CL Pauwels at Large

Eight of Cups: moving on

realizing the current cycle is over
abandoning a hopeless situation
disentangling yourself
starting on a trip of unknown length
letting go
finishing up and walking away

Almost one year ago (February 5, 2018, to be exact), I began blogging about the “Parallel Journey” I found myself on and musing on the similarities between the writing life and the political. That lasted for barely six weeks before life – and the tyranny of the urgent – came crashing in, derailing my intentions.

On March 22, I lost my writing partner and best female friend (Hubby gets the male role), Lori Fetters Lopez. I’m still recovering from that, still missing her daily, and still recovering from the political life I was immersed in for almost exactly nine months as a candidate for public office. She would have enjoyed that adventure much more than I did, and I would have survived it more easily with her on my team.

Such is life.

But now, I’m finally returning to the musings of that journey, because as any writer I know will tell you, writing is therapy. I need to move beyond the internal musings and fretting and rehashing that have weighed me down since the election and start putting words on the page again. Dumping those lingering thoughts should free the way for me to finish the novel that’s been sadly neglected since the chaos began.

At least that’s my hope.

It’s funny, really, how many similarities I found in my two lives last year:

• Gatekeepers
  • Agents/editors/publishers
  • Political parties/financial backers
• Assumed knowledge base
  • Querying and agents and publishing and marketing and social media platforms and with all that when is there time to actually write?
  • Paperwork and campaign laws and finance regulations and fundraising needs and approved vendors and where exactly can we post those campaign signs?
• Idealism
  • Write the breakthrough novel first time out and be set financially; making a living as a writer
  • Qualified candidates are recruited/selected/supported and win races because the public cares about quality government
• Industry resistant to change – with good reason, or because it challenges the powers-that-be?
  • Stigma of “vanity press” self-publishers fading oh, so slowly
  • Independent candidates fighting an uphill battle against the entrenched two-party system
• And on a more personal note, focusing on that one negative review/social media troll rather than all the positive comments and support

That’s my road map for the next several weeks, so stay tuned! I hope you’ll join me as I debrief on the page and explore the writing world from a different perspective – and then move on.