Ambition...where did it go?

I feel foolish confessing my writing has fallen by the wayside. Normally writing is my savior. Its where I go to hide from the world. In the past year it feels as if I lost something. That drive inside me that makes it so I HAVE TO write has faded, vanished, slammed into park and refuses to move. I can't seem to jump start anything to do with writing.
This scares me a bit.
I've been painting a lot and have started to learn piano, but I know these are substitutes for that thing inside me that wants to be writing.
As silly as it may seem I blame this on a loss of a pet. Elvis, my parrot of 11 years died suddenly. He was jumped on by one of the dogs I fostered and died in my hands. He nipped my finger once and was gone. I cried for days. I'm still crying inside and the smallest things can set me off. Its been over 6 months and still my heart weeps. I blame myself. I was his protector and I failed. His death is all my fault.  I don't blame the dog. Something fell beside him and he pounced. My daughter and I were standing right there and still couldn't stop it. I don't even think the dog knew what it was when he jumped on it. Probably thought it was a toy. Dogs move instinctively. I was the failure. Elvie's death is mine. I should have kept him safe.
Silly, I know but since then I can't write. I don't know what I'm waiting for, or why I've been so stuck over this. He's not the first pet I lost and I'm sure won't be the last. But parrots are special. They are almost like little people. He talked and would say the absolutely right thing at the right time. He ate when we ate, slept when we slept and was part of the family. I miss him terribly.
They say grief has five stages; Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I guess I'm in depression since there is no guilt. Or maybe there should be guilt. Or is that in bargaining? Am I trying to bargain my way out of guilt? Justify that I didn't keep him safe?
I know accidents happen and we can't stop the world, but still my heart broke when Elvis left me.
Weirdly, about two weeks before he died I had this overwhelming feeling that he was going to be gone soon. Like I looked at him once and knew he would leave me soon. The thought so horrified me that I shook it off immediately.
If I ever have pychic powers I don't want to know things like that but sometimes...
Why don't I ever get the lottery numbers? Something useful.

Then a few months ago my dog died. Halston was 16 and a golden retriever so we knew it was coming. Still didn't make it any easier.
So now I'm plodding through an old story, trying to get it ready for Kindle but my heart's just not in it.
Tell me how to get "it" back. That thing inside that makes you write. I think it's still there. It just won't come out and play.

Captured!

Putting it out there...

We all know the scary side of going Indy is putting your real name out there with a big bold sign that says LOOK WHAT I DID.  When we were real little most were anxious to show our artwork or newest creation to the world. We vied for attention of adults. Then getting older we were suddenly too cool to care. Shrugs, head  flips, acting out in other directions, and, for some, hiding replaced our anxiousness to share.

Stephen King never seemed to have this problem. He wrote in his book, On Writing, that he was sending stuff out to magazines even as a kid. He had a big nail in the wall over his desk and used to spike the rejection letters onto it. I find this brave stuff for someone of such a young age. 

I had good parents. We were on the poorer side of life but happy. My parents went the extra mile to talk with us and be active in our interests. When the teen years hit I was mostly a hider. I hid my stories and most of my art work but for the life of me I don't know why. Even after high school I wouldn't show my work to anyone. I got married, never shared. Had kids and made up stories just for them and let the adult stories fall by the wayside.

Then I met Leni. Our kids were in kindergarten and we'd sit outside by this big tree waiting for them to come out of class and talk. She was one of the smartest people I'd ever met. A voracious reader, Leni was the kind of person who believed we were capable of anything. Eventually, I told her about one of  my stories and her first reaction was: PUBLISH IT! I stared at her. Never in all my years of writing had I thought of publishing anything. I wrote because I couldn't not write. But Leni was a do-er. She saw something and did it. She was amazing and encouraging and I decided to write something aiming to publish.

The story was about a woman who went back in time to the days right before the Civil War. It went into how a woman from the 80's  adapted to life without all our modern conveniences and how she dealt with the climate of slavery, suppression of women's rights, etc. It was a hard write. I'm way too liberal to be able to survive that without a fight.
That story is in a box somewhere and will probably never surface again, but I have to thank Leni, my dear friend, for giving me the power to put it out there. Without her I'd still be hiding. Leni passed away from MS but her spirit has never left me. She was all that was good in the world.

My question under all this is when did you decide to put it out there? How did you find the courage?

