Catégorie : Writing Tips

Mistakes.

It happens.

Fooling oneself for various reasons also happens.

I tend to be sort of an expert on the latter!!!!! If you have been kind enough to hang around this little writing blog of mine, you already know.

(and maybe you’re sighting in disbelief right now; what!?! there again?)

More than often, I’ve been fooling myself in order to do something I wholeheartedly do not wanna do but have to do anyway for adult reasons.

Going back to work retail wasn’t a mistake. Not at all. Kiddo needs food, clothes, and presents for Christmas. You know, little things like that.

On the other end… Fooling myself in believing I would not care a second about the people I would work with was, indeed, a mistake.

That, and thinking retail-related things would be pretty much the same as they were a decade or so ago.

Wrong, wrong, oh so wrong.

The pandemic, like it or not, changed a big whole lot. Not, perhaps, within the very old fashion company I work for.

But within people, very much so. Very much so indeed.

I work with very nice people, 98% women, most of the time in their old 50’s or 60’s, loads of single moms and twenty-something trying to figure things out about their future while selling things.

We earn little money for very physical, tiring, polluting, and overall meaningless work.

Three months working for a kitchen appliance retail chain and I’m appalled by the discrimination and conditions we have to deal with.

Every day drains more energy, and more imagination out of me.

Every day brings a little more bitterness, a little frustration.

Every evening and night, I can’t get the day job stuff out of my brain.

Those are signs, clearer than clear, that I picked the wrong day job for my writing and blogging career goals.

Now, time to find a day job that comes with lower stress levels, and much less hours.

Will 2023 find me working in the book world again? For sure.

That being said and settled, it’s gonna be hard leaving behind the women I’ve met.

Yet, it can’t be helped. The big writing plan, not to talk about my mental health, is in jeopardy.

Thanks for being here.

May all the good words flow your way!

Writing novels… writing stories… it’s sharing the way our own soul is connected to the world around us, the world beyond us, through our own words, voice and story.

Writing, for me, is breathing. It’s living. It’s my way to contribute to our human society, by writing stories that will make the reader feel all kinds of emotions, and discover all sorts of things.

Writing is my way (the best way) to share my endless admiration for the wonderful beauties surrounding us, or for what makes our fragile lives precious.

Instinctively, when I first started working retail, to thrive among sometimes interesting sometimes not-always-nice humans and survive through the amount of pure pollution and waste produced in one day only, in one store only, I disconnected my soul, and my heart.

When I first got out of the retail microcosm, I was relieved and certain of one thing only: never again would I spend hours of my life in a store doing chores in an endless loop.

Never again would I voluntarily trap myself in a mindless, useless, job.

And yet.

Mama’s got to do what needs to be done to make sure the kiddos have all they need while helping Santa bring presents on Christmas.

Feeding the imagination through the void growing inside my writer’s heart is a challenge.

A challenge I got through before. That I’m going through now.

As for my NaNoWriMo stats… let’s say I wasn’t planning to win, and I won’t!

I can hear you, all the way from my little town drizzled with the first winter snow:

« Stop with the suspense, mama writer, we can’t take it no longer!« 

Since you insist, let’s cut to the chase right away, even if it goes against every storytelling rule I’m aware of!

Drumrolls Drumrolls Drumrolls.

NO!

Indeed, dear fellow writers, the day came.

Our family adopted a little chocolate Labrador. An adorable little furry ball, bright and joyful as can be.

A new writing routine is taking place. Yet again.

The whole thing, exciting but quite mundane after all, triggered a retrospective state.

There were difficult and rather sad months, with a few happy moments in between.

Funny enough, getting a puppy is not one of those fun moments for me, since I’m on the evening, night, and early morning shifts.

And like it is said above: a puppy does NOT help increase the word count.

If I want to accomplish any writing… or take an online writing or literature class…

… well, I’ll have to work harder, sleep less I’m afraid and patiently wait for the puppy to grow up and sleep through the night like the other two upstairs, snoring as the sunlight rises on the first snowfall of the season.

The writing adventures go on.