A Request and Covid Struck Me Down
A Request and Covid Struck Me Down
In which the Trickster has consumed my life and made it impossible to build a successful business.
First, the request:
I am preparing my first manuscript for sale.
I know, what exciting news! A collection of prose poems / micro-memoirs surrounding my first trip overseas.
But self-publishing is scary and overwhelming, which is probably why many don’t do it. Writing itself is hard enough.
The keys to self-publishing, outside of having a solid manuscript are a genre-appropriate cover and a solid description.
This is where I need your help.
I’m having trouble being “marketing Libby” with my own manuscript. It’s really hard to feel comfortable evaluating my own work with the purpose of talking it up and in the space of being desperate to a) break the self-publishing seal and b) the fact that I’m so skint right now I NEED to get the ball rolling on these things, I’m wondering if you can help.
I need someone to read the short manuscript and expand my book description to a max of 4000 characters in a week’s time. Or at least give me more language to work with.
I have started one that can act as a base but I need help filling it out with poignant detail / language that best describes the manuscript.
It’s a short manuscript, more of pamphlet than a book.
I can’t pay, but maybe we can arrange some kind of trade? Or, I can offer you my undying gratitude and love?
In other news, Covid has taken over my life.
Obviously I’m alive and my olfactory senses seem to be coming back (though I will say it’s the most pungent smells that are getting through just now), but it was a rough go, even for the stay-at-home model, as I’m sure many of you have now experienced.
Definitely many have had and have it worse, but even in its milder form, it’s not been a picnic.
In between long sleeps and hacking up a lung, I managed to catch up on a couple of issues of Mslexia, and in the Autumn 2021 issue, Leah Larwood writes about recognizing and employing the Trickster archetype to create relatable scenarios in her essay, “Jungian Archetypes: #1 The Trickster.”
The Trickster, as seen in Loki, The Riddler, The Joker, etc., is a common characterization. Antics range from minor and playful mishaps to downright sadistic and murderous sabotage. However, the Trickster can also insight shifts and growths. She says “Many experts agree that when the Trickster appears in our lives, this generally means that our unconscious attitude in some areas of life has become too rigid” (55).
Folks, the Trickster has been with me for some time.
I thought perhaps since I moved here to the north woods. Copper, for instance, has come into a number of more or less non-lethal, yet incredibly scary, situations: pancreatitis after eating a rotting animal, Lyme’s (again), skunk spray.
And for me it feels as if I’ve experienced non-stop disruptions in my working / writing life: an ever rotating door of deliveries (which cause the dogs great distress), home renovations, visitors (my parents have more guests than I would ever want), on the light end. Chronic health issues and family traumas, K9 and human deaths, on the heavier side.
It has felt like endless chaos despite the trees and birds and meditation. It’s made it difficult to get a firm foothold in building the writing and self-publishing business of which I know I’m capable.
On closer, examination however, it’s clear that the Trickster has been with me much longer than the last 12 months. The extensive burnout I experienced toward the end of my program. Falling into old, unhealthy relationship patterns.
Moving house in itself was clearly designed by the Trickster gods, of which I’ve done three times in three years. The awful landlords I ended up with in that first Iowa City move. And aside from breaking my foot after the second Iowa City move, Copper really hated that house (or the people who walked by: the mail man, the bunnies, there was a lot of anger).
Each one was a hopeful move toward something positive: cheaper rent, a house of our own (of sorts) in a homey neighborhood, but each one seemed to stir up the Trickster more and more.
And just when I’ve come to my last tether money-wise, Covid strikes, rendering me useless for nearly two whole weeks.
It was, of course, bound to happen at some point even with vaccinations, but it niggles at me, all these things adding up to a bigger picture especially when you consider I rarely go anywhere and spent the weekend just 24 hours before symptoms started with my sister who’s so far Covid-free.
As are my parents even though Dad, who seems to be confused by how it spreads, kept sticking his nose into my room sans mask but panicked any time I touched anything regardless of clean hands, mask, and the fact that it doesn’t really spread on surfaces.
Old understandings about how germs spread die hard, I guess.
So I’m left here wondering what Trixie is trying to convey. I’m clearly not getting the message.
I definitely fall into rigid patterns when I’m emotionally taxed: I develop inane routines I’m incapable of following, I feel as if I have to USE EVERYTHING UP (products, food, paper, pens, craft supplies, I mean whatever), FINISH ALL THE HALF-FINISHED PROJECTS I’ll likely never finish, and ORGANIZE ALL THE THINGS, as a way of creating order among the mental and external chaos.
So, is she just teasing me? Is she making a broad statement about my attempting to control things? Reminding me, while I try to grasp on to some small control in a situation I have limited power (living in a house that’s not mine, starting a business that could go either way), that actually much of life’s beyond my control?
Or is it something more interconnected, more specific? A missed direction? (Misdirection, Trickster, get it? Snort, snort.)
I have asked on more than one occasion for the Trickster to lay off. I have shouted clear boundaries at him. Pleaded quietly. And yet they keep coming at me. Almost obvious, now, in their tactics.
So, here I am, I lay myself at her feet. I surrender Trixie. Just show me what door to open next and I’ll follow you through. If I manage to not pass right by it… again. You’d better offer a rather large door. Might I suggest an airplane hangar?