Blog Dis

Blog dis: Push and Pull

Writing often feels like a delicate balance between desire, available time and the creative spark, which doesn't always co-operate when you want it to co-operate. Getting started is a problem for many, while others get bogged down in re-writes and still others become sidetracked with other life priorities.

I believe that I suffer from the last of these, becoming pulled away by other priorities, such as work, outdoor activities and exhaustion. Granted, I admit that I've been fortunate with my first series of six novels, to feel confident with my ideas, and how they were presented, and how I had implemented them at the outset, including re-writes. I find, however, that my wheels can some times fall off or spin in multiple directions as I attempt to juggle multiple priorities.

Presently, my eighth novel has begun, just the first chapter, mind you. The opening paragraph and the full first chapter have typically been my least strong point when I start a new novel. I want the first chapter to be perfect before I press on, rather than to pull together some hodge-podge idea and then just move on, as some writers do, telling themselves they'll fine-tune the first chapter down the road. Not me. I need to know that the first chapter is in the can, so that I can feel comfortable before I plunge into the next one. It is a process, and we each find our level, the way water finds its level, spilling into each crevice, until there's no more room left.

Such is the process of my writing routine.

We are now heading into 2025, and my goal is to make serious headway into novel eight, which I am spring-boarding off my seventh novel, POM. So appropriately, novel eight is being titled POM II and I already have a cover design that I adore, thanks to my graphic design
@fantasy_art_z
, in order that I may keep it open on my computer for inspiration while I write. When I had finished the laborious process of editing novel seven, all 770 pages, some 265,000+ words, my editor dropped at my feet her blunt recommendation, "Start writing the next one, rather than wait." She's right, of course, and dastardly. 😂If you wait too long, you lose your edge, and returning to a follow-up novel that continues the saga from its previous, will only mean that you may potentially fall deeper into a sinkhole. Nobody needs sinkholes unless they're connected to sewers, not novels.

Sometimes your writing agenda pushes you to new heights and at other times it pulls you down. Every writer will tell you that their brain never stops, which is why I keep notebooks with plot points, that come to me at the oddest moments, like working out on my indoor bike. And because I didn't wait to begin novel eight, I've been re-reading my seventh novel POM, while I cycle in the morning to music videos, despite having read POM I'm sure at least 25 times, while in the process of writing it for the last nine years. Writers are masochists, of this I am convinced. Now, as I read through POM, yet again, one chapter at a time, because my time on the indoor bike is limited, my brain lights up with new ideas for novel eight.

Do you see what it means now to be an author? Our work is never done, much like any other artist who paints, makes music, or who gets up on stage and does stand-up comedy, or improv or recites lines from a stage play. It never ends, and so it shouldn't, for the day when it ends, the artist is dead, or in the process of dying. Let us all hope that death comes quickly to each artist, but only after we've completed our current art project.

Over the holidays, I step away from writing as I do each year, to give myself a length of distance from myself as the author, and to gain perspective. I won't work on my 8th novel, nor will I issue a blog post or a poem after today, not until the New Year. The good thing about not having millions of followers is that I won't be missed... maybe by one or some but not by many. It's one of the hardest facts of life, that we want to believe our absence will be missed. Truth is most of us won't be remembered by followers one month, one year, much less five years after our passing. But our art will be remembered!

Now is as good a time as any to drop this older picture of myself. For an author photo-shoot, I thought it would be a good idea to bring along some rolled up laminates of the covers from my first series in order that my photographer could snap a variety of options, to show me inter-acting with my characters. All the covers for my first Crimson Fantasy series have long since been re-designed. However, there's still something appealing to me about the original, raw cover design for novel two.

My mouth is open wide, and I'll leave it up to your imagination as to why my mouth is open... or rather why it was open - past tense, after all.

Happy Holidays!! 🎄I wish you downtime and some meaningful moments and exchanges with loved ones.

I saved it all for you,
love that flows from glaciers.
When you touch me,
I am eighteen again;

a young breast falling,
into perfect shape,
a slender neck sloping,
into exquisite drape.

I saved my soft heart for you,
held by your crystal blue eyes,
and sighs that come undone,
by our naked truth.

Let us expose the devotion,
of our impulses in motion,
to scatter the passage of light,
in the melting pockets of ice.

