If you are like me, every year post Halloween (and my birthday which happens to fall on October 3oth… amazingly every year on the same date!) you feel the ramp up of the holidays, which I call the “holidaze,” heavy, heard and thrusting into your life until the New Year. There’s so much to do, even when you have whittled your gift buying list down to just an essential few and visiting ever fewer places. Really, COVID has nothing really at all to do with the fact that I simply do not want to be out and about in the hustle and bustle this time of year.
So, what does any of this mean to the erotic writer? Are we exempt from the holidaze sitting in our garrets churning out our fictions for barely enough money to afford a good-sized phallic candy cane?
I can tell you from first-hand experience that the clients I write for tend to slow down in their needs for articles, blogs, reviews and interviews this time of year. By mid-November (when I write this) I am pretty much full up for any work until the New Year. Also, quite frankly, I feel my energy for fiction writing slowing down, the twinkly lights and yummy cookie smells (and the Thanksgiving bird feast looming) distracting me from thinking up new naughties.
I fight this malaise every year. As much wanting to be prepared for what’s coming in the New Year, with AVN and the various XBIZ events happening in January, as wanting to shore up some future work, I need to stay on the ball. Certainly, I will give myself a week off between Christmas and New Year, or at least slow down a bit, but I’d like to have my proverbial ducks in a row for when the holidaze pass and we are into the drag of months like February and March and I have yet to fully pay off the credit card bills from what I spent during the holidaze.
Yes, even if you have whittled your gift buying list to just the essential few.
As the old saying warns, it’s best to have your groceries bought well before you are hungry. I’d advise, enjoy whatever holidaze you do, delve deep into those traditions, amass friends and family around you. But don’t forget the work, and this is true for whatever work you do, not only naughty scribbling.
If you have some writing projects you have put off, maybe the New Year is when you should tackle them. If you haven’t heard from or reached out to a client, old, current or potential, set the post-holiday time for doing so. A reassessment of your writing goals also might be in order. I’m not the biggest proponent of resolutions, save for making a resolution banning me from making any more resolutions. But a little planning now, best you can, for after the crazy times might serve you well.
Happiest of holidazes to you and yours.
