Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) is a monthly blog hop for writers at all levels to share their fears and insecurities in a safe and encouraging place. Please drop by and say hi to Alex Cavanaugh who started this nifty concept in bringing us all together.

I’ve been kind of out of it lately.

I don’t want to talk to anybody. Don’t want to do anything. I’ve got too much to say but no energy or desire to say any of it. Which leaves me in this weird sort of funk that has me questioning my day-to-day happiness as well as my mental stability, something every artist does but never talks about. Sshh. You didn’t read it here.

I’m fine. Really. It’s just the dark thoughts that plague most people (and not usually me) have been repeat offenders lately and that’s something I’m not used to. So I don’t know what to do. When the demons do come knocking (the rare occasions it happens), I’m able to bat them away—quite successfully, I might add. I’m optimistic this is the life I’m supposed to be living. I’m blinded by the belief that I’m meant to tell stories. To write. And always have been. But I’ve been struggling to live in the positive. My brain feels like a weary battlefield, neither optimism nor depression surrendering, both battling to rule my outlook on everything I do. And that’s what April has been for me. A month of constant war.

I have been writing. So there’s that. I have a book coming out next month, after all—the fourth in a series I love. But I don’t want to promote it. I don’t want to advertise or talk about its release. I simply want to sink back into my shell and send out a few texts to the handful of people I know are awaiting its release. It’s sad, really. That I’m back here again. I had so much gusto a few months ago and now I’m trying to decide each day if I want to be happy or sad. It’s weird and it’s scary and I hate that it’s part of the process. I hate that I have to go through it.

I guess the good thing about April is the unexpected inspiration for my next book. I’m excited about it, which has renewed some of the optimism, but the giant 3-0 circling my head is a constant reminder of the failure I continually convince myself I am. I’m thirty and not there yet. What does that say about me? What does that say about my talent? What does that say about how the rest of my life is going to go? And suddenly the demons are back. I hate them, and I hate myself for giving into them.

But I’m still writing. I’ve posted this, haven’t I? (Please God let me not chicken-out and post this). Things will be okay. I’m sure they will. After all, Crusade Across Worlds is coming out next month and ITR is still in its best stage—the unwritten period when everything is just a montage of scenes, a movie trailer of highlights I want to write.

Ah, the beginning to any creative piece. The inspiration. The possibilities. I do think, despite all the demons and mental exhaustion that goes along with being a writer, that this may be one of my very favorite things in life.

So I’ll cling to that for now.