Release Day for Not Alone

Do any of you remember when I said I have a thing, and it's getting published?! Today's the day, today's the day, guys, it's RELEASE DAY!! SQUEEEEEE!!

I've said some things about it in the past, but I shall gather them together here now, for accessibility. Here you go.


From last year, "I Have a Thing!":

"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's Saving My Life Right Now

Modern Mrs. Darcy says this idea comes from Barbara Brown Taylor's memoir Leaving Church, that "most of us can easily articulate what’s killing us, but few of us pay attention to what’s giving us life."

A lot of this is in common with what I'm learning right now, or learned last year. I didn't make it into the what we learned in January linkup this month though (ah, to write faster!), so it shouldn't be too terribly redundant for you.

Okay, I didn't quite make it for this linkup either, but whatever.


1. Big goals.

I'd heard before that you shouldn't have too many goals going at once, but I'd always resisted reducing mine. Winnowing and those sorts of decisions are hard for INFPs. I remember reading from Michael Hyatt that your brain can only keep so many goals in mind at once, and I was like, "That's what writing them down is for!" But. He was right. Goals are about change, and there's only so much energy and focus and willpower to go around. Better to make the decisions on the front end.

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.

Beauty in Winter

2014 was a big year for learning things. Sad and tragic things, fun things, productive things, beautiful things, all kinds of things! As Gracie sometimes says, "Ah the wings!"

(All the things.)

I would love it if I'd already written blog posts for many of these, which I could just link to with a little summary, but 2014 has also been a hard year, and the words and stories are slow to come. They're coming, now, but I can't push them all out before this linkup. (Speaking of things learned.) So I'll write what I can and maybe add some links later, to future posts.

(Because what an epic long blog post with lots of links really really needs is even MOAR links, to other huge long blog posts. Yup.)

1. Reminders of grace are all around.

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.

Happy Work

A few little things I wrote yesterday, almost put up on Facebook and/or Twitter as three individual statuses/tweets, but then decided I would like here, together.



Working on editing, and man. It is work, but this work makes me happy. ^_^

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.

Some Musings on Different Takes on Successful Women (sort of)

So, I originally wrote this post very specifically to be a comment on a post by Laura Vanderkam on "Millennial women and ambition." But my "comment" ended up as almost 700 words long. Hmm. Well.... So I decided to put it over here. Um... go read that link first, this one would be a little odd standing on its own. Heck, I feel like it's a little odd even if you read only that one post, I wrote it in the context of many posts and a few books by Laura Vanderkam. There are things I didn't need to clarify as a "comment" that I probably should clarify here. Meh.



Speaking of different kinds of ambition... Though it might not be as inspiring to the women in Zeno's survey response group, I'm really curious how a study of successful creatives (and mothers with kids at home) would compare to your study of women earning over $100,000 a year. It would be harder to create objective measures of who to include, but perhaps those who have won specific awards, for example?

This post made me wonder about that because of recently reading a piece by Shannon Hale on her blog about how she manages to both write and mother. She's published twelve books since 2003, including a Newbery Honor, and is successful by most measures... at least for novelists. But I'm sure she doesn't come anywhere close to making $100,000 a year. She also has four children, including toddler twins.

I know you've interviewed individual successful creatives before, like LeUyen Pham, but I'm still curious how they would compare as a group.

I guess this kind of study wouldn't do as much to topple the cultural narratives, as people think of high executive positions as being far more demanding and inflexible than artistic positions are. On the other hand, I feel like I've read SO MANY men put something in their acknowledgments about "thank you to my wife and children for tolerating my disappearance while I worked on this," and given how many people are trying unsuccessfully to publish even one book, I think of those who publish critically-acclaimed book after book after book as wildly successful, on a level in some ways with those top executives. (And one I'm far more interested in emulating, personally.)

Shannon Hale's piece was interesting in the context of your posts, because she does seem to subscribe to the larger cultural narrative, for example saying both, "By the time I had 5 published books and two non-napping children, I realized this writing thing was technically a career and I didn't have to be a martyr and I could give myself permission to get help," but also going on to say, "Originally I had a sitter that came over 9 house/week [sic]. This past year, it's up to 17 hours/week. And it's not enough to do all I could/should do. But it has to be. Because I don't want to have a full-time nanny even if that was feasible. I want to be a stay-at-home mom." That made me wince just a little bit, even though she's very clear she's talking about what she herself needs, not what she thinks other mothers should do.

