No Automatons Here
My dad died twenty years ago this year. I used to forget the day that it happened so often that I put it in the list of friends birthdays I keep on my phone. It’s November Second. So it goes.
With that, I've got a keen sense of memento mori that pops up in all a manner of interesting ways throughout my life. I work a lot. Like a whole lot, you see, and most things that I do, I end up considering as work. Writing is work. Three years ago, I made it my second job. I've tried all a manner of methods to write consistently: word counts, daily time commitments, weekly newsletters. Everything helps in a little way, but it all comes up null in the fall.
Life happens to all of us, and we can't pretend that it doesn't.
I thought of this essay on the car ride home from the day job I spend forty~forty-five hours a week at. I sat down at my desk to write it after taking care of some home chores and I sit before a yearly calendar with red X marks on each day I've written this year (since I got the calendar). There are a lot of damn X's.
I also love autumn. It may be my favorite season, though I don't like to pick favorites. What is certain is fall is the season I celebrate most. Sweaters and music and foods and drinks. All the basic stuff and all the instagram-able. I love it all.
Things die in autumn, though.
Leaves fall. Crops are harvested. Hunting seasons happen across the United States. Winter comes ever nearer with the true death of seasons, the true calm of nature as it rests to regrow and live again.
My dad died in autumn.
We go through phases without noticing it. I think if we tracked all the data of each of our lives, certain truths would become apparent to each of us.
I read less in the beginning of fall. Every year, I track my reading, books I start and finish. And each year, the months with the least amount of books read are September and October. I may say I'm busier in these months, or doing other things, and that distracts me from reading, but I think I do those other things to distract me from normal. Reading is normal to me and so I get away from it. I play video games. I eat crappier food. I regress to simpler things and I do less in autumn.
November, after the 2nd, I get back to it. It’s usually the month where I read the most.
Writing follows suit. I write best in winter and spring. Recharged and free after holidays, I wake when the morning is dark and put words to page like a madman. In the summer, I keep the momentum and work inside and cool, writing in the time around hobbies that keep me outside and overheating. Making time for work. Then fall begins and I cannot write.
I began planning an October extravaganza for this newsletter in August. I wrote a novella of cosmic horror this July and it fit perfectly into the plan. Horror in October. Autumnal perfection. I told you all about it in an essay two weeks ago that I wrote in the middle of that month.
But I haven't been able to touch the novella for editing since September.
Instead, I wrote short stories. First drafts for three stories, all horror twinged and all a decent fit. After releasing The Specter, they'd be perfect to fill out the final weeks of the month.
They sit still on my desktop, unfinished. Unable to be finished, for a little while at least.
I lapsed in posting to this newsletter last week. Many of you probably didn't notice. That's fine.
I wanted to lapse again this week. Then, this essay came to me as I drove home from work this evening.
There are no automatons here.
I want to write every day. I try to write every day. I cannot write every day.
Back of napkin math: I've written 190,000 words so far this year, not accounting for some untracked revisions and handwritten items. I say that only because I have felt awful this week and the one before that I couldn't muster up anything within myself to finish a story. But I have worked this year and will continue to work. A break is not nothing.
There are no automatons here.
I will work to publish weekly as I can, and knowing me, I likely will get ahead of my weekly schedule by miles this winter and spring, but for now, I'm giving myself some slack, as we should all give ourselves some slack. You cannot always create.
This is no essay of excuses, but a behind the scenes to the mind of one writer and creative person. I guess to sum it up as I look to cook up some dinner for the evening, my message to any reader of this essay is:
Give yourself some slack.
You cannot always create.
You cannot always work.
There are no automatons here. and there never should be.
Thank you. Love you all. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming when we want to.
-Max