It's never with my writing my books; I do fine there. I've been blessed by God to have never suffered from writer's block. Okay, okay...don't get mad at me for saying that. It's just true.
Some days are slow. Maybe a paragraph. But I never go a day without writing, even if it's only one terrible paragraph I know I'll be deleting tomorrow, or ever later in the day.
It's the work I do for a living. Unlike most authors I know, I don't teach. I taught for four years at a community college back in the mid-2000s, but that was 090, 100, and 101 classes, with some GED and Literacy classes thrown in to fill out the day.
It wasn't mind-numbing like people say, not for me, anyways; probably because I strayed off the curriculum, would take a day I intended to be about the actual use for the semi-colon and instead talk about Stephen King's daily writing habits. I did that. I did.
Later - from about 2019 to 2023 - I taught online in a Master's of Fine Arts degree program. It was COVID time and those jobs were easier to land.
But the remote work was never a living. It was extra money and generally took up more of my time than I had anticipated.
Point is, I'm working now as the sports director of a media tv and broadcast company. Sports are big here in Kentucky, and so during basketball season and football season there's plenty to do. But baseball, softball, volleyball, and other "off-season" seasons can become a dry time for coverage.
And here I sit trying to think of feature stories to keep content flowing. Some recent segments have been about a statistics keeper, a score keeper, who has been doing this for one school for 47 years. Another was about a young man who is the tenth ranked archer in the state but has never been bow hunting, an odd sort of detail for someone that good with a bow and arrow. The one I'm trying to nail down now is a feature on a sort of "small town, big pride" kind of thing. Think the movie Hoosiers and you'll get the idea.
It's all slow. I've drank five cups of coffee (it's 1:02 p.m. here at the job). I've smoked six or seven cigarettes since getting to work. I've left my desk more than a dozen times and walked outside and stared at the sky, felt some cool breezes, and returned to my desk. I've talked five or so times with my reporter, trying to job loose some ideas.
It's slow, and I'm not used to that. Most of my life I've made a living as a news reporter, and news is rarely very slow. There are dry periods, but nothing lasting as long as an entire high school baseball season.
It's how I ended up here, writing at Bent Country this afternoon. And so now it's time to get back to pacing the floor and smoking and drinking coffee.
My injured heart hates me.
