Early morning waking

[satyapriya]

This early morning wake up is driving me nuts. 3.30am is remarkably late for me these days. 1am, 2am are more likely, with a 5am fall back to sleep.
This morning, I just gave up. Lay there for a while, scrolled through facebook, brief visit to twitter, then reading.
It's 6.30am now. Sun's up, but the birds have been awake for ages. Some damned fool magpie warbled briefly at 4.30 or thereabouts, making me think it was later than it was. "Oh well, if it's dawn, may as well give up, get up." I did. It wasn't dawn. Stupid maggie.
This has been happening since mid-November. Did my daughter's wedding really throw me for that much of a loop?
I think it's more that the wedding set off an anxiety spiral that didn't let up until...well, I'm not sure. If I'm honest, I have other things to fret about now.
I am trying, truly trying, to be more positive about my life, and my writing. I'm trying not to let lethargy, anxiety, and defeatism win.
Okay, those two reader critiques of IN AND OUT OF THE CAULDRON really threw me. I'm still questioning whether or not I have what it takes to produce a long-form book. I thought...okay, I'll say it... I thought I was a better writer than the two opinions indicated. I thought I'd dug deep enough. I thought there'd only be some fleshing out to be done.
I feel defeated. I don't know that I have it in me to go back and find the real story, the real depths of my spiritual journey. I feel tired just thinking about it.
I gave myself time off after finishing the first draft of CAULDRON. I needed it.
Recently, I've been playing with flash fictions. But they're not true flash fictions, in that they're not full stories. They are little half-formed things, notes for a story maybe, the way one reader said my 50,000 word draft of CAULDRON was notes for a memoir.
Maybe PhD-Man was right all those years ago, that I just don't have it.
I don't know any more.
In the last few years, so much has fallen away. Friends, groups, practices, tarot, palmistry, my magical practice, any sense of me being of use.
I have considered that maybe writing wants to fall away too. It's scary. Who am I if not writer?
I don't know how to put a story together any more. The way my mind used to work, back in the 80's and 90's, fastening on to an idea, and trying it all different ways in my head until the plot came falling into place...just isn't there. I get ideas, but have no idea how to hang a plot on them.
"Man believes his wife to be a snake." Um, okay.
So I write about 800 words of a man coming to believe his wife is a snake, the little hints that give it away. And then, there's no development. It just stops.
My mind looks like a limestone cave - stalactites and stalagmites all over the place, nothing fully formed, nothing complete, shards everywhere. Lovely and glittering to look at, but...
I finished a short story/flash fiction the other day. About 1200 words, if that. A man and woman meet in cyberspace, on dating networks. They correspond. And that's about it.
Help! How do I find the story teller inside again?

Comments

[captlychee]

Those snake and dating ideas are the story. Most literary fiction these days is half-developed stuff told in few words. You may be getting your view of what is and isn't a story by looking at the wrong venues, but it's clear from what I've read recently that word count is everything and story means fuck all.

Is flash fiction meant to be a full story? I thought it was all about the 'instant write' idea. (Maybe I'm looking at the wrong venues.)

I remember your belly-dance murder mystery had a good through line and a surprising murderer, so you can plot things.

Remember that PhD-Man is pretty bright and works and works and works at whatever he's doing till he gets it right. "Driven" is the word. You don't want to be like that. (/And in real life, he hasn't advanced much in quality of writing since 1983.) He thinks that slogging it out will make you a better person and a better writer, but it hasn't worked in his case.

Get some other readers.