Snap! Snap!

What's that obnoxious snapping sound?

My desperate attempts to snap out of a writing-funk I've been in for the last couple of weeks. It's either February or the cumulative effect of reading all the Publishing-Is-Dead articles and blog posts (including this one Publishers Weekly) that have rendered me unable to garner the necessary energy to keep writing.

What's the point of writing, publishers won't take chances on new authors. Write because you have to; if you have anything else you'd rather do, go do that. Publishing was hard to begin with, now with the economy heading south, it's just gotten a hundred times harder. Write what you love. I can't be blind to market forces. You can only write what speaks to you, anything else will come off inauthentic and publishers and readers alike will smell it a mile away.

And of course, not writing brings with it the low-level but constant restlessness and something-isn't-quite-right-ness.

Vicious cycle.

What do I have to come back to? What can I control? Not the state of the economy or the publishing industry, the taste of readers and health of bookstores, decisions of agents and editors. The only thing I can do is

Write the best book I can.

As advice goes, this is glib, flippant, and cliche, but unfortunately true.

I have to ignore the loaded word "best", ignore the bad news, and just go back to writing. Where do I find the motivation that brings energy and hope?

Write. Read. Live.