Another wince moment is along the lines of the assumption you mentioned, "that men don’t care about not seeing their families." She says, "And all of that is a lot a lot a lot harder as a mom. Writer dads I know who aren't the primary care giver have a different situation. They can go off when they have a deadline to a hotel for a few weeks and write, or they work from morning to night for weeks on end and their wife picks up the slack. But I'm the primary care giver, and I don't have that luxury. I don't want it." Well, maybe her description of how to both write and mother can help the writer dad who doesn't want "that luxury," either. Meh.

Anyway, she does seem to follow some of your "most successful" patterns. She "makes the minutes count," saying "And for the most part, I seem to be writing as much as my non-parent full-time-writer friends even though I have a part time schedule." She rests on the weekends. She talks a lot about all the things she can't do because she can only manage to write and to mother, but it seems like if you just changed the focus a little bit, she'd be another one of your stories of a very prolific and successful professional who spends lots of quality time with her kids. Fascinating.

Okay, sorry for this novel of a comment, but I was really interested by the combination of these posts.

Pieces

Pieces

I saw pieces of my mother
in my home the other day.
I tried to put them back together,
but they wouldn't fit --
not the same way.

I saw pieces of my mother
and I tried to talk with them.
One conversed quite nicely,
but from others --
just a blank stare.

I found pieces of my mother,
and pieces,
and pieces.
No matter where I looked for her,
the whole just wasn't there.


I said something about pieces of her in a facebook conversation about my mother's dementia, and that inspired this poem. I'm not sure it's an accurate representation of my feelings, it's just the poem that came to me. Sorry if that's a cop-out.

An alternate first stanza that might reflect the truth a little better would be something like,

"I saw pieces of my mother
in my home the other day.
I didn't try to reassemble them --
knew they wouldn't fit --
wish I'd tried, all the same."

But I don't like the sound of that as much. The rhythm isn't quite right.

The rhymes and words are so simple, it seems a little odd in light of my last post on rhythm and rhyme. Odd in light of the fact that it's the sounds of the words that drove my writing, more than the feelings. It seems sort of like something a child would write. Like I would have written, as a child. Perhaps it's okay, a good juxtaposition with the subject matter? What do you think? I think it seems to work, in fact I'm growing quite fond and proud of it, but I'm biased. I can never see my own writing very clearly, with the same eyes that read everything else. Or at the most, it seems to take years of not looking at it.

This one appeared almost wholly formed in my mind at 1:30 in the morning about a month ago. I hate to say things like that, it contributes to an idea that writing is all about inspiration, rather than time and work. It's work, for a number of reasons. Enjoyable work that I can't keep myself from doing, but I also need to sit down at my desk and commit myself to get anywhere. As Philip Pullman says when asked where he gets his ideas from, “I don’t know where they come from, but I know where they come to: they come to my desk, and if I’m not there, they go away again.”

Nonetheless, this poem did more or less "appear." It was kind of like a quick slideshow -- I'd follow one line to see where it was going, and then the next would materialize. I suppose that's a part of the work of writing -- Kristin Cashore said she thinks Neil Gaiman said that "everyone has ideas, the difference with writers is that writers notice that they're having an idea."

It takes practice to notice, too (as reading more of the link above would corroborate). It takes writing to be on the lookout for writing ideas. (At least for me.)

I noticed a phrase repeating in my head that sounded a bit to me like a line from a poem: "I saw pieces of my mother," or maybe it was simply "pieces of my mother." I went from there. I got up out of bed and wrote it down, and crossed out words here and there, replaced some of them with others. And there it was.

Of course, talking about my writing process as though I am a writer, one of the ones Neil Gaiman was talking about... it sounds kind of arrogant, if you don't like the poem, if it doesn't work. If it does work, well... then maybe it's okay.

So, feedback? Do you like it? Any similar sorrows you're struggling with? Or tell me, what do you think about the balance between work and inspiration, not just in writing, but in any creative endeavor? Or about the balance of self-criticism? Is there something personal you've been wanting to share somewhere, but you're doubting yourself?

Judging by the number of questions here, maybe I'm trying to do too much with this post, and should be more focused. Meh.

