What’s up in the wild and wonderful world of me?
The big news: YES, I AM WRITING J&A NEXT, EVEN WITH ONLY 56 PLEDGES.
I shall explain more about that below.
So, I spent the last two weeks or so playing with supplements and trying to wrangle my OCD under control again. I had a lot of success with 5 HTP in September, but then it sort of stopped working, and I was frustrated by that. As mentioned last week, I was trying adding dopamine precursors into the mix, but that wasn’t really cutting it either, so then I read that maybe 5 HTP needs you to take a break from it to keep working at full effectiveness.
So on Monday and Tuesday of this week, I took no supplements whatsover except for Theanine as needed when I freaked out.
And what happened?
Oh, yeah, this happened.
So, um, about that. Yes, I screwed up my estimated taxes. Yes, no matter how I crunch the numbers I have enough money to pay my taxes and live until January and nothing more. Yes, this is scary.
It’s no scarier than last time around this year. It’s no scarier than the day-to-day of my financial situation. This is a typical obsessive thought pattern for me. I am terrified that I live in a world of financial uncertainty, but that is just, well, life. Everyone lives in a world of financial uncertainty. Anyone could lose his or her job tomorrow. Some people have a more convincing illusion of certainty than I do, but, in essence, I just can’t control the world.
So… this is embarrassing and all, but that survey is basically a very sad attempt to make the world certain. It’s me desperately wishing that somehow I could KNOW if I’d make enough money off of a book and whether or not it would be financially lucrative.
It happened because I’m scared. But… I have an anxiety disorder, and I tend to be scared all the time. Of all kinds of things. I have to deal with that.
The end.
I’m writing the last J&A book next, and I don’t care how many people vote in that survey. When I wrote Breathless, exactly no one was interested in buying it. Now, five years later, I’ve been supporting myself solely from my writing for nearly two years. I did not get here by taking the safe route. I did it by taking risks. By leaping without being sure that there was a net.
I’m not going to stop now.
So. Anyway.
Sorry for subjecting you all to my mental illness.
(*Note on that, as well: Aaron thinks I should go to a doctor to discuss my supplement use as opposed to experimenting on my own. He may be right, and I may be a crazy person. I’m careful not to take anything that’s dangerous, and I currently like the idea of “natural” supplements as opposed to prescription drugs sold to line the pockets of people working for big drug companies. But, again, that is probably some kind of OCD thing on the same line as being afraid of germs. Still, making that decision will be easier after I’m being forced to pay hundreds of dollars a month for health insurance next year. I plan on getting my money’s worth. Until then, pay attention, I’m obviously destitute. That’s why I made that survey.)
The week:
Sunday: 6K in three sessions.
Monday: 6K in four sessions (one was a sexytimes scene and they always take longer to write due to needing a thesaurus for words like pleasure and sweet and thrust and good and… gah.)
Tuesday: 2K in one session. What did I spend the rest of the day doing? Well, I had my class that day. Then I found out the September KDP reports were up. So, I was like, “Oh cool. I’m only a month away from knowing how much I made total in 2013. I’ll get a rough idea of my taxes.” And then I ran the tax numbers over and over and over and over and over and over. OCD is FUN.
Wednesday: Back on the supplements. Added something called NAC to the mix. Jury’s still out on what I think about it. Now I’m freaked out because I’m destitute and broke, so I decide to write 8K. (Because writing more will save me from being destitute. Or something. You know how I’d describe OCD? Having a rational fear and responding to it in irrational ways.)
Thursday: 8K in four sessions. (I may keep up the 8K pace. Not sure. It would be cool to get this book finished early if it indeed meant that I could write more and not just need to take a break because I exhausted myself.)
And I’ll see you next week!
