Do you get the dreaded summer doldrums??

Every summer this happens.

Does it involve lying halfway on the floor, moaning? Yes, yes it does.

I call it the summer doldrums.

And not even ice cream cake can save me from it.

My creative spark shrivels up like a worm on a hot sidewalk, and writing turns into a hair-pulling exercise in willpower and patience.

It sucks.

I mostly blame the heat and the angle of the sun as it slants through my window. Yeah, I know. That sounds nuts. Captain Nemo thinks I AM nuts.

Me: "I can't write because of the heat!"
Captain Nemo: (calmly) "Turn down the thermostat."
Me: "But also--the sunlight, it has a weird glow in the summer, there's no slant! It's too bright! It messes with my muse!"
Captain Nemo: *shakes head*
.
But there is something about the Georgia summer that makes my desire to write (along with most of my good ideas) just go *poof* ... it's like magic. Very, very bad magic.

Does this happen to anybody else? How do you cope?

So far my methods have been "plant butt firmly in chair, force self to write." But despite my best intentions, the words trickle out of me like the last couple of drops in my watering can.

*Sigh* At least in the South we have A/C.

I am really looking forward to fall!!

Submitting Stories

For me, story submissions of any kind feels like getting in line for one of those theme park free-fall rides where you sit on the little bicycle seat, get strapped in like a baby in a carseat and then get dropped seven stories. You're a little excited, you're pretty scared, and you know it's going to probably hurt.

A lot.

Yeeeaah, at a time like this I always just want somebody to hold my hand and ride with me :-(

Seriously, rejection sucks. There's a part of me that would almost rather just not know that my writing is no good and nobody is interested. I'd almost rather just blissfully think I've got a shot at this whole writing business.

Almost. Fortunately, the desire to actually succeed is stronger than that head-in-the-sand mentality.

On a slightly different note, does anybody else feel that disorienting mental split when they read their own stuff? Half of me is like THIS IS GENIUS! and the other half is like Nobody in their right mind will want this stuff. It's AWFUL.

Hopefully, the reality is somewhere in the middle between those two. Or, hey, I'd settle for the former... :-)