Anticipation – Part One

I am in a state of anticipation on several levels, right now.

The one most on my mind today deals with the, as it were, secular seasons.  Or, more specifically, the change of seasons.

In reality, each season has its own  . . . variety . . . of things.

Each season has its beauties, certainly.  Each season also has its own potential problems.  There is winter cold and the accompanying heating bills and sometimes precipitates such winter illnesses as flu and colds, summer heat that can cause its own potential health problems including such things as heat prostration and respiratory distress brought on by poor air quality, and Spring has the potential for bringing with it flooding concerns.  Well, at least in my area it does.

The upcoming change of season from Winter to Spring is on my mind just now because of a few things.  First, where I live we have a warming trend over the next few days. 

After a very mild winter this year, we had a snowstorm late last week.  It was only the second actual snowstorm of the season, and started on the last day of a Leap Year February.  It was, however, an extended storm that lasted two full days.

After that storm, the temperatures dropped to the low-to-mid 30s up until the day before yesterday [a Tuesday, after a storm that ran Thursday, Friday, and into the wee hours of Saturday last week.]

Yesterday, however, the milder weather that characterized most of our winter returned for a few days.  It was in the 50s.  Today, it actually got into the 60s, and then it cools again but only to daytime temperatures in the 40s [lows of 30s are forecast, but I anticipate that is overnight temperatures.]

In addition to this warming trend prompting thoughts of Spring, the Springtime clock change to Daylight Savings time is scheduled for this weekend.

And the official first day of Spring is only a week and a half away.

This winter has been mild, and I have been grateful for the savings on heating oil.  It has in many ways been a quite difficult winter for me in other ways, and I’m not sorry to move on to the warmer [and longer] days of Springtime.

And so, I’m anticipating . . . and looking forward to the kind of events and opportunities that Spring may bring about this year.

Certainly, we don’t want to live our lives too much in the past or the future:  there is much to be said for living in the moment as much as we possibly can.

Yet, there is something in a way delightful about a state of anticipation.  This is true in creative writing as well as in life.  And true on the flip side of the writing coin:  a build-up of anticipation in the reader.

There’s a certain highly enjoyable tension involved in reading a book that we can anticipate some element of the outcome without anticipating the details.  In a romance, for example, we generally can rest assured that the hero and heroine will form a lasting, loving relationship.  The book may or may not take us to marriage, but by the end we likely have some sense of a firm commitment between the primary male and female characters.  In an artfully done such book, the anticipation of that basic formula of ‘girl meets boy, they fall in love’ lends a deepening of the enjoyment of the read to the details that we don’t anticipate:  the ‘how’ of the relationship’s realization.  The little surprises.

Indeed, I have noticed some particular trends in Christian romance in recent books, and they often lead to this balancing act between what the reader does and does not anticipate.

But that is a Blog post for another time:  the trends in Christian romance.

What about you?  What are you anticipating at this time?  In your own life, or in your creative writing.  If you are involved in a creative writing project, how are you setting the stage?

If you haven’t thought about that as you work on your fiction, perhaps now would be a good time to consider the element of reader anticipation of your character’s progress in the story you are creating.

Diversions and Distractions

I started the Blog with excellent intentions to post a couple times a week each week, and sometimes more than that.

Unfortunately, as they say:  “Man plans, God laughs.”

I did well enough for the first few weeks.  I knew there were going to be a couple weeks I would have some trouble with posting more than once, and probably one week that I might not be able to post at all, due to diversions and distractions.

When I finally got back to the Blog, I found I had not posted for a full month during that phase.

I unfortunately had a variety of distractions during February that kept me away from the Blog, and to be blunt in some instances it wasn’t a matter of the time or energy to write a Blog entry . . . which I find easy to write . . . it was a matter of mental disarray such as to make coming up with a topic an exercise in futility.  That is a matter I will get to later in this post to draw this subject around into the area of ‘topics about writing.’

An element of the distractions and diversions is anticipating a recall to seasonal work on February 27^th, and dealing with getting ready for that event.  I knew the date throughout February, or nearly so.

