Apathy ~ Who Cares?

I worry that I'm beginning to feel the way I did shortly before I quit songwriting: there's nothing new; I can't come up with anything new; it's all a waste of time in the long run.

And worse: I'm only repeating myself.

I suppose all writers have certain go-to's; maybe words or phrases they love; descriptors, settings. For some reason I'm big on the sun rising, and driving, and weird things like trash cans. It's inexplicable. In one story a bear is ravaging a trash can, in another the potential love interest is leaning on a trash can as he makes small talk. Truly, in my everyday life I don't give trash cans a second thought, but I'm willing to bet that every one of my books contains some reference to one. 

But writing the same thing over and over is boring. I need to expand my horizons, and I could do it, but it's "easier" not to. Apathy.

It's not that I don't work hard on my stories, but that's mainly due to my aversion to failure. I still have that need to prove to myself I can do it. In the long run, though, what did I do?

Which brings me to Inn Dreams. Every day I have new Voracious Readers Only participants ~ six new ones today ~ and I dutifully add them to my mailing list (which they've given permission for) and I plop them into my Excel spreadsheet as a fail safe. But I don't get excited about them; now it's just something I have to do. Likewise with BookSprouts, which is suddenly producing a few results. After all my frustration with the site, now that some readers have claimed my book, I should be ecstatic. I'm not.

I could take a look at my KDP book page to see if there are any reviews or (unlikely) sales, but why bother? Inn Dreams is a perfectly nice little story, but it doesn't break any new ground and it's not a literary masterpiece. I think back to how difficult it was to write properly and all the hair-pulling I did, and for what? If people only knew how I managed to go from a 14,000-word (essentially) short story to an almost full-length novel, would they care? As it was, I had to force myself to do it, and only because I was disappointed in myself. At least while I was into it, the story interested me. I didn't know where it would go and I was intrigued to find out. Revising Second Chance, the reason it's going so slowly is that I don't really give a damn. Probably the most interesting part of it to write was near the beginning, when the MC's original band became embroiled in a slapstick tussle on stage. At least that was fun. 

And I know that women readers for some reason are averse to what some deem "unlikable characters", but my MC in Second Chance was a lot more interesting and alive when she was angry and bitter. Now she's a people pleaser who's constantly worried about hurting others' feelings. I'd love to turn her back into the person she originally was ~ a hard drinker and a cynic. But noooooo. Can't have that. Female characters have to be "nice". Because they never feel frustrated or annoyed or hopeless. They never lash out at someone unfairly. 

I do feel a bit constrained. I like writing stories that interest me. But one literary agent's criticisms echo in my ears all these years later. According to her, my main character in that book was unlikable. Never mind that someone had almost murdered her and that experience changed her forever; made her tough and brittle. When I condensed that book down to a novella I watered the MC down. She wasn't allowed to insult anyone, even if they deserved it. She turned into the archetypal female character ~ scared, unconfident, insecure, worried about what others thought of her. In other words, boring and interchangeable. 

One day I would like to write a book with a character I like; a character who's real. Of course that book would be only for me, because "that's not what readers want". 

I think in my revision of Second Chance, I'm going to have the MC go on a wild bender. She gave up alcohol months ago (of course), but maybe it's time for her to let loose. I can always delete it, but at least it would be fun to write.

My writing is missing the fun.