The Bug Done Bit Me, Dagnabit!

We cue up another episode of G.B.'s Adventures, Now?, the occasional series where G.B. discusses his thoughts and his Muse's thoughts about writing with the outside world. Today's post will feature the leaking of G.B.'s brain cells all over this blog, which is to say that those looking for some light BDSM will not find it here today (at least that's what my Muse would like everyone to know).

For the 1st quarter of 2015, my writing has been somewhere in the general vicinity of "let's procrastinate" and "I'll get to it soon, but first I need to goof on my computer for an hour and a half". Which is to say, not much of consequence was produced. However, by the 2nd quarter, I finally found something to work on, which was a total rewrite of this chapbook/novella. But as the 2nd quarter drifted into the 3rd, I found that I was spending more time forcing myself to write, than actually wanting to writing.

Scary thought indeed.

But, as they say, sometimes a good thing can pop up when you least expect it. While I was taking an unneeded break from my forced writing (working on the prequel to this), I decided to re-read one of my published short stories. Imagine my surprise when I found that the link was de-linked. With a little judicious research, which manly consisted of using Google and Facebook, I was able to find out what exactly happened. A few questions to clarify a couple of points, and I was back in business with my short story, Red Stripe.

And that, my friends, is when the writing bug bit me.

While I was trying to figure what to do with the story, an idea quickly popped into my head. a Kindle only short story release. In rapid succession, I had three stories picked out, two that were previously published and one fresh one. The fresh one turned out to be only partially written (belatedly discovered that several pages were missing from the version I was working on, but fortunately found them stashed elsewhere on the computer), so thus, I actually spent time AFTER WORK writing and polishing up the 2nd draft. I also spent a small percentage of that time planning/outlining the overall interior content.

And there was one other very tangible benefit to this bug bite: I no longer found that I was forcing myself to write. Instead of fear and loathing whenever I sat down in front of my XP to write, I had acceptance. Accepting the fact that self-imposed deadlines can be a crippler and that there is no wrong way to write (i.e., one book a year as opposed to multiple books a year), allowed me to rediscover the fact that writing has always been my oasis of calm from the crap-that-rolls-downhill-and-lands-squarely-on-my-head-every-day-life.

And that, at the very least, is the one life preserver that I can always latch onto whenever I need to.

(c) 2015 BOOKS BY G.B. MILLER. All Rights Reserved.