Practicalities of Living Life in a Hard Season, Part Three: A Narrative

Practicalities of Living Life in a Hard Season, Part One
Practicalities of Living Life in a Hard Season, Part Two: High Sensitivity

Okay, so Parts One and Two explained my main dilemma, with two especially resonant links. Musings on the line between excuses and reasons, what self-care looks like and how hard it can be, and what happens when you throw high sensitivity into the mix. Keep in mind that, as I mentioned in the beginning, when I feel like my life is spiraling out of control, I tend to numb myself out in various ways, to gain a sense of pseudo-control. So not helpful. But not something I want to be beating myself up for either, because it IS understandable, and beating myself up just makes me feel more out of control.

I've been thinking about that sense of control and the narrative I tell myself. Why I really, really want a good narrative, one that makes sense of me, one that tells me how to work with myself.

Unwrapping My Friday

This starts with someone else's post. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Go read "One Thing My Soul Is Begging Me to Do." It's worth it, I promise. And then click over and read the link mentioned at the end, her piece at (in)courage. Got that? Okay, you're ready.


What does unwrapping my day today look like? It isn't Tuesday today, but most of my days these days are very ordinary, even the special ones, and I want to start this practice right this minute. Trying to remember the little ordinary moments from three days ago won't do, I want this day, now.

I Have a Thing!

It's going to be PUBLISHED! Squuuueeeeeeee!

If you need me, I'll be over here on the ceiling.*

averagecats.com: Ceiling Cat

Oh wait, you wanted a few details? Fine. Be that way.

My "thing" is a personal essay. It will be included in a collection about infertility and miscarriage, from Kalos Press. Mine is about miscarriage.

"This isn’t a book that offers solutions – there are plenty of experts for that. Nor is this a book that expounds theological explanations for pain and loss – that necessary job is already well done elsewhere.

"What this book offers is simpler, and more primary: it offers companionship. No one loss is like any other, yet sharing our losses can offer, if not true solace, at least the comfort of knowing there is someone else there beside you in the dark, someone who understands. We hope that in sharing these stories you will gain the words and phrase to better frame, to better comprehend, to better share, your own story." [-from the introduction-to-be, quoted in the editor's Call for Submissions here]

Why, hello, my life mission statement!

("I write for myself, because I have to. I try and I hope to write for you as well. These things don't have to be opposed, either. Though I do it for myself, I hope my writing is not selfish. I tell my story to let you know you're not alone.")

(I would also quote some other blog posts here, about how my personality type helps me gain the words to frame my story and to help give you the words you need; but I haven't quite written those blog posts just yet.)

Um. Anyway.

>_>

The publication process is not a fast thing, so don't expect this book to be out any time soon. But I will let you know when it's available!

Believe me. I will SO let you know. ^_^

*Okay okay, I've known for a little while now, but wanted to make sure it was fine to announce before doing so. Still. Squee.

Things I Wish I'd Said, or: Snark, Incoming

I probably wouldn't be posting and linking to this on a weekday morning normally, but I have an eye appointment later and I'm not going to work until after that.

Meanwhile, I am feeling very squinty. *cues up unnecessary explanation*

My glasses are broken. Well, sort of. They could be fixed. One of the screws holding the frames together came out. I didn't lose it, but it seems to be stripped.

How that could possibly be, when my glasses are only about a decade old... oh wait.

My last eye appointment was around eight and a half years ago, before I married. I didn't get new glasses at the time, I got contacts, probably a year's supply. I haven't bought contacts again since they ran out, though I might in my next appointment after today, after getting new glasses. The last time, eight and a half years ago, he said my prescription hadn't changed much, so I didn't bother with the glasses. My appointment before that was probably... oh, I don't know, maybe a few years earlier. Maybe more.

Anywho. *back to not exactly regularly scheduled programming*



In a recent Facebook thread about personality types, someone commented on the phenomenon where you think of the perfect thing to say in a discussion -- a discussion which everyone finished days ago, and which feels silly to bring up again.