COPYRIGHT © Patricia K McCarthy

What motivates you to get up every day? Is it the onerous responsibility of supporting children? Do you get up to a throng of political supporters as you work hard to win a bi-election? Motivation seems to be one of the deciding factors when it comes to the routine lives of humans. We are motivated to work bcus we like to eat and drink and exist in a reasonable state of existence. We are motivated to exercise bcus we desire to maintain some kind of healthy body shape that will attract a potential lover. We are motivated to do the things we do bcus sometimes we are compelled by unforeseen forces, like our urges, which requires us to disregard our impulse control, in order to satisfy these urges. But where to draw the line? And when should the line be drawn? Is the line shorter for politicians? I think it is, the line is narrow-thin for politicians and in fact the line is as short as a regular-sized penis.


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There's a valid reason why we reach for carbohydrates when feeling stressed bcus the breads, rolls, pizzas, muffins, cookies and tortilla wraps of this yummy world are made with white flour that your body processes efficiently and neatly into sugars and/or fats, storing these not-so-lovely nutrients in your bodily tissues that you can gaze at weeks and months later on your thighs or tummy as they expand.


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Let me suffer and kill the lie,
that I do not love you,
when I want you most,
when thunder sounds,

and fills the sky with dark, bursting clouds.
You shall know my true heart,
has betrothed itself to you.
You are the air I breathe,

the sun I seek, to live,
I must be with thee, to die,
I trust you will not grieve,
If tomorrow never comes.

If you were not there for me, forever,
I would carry your image, emblazoned
on my breast, let weariness fade,
and disappear into the morning mist.

COPYRIGHT © Patricia K McCarthy

What's not to love about Christmas when you're a kid? Because when you're kid, it's easy to encourage your little Id to shine like a diamond, that inner child who thinks only of passions, locked in a tug of war with the ego, which is supposedly a representation of our reason and common sense. But Christmas has as much to do with common sense the way summertime has to do with wintertime: two polar opposites! We are now into the mid-point of December and this means the most special day of this holiday season is a week and a half away. I speak of the 25th day when the little trampling of feet can be heard in the house, tearing down the stairs at some awful hour like 4:30 AM, still dressed in pajamas, to sneak a peek under the tree, just to see what Santa left for them.


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My body is on fire.
My skin is searing to the touch,
too hot to endure,
these urges of your appetite.

You stir a tremor below the ground demur,
flushing my soft face, and speckled eyes.
Even your crooked smile,
ignites the electric arc. In your arms,

I want to cheapen myself,
and stoop to new levels of dirty and low,
to follow you, and be ravaged against brick walls.
Scorch my body with your burn,

Until I turn into you, toward your fire
of fervor, of fury and undying flame.
We shall consume and devour one another,
and all that blazes in the night.

COPYRIGHT © Patricia K McCarthy

Like most, I suppose, we regard ourselves as being clever and highly intelligent people, for the most part, in any event. I mean to say there are few if any people who would introduce themselves to you, to bluntly declare, "I'm a dullard and I have no brain." Not only do most people regard themselves as being smart but they will recite specific instances to you of how they had applied these brains, to further prove they're above the regular average Joe who's still learning how to pull the tab from the Coke can without cutting his fingers.


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I looked for joy this morning as I walked into work, watching more bloody snow fall from the dull and dreary sky. I looked for joy under my bed and over the hill and around the corner but no joy appeared to me at the outset. Sometimes I truly believe that joy is the shy groundhog that comes out one morning, sees its shadow and runs back into its hole to hide until Spring arrives.


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As I see it, we're all guilty of being far too possessive of people and things. I like to believe that I don't have a possessive bone in my body. I'm not interested in holding onto past flames who are no longer interested in me, nor a part of my life, the way some men and women will do following a break-up; they find it next to impossible to let go, and either both or one from the relationship will continue to try and connect with their ex, almost as though they resent no longer being considered a priority. Blah! So much going on here, that I don't know which psychological explanation is best to assign to this behaviour. I've seen it happen with girlfriends who are regularly contacted by their ex, despite them outright ignoring them.


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Ten years cried, in those tears.
You are not above loving.
You are not above healing.

Whatever shall become of us?
Tell me what drives you,
to race along my water's edge,

majestically, on hooves of wildness.
Your smell pierces my nostrils
like the scent,

of your body and hair,
orphaned from my feelings,
for too long,

you've not been held or loved by me.
We are too near to death, unless
we can feel each other's love again.

COPYRIGHT © Patricia K McCarthy