Tag: general

hello burnout my old friend

On By Laura Mauro1 Comment

I haven’t blogged in a while and the reason for that is because I am too busy. So, so busy. Soul-crushingly busy. It’s my own fault. I took on way too many commitments in a short space of time and now I am Suffering.

It will, I hope, be worth it in the end. But it’s a hard-learned lesson: I need to slow down. More than that, I need to learn to say no. This is hard for me as a by-default people pleaser, but also as someone who legitimately fears that opportunities will dry up if I turn too many of them down. I guess most creatives have this fear, and there’s a constant battle to keep producing art, to stay relevant. It’s hard to balance with all the other stuff, like ‘the day job’, ‘everyday life’ and so on. So for me, a person with a full-time job (and a long commute), a part-time Master’s to study for, plus a fiction writing career AND a wrestling journalism gig to cram in…it gets a bit exhausting after a while. My husband is starting to wonder if I actually exist or whether he imagined me.

So. Once this mountain of work is taken care of, I need to pencil in time to do absolutely nothing. My dissertation is almost upon me, so the window will be very small. And frankly I’m very bad at doing nothing. I thrive when I’m busy. I always want to be doing something, anything, preferably something with an end result that I can be satisfied with. Perhaps practising relaxation and laziness will be good for me. Perhaps it’ll drive me insane. Place your bets.

Apropos of nothing, this January marked three years since we lost David Bowie. Here is one of my very favourite of his songs, featuring the equally wonderful Maynard James Keenan, and remixed by former Nine Inch Nails keyboardist Danny Lohner – a wonderful melting pot of some of my favourite bands:

[insert pithy title here]

On By Laura Mauro4 Comments

I’m not usually one for formal New Year’s Resolutions, but since everyone else was doing it, it seemed almost rude not to. I’d be telling fibs if I said I had a list drawn up, or a concrete plan for change, but there are a few things I think I should address in 2018.

First: I need to brush up on my Japanese. To this end, I’ve dug out my Japanese for Busy People and Genki textbooks from my Japanese classes, and I’m also making use of the lang-8 account I started and was too scared to use back in 2014. (My fear of Being Wrong in Japanese is still strong, but I also recognise now that if you don’t make mistakes, you don’t learn. And the Japanese lang-8 users are very gracious in correcting my plentiful errors.) I’m off to Japan in March for fourteen days, and I’d love to have the confidence to communicate – however piecemeal it may be!

Second: Fitness. My arthritic joints aren’t getting any better, and I was recently diagnosed as hypothyroid thanks to Hashimoto’s Disease. Clearly my body is telling me something! I enjoy lifting weights but I think I also need something more structured to encourage consistency – exercise isn’t something that comes naturally to me. I joined a new gym in December and I’ve been trying out various classes. Pilates and Tai Chi are great, and I need to work up the courage to try out the Boxercise class (I fear my woefully low levels of cardiovascular fitness will lead me to collapse and embarrass myself mid-class). And of course, eventually, I’d love to get back into lifting those heavy weights.

Third: Writing goals. I completed my first Master’s essay over Christmas, and it felt very good to get back into academic writing. It helped enormously that the subject matter was engaging (so much so that I actually had to cut out an intended section of the essay because I’d already overshot the word count.) My Spring term module is on ‘The Victorian Fin-de-Siecle’, which is proving to be very interesting already.

(Also: more writing means less Facebook. I’m finding Twitter is my preferred platform at the moment, and I think less Facebook will hopefully encourage more blogging – in English and in stilted, terrified Japanese.)

In terms of fiction writing…I have no project commitments outstanding, so I am in the daunting position of being able to write whatever I feel like. I’ve read some truly incredible stories in the past few months, and intermingled with reader’s joy was a touch of writer’s despair – I’ll never be able to write like this. I am opting to take this as a challenge rather than as a self-rebuke and I hope to up my game this year, and focus on quality rather than quantity. Time will tell if this is a successful tactic, or whether the latter half of 2018 will see me sobbing face-down on the floor by my bookcase and vowing to live a life of literary hermitage. There’s much to look forward to in 2018 from a reader’s perspective (not least Priya Sharma’s forthcoming collection ‘All The Fabulous Beasts‘ from Undertow Publications) so whatever my writing life brings this year, my reading life should be very rich indeed.

