struggling – Kara Jorgensen

I don’t do personal posts nearly as often as I used to, but I wanted to update you all on why I am so behind on basically everything. I apologize if this one is a bit heavy, but my life has been a bit of a shit show since February to the point that I feel like a bad news bear. CWs for pet death and pet medical stuff.

If you’ve read through my monthly wrap-ups for January and February, you know some of this. In January, I worked up to the wire on The Reanimator’s Fate and then, decided to take a few weeks off from writing to recover my brain. In mid-February, I decided to start working in earnest on “An Unexpected Christmas” (TRM #4.5). Within two days of doing this, Finn, my oldest and best boy had repeated seizures and had to be put to sleep. He was eighteen years old and lived a very long and good life, which is what I take solace in. He was a very healthy and robust dog until the last six months or so of his life where he needed a lot more care and attention. I miss him immensely, especially hugging him and giving him sweet baby kisses, and still catch myself checking on him, even though it’s been over a month. We celebrated my partner’s birthday a few days later on a rather somber note, and the week immediately after, Edgar (15 year old soul dog) had a medical problem.

Edgar is fine now, by the way, but he scared the ever-loving shit out of me. He went outside and suddenly, his mouth started bleeding nonstop to the point that I thought he was going to bleed out in my kitchen. I took him to one local vet (not my usual one as he was closed), had an absolutely traumatizing experience with a vet who was incredibly unprofessional and ageist regarding my seemingly healthy but bleeding dog. Long story short, he said that he probably had cancer and should be put down. I was like fuck that and fuck you and took him to an emergency vet half an hour away. Somewhere along the way, his mouth stopped bleeding and in the car, he spat out a glob of tissue that turned out to be the tumor that had been bleeding in his mouth. The emergency vet was lovely and took the tissue glob to be biopsied. Even after Edgar seemed okay, I was freaking the hell out because Edgar was anemic and not himself for over a week, which once again tested my nervous system. Luckily, he recovered fully with some antibiotics, and the tumor turned out to be an encapsulated piece of plant material that somehow ruptured/ripped open in his mouth. An absolutely bizarre ending to that horrific experience, but I’ll take anti-climatic at this point.

Following Edgar and Finn’s medical episodes, we took Katie (10 yr old dachshund mix) to the vet because she has had a lump slowly growing on her nose for several months. At first, we thought it was an allergy lump because she has allergy problems and rubs that spot. The vet did a biopsy on it, and it turned out to be soft tissue sarcoma, which is a kind of cancerous tumor. Luckily, it doesn’t tend to metastasize, especially if it’s a low grade tumor. This past Friday she had surgery to remove the tumor from her nose. The downside is that they can’t get wide/perfect margins on a dog’s nose due to how little space there is, so while the vet got most it, she will probably need a follow-up treatment like radiation or chemo to kill the remaining cells to keep it from growing back. We will find out next steps once the full biopsy is in and her face heals up. She’s only ten and a small dog, so she could live another five to eight years without issue if those remaining sarcoma cells are nuked. I made a donation thing in case anyone would like to contribute to her cancer treatment as it will be a lot of money by the end. My mom is helping us pay for it, but after her and Edgar’s repeated trips to the specialty vet, I am scraping the bottom of the barrel on my savings.

I also want to give a giant thank you to everyone who has donated to her care so far. Everyone has been so lovely asking after her and offering their support, and I appreciate my fellow writers and readers so much ;—; It’s been a very rough two months, but this has made it slightly less anxiety-inducing. I struggle to ask for help and continually feel guilty when I do so, but for my dogs, I will do it.

My dogs are my babies. I spend all my time with them when I’m not at work. They are my constant companions, and unfortunately, when they are having issues, it is very hard for me to focus on anything else. I feel like my brain is finally hitting some equilibrium now that Katie’s surgery is done with, but writing has been a very slow-go. I plan to work on “An Unexpected Christmas” while starting the rewrite and expansion of Flowers and Flourishing, so there shouldn’t be too much lag with the latter. I’m actually really excited to flesh out Agatha and Louisa’s story for rerelease, but I also want to give you all a fun Oliver and Felipe story. I appreciate everyone’s patience when it comes to getting AUC out. If you can hang in a little longer, I promise it will be worth it. Oh, and there will be dogs.

I have a confession: I hate starting a new book.

This probably sounds weird from someone who loves writing, their characters, stories, etc., but the actual starting part is the absolute worst for me. I’m not one of those writers who gets an idea and immediately dives headfirst to bang out 10,000 words in a few days before hitting the wall when they get to the middle. No matter how hard the spirit of inspiration strikes, I never get that sort of burst at the beginning of a story. The beginning is always the slowest part of the writing process for me. I’m constantly having false starts, stalling, reworking or clarifying things. The beginning of a book is about feeling things out and trying to get the shape of it in my mind before I get too far. My process is probably closest to a sculptor using a piece of a marble. They have to inspect the veins and natural curves and weaknesses of the rock before they get too far, lest they ruin it.

I’ve said it previously in other posts about my writing process, but I hate mess. I’m not the kind of person who can speed-run through a draft and deal with the problems later. If I have a super messy draft, there’s a 90% chance I will just chuck it in the bin and move on instead of dealing with it. Because I am mess averse, I tend to be a slower writer but a quick editor. My writing has been gone over so many times by the time I reach the editing stage that the draft is fairly clean. At the same time, I don’t have hyper-productive days with astronomical word counts because that would mean cleaning up a lot of mess later. Occasionally, I do have these days, but they’re often toward the very end of the story when I know exactly where I’m going and what needs to happen.

The beginning of a book is like standing at an eight-way intersection. I have too many choices and I haven’t puzzled out where they all lead yet, so I get decision paralysis. Some people will say just pick something and deal with the consequences. Yeah, no, I’d rather take a few hours or days to figure out what won’t work before charging down a certain path and making a mess for myself. I’m a careful writer, and the fact that the slow start is part of my process is something I need to remind myself each time I start a new project.

I often scare myself when I start a project because I am so slow at first. There’s a little, panicked voice inside of me that’s like, “At the rate you’re going, it’ll take two years to finish this book!” and then, I freak out more and freeze up. This time, I’m trying to remind myself that the speed at which I write exponentially goes up the further along I am in the book. The first five to ten thousand words are the slowest because my brain is still grappling with all the setup and moving pieces that need to be nailed down early on. This is part of the process, even if I don’t like how it feels, and at some point, I need to make peace with that.

The beginning of a book is like a road with nearly limitless paths, and the further I get into that draft, the more side streets are closed to me. The path becomes clearer, and the chance of getting lose diminishes. For now, I will keep going, albeit slowly, and try not to get lost.

Tag: struggling

Why Kara is Struggling to Write

The New Book Blues