There were two convergences of my writer-life homework and real life in the last three days.
The first was with a Passionate Ink author salon (deep dive series of craft discussion and homework) on estate planning (aka – the un-fun writing stuff) and getting sick. Sick? Ha. Yeah, no. Monday it started with what I thought was a migraine. It quickly turned into vertigo. This would be my now (on record) third time experiencing it. I missed the salon.
If you don’t know what it feels like, imagine standing still, but feeling like you’re on the Tilt-o-whirl at full speed and your idiot co-pilot has locked the bar ALL the way to the right which results in G-forces your body is incapable of handling. Cue the urge to vomit.
While I didn’t throw up, I wanted to, just for relief. My eyes wouldn’t fix on a location. Nystagmus* is the medical term for it. That was Monday.
- Tuesday—OUT. Felt like crap, still experiencing the room spins, eye issues, and felt barely alive most of the day. By evening, I managed to make it to the PI board meeting.
- Wednesday—WFH a full day. Totally drained.
- Thursday—HECK YEAH I can do this work thing. Drove in (an hour) and by 10:30 felt awful. Buggered (and I believe I AM using that term correctly on multiple levels) the rest of the day through and limped my way home in traffic being THAT driver, GASP, going the speed limit or slightly under (in the right lane, because I’m not that evil) in Maryland. Seriously, they should invent a wellness check for drivers who do that here. Googled my symptoms, stopped drinking coffee since I already don’t do a lot of salt. (FML!)
- Friday—No coffee, WFH for what ended up being a half-day, TeleDoc appointment where she URGED me to GET HELP NOW, and bit the bullet for an UrgentCare visit.
Drumroll… I had an ear infection that didn’t hurt. [side-eye] And no sooner than he diagnosed it, I’ll be damned, but that stupid ear started hurting. I treated myself to a Vietnamese Iced Coffee. 😛
*If you follow the link, see why the TeleDoc MD was so insistent. Trigger Warning: if you are the type to read WebMD and then start doom-scrolling worst case scenarios, you may want to not go to that link.
Convergence #1:
Work on your final letter to your loved ones and get a health scare. Maybe I should get on that homework now that I’m feeling better? Naw. Write a blog post!
Convergence #2.
I want to go see “It Ends With Us” in theaters. While I haven’t read the book, it is getting a lot of hype in both movie and book form. Before I made the decision to go see it, I was doing personal homework on a deep dive into “Save the Cat Goes to the Movies” and doing my own plot work deconstruction on a couple of stories and mapping the beats from movies to books and applying them in relation…yadda yadda yadda… a rabbit hole with no bottom, I’m afraid.
As I was mapping out the latest work in progress (WIP), I weighed its plot against “Buddy Love” (which most romances are) and “Rites of Passage” (RoP). Clearly, “It Ends With Us” is a RoP not a Buddy Love. Seeing that a few industries (Motion Pictures, Newspapers, Advertising) don’t know the difference between a ROMANCE and a DRAMA, there is audience confusion going on. Although, most romance readers KNOW Colleen Hoover’s novel wasn’t meant to be in the category romance genre.
And this is where I go back to a burr-in-the-saddle AuADHD rant from like 2019… Sigh. Summarized, I posited on the correlation of a certain (then?) problematic org’s definition versus other industry definitions and the stigmatizing of the genre. Which had a lot of pushback because (again, AuADHD) my brain couldn’t get the fingers to type ALL the shit mapping on my proverbial murder board and how the vitriol from indoctrinated authors when you confuse the two* really hurts baby authors who haven’t stepped on that mine…yet.
*This post from Harlequin puts a punctuation mark on the difference and nuance that my murder board was pointing toward. But since BISAC FIC027+++ doesn’t make that distinction, there remains a contingency who complain when their romantic story (aka trade “romance” fiction novel) (best categorized in BISAC somewhere between FIC027000 and FIC027430) doesn’t end in a happy-ever-after. Again, I’ll refer to the BISAC list for where CH’s books should be… Family Drama? Maybe FIC045010, but try selling that to your agent and marketer. They’ll point to the limited audience and recategorize it anyway. Thriller? (see Romance, not helpful), General? Too broad. City Life? Uh… not really. Crime? The focus is on the coming of age love tragedy, not the issues of city life, so no.
Erotica? Do you WANT to be dungeoned and not able to advertise? (quote from the article: “Simply being erotica will not dungeon your book. Being in erotica may limit ads, but the books are still searchable.”) ARGH another rabbit hole. Seriously, love stories that end tragically (or have dark themes) are marketing gold for audiences who love a good cry. There should be a BISAC for it that differentiates it from the stories that make you cry, but make you smile more. That way authors can put this bickering to bed once and for all and bring all the lovers of writing love back into one tent. Which was the WHOLE point of my stupid rant so many years ago. In-fighting is petty.
TL;DR:
- Health scare + Book/workshop on final letter,
- Articles/advertising/entertainment + STC beat sheets. And I’m obstinate when it comes to building a bigger tent. But not obstinate or energetic enough to deal with the backlash.