Heh. I am ALL OVER this. I said,

"I've been thinking about adding a category to my blog along the lines of, 'Things I Wish I'd Said' -- totally understand! I'd use it even for online conversations, because even though they're written and technically I could come back to them, sometimes the answer that keeps bugging me doesn't get used right away, but it STILL KEEPS BUGGING me, even a year later, and in online time, that's like decades, and is just ridiculous!"

So. They get their own category, here. It's not like I'm going to put up EVERYTHING which could possibly qualify -- I want to be careful, I don't want to post anything that would make people feel like I was attempting to talk behind their backs, for example. I also want it all to fit within the focus of the blog, though arguably, writing extensive analysis of arguments I'm highly passionate about automatically qualifies. Nonetheless.

For quite a while after I first thought of the idea and toyed with it, I didn't think it was necessarily a good one. It kept coming up, but... nah. Besides my reservations, I have a backlog of ideas, not enough time to develop and post them.

I still won't be promising or even trying for any kind of a posting schedule for this series/category -- things will come up when they come up.

But I'm doing it. The final straw? A comment thread that's almost two years old -- which I found last week. Doesn't technically fit the series specs, but close enough.

The working title of the blog post about it is, "I read too much of the internet, and my brain exploded."

Taking notes on it has been fun so far, if in a rather "Wow, these comments seem more and more wrongheaded the more I think about them, which is impressive, considering where they started!" sort of way.

Snark. It's coming. You've been warned.

Quettandil

This will be going on my About page soon, but I wanted to give it its own post, too. Not sure how soon I'll be adding it to About, as there are other changes I want to make, and I'm not sure yet how I'm going to integrate the pieces. But regardless, here it is!

I think about my feelings and feel about my thoughts. I don't believe thought and feeling are opposed. My sister Melanie appropriated a word for people like us: Geeks. Not all geeks are Geeks (and I'm more a nerd, myself); but it's about the closest term to hand. Hi, my name is Marcy, and I'm Quettandil, Word Lover.

I want to write holistically. I am a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend; but I and my world encompass more than those roles, and I am also a bibliophile, writer, polyglot, singer, runner. I'm trying to tell some of the stories involved in becoming a new mother, but I think I would write a horrible mommy blog.

I believe in integration. I write for myself, because I have to. I try and I hope to write for you as well. These things don't have to be opposed, either. Though  I do it for myself, I hope my writing is not selfish. I tell my story to let you know you're not alone.

I am a story lover, storyteller, collector, creator. I hope.

I hope, I hope, I hope.

If I'm doing this wrong, Quettandil's focus is a lack of focus; if right, the focus is integration, especially in being Word Lover. (Books! Thoughts! Feelings!)

Please, will you tell me a story?

Linky Linky Link Links

Sorry I've been so quiet here. The last month or so has had lots of ups and downs, times of just getting by and making it through, lovely quiet times of vacation... no big earth-shattering events really, just... life. Lots of life.

It's also possible Gracie's been a little harder and more time-consuming recently, but I'm not quite sure. It might just be that I'm watching more TV... I don't want to watch so much, but when someone's in the living room watching Angel, how can I resist? I ask you.

You know how I was planning on regularly featuring other blogs here? And how I did one post in the "series," over a year ago?

Now that I mention it, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't know. Um.

So, as I go through the blogs in my RSS reader, I have some tags I use regularly, which include, "Could use for a blog post," "Or maybe forward or share," and "Wonderful things I want to remember (use sparingly)."

Yes, even my blog tags are exceedingly verbose. Anywho.

I'd still like to do those "featured" posts, with one blog at a time. I started on one for Patricia C. Wrede's blog. But it recently struck me that unless I just want to keep building up more and more and more links for some mythical day when I'll post about them all, I should, well, post links more often.

So I started a tag in my RSS reader for "This week's links," and I think I'll try to use it regularly, and in the weeks I skip, just untag that week's links again and start over. And I may throw in some random bookmarks from the week too, stuff I happened to see that isn't from a blog I subscribe to. But just from the last week. Keep things a little more manageable. That's the theory, anyway. I'm not making any promises.

This means, most weeks, I probably won't have much of a theme. But meh. Lots of random highlights from teh interwebz! Woo!

