What’s Next?
I’m not sure I have the healthiest approach to living, but it works for me under the less-than-ideal conditions I’ve experienced over the years and more recently. When I’m faced with an overwhelming number of issues, especially health issues, I get into a “What’s Next” mode. I still plan ahead and make goals, but I’m largely focused on what I’m having to face in the moment or what I’m about to face in the next moment, if I’ve just completed something. That can be the novel I need to edit, the livestream I’m starting in minutes, the next doctor’s appointment, the next exercise I need to do for my physical therapy, or going to bed because I’m tired. Big and small, each task is compartmentalized into what’s next.
Writers think about writing all the time, but I’m getting to where I’m not like that. Something is still always churning in the back of my mind, but it is way back there. I take the craft seriously and I write with joy, but when I sit down to write now, often I’m escaping from my own life into the lives and worlds of others. That’s all that occupies me in that moment. When I stop, I set it aside, I don’t think about it much in the front of my brain, and I address “what’s next.” My identity is tied to writing, but my moment is bound to what’s next and not much else.
It is a strange place to be. I’m looking forward to conventions and hanging out with fellow writers and readers again. I enjoy my writer/reader friends and have missed their presence over the last couple years. I don’t think in quite the same ways as I used to. I don’t value as many things the same as I used to. I do think I’m better at living in the moment though. For a variety of reasons, I’m far less connected to the past and future than I used to be. I deal with what is next when it is time to. I look forward to sitting and being with friends again simply because they are friends. That’s what’s next, I guess.
Here are some things you might be interested in:
Earthworm Gods #BrianKeeneRevisited
by Jay Wilburn
We have a strong opening for our character narrator. Brian Keene’s skills are fully on display here. In the afterword, he discusses that this was the first time he felt like his true voice as a writer started to really show itself. I’m surprised to hear him say that, not because the book wasn’t good, but because …
“Bless Your Heart”
by Jay Wilburn
Sally stared through the dirty front windows of the restaurant from where she leaned on the hostess station by the front door. The windows were clean on the inside, but there was no keeping the dirt off the outside.
Something out there, through all that film of clinging dust, fell from the sky on a few white bursts of fiery energy …
These are the best of the stories I wrote on Twitch livestream. If you’d like to read them or even watch them come to life in video before your eyes, the collection is available from Amazon in paperback and ebook now.
Thanks, Everybody
Find past newsletters here.