Find Me Serenity

It is 5:40pm on the West Coast and I feel like it is the middle of the night. I have spent the day working on streamlining the Anastasia Reeves site and re-designing the eBook cover for “Bandmates.” I also spent some time arguing the semantics of the word bullying on a writing forum, and editing a story I probably shouldn’t be writing. Oh, and I watched the eleventy hundred hours of coverage of NHL Free Agency Day. My team is falling apart before my eyes and it is very disheartening. And although it seems I was fairly productive, I feel like I wasted a whole lot of energy I on things I have no control over.

Writing these days is a lot harder than it used to be. Putting aside the at-your-fingertips scrutiny available to you the moment you have something written and published, the process of getting your stuff seen and read takes a universe of energy all in itself. I constantly feel like I am talking into the wind. I mean, I get it. I write in a genre that straddles the line between “oh my gosh why is she doing that?” and “wow I didn’t even know you knew how to do that.” But even the people not afraid to admit they read my stuff are hiding behind trees. There’s nothing I can do about that. You either find an audience, or you write for yourself. Knowing that does not make it any less disappointing.

But it’s the fact that the universe has chosen this skill to gift me with that has me most tied up in knots. People don’t read books anymore. Shit, people don’t even read blogs anymore. It’s all pictures and gifs and silly videos of guys being punched in the dick followed by a really cute kitten doing something absolutely adorable. Even on Facebook we can’t simply respond with words. We have to post dumb memes and videos and gifs that say our words for us.

So why is it that I write anyway? Your guess is as good as mine.