They won't all necessarily be brand new, either. When I read blogs, I find the oldest post (that isn't so old it's a time period I've given up on), and then I catch up within that particular blog before moving on to the next oldest post, and so on. Right now I'm about 20 days behind. Plus there will probably be some lag between my drafting a post and actually publishing it, because I'm like that. I know there's a lag this week!

So. Without any further ado, here are... some of my links. I had quite a lot, and ended up only including a few in my draft of this post. I was going to add more still, but... well, now it's this week. There are some awesome ones I didn't get to, but oh well.

CaptainAwkward: "#497: On 'keeping the peace' with an unlikeable mansplainer"

Language warning. This is, more or less, on why you shouldn't "keep the peace," especially as applied to someone who is chronically jerky towards someone else with less privilege.

("You can’t solve injustice until you admit and truthfully reckon with injustice. If we have the expectation that our institutions will always cater to the wealthy, the white, the able-bodied, the cis-gendered, the straight, and the male and treat people who point out the cracks in that system with contempt and silencing and pleas to be nicer and “keep the peace” (not to mention outright denial that there is a problem), we become the problem. We are saying that this state of affairs is “the peace” that is worth keeping, and acting like the peace isn’t broken over and over again with every instance of injustice, white supremacy, inaccessibility, ableism, transphobia, etc. The peace has already been broken.")

It's pretty awesome. Because I've gradually become much more feminist in... oh, maybe the last year or so? I feel like I should warn that if you are not sympathetic to feminism, this is not the article to convince you -- it isn't, nor is it intended to be the article that does that work. It isn't 101. There are other links for that which I might share with you sometime. But if you're already slightly sympathetic or open to such things, and you either know some of the lingo or are willing to follow the links within the article to learn the lingo, well, I think this is a good one for you.

(And yes, as in the above quote, racism and such come up too -- but because of the nature of the original letter writer's question, the focus is mostly on "mansplaining," which is why my focus here, introducing it, is mostly on feminism.)

I was going to quote a long section from towards the end, but I couldn't find a place to cut off the awesome until it was almost a 600-word quote, and that seemed a bit... excessive. Even for me. I'll just say that I especially liked the theoretical scenario with the mansplainer, and from that dialogue, especially this bit:

"‘Splainer: blah BLAH blah you just don’t want to admit that you’re WRONG and GIRLY and WRONG that’s why you won’t debate me. What about blah? What about BLAH? Behold, I am the Devil’s Advocate!"

And then from there through to the "Keep this in mind: It was always that awkward… for you." paragraph.

Side note: Yes, Biblically, we are supposed to be peacemakers. I'm not so sure this is the type of "peace" Jesus was talking about. Just because people use the word doesn't make it so.

And ah, speaking of feminism...

The Actual Pastor: "My Take on Women in the Church"

I do like this. Doesn't go into depth about the Biblical interpretation, but fits with some things I've been thinking for a while now. Especially about the consistency issue, which certainly, well, IS an issue.

Okay, now a sad one. Sorry. Bear with me here, we're almost done!

Learning to Hope: "Pandora"

This isn't the most stand-aloniest blog post ever, but I think it kind of works. Here's the blog's "About Me," for some context:

"I'm a 26 year old former Caregiver. This is my voice to talk about my life- mostly about learning to live now. My husband was diagnosed in November 2009 with Glioblastoma Multiforme- terminal brain cancer. He was only 25 and I had literally just turned 23. He fought hard for almost 3 years before he passed away September 2012, just a month after turning 28. This was my blog about our life. This is still my space to find Hope. This is now my public battle to show what life is like as a 25 year old Widow."

Why follow a blog like this? I first discovered it from this awesome post. To me, it's kind of like watching Grave of the Fireflies -- the movie may not strictly be "enjoyable," watching one of the saddest things in the history of EVAR, but it feels important. Reading this blog... it's a struggle an actual person is living through, and taking the time to listen, even virtually, seems like, well, the least we can do (rather literally). Even when it is only virtual, even when you're just a lurker, and you don't know anyone else in a similar situation... I think it's good to be aware of the pain that's out there in the world. Can make you a little more empathetic at the least, right? So. Even though this post is better in the context of the blog, it's not a bad sample, either. Read it.