To shift back a little to the poem's subject matter:

Let us pray for all who suffer and are afflicted in body or in mind;

For the hungry and the homeless, the destitute and the oppressed
For the sick, the wounded, and the crippled
For those in loneliness, fear, and anguish
For those who face temptation, doubt, and despair
For the sorrowful and bereaved
For prisoners and captives, and those in mortal danger

That  God in his mercy will comfort and relieve them, and grant them the knowledge of his love, and stir up in us the will and patience to minister to their needs.

Gracious God, the comfort of all who sorrow, the strength of all who suffer: Let the cry of those in misery and need come to you, that they may find your mercy present with them in all their afflictions; and give us, we pray, the strength to serve them for the sake of him who suffered for us, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
 -The Book of Common Prayer, from the Liturgy for Good Friday

Rhythm and Rhyme

I get Marian Call songs stuck in my head, and it is no bad thing. The other day I was struck again by her rhythm and rhyme, and the contrast with... other lyrics.

Take, for example, Weezer's
"I swear it's true
Without you my heart is blue."

(I admit it, it's not fair, this is not a random example. I picked these lines because they particularly bug me. For some odd reason.)

And then there's Marian Call. The lines running through my head the other morning:
"She'd collect on the cash, but her victory stung
She cursed at the cat that had captured her tongue."
 
Ah. Sigh of pleasure and relief. (Fun alliteration in this sample, too. Bit of assonance even, for that matter.)

Or how about:
"So you unpacked your camera to frame the good times,
And I nabbed a used napkin to scribble some lines.
The chemistry swept us both off our toes --
You shot no one else -- I couldn't compose --"

See, Weezer? Not "off our feet," but "off our toes" -- you tweak a cliché just a tiny bit, and your line becomes about a million times better. Objectively.

Dang it, now I have Weezer stuck in my head. ("Girl!")

There's this awesome and amazing thing that is awesome and amazing.

It almost feels arrogant to post a link to this. I mean, millions of people follow the people involved. Why would anyone who doesn't follow any of them follow me?

On the other hand, that still leaves millions of people who don't follow them, and a few of those might follow me. Especially since, you know, there are some people who know me in real life. Family. Friends. Anywho.

So... Patrick Rothfuss! Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess)! John Scalzi! Wil Wheaton! This video has them all! At once! If somehow you haven't seen that this video exists and I'm the first one telling you about it, here it is, watch it! Alright, if you're not familiar with any of them, it might be a bit confusing in places, or generally less awesome. It's possible. So, um, go familiarize yourself with their blogs? Yes, that sounds logical.

Hmm. But perhaps you follow them on and off and hadn't noticed this one yet. Or you'd seen that it exists, but like me, when blogs link to videos you add it to your "Meh, I'll watch it later" queue, or maybe your "That's awesome! I'll watch it later!" queue. In which case, I'm here to urge you to really and truly watch it this time, probably sooner rather than later. I mean, really. Rothfuss, the Bloggess, Scalzi, Wheaton! ALL TEH AWESOME!

Yes, it's almost 90 minutes long. That does take a while to watch. Almost 90 minutes. Maybe more if you ever have to rewind for something you missed, or pause because your baby started crying. But look at it this way, that just means... MOAR OF TEH AWESOME!

Oh, and they talk about blogging and writing and overcoming fears of what random internet people think to do creative things. And stuff.

With no further ado, The Story Board Episode 5: "Life Online: Putting the Meme in Memoir":

Flash Fiction Contest

Writer Unboxed is having a "7 Sizzling Sundays of Summer Flash Fiction Contest." For stories of 250 words or less. Rules and prizes are at the previous link, and here's the latest writing prompt, open for submissions until early Wednesday morning (4 a.m. Pacific Time).

Thought my writing friends might be interested. You've missed two weeks, but there's still time to participate this week and for three more weeks. And hey, lots of good little stories to read, too. This is a more serious writing website than some. Not very amateurish. Donald Maass and Juliet Marillier are even among their blog's regular contributors, which is pretty awesome. (I haven't yet reviewed Writing the Breakout Novel by Maass, though I loved it, but I've reviewed five of Marillier's books -- probably easiest to find them by heading over to my Book Reviews by Author page and scrolling down to Marillier.) Anyway, all that to say, maybe that's why most of the entries seem to be of a fairly high quality. All of them are available to read in the comments. And if you want you can just read the best of the best by looking for the winners and the honorