Featured Writer on Wellness: Susan Wingate

Creativity is such an amoebic thing.

It moves and grows, shrinks, contracts, spins and warbles in a constant tidal motion. Fortunately, I’ve never suffered from writer’s block but have felt overwhelmed at times by a story. Not sure what to do, insecure about my ability to plot.

Will people like this phrase or that? Will they like my word choice? Definitely those questions point to self-doubt. And when you finally get a novel finished and out to agents and publishers, the non-ending string of rejections is enough to cripple your faith that you’ve chosen the right career path and, “Hey, maybe I made a mistake and should’ve stayed in accounting.”

Thoughts wheedle in and make you feel like a failure and a phony. All these worries eat away at what you’re aiming to achieve which, in most cases for writers, is to become a successful NY Times bestseller with a reader base reaching to the millions.

To Be An Author with a Household Name Like Stephen King

My mind often goes to the furthest goal and hangs there in the air like bad breath. To be an author with a household name like Stephen King. This has the propensity to derail a writer, certainly it does for me.

I can’t recall how many times I’ve doubted myself and swore to quit and go back to accounting. Too many times, really.

But soon after imagining this and then twinkling back to real life, I take a deep breath and get to now and to the tasks at hand. Still, I think this is the human condition no matter what one’s profession is.

We tend to think to the nth degree when we see ourselves successful in our fields.

Writing is Like a Gigantic Doubt Eraser

To cope with these emotional upheavals, I write. I find my best recovery in doing the think I love the most. It’s like a gigantic doubt eraser for me.

Of course, I like to get out in nature and walk and sometimes run but mostly I write. I have my exercise routine and we eat well―lots of grains and veggies. We split the occasional bottle of wine.

But mostly I write to get out of any emotional slump. It’s worked for me since the beginning, way back when I first decided to take my writing seriously in 1997 and it works for me today.

The Mental Fatigue is the Hardest for Me to Shake

I think the mental fatigue is the hardest for me to shake.

I’m incredibly physically active. We live on five acres and have a small herd of deer and other wildlife that I tend to. I have three dove aviaries, six cats, one dog and a husband with dementia and tend to run up and down a flight of stairs several times a day.

I’m out in the storage area working the granary, hefting fifty-pound sacks of scratch and pellets daily, raking out muck from the aviaries and that’s just the animal tasks. That doesn’t include landscaping and house cleaning.

I have a full plate and get my writing and schoolwork in early. Oh yeah. Did I mention I’m finally getting my Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing?

I don’t have much extra time to feel challenged emotionally although by the time I drop into bed, I’m pretty beat physically.

Life and Art Walk Hand in Hand

For the last couple years, life has focused with laser definition onto my husband’s condition. Our daily routine revolves around his schedule.

I try to exercise and stay in shape because he weighs 200 pounds and I weigh 130 pounds. I’m constantly either lifting him out of a chair or into one or helping him in the shower or up the stairs. There were a few times he rolled out of bed and I couldn’t lift him off the floor.

Staying healthy is one of my utmost concerns so that I can help him as he weakens physically. With dementia, a person doesn’t fail mentally as one with Alzheimer’s will. With dementia, mind-body coordination seems to fail.

With Bob, his talking is failing him, but his memory seems intact. If you think about this, that’s the worst nightmare. To know.

Anyway, I have an acute understanding about how important it is for me to stay healthy. And, interestingly, I’m writing a story about a women whose husband has dementia and goes missing. Life and art walk hand-in-hand, don’t they?

Nature and Writing Keep Me Creative

For me, nature and writing keep me creative. If I cannot enjoy one, I have issues with the other.

Even when temperatures drop into the twenties and rare teens, I still go outside. Our house sits on five acres that are mostly wooded. We have one tall old Douglas fir in the back field that I swear whispers my name.

I trounce around in the woods ducking under and goosestepping over fallen trunks and branches. I battle nettle and wild rose thorns and scare out a fox every now and again from the edge of the pond where we have flocks and flocks of mallards and wood ducks.

I love taking my dog out during the night (I usually take him at 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.) when the bats careen in on the air at moths and mosquitoes. I love smelling the night air, checking for rain or someone’s wood burning in a nearby fireplace. I love gazing up for stars and when they’re not visible imagine how dense the clouds are and if they’re only wafting by or if they’ve blanketed our small island.

I love nighttime alone outside with no houselights and only the sky’s brackish canvas on moonless cloudy, nights or stars and galaxies ablaze like a candle behind a sheet of black lace. Nature inspires my creativity as does writing.

Writing Is My One Love That Will Never Leave Me

I think my father and mother would be extremely disappointed if I ever stopped writing.

My father died in 1996 and my mother in 2016. My father was a writer and my mother dabbled but mostly she was a fine artist painting in oils and acrylics. She was especially talented at creating wilderness landscapes, ocean scenes, and cloudy skies.

In fact, it makes me wonder how much her paintings influenced my love of nature.

I think during any difficult time, I think about my parents and long for them. On quitting, yes. I think both of them would have been disappointed and still would be disappointed if I were ever to quit. But then, I think I will never quit simply because I cannot quit.

Writing is my one love that will never leave me, and I am its loyal wife.

If People Don’t Connect with You, They Aren’t Going to Pick Up Your Books

Marketing isn’t a one tactic sort of thing. A writer must constantly evaluate their brand, their latest book, the world as a whole from the finite sense of the immediate local goings-on, to regional, national and world trends in the publishing industry but also in culture.

Marketing is a profession that is constantly in flux whether due to changing times or changing technologies.

Social media is key right now. Who knows what technology will throw the business world in five or ten years. But keeping in contact with people and nurturing relationships is incredibly important.

Another important issue for me, is to keep my website easy for readers to use. I don’t want readers to bounce off my site to something else. I want them to stay and learn what I write but mostly I want them to learn who I am.

If people don’t connect with you, they aren’t going to pick up your books. I want to make that connection between author and reader. It’s a relationship that is intimate and satisfying for both.

How Do I Fit Life Into My Writing?

I think the better question is how do I fit life into my writing? Writing drives my days much the way my husband’s condition does. I fit life in around my work and around Bob. It has to be that way for me.

If the house gets unruly, I have cleaners who come in once-a-month to help. If the landscaping gets out of control, I’ll hire landscapers, but I WILL NOT postpone writing for anything but my husband.

Advice for a Young Writer: Do It!

You’ll get years of heartache and joy and that’s called life.

If you choose a career (which I did) that you don’t enjoy, what will your life be? Just a series of getting dressed, going to some job, eating and sleeping until it’s over.

If you have that creative urge to write, then do it. And do it with complete commitment so that at the end of your life you can say, “Look what I did!”

Now, that’s a life well-lived.

* * *

Susan Wingate writes unputdownable, surprising and twisty stories with crackling dialogue that exhibit a rare deftness in style offering up stories that are riveting, original and with a humanity rarely seen in contemporary fiction.

Wingate is a #1 Amazon bestselling, award-winning author of over fifteen novels.

For more information on Susan and her work, please see her website and connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Goodreads, and LinkedIn.

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