(Side note: Grave of the Fireflies is not so much a story of the struggle of an actual person, but it's close enough. Though fictionalized, it's easily the sort of thing that happened to many children in that time and place. Empathy for pain in a major event from a culture's history is important for empathy to the people from that culture. And then... change more details of the story, and it's still happening around the world today.)

Alright. Enough of that. This one's just fun!

Wil Wheaton dot Net: "because it's the recliner my nephew deserves right now"

Also so cute. And short, so, yay!


Wow. I just managed to make a links post 1,397 words long. That's... special.

I ought to be sleeping...

...but... it's not that I'm tired of sleeping, per se... it's just that I'm tired of getting to do so very little else.

Yesterday my baby: codename Gracie (because Apocalyptica the Flimflammer is taken already) turned one month old. I know I'm doing well to be doing as much as I am, but that doesn't change the fact that I want more. I want more than to nurse her, burp her, change her diaper, burp and soothe her to sleep, fall asleep, nurse, burp, change diaper, soothe to sleep, grab a snack, unwisely waste some time online on my phone even though I could do that while nursing and I should be sleeping, nurse, burp, change diaper, burp and soothe to sleep, brush my teeth...

I mean, I have done other things. For example, two nights ago I went to SLOBS, a book club, and read For the Time Being by Auden with them. Lovely. But on the scales, against being on call 27/7, those other things... well, they suffice at first, they feel great at first... and then, hours back into the nursing and burping routine again, and I need another break.

This is just the way it is with a new baby, I know. If not much, much worse. I'm simply trying to explain, for my own sake if no one else's, why I'm blogging right now instead of using the valuable time to sleep.

And... I'm going to stop with that explanation. Lame, but I decided even before she was born that I'd like to try publishing posts before I think they're "finished," to settle for "parts" of posts, as a mind trick to get myself to post shorter pieces, and more often. Especially the more often part. Can't expect to ever do much with this blog, as I want to, if I don't post more often. Right after having a baby is rather a silly time to try to change that, but... well... I'm nothing if not silly.

Excuse me, someone is dropping her pacifier every other second, which means she's working up to the screaming hunger. Oh, wait, no, now she's falling asleep. I'm so confused. Hmm. Might be the power of "Don't Try" by Marian Call playing in the background. Maybe. Or maybe she just finally got tired of being awake. Meh. On to something else. I might even (gasp) read a book!

Celebration! ?

The Antepenultimate Blog Post hit 1000 pageviews today! Yeah, I don't get a lot of traffic. Relatively speaking. The second highest post, First Post, has 231. Er, and I guess it could've hit a thousand yesterday, with no hits today, and I just happened to notice today... but at any rate, thousand! Woo! Yay!

We should do something to celebrate. Hmm. I'll keep you posted on that. I think I might start a series featuring my favorites from other blogs, with an occasional old favorite of my own posts that haven't gotten much attention thrown in, here and there. That could be fun.

Book Review Tags

If you come to my blog instead of reading posts in an RSS reader, you may notice I've added an annoyingly long list of links to my sidebar, a list of "Book Reviews by Tags." I'm looking into getting it changed to its own separate page, like the "Book Reviews by Author" one, but so far I don't see a way to do that. As far as I can tell, Blogger will only allow gadgets to be added to all pages on a blog at once, not to specific ones. And without a gadget, I'd have to link to every single category and every single book by hand. That is not going to happen. Unh-uh. The mind boggles. Heh, I'm only about halfway through adding the tags to my book reviews as it is. I did "Book Reviews by Author" by hand, but there's just one author and one link per book -- so much easier!

Anyway, despite how much space it's taking up in my sidebar, I like it. I'm hoping it will be helpful, that it'll be a handy way to find some other books that might interest you. Plus I just like tagging books for its own sake, and I'd like to have some native tags instead of the LibraryThing ones. Sorry about the "br:" at the beginning of all of them. Since Blogger doesn't have sub-labels, it was the only way to keep them all together (for my own sanity as I check the boxes to get the two gadgets to display either the book review tags or the regular labels) and to distinguish them from the regular tags/labels (because I might tag a post about "Suffering," and that isn't the same as tagging a book I review about "Suffering").

