But now I have a dilemma. I have realized that I have lost my soul. And it's not because of what I'm writing, it's because of my life. I have a bit of an obsessive personality. I like to keep my mind busy so that I don't have to think about my life. There are aspects of my life that I absolutely love, but I have to say that my lack of sexual connections is affecting me. And I don't mean, lack of sex. That could be better but it's fine. No, it's the intimacy thing. I need more intimacy in my life.
I think what has really kicked it over the edge for me is the fact that I write about intimacy all week. Thinking about intimacy is my job. Figuring out how to get people into intimate situations is what my fans (I love saying that) come to expect from me. And therefor my lack of having it is seriously affecting me. I have long started to envy the characters that I write about. I sometimes write about some screwed up individuals, but more often than not I find myself wishing that I were them.
So scooting ahead in the story, I wrote something last week and it was dark. It was kind of soulless. It was a bit angry. It was not hot. It wasn't even porn. It was something else entirely. I guess it was, as I said, soulless.
That happened because I am starting to lose the softer part of who I am. I guess I'm trying to protect myself by shutting that part of myself off. But when writing erotica/romance you can't do that. You absolutely can't disconnect with that aspect of yourself. So now, I have a serious problem.
After realizing that, I declared that I will stop writing until I reconnect with myself. That's good. This weekend I took some very strong steps in that direction. It was even a personally phenomenal weekend. But where do I go from here? I do have to do some work this week. I absolutely have to publish my podcast. But how much do I do past that? My audio books are selling very well. Do I take this time to record 2 of the books that I would consider a risk instead of a sure thing? That's not writing, but it will again take away my time to think and feel stuff, and having time to think and feel stuff is what made this weekend so powerful.
So I'm torn, I tell ya. This is exactly how I've been my entire life. I never took vacations because to me vacations were the time to do the work that I couldn't do while working. Something tells me that it would be better for my mental health if I didn't work, but I took a look at my fellow writers' sales numbers. Some of the writers that started at the same time as I did are now making more than twice what I am.
I know that the reason for it is because I only wrote 1 new book in January and 1 new book in February. During those months I was doing my translation experiments and audio book experiments. Granted, I'm now making a good profit because of both, but probably not as much as if I continued at the same writing pace that I was at in December. And now if I choose not to do any writing until "I find myself", I will fall even further behind. I was once the fastest one in my group to a $1000 in earnings. Now I'm amongst the slowest to $5K. I'm very competitive and that does not feel good to me.
What I keep telling myself though is that eventually the German market will grow and I would have been there on the ground floor making me one of the most successful authors there. And I also say to myself that audio books is also an emerging market and I would have been on the ground floor for that rise as well. (Those that were on the ground floor with Kindle ebooks in the US are now making a mint.) I also say to myself, now that I have the audio books and German books, the result of my podcast will be amplified. This is what I keep telling myself so that I don't feel back about slacking. But I'm not positive that I can continue to tell myself that if I just stop doing all work.
Like I said, I'm torn.
Oh, and remember my books. Check them out here.
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