By the River of Nomads...

 

Sacrifice...

      Things seem to go that way. To live my life... or the life I dream of with my writing, my reading, my art and getting published, I need money.
       I'd rather be writing all the time and doing these things but I can't because I need to work. I have an amazing job, in that I am very grateful, even though I wish I had more spare time. In that I am sacrificing my writing time and honing of it so that I can finance the submissions and editing and courses and printing of my work.
        It gives me more inspiration when I do get time to write and when I work so much. But it does make me feel like I'm not a writer.
       And I can honestly say that you are a real writer if you don't believe yourself to be at first or most of the time. This isn't always true and reliable but mostly it is. To know, you have to remind yourself of the facts.
  Me...I can say that I'm of two minds and states in every part of me. In my writing I know I'm a writer but I don't believe myself to be worthy of being called a writer. I believe a lot of two-sided-bitter things but in my writing, this...
   On my desk I have a large envelope that holds the self-published first version of my dragon novel as well as a translated version in Japanese completed by a friend of mine. In that same pile is the newest manuscript of a new novel I'm part way through writing, as well as the last notebook filled with the last part of my second latest novel of which I'm in the middle of typing up. I also have the eight documentaries I've completed of my islands on the Black Ocean that I created. I have next to that my story notebooks and journals and the latest book I'm reading and in my laptop are all the copies of my stories....all eight or so and incomplete prototypes included as well as self-prompts attached to my screen to try and encourage my writing.
   I'm not trying to boast or brag, just that I've been writing for 18 - 20 years in my genre and I really am slowly putting my writing plan to get published into action.

   So eventually I came to the terms with myself that I am a writer, that I am meant to be a writer and that I am a good writer but that I have a long way to go and that I am not yet an author. Only when I have a properly printed book in my hand that I've written will I be an author.
   Please dear friends, I invite you to reflect on your writing habits and what is involved in your life - write it down, whatever you have to do - and see if there is enough evidence to support who you believe yourself to be.
   Mind you, even when I haven't touched a story for years, I still get new ideas and bits and peices to add to the tale and new inspiration. That's why I feel that there's not enough time, because I honestly believe that I don't have enough time in my life to do all the things I want to do...to feel that I am able to relax and actually complete and experience everything. Instead I have only sixty to seventy years left to realise this...my life.
    It's a long time, and I realize that this is the attitude I should take, but sometimes it's hard. But it is a long time. :]

   Which is another thing...sometimes the only way to get through life is to constantly be diplomatic. I try to...though with my writing it's much harder to just be all nice. But in that...if ever one has a problem, use silence, instead of just bellowing at said annoying or hurtful person...and, I'm not sure...it's hard to explain.
  Just that it seems to play out in life that the guy who succeeds is always on everyone's good side.

 

You know, I used to have a black cat. Heehee, yes I did, yes I did.

My point is that back years ago I used to just be more. With my cat we'd walk out to the field opposite my house just on evening or just-to, and we'd sit there together watching the sun set and listening to the sounds we both could hear, being like her. I wouldn't notice the cold and I'd be so so there.

Cold is so...I feel more there when I'm hungry and cold and near water.

Sounds terrible I know, but there's some things...to be able to really feel the edges of myself and be there and exuberantly happy because of it...then, well, hunger and warmth become secondary.

    

         I don't know where to end this, but I do know that despite how well my life seems to be going, the dark gloom cloud keeps peeping out at odd and sharp corners and angles, in the moments between bus stations and lonely roads...and when I see how much my life and my families life is about to change and is changing, it makes it somehow worse and more strained that I feel I'm being inducted more and more into the jigsaw of life.

      

       What I mean by that is that life is like a jigsaw...so many interconnecting peices and sometimes it's a downer to think that it is so complex and big that I could easily get my place in the puzzle and become lost in its' folds. Because really, if we're honest with ourselves, it can be near impossible to find a single small peice in a billion peice puzzle.

 

 

Just...really, living in a small apartment, alone with perhaps a cat for company and working like a robot for this company because I have no other job and so can't risk being free...and seeing my life slowly running to the grave in this process...

 

Sorry to end this with such a downer note.

 

And no...it is and it isn't as simple as I'm telling you.

 

Miss CLScarlett xx