I was also involved in writing articles for a site in hopes of raising my Internet visibility during February.  Normally, like the Blog, that site is a “write at your own pace” site, but they had a “challenge” from mid-January to mid-February, offering a valuable information document for those who completed an average of one article per day during that timeframe, for 30 days.  This was an exclusive offer:  not sold, only provided as a result of completing the challenge.

That went well enough at first, but towards the end, I was again finding it difficult to come up with topics to write about.

I also had my own personal writing objectives during that time:  I have two novels in process [actually three, counting one in Beta reader limbo], and I had enough long-hand manuscript to feel rather uncomfortable with that in limbo when I went back to full-time work. 

So, I prioritized manuscript typing during the approximately last work week before I returned to work.

But, the biggest distraction and diversion involved the need to replace a vehicle as inexpensively as possible in time to return to work on February 27:  plus get all the follow up paperwork, inspection, and so on done.  To some degree, that had a fall-out effect on everything else.

There were several uncertainties in the course of finding, negotiating, funding, etc., the vehicle and this created a significant distraction that kept me from keeping up with everything.

Normally, return-to-work preparation just involves some wardrobe and budget organizing.  But in this case, the budgeting is more difficult and I had to go through purchase, insurance validation, registration and inspection of the vehicle and as a result deal with an even more limited budget than is normal starting out a return to on-site work.

In the middle of all this, I realized that before returning to work I also had to replace my driving eyeglasses which not only was I using a prior prescription having ruined my current pair, but that back-up pair was falling apart as well..  That meant working something more into a tight budget, and finding a source for inexpensive glasses online.

At times, the things that needed to be done were exhausting.  All in all, this led to my having enough diversion and distraction in operation during much of February that I didn’t get back to the Blog as I should:  especially for such a new Blog.

Now, as to how this specific situation for me relates to other writers.

In one of my first courses in my Major as an undergraduate English Major, the instructor indicated that “all writers work under constraints.  Constraints of time, constraints of health . . .”

Professional writers always make their best attempt to do their best work.

The fact of the matter is, though, situations do arise when because of constraints, the individual writer’s “best work” is “best in context” and not necessarily the writer’s best work rated, if such a thing were possible, in a vacuum so to speak.

Tight deadlines may mean a partial response timely is better than a full response late, for example. 

Even in projects for which the currency is not payment in cash or electronic funds transfer, but which we still want to put our best foot forward to advance our professional reputation and visibility, time and-or health constraints may mean a writer has to choose among a variety of projects that should get completed and determine on which are the most essential at that time. 

Such constraints could mean putting up something much shorter than a writer would like in a Blog, just to keep a hand in the game.  Indeed, when I first assessed how much time I missed, I did put up a fairly short post just to ensure such readers as do stop by the Blog find it still active if rather dormant.

With cash or electronic funds transfer compensated work, time constraints may mean negotiating more extended deadlines so as to enable doing the best work, or it may mean being more flexible on terms.

Writers [and clients] do need to recognize that constraints can and will occur:  and do the best they can to compensate for that such as to allow them to continue to submit the best work they can for each outlet they have for their work.

Another important aspect of writer constraints, especially those that are due to sidetracking by diversions and distractions, is to try to come full circle once you get past those distractions and try to tie up all the loose ends:  such as by revitalizing a Blog you haven’t managed to post to for an interval through resumption of a more frequent posting schedule.

I would have tried to do that this weekend in any event, but am taking advantage having taken a Friday Leave day in part due to questionable weather/driving conditions in my area.

Is it time for you to take stock of your writing activity, and find any areas you wanted to develop that you have not pursued as fully as you would like?

Even if those areas are things more on your “want list” such as personal projects like novels you have no publisher or agent on tap for rather than paying projects, making even a start on tying up some of your loose ends on such projects is likely to both give you a psychological boost and contribute to improving your writing endeavors across the board.

Happy writing!

www.kristawriter.com