Tag: staying focused

Cozy Mystery

Strange Times …

carolyncordon

Thinking about what is going on in the world right now, I’m wondering, is there really any point in getting concerned about what is happening in countries I’ll never visit, people I’ll never know. But of course that is a head in the sand kind of thought. Places, and people, are important. Things that happen in one place bring echoes of what occurs to other places, as people doing things in one place can link with other people in other places.

I’m not only looking at this from the point of view of a world being held in stasis, at home, trying to find new ways to live our lives … The coronavirus, Covid 19 has us all looking and hoping, grasping greedily, some of us, and sharing compassionately some others. I know of city people ‘invading’ small tourist towns, causing difficulties for permanent residents, who are not accustomed to having so many people there, out of tourist times.

As a person with a chronic illness that means I may be affected in worse ways that others, I am doing my best to stay at home, as much as possible. I go outside, often, but only outside my own house, and mostly remaining on my own property. I gather herbs, and make myself cups of herbal tea, or let our dog in and out, for ‘comfort trips’ into the backyard.

But I’m a writer, so this locked in time could be the ideal time to get writing my Cosy Murder Mystery series, but, even though I have indeed written a little bit of the first book in the series, I don’t seem to be able to settle down to getting it all written, my mind is skipping around from here to there, and I write a blog post, a poem there, and perhaps another couple of paragraphs of the novel, but not necessarily in any kind of order.

I have the TV on, mostly on news channels, seeing and hearing the same news, slightly changed perhaps, watching the numbers, worrying, and staying safe inside … If I could, I’d be like Missy, my dog, lounging around on the sofa, and not worrying about anything except having food, and getting to the toilet as needed …

Missy ‘lounging around’

But I’m not a dog, I’m a writer, and even though writing blog posts is writing, what I really want to be writing, is my Cosy Mysteries … Oh brain, please, think about the people and places in Talloola, and write more words for that first book “Winds of Death At Talloola”!

So enough of this blog post, and perhaps back to my novel-in-progress!

Cozy Mystery, Uncategorized, Writing

Locked In or Reaching Out?

carolyncordon

Even as we are (most of us anyway) in Locked in mode, keeping ourselves and others safe, by staying at home, most of the time. Many are bemoaning these scaled back quiet times, and they’re worried about not being able to work.

Not me though, and not many of my friends. A locked in life can feel like bliss, nothing you have to go out and do, the days are yours, to explore your writing options. The projects that had been put on hold, waiting for a time, when you actually had time, and suddenly, that time is now!

While many businesses have closed down, many publishers, especially small ones, are still very much at work, and they are able to go on doing their publishing thing, calling for submissions, receiving them, putting anthologies or other books together, then sending them off to be printed.

This is great news for many of us, and many of my friends are getting published, and we celebrate the good news with them, when they post the news on blogs, or on Social Media. But the sad part is there won’t be any Book Launches, where everyone comes together in the same room, words are read out, and hugs are given, food and drinks are consumed, and much chat happens.

No more. It is possible to still hold a book launch, one online, but many of the best elements are missing. There are no hugs, the purchaser is unable to watch as the writer of the book signs the new copy the purchaser has handed money over for. If books are purchased, it happens online, and there are definitely no hugs.

Personally, I’ve had two poems accepted by two different publishers, I’ve entered a short story in a competition, and I’ve written some more (but not enough) of my bigger work in progress. That work in (slow) progress is a Cosy Murder Mystery series. I have characters, and a setting, as well as many book titles and slight notes on what each book will be about. There are I think twenty books in the series. If I ever get them written, I expect I will be in my late seventies … This is not a bad thing necessarily, many authors of such books are more mature, they’ve lived lives, and know much about people, it’s all fine!

But the rate my writing of this series, I’m likely to be more like in my nineties. I sincerely hope the writing of Murder books helps to ward off dementia, because otherwise I’ll have no chance of making my way to the end of my list! Whether poetry, or mystery books, or anything else really, being locked in makes it all easier, with so much time available. Sadly, more time can also mean more things to procrastinate about.

And this crazy Covid 19 time, when there is non stop media about death rates, recovery rates, things to do, meals to make, cleaning to do, decades old boxes of ‘stuff’ to sort through, the dog to walk and feed, gardening to do, and so on. So tasks you’ve never had on your list of things to do may appear, and all of those things can stop the writing happening …

With no sense of routine, things can just drift away, things happen, but they don’t amount to much, and little or no writing is done. Where does the time go? It goes down the drain, and even though your house is clean, and dishes are done, with different recipes tried out now that time is there, sourcing ingredients might take more time than usual, and you may not be able to get those ingredients, so you have to find a different idea.

And no writing gets done … I’ve been able to get some sort of sense to things happening, by moving from breakfast table to laptop every morning, Emails read and dealt with, and then writing happens, most of the time. The writing might be a poem, a bit more of that novel, a blog post, something for the monthly community newsletter I edit, but writing. Words happen every day, and I am still a writer, just a locked down one.

My Locked in view …

If you have a plan that works for you at the moment, I’d love to read about your ideas, please leave a comment, and we can perhaps all get better at managing our time, and get some great writing done!