My book reviews from here on out won't have that section at the top telling you how I'd tag them in LibraryThing, those tags will just be with the regular labels down at the bottom of the post. But I'm not going to go back through all my old reviews and remove the LibraryThing tag section. That'd be silly. And I'm never silly.

In related news, I see I haven't actually written and posted a new book review here in almost two years! Yikes! Sorry about that! I knew it'd been a long time, but I didn't realize it was that long! I think I'll start posting some new ones soon. Any day now. Honest.

I'd started thinking of book reviews as much harder than other kinds of posts. (Not the reading part. I almost always do that obsessively, with only the sorts of exceptions that prove the rule.) I'll try to scale back on my perfectionism in that area, take them less seriously, and see if that helps. They ain't gonna be perfect anyway! And it's not like I won't still compulsively edit. There's a little room for slack, I think. Better than not posting any in two years (cue disgusted face).

Of course, there have also been other things on my plate, things that provided plenty of their own material to post about, like this and this. I suppose there's a reason the very last review I posted was of Home. Naahhh. Couldn't be. Um.

So, what do you think? Do you want to see more book reviews? Like the tags? Dislike them? Ideas on how to move them? Don't care and you're really not even sure why you're here? Can't believe I would spend so much of my time going on and on about this? Completely unrelated suggestions? Talk to me. Bonus points for commenting here instead of on my facebook page, so I don't look so lonely. :)

Narcissism

Ain't it fun?

Um. As you can see, if you aren't in an RSS reader and you pay attention to these sorts of things, I've tweaked a few of my page elements. I've added the lovely Tolkien quote at the top of the page, and then moved the "About Me" to the side, as it wasn't playing nicely otherwise. (There's symbolism in there, somewhere?)

I added "Currently reading:", though if you have an adblocker, you may need to disable it on this page to see what I'm currently reading. That's what I had to do. ("Why isn't it working? Why does it hate me? __ Oh.")

I probably won't update what I'm currently reading every time I start a new book, but I'd like to change it at least once a week. That's the plan. Every time I change it I'll link to the last book I was reading that I haven't yet finished (on this readthrough). Because I'm highly distractible, even when it comes to my Biggest Addiction (books, duh), so the last thing I started will probably change quite a bit, whereas finishing the books is slightly less common. Though of course it happens all the time, too.

Book reviews, now... I should get back to doing more of those.

La, la la...

Unless the last book I started is Highly Embarrassing. I reserve the right not to tell you I'm reading a book if I don't want to tell you I'm reading a book. But that probably won't be very common.

I added the "Popular Posts" widget. Here's where I feel especially narcissistic. But I'm hoping that if strangers wander onto my blog, it will help them to find some of my best writing. I hope. It feels... a little idealistic. (Strangers? Here? Where?)

And if they're so popular as all that, do they really need the extra promotion?

Yes, they do. I know that from bookselling, and bestsellers.

I'd actually played with the idea of creating a page for my most popular posts before I saw there was a widget. I was thinking of updating it every month. For the fun. Even though it seems a little silly. I guess I'll let Blogger do it, instead.

There are also a couple issues with the stats, though nothing very serious. These are supposed to be my "all time" ten most popular posts, but Blogger's stats started in May 2009, whereas my blog started in December 2004. The tendency is for each post to get the most hits right after I publish it, so... meh. I hope my readership has gradually grown, which renders that... at least slightly moot.

Can something be "slightly moot?"

And then secondly, the posts that were imported to facebook have a disadvantage, compared to the ones where I only put a link on facebook. Since people didn't have to click through to my blog when a post imported, in order to read the thing. But again, meh.

