Are you still writing?

I'll tell one more story about something that happened when I left the house, and then I'll move on.

Of the many musicians that I admire, there is one who recognizes me. I saw him recently and it was great, and he asked me if I was still writing.

That is so much more complicated a question than it should be.

To be fair, he also asked how I was, and that is way more complicated than it should be too.

On top of an already difficult life, that hard drive crash really set me back. I was grateful to be able to get at least some traction with the laptop, and my friend's mother's old desktop is a huge help, though it does slow down a lot. I did get FinalDraft and Office back up and running (though it also has OpenOffice, and sometimes the differences are hard to tell and I have documents in both Word and WordStarter and maybe a third program too). Clearly I am blogging again.

I am not blogging as well. I used to draft posts in a Word document, and then copy them over. I should still be completely capable of proofreading regardless, but I spotted errors better in Word, so what I pasted into Blogger was better. I could create another Blog Draft document, but that doesn't feel right. It may be a sense that this computer is only temporary, but also there may be ways in which spending less time on the blogging helps when there are always so many things to do.

Getting FinalDraft reinstalled does not give me editable copies of my screenplays. I can download the PDFs from Amazon Studios and recreate them, but worse than that, Amazon Studios has stopped accepting open submissions. Granted, they never bought anything anyway, but that was the one place I had where it didn't matter that I don't have an agent and that no one knows who I am, and it's gone.

Frankly, from a financial point of view there is no evidence that me writing is productive, and honestly not a lot of evidence that a decline in my blogging quality makes much difference.

That all made the question resonate more: Are you still writing?

Should I be? Does it make any difference at all?

I didn't really have time to think about it then, but I kept coming back to that question, and is this the time to walk away?

And I can't.

It may be that the only reason I woke up less worn out today than I did yesterday was because I got in some productive journal writing. It is certain that writing my messy, oversharing blog posts even while busy and worried felt better than skipping them last week.

And I love my creative writing, even though the amount of money it has brought in has been negligible.

I am reading a lot of soldier stories now, and I find things in their writing where I see things I got right in things I have written.

I still like what I write. I still only feel good when I write.

No, I haven't been writing much. I should be.