Will I Ever Write Another Novel?

 In my last post, the one where I revealed that I am autistic, I more than hinted that this discovery has impacted my “writing career,” and promised to tell you how and why.

So, here I go.

AuDHD, anyone?

Before I get into all that, I need to explain that in addition to symptoms of autism, I also display/experience enough symptoms of ADHD that if I wanted to, I could carry the label of AuDHD. It’s what the neurodivergent community has dubbed (with some affection, I think) those of us who are dual-diagnosed with autism and ADHD.

I don’t really care for the label, because it’s misleading. I don’t think taking an interest in many things displays “hyperactivity,” and my brain isn’t attention deficit. On the contrary, it tries to pay attention to too many things at once!

But those traits of needing novelty with some frequency, and having a brain that wants to go everywhere all at once, make writing a novel a huge challenge.

I enjoy writing stories, but…

While I’ve always enjoyed writing stories, I also enjoy sitting down and playing my guitar, singing, and writing non-fiction to teach what I’ve learned.

I enjoy gardening, wish I could find the time to buff up my Spanish and sign language while learning other languages, and love to learn about nature.

Oh, and over the years, I've probably started AT LEAST ten - yes, ten! - YouTube channels. Right now, I'm keeping my gardening channel updated and am going to start a channel where I talk about neurodiversity, both sharing my journey and helping neurodivergent families live in greater harmony. I'd recently started an inspirational channel and comedy channel, but think I'm going to ditch both for a while, if not forever. 

Is your brain spinning yet?

In other words, for the past ten years, sitting down and making myself write 1500-3000 words per day has been a kind of slow torture, because I haven’t had time to pursue all of my other interests. And because my brain insists on novelty, it wants me to complete any given project as quickly as possible, which means I’ve been focusing most of my time, energy, and attention on whatever story line I’ve been writing. That means that by the time I finish even a short novel, I’m so burned out that I don’t want to pursue my other interests. So I end up wasting time listening to other people’s novels and/or watching entertaining YouTube videos.

And then after a week or two of vegging out, I push myself to write the next novel because if you want to make money with self-publishing, you have to write series and you have to keep your fans happy.

Last fall, I got sick of the merry-go-round. I was completely burned out with writing novels. Completely sick of the whole self-publishing scene.

At the time, I didn’t know the root cause. Now, I do.

I haven’t been true to myself.

I cringed, writing that sentence. “Be true to yourself” has become a cliché that the world seems to have interpreted as, “Be as self-centered and selfish as you want, because you deserve it.” However, when I use the phrase here, I’m talking about my natural bent.

Part of my natural bent is not to spend thirty days and more on a writing project.

Without exception, with every novel I’ve ever written I’ve wanted to quit at around twenty thousand words. A story is fun up until then, and at that point, I’m ready to move on to something else. Why? It’s the way my brain is wired. I crave novelty, changing things up with some frequency.

I’ve tried writing novellas and short stories, but somehow, the stories in my head are always a lot longer. I want to put in a lot more detail than those styles allow. And some would say that it’s a lot harder to write a good short story than to write a good novel.

Why not write more words a day and be able to finish a novel within a couple of weeks? Besides the thing about wanting to be able to a variety of things during the day, I have Irlen Syndrome, otherwise known as Visual Processing Disorder. Just writing 500 words at one time makes me tired; writing more at one time puts me at risk of straining my eyes, especially if I do it multiple times a day.

I can, to a large extent, write without looking, but even if I don’t end up with a ton of mistakes to fix (as task which DOES require looking, no way around it), the fact remains that for every half hour I spend working on a story, it’s a half hour I could spend working on one of my other hobbies or interests.

And when I ignore those other interests, novel-writing burnout happens more quickly. So I might as well have written less over a longer period of time.

Which I hate doing, because I get tired of the story when I do that.

Anyone seeing a catch-22 here?

Then there’s the autistic side of me.