If I had created a page for my popular posts, I also thought about "featuring" an eleventh post every month, one that I felt wasn't getting as much attention as it deserved. But meh. And then featuring some excellent post from my Google Reader, alternating the blog it would come from. You know, to make me feel better. About the narcissism. And every time I updated, I could also write a post for it, to have a history of some of the ups and downs and features and such... I am so idealistic. I so wouldn't have done all of that. I mean... I would, I would! It would be fun!

And then the rest of my page elements remain the same, below the popular posts. For now. I do intend to update my blogroll at some point (I want to make it more closely reflect what's in my Google Reader), and maybe start tags for my book reviews (native tags, not LibraryThing tags), possibly all prefaced by "book review:" in order to keep them all together in the labels. Unless I can figure out a better way. I want sub-tags, dang it!

Oh! Sing a Lament for the Life of a Blog! Or... Don't. Plus!: Old News!

I noticed the other day how much my Bloggy Goodness Output has dropped (oh so steadily) since 2006, and then especially dramatically since 2008, as indicated by my sidebar. I suppose 102 posts in 365 days is quite a bit (Possibly padded somewhat by pictures which counted as one post each...? Yes. Definitely.), and I'm not going to try to reach those heights again, but I don't want it to keep dropping at this rate, either.

Facebook is partly to blame. I think I'd like to do a lot more posts like the last one, which started life as a facebook status update, and then migrated. Only, in the future, I'll just let such things import to facebook, rather than starting them there. I will think about making them as status updates, but then I will stop myself: "Wait, no!" I will say. "A short blog post! That's what's needed here!" That's the plan. Aside from updates I don't actually want to keep public, or updates that are only a sentence long. (Ha! How often is that gonna happen?!)

To be fair to facebook (Why? That's no fun!), it's been good to the blog in other ways, ways that don't have to do with the sheer quantity of material. With the post importing feature, many people read random posts of mine they never would've read otherwise. So that's cool. But that can still happen if I make fewer status updates and more blog posts. And then I'll have more of my writing together in one place, and update the blog more often... yay. Good things.

Sort of kind of also along those lines, there's a blog post I started writing on April 30th this year which I never published, and it's been bugging me. Especially since it involved talking about writing goals that I met, and I'd like to start posting goals again, but then I'd rather not before I actually post what I've already written on that topic... It'd be like forcing you to come in in the middle of the conversation. Er, monologue. Only not really probably, probably it wouldn't even be noticeable. But... um, you get the idea?

The reason I never published it... well, for a clue, look to the original title: "Chapter 371: In Which the Blogger Writes of Writing Goals Met, and a Kind of a Win, and Megan Whalen Turner, and a Couple Cool Links, and the Results of The Alzheimer's Blogging Competition, and... Okay, That's It." Yeah.

Another part of it was that I wasn't sure how much to say about Megan Whalen Turner. I met her at the LA Festival of Books, but somewhere in the process of writing the post I looked her up online, noticed that she isn't very comfortable with having stuff about her up online (scroll down through the link), and began to wonder how much I should really say. Probably beyond the point of reason, as she seems to be talking more about bio type stuff, but... I'm not completely sure on that. And she's so explicit, with the "I'd rather that you didn't either," so I shall err on the side of quietness and cut what I was going to say. Because she's awesome, and it's well worth respecting her wishes. If you ask me in person, I'd be happy to talk about the event. Maybe someday I'll even write up a proposed post and send it to her for permission. Maybe. But not right now.

What I shall do now is give you the rest of what I did write on April 30th. I could try to finish writing and editing it just as I had originally intended it, as its own post without all this intro, but... that was taking forever. (Yes. More forever than this.) So I'll give you the incomplete version. Merry Christmas. You're welcome. (No, I'm not that arrogant. I'm quoting Raj! Clearly.)

"A lot of things to blog about today. Many of them deserve their own posts, and maybe one will get one later (though... good intentions or not, it's honestly a bit doubtful), but I might as well just post them all now. Better for each topic to have a post, shared with other topics, rather than to have no post at all, right?

