In which I am abject

I have not eaten and I cannot be bothered to eat. My eyes ache, and I cannot be bothered to take out my lenses. I almost didn’t bother to shower, but the pleasure I take in scented soaps is a pleasure that rarely fails me.

I cannot even say I haven’t been working. I have been. It just hasn’t been enough, and it hasn’t opened the trapdoor in the upper reaches of my brain.

I’m addicted to a drug of my own making. And once in a very great while, I cannot supply it for myself, and so I walk around craving, and nothing else suffices.

All of which is to say: the post-novel burnout hasn’t gone away yet. One of these days I’m going to wake up with an original thought in my head, and I’m going to put more than a few words in a row again, and it’s going to be absolutely wonderful… and until then, I’m going to ghost around the house and eat stale crackers for lunch and listen to Wilco all day.

Kids: just say no to writing.

6 thoughts on “In which I am abject

  1. Wilco will keep you in the doldrums! Also best avoided on a bad day: Radiohead and Damien Rice. Medicine for burnout can be found in Sinead O'Connor's reggae album, Goldfrapp's Seventh Tree and, of course, Bob Dylan's Modern Times. When you start to feel your spirits lift, put on Devendra Banhart's Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon…

    Now how about posting that final chapter playlist you promised?

  2. Oh, Olinka, you are so right… and of course I went straight from Wilco to Radiohead yesterday, and unsurprisingly, it did not help.

    Bob Dylan, coming up! And I will post the final chapter playlist shortly, too.

  3. Claire, hang in there! I'm sure post-novel burnout is awful, but if great athletes need a rest period after the Olympics, you need to give yourself a little recovery time after writing a book. In any case, think of this recuperation time as "gestating new ideas time." You have a no-holds-barred, completely guilt-free pass to just relax, watch movies you've missed in theaters, read any books you've been meaning to, etc, without thinking "I should be putting my time to better use writing." This recovery period is REQUIRED. So just relax~ –and no writing!!

    That said… I'd LOVE to read that second Gus story you said you were writing last time~~ 😀 I rarely reread short stories, but I've read "Who In Mortal Chains" three times now (well, one time was aloud to my sister who also loved it)… *__* What a charismatic heroine… mata aitai na… So, err, if you ignore all my kindly advice to relax and jump back into writing (that story :P), I really couldn't disapprove… ^_____^ ♥

  4. Oh, haha, this is Cy again, btw… guess I didn't sign into my lj last time. @_@; But yeah… sadly, you've got a hanger-on now, lurking around your blog waiting for updates. (urk, that sounds kind of stalker-y, doesn't it? Sorry, it's not meant to be! ^^;; ). In any case, good luck with everything!

  5. darkcyradis: thank you for the combined vote of confidence and kick in the pants! I do indeed need to get the second Gus story in gear (and then sell it, which is difficult enough that it might actually not belong in parentheses, but whatever… sufficient unto the day, right?)

    I'm so glad you enjoyed the first one, and even more that you took the time to tell me 🙂

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