How I came to write short stories

On By Laura Mauro3 Comments

It occurred to me the other day that I have been a published writer of short stories for six years now. I’ve been writing for far longer than that – since I was very young, in fact (my first poem was written at 6 years old. My mum still has it.)

My ‘journey’ (god I hate that word) from casual word-wrangler to actual ‘writer’ (if not full-time writer) is probably very unremarkable. At some point in my early/mid 20’s, I joined a writer’s forum called Absolute Write. As is the total mundanity of this action, I can’t even remember why I joined that forum – I had no realistic aspirations of actually being published at this time. I suppose I just thought it’d be nice to be around other people who found making things up to be a fun and satisfying diversion.

Then I wrote a story. It was a post-apocalyptic short story set in south London. I titled it ‘The Only Living Girl In New Cross”, because I’m terrible at titles and Carter USM are much better at it. I posted it on my blog. The thought of submitting it for publication never crossed my mind. Until I got a message from a fellow AW user – a somewhat gruff but ultimately friendly message – enquiring as to why I was posting work on my blog instead of sending it to publishers?

This opened up new possibilities. It seems odd to think of it now, but although I’d always harboured dreams of being a writer, I’d never really thought about it in practical, realistic terms – the actual business of being published, of finding an audience. It all seemed like the kind of thing other people did; not me, with my weird ideas, and my weird little stories. Who’d want to read those? Still, I was intrigued. So I took the AW’ers advice. I sent “The Only Living Girl In New Cross” to Black Static. And I waited.

It was rejected. Oh well.

It was a blow, and I was discouraged. Of course I was. I put that story away and I resolved not to look at it again. In fact, I no longer have a copy of it anywhere. In retrospect, I think it’s better that way. We’re all entitled to misfire, especially on your first attempt. But – and this is important – it wasn’t a waste of words, or of time, or of effort. You learn from every story you write. (You learn from every story you read, too, but that’s another post entirely.) People talk about ‘honing your craft’, the way you might hone the blunt edge of a knife: every story you write sharpens the blade a little bit more.

The second story I wrote was called “Red Rabbit”. The title came before the story did: I had this indelible image in my head of a red rabbit’s face, in the style of The Black Rabbit of Inle from Watership Down (an image which has always stayed with me, the way things that scare you as a child tend to do.) It was set in America, in a part of the world I had never been to (and again, this is another post entirely, but – YouTube, Google Maps, Flickr – all invaluable resources in bringing alien locations to life.) This time, I asked a few fellow writers to cast their eye over it before sending the finished version out into the wild. (Not everybody feels the need for a second opinion, or a beta reader, and that’s perfectly fine. I always feel better about a story when someone else, who isn’t in my head, has had a look and weeded out some of the bollocks – especially given my prolific overuse of semicolons.)

I sent it off to Shadows & Tall Trees. And, to my delight, it was accepted. My first ever short story in print. Occasionally, I’ve been asked how I got published, and my honest answer is – I don’t know. Right story, right place, right time. I think, sometimes, that’s all there is to it. You can’t predict it, or make it happen. You just have to write the best you can, and hope someone is receptive to it. I’m lucky enough that somebody was.

Much like tattoos, short story publications are addictive. Short stories themselves are addictive. They’re less consuming than novels, but mean just as much, to the writer and hopefully to the reader too. A short story is a visit to another world, and sometimes that brief excursion can give you an experience that the prolonged inhabitation of a novel cannot. (Not to say I dislike novels – I love them. I just have a real fondness for the short story form, and the things that can be achieved with it.)

Since then I have dedicated a ludicrous number of hours to writing short stories. After “Red Rabbit” came “When Charlie Sleeps”, which was an exercise in going for broke in the weirdness stakes. After initial publication in Black Static, it was picked up for reprint in Best British Horror 2014. My second published short story. I’m yet to repeat that feat, but even if I’m never picked for a ‘Year’s Best’ again, I can still be proud of that achievement.

The raised profile of “When Charlie Sleeps” led to me getting to know many of my fellow writers and peers, which led to a few anthology invitations, which led to “Ptichka”, a story I am very proud of, and which was nominated for a British Fantasy Award. Again, if I never repeat this feat, at least nobody can take that away from me.

These things tend to be circular. The more you write, the more you improve, the more you (hopefully) publish. The more you publish, the more people come to know your name, what you’re capable of. That’s not to say it’s plain sailing: I’ve still got rejections coming out of my ears. That never stops. But knowing you can do it gives you the drive to keep doing it, even when it feels pointless, and you’ve amassed so many rejections you’re thinking of changing your middle name to ‘Failure’. And every acceptance could be the last one you’ll ever get. I think a lot of writers will understand that feeling. But you keep going, because the stories keep coming, and you can let them pile up like a snowdrift but sooner or later, someone – be it a gruff stranger on an internet forum, or your own internal monologue – will ask you why you don’t just give submitting a try.

it’s the doing that kills you

On By Laura Mauro8 Comments

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I have a motivation problem.

This could apply solely to writing, and it undoubtedly does apply to writing in some ways – it’s coming up for four weeks since I last wrote anything. But largely, this applies to Life In General. I have a problem with motivation. Specifically, I have a problem with maintaining it: oh, I’ll gladly take on all number of hobbies, challenges, pastimes etc. I’ll take them on with great enthusiasm and pour myself into the task. I’ll watch myself improve and I’ll take pride in that. I’ll probably show off a bit, too, because I do that.

And then it just….fizzles out.

I’m not sure why this happens, but it happens with almost everything I do. Japanese lessons – I studied for almost two years, and then lost the will (in my defence, I was struggling to afford the classes, but…) Sewing plushies – I made a couple, bought a load of sewing kit, and then found myself utterly unmotivated to continue. My personal history is awash with abandoned, half-finished things: the Good News twitter which I rarely update anymore, weightlifting progress which comes in fits and starts. I promised myself at the start of 2017 I would keep a basic daily diary – I did great until about mid-March and now empty pages abound. I promised myself I’d relearn how to read Tarot cards. I promised myself I’d update this blog regularly.

I can’t put my finger on why this happens. Sometimes, it’s because something becomes very challenging and I give up. (I admit to having a problem with this: if I’m not instantly good at something, I get incredibly discouraged and find my motivation crushed.) Sometimes something new comes along and grabs my attention – inevitably another ten-minute wonder. My brain seems incapable of maintaining a level of enthusiasm for anything for very long.

Writing is the only thing I have stuck with – I’ve been writing (mostly) consistently for about five years now. And even that’s a struggle sometimes. I try to form a ‘writing habit’ – writing at lunchtimes, in the evenings, early mornings, take your pick. It never sticks. Sometimes I can go weeks without writing a word. I always think about writing – I’m forever planning stories and scenes in my head. But when it comes to actual motivation, there are a great many times when I find it completely absent. (Says the Imposter Syndrome: clearly you’re not a real writer then.)

I toy with the idea of writing myself a schedule – allocating myself time outside of work to write, exercise, practice Japanese, time on the internet as well as time to relax. I toy with it, and never do it, because oops, it turns out that involves a degree of motivation as well.  It’s frustrating, especially since I can’t work out why I’m like this. Why I dive into something with unbridled enthusiasm only to find it dwindling weeks or months later. And the worst part is, I am incapable of enjoying doing ‘nothing’. I hate it. I can’t stand just sitting around, watching telly – I feel at my best when I am ‘doing’, but sometimes the ‘doing’ is so difficult.