Perhaps I'll go in the rather arbitrary order listed in the title. So. The writing goals set forth in "Chotto..." on Sunday were not completely met. But I did a lot more writing this week than in previous weeks, and I'm happy with that. It was a semi-decent pace. Even some of my slowing down was fruitful, a bit of time needed to stop and contemplate what might happen next, and whether or not I should really still keep it going in that direction, given one slightly unexpected development. I'm okay with a certain amount of sitting and staring out the window daydreaming, as long as I'm still doing enough writing that I am consistently daydreaming. Actual action is very helpful for keeping the story present in one's head, and not forgotten for most practical purposes...

So, I wrote that Healer scene, from Beth's perspective this time (which I apparently had started on before, but I didn't get very far, and I ended up writing it differently), and I wrote most of her journey home, I think. Including some general summary paragraphs, and one scene that I'm rather fond of at the moment. Though it may be too intense. Not sure yet. It's possible that I've put other characters of mine into situations just as or more traumatizing, but... well, Beth is the one I keep shaking my head at and saying, "Wow, I've traumatized her. Poor Beth." Yeah... That may just be because I haven't done as much writing for some of those other characters. They're more roughly sketched out, or they aren't as major characters for their books... The first person point of view makes it a bit tricky, too. I think it has to be in first person, but... aaeeh. I mean, I really like that scene I just did, despite the intensity. We'll see. Maybe... Well, I suppose I like reading that sort of thing myself. Maybe I'm not writing for people who don't like that. Sorry, this train of thought is highly influenced by the Megan Whalen Turner topic coming up, but I'm not there yet. Wait your turn, Mr. Topic, sir. Um.

I did not finish the journey completely, or start on the scenes at home. That part, not done.

In the course of writing that scene I liked and its aftermath, I accomplished something else unrelated to my goals, but a thing I find to be a kind of cool marker: I passed 50,000 words. And actually, unlike in NaNoWriMo, where you even count words you're going to delete later (by italicizing them, if you must), this is not counting those words. I sort of kept them, by using the Track Changes feature in Word, but that means the word counter doesn't count them. I'm pretty sure. In other words, I have more than won a NaNoWriMo event with this novel, finally!  Kind of sort of. I mean, it took a year and a half instead of a month... That's quite relevant. Technically, by the rules of NaNo, it's not a win. But something to be proud of?  Sure. It's way harder to keep slogging through, to write when there's no fun-month-thing hanging over your head, to just keep writing day in and day out, than it is to write in the excitement, when you know that next month you can just pick up the other pieces of your life, that IT'S ONLY A MONTH, AFTER ALL. In real life you have to find a balance, and sometimes discipline in one area translates to no discipline in another area (like writing), and man it's so much easier to curl up with someone else's good book, and I don't know what happens next anyway (okay, that can be a NaNo excuse, but the proliferation of other excuses in the non-NaNo times can make it feel stronger, more valid), and... well, so on.

It's still not up to the pace a career novelist would write at. Not by a long shot. But it's something. It's a heck of a lot better than the pace I was writing at before I ever did a NaNo.

And, let me remind myself:  50,000!!!  There. That's better. Heh. Makes it the longest of any of my works thus far... for now. That will change.

Today I went to the LA Festival of Books, and I saw Megan Whalen Turner at a panel I attended, and the signing after. It was awesome, and there's so much I could say about it, I'm not sure what to say. But I wore my "I'm blogging this." T-shirt, so I should say something. 'Course, I wore that shirt for the Patrick Rothfuss signing too, and I never did. Just posted a few pictures to facebook. Lame. I should totally write about that signing. But again, so much to say..."

Yeah, this is where I cut a couple things I was going to say. Ha! Consider yourself taunted!

"Next topic." Which... is all I had written after the Megan Whalen Turner part. I don't think I'm going to bother with the "Couple Cool Links" part of my original title. But I do want to finally write about the results of the Alzheimer's Blogging Competition, since I still haven't done that yet.

So here. Have a link to the results. I really liked and strongly recommend reading the winning post. And then... I'm listed second. Not explicitly or officially as second place, but... I'm going to think of it that way, anyway. ^_^  Because I can. (And because, if I ever mention it in a query letter, calling myself the "first runnerup listed, although not officially second place" is just... awkward.)

Yes. I could definitely use more of the short posts.