I’ve tried really hard over the years to create what I used to call “normal” characters. Now I realize that they are characters I was trying to put into a neurotypical mold. In other words, I was trying to create people that I simply can’t understand. Women who care about makeup and fashion and babies; men who ooze confidence and boldness, and who can have a long-lasting conversation.

Want to know where I got the idea for Allison Whitlock of my “Pine Mountain Estates” series? She’s the woman I’ve always envied: calm and in control, even in the face of trauma and tragedy. Nurturing. Compassionate toward strangers. Hospitable.

Though I like her character, my favorite characters by far are those I’ve modeled, unknowingly, after people with neurodivergent brains.

Sheila Carson and Hank Johnson of The Envelope.

Michelle Dennis and Daniel West of Snuggling With The Christmas Chef.

Tiger O’Keefe in Talia’s Tiger.

Erin Halley in His First Choice.

Rachel Polowsky in Worth the Risk.

Tommy Ward in Pine Mountain Dreams.

But most women don’t relate to women who hate wearing makeup and shopping, and who’d rather spend a weekend researching some science topic than going out with “the girls,” so I’ve tried to write neurotypical characters as much as I could get myself to.

And it’s been really, really hard. And…they end up being the characters I find boring and mundane. In fact, my three least favorite books, the first in “Choices and Chances” and “Christmas Sisters,” and the second in “Rock Star Husbands,” are my least favorite, I recently realized, because both the main characters are neurotypical. By the reviews, readers disagree with me. But most of my readers are neurotypical, so they easily relate to those characters which I struggle to create.

Then there’s the marketing side of self-publishing. As an autistic person, I find maintaining and communicating to an e-mail list intimidating, some days downright frightening.

The reason is two-fold: first, I hate doing anything social, and e-mailing a bunch of people at a time feels social. Second, as is the case with many neurodivergent people, I am extremely sensitive to rejection. Every single time I’ve sent an e-mail to my subscribers, I’ve been afraid that someone would e-mail me back a scathing criticism.

Having received a comment on my blog like the one I share here has made me even more skittish.

The autistic side of me also cares more about learning and teaching than about writing fantasies (which any story with a happy ending is, really; life rarely ties up all loose ends with a neat bow, and in a way that satisfies everyone).

Will I ever write another novel?

That all brings us back to the original question. The answer is…

…I. Don’t. Know.

When I wrote this post about where I wanted to take my writing business, I was already questioning whether I truly wanted to continue writing novels. Not too long before that, I'd been genuinely enthusiastic about putting my Christian thriller and fantasy story ideas onto the proverbial paper. And I had committed to myself to write two more novels in the “Pine Mountain Estates” series to bring it to a close, and bring the total number of books in the series up to nine.

But now, I don’t know. In the past, I’ve written more than one blog post in which I declared I was done writing novels. Eventually, the story bug came back to bite me, and I returned to writing. So, it could be I’m simply in the biggest burn-out phase of my writing career.

It could simply be I can’t handle the stress of maintaining a large summer garden AND writing novels at the same time, and by fall I’ll feel like diving back into them again.

Or, it could be that my dream of making a living by writing novels has been misdirected.  Making videos is a lot less stressful, and I love using my gift of acting on my comedy channel, as well as my gift of teaching and desire to encourage on the other channels. I love having more time during the day to do whatever, instead of being chained to writing and editing.

Most of all, I love not having to worry that I’m a few minutes away from a severe eye strain. I love not being tired all day because I spent most of the morning writing.

Will I ever write another novel? At the moment, my mind says, “No.” But I’m not God. I don’t know what even the near future holds.

One thing I DO know: I love to write. Therefore, while I’m not writing novels, I’m going to be writing a whole lot more blog posts.

About whatever I want to write about. Autism. Homeschooling. Women’s health beyond fifty. Gardening. Maybe even self-publishing.

You have been updated. Sorry and you’re welcome.