Marketing....the other side of Indy work

As in any art things are a work in progress. Even after the book is written and rewritten and rewritten there's more to do. Once the story's told we move on to preparing it for publication/formatting, cover art, and then correcting the formatting.
When I first put Soul Mates up for some reason in the first paragraph (and only the first) all the "o's" turned into zeros "0". Very weird. Then I saw all my other typos! Yikes! How embarrassing.
All corrected...hopefully.

Moving on to marketing (Yuk!) Marketing is like stripping naked and running down Main Street. You want people to notice you but actually putting yourself out there is intimidating.
So you Facebook your people, email your friends and then attack the web.
I'm just starting the attack and am in the process of building a website. Scary putting your real name on a website. Here in Aimless land I'm pretty anonymous, but out there I am who I am.

www.jeannedonnelly.com

For better or for worse.
But like the tiger and life in general: Its a work in progress. 
Now where should marketing go from here? I have a few ideas and I'll be blogging them later. Where did you go with it?

Punctuation!

I see the story unfolding and suddenly someone yells. Woof! Woof! Woof! (It makes sense in book, I promise)

So since I've been warned by writers and an agent that we should never use exclamation marks. So I stare at the page...what to do, what to do....
I need to read some more. I usually read constantly, two or three books at a time, but lately I've been painting. When my soul is sad I paint. All other emotions I can write through, but not sadness. For some reason slopping paint on canvas works. Its like blanking my mind out in a way nothing else does. Time ceases, paint heals.
I miss reading. This has gone on way too long. I need to get over the losses and find a way back to what I enjoy.
Maybe then I can see what other writers do about the woof.

Blogging, Facebook, and time...

I love bloggers. I have a list of blogs I used to visit daily, but I'm sad to say I've drifted away from blogging. It seemed like a giant slow down on all the bloggers and I know we all have real lives that take us away from all this, but I think when I was blogging all my writing moved better. It was almost like morning pages (see The Artist's Way) that were meant to flex the writer's muscle in a way to clear the clutter.
Then there's Facebook that can really chew up time. It's entertaining and keeps us in touch with friends and relatives we don't get to hear from on a daily basis. I love seeing what my nieces and nephews are up to even if I haven't seen them in a while. Then two hours fly by and I realize I've done nothing. Facebook is a time-sucker.
Finally there's this job I have to go to everyday because I need to earn money. Even when I do have down time (and there's a lot where I work) the other people in the office are always chattering so I find it hard to concentrate enough to write. I tried head phones but people get upset when I tune them out. They have nothing important to say to me, but want me ready to answer anyway.
I used to get up an hour early to write. I made it a job I went to everyday. Where did this determination go? 

To get back to writing on a regular basis I'm trying to start with getting back to blogging. Flexing the writing muscle that I hope will get me writing regularly again.

I NEED OTHER WRITERS

There are several reason why writers need other writers. Number one is you can't write in a vacuum. If you take one tip from each writer you meet it moves you that much closer to being an awesome writer.
Writer's groups give you special insight into how your work looks from the outside in. When i write and rewrite and rewrite I miss the simplest things. A good writer's group will tag these things and offer suggestions to improve. I had a great writers group at one time but it dissolved when Barnes & Nobel kicked all their groups out. In protest I don't shop at B & N anymore. I'm an Amazon girl now. I think removing the chairs and groups was a big mistake on their part. I belonged at several groups in our local store and they just stopped all of them and removed those cozy little seating arrangements. Pity. I never left a group without buying something on the way out. Now that I'm not there for my group, I shop on Amazon. My bank account is grateful but I miss my group. One of the members was an agent and she was awesome with the grammar and punctuation. Another was a multi published author who gave amazing critique. Miss those peeps.
I need other writers for insight into the publishing biz. Its changing. Agents used to be the gatekeepers to the world where only the ubber talented and lucky (yes, i think some are just lucky) get passed onto the major publishing houses. Now with Amazon cracking the lock down on the publishing biz its a whole new world for publishing. Other writers are a wealth of information on the in and outs of this new world.
I need other writers for inspiration. Every time I hear about the success of one of my writer friends it inspires me to work harder. I rejoice for every book they publish, every bridge they cross and every moment they shine in the author spotlight. These amazing writers, who forge ahead in conventional publishing or the new world of Kindle and Nook, give me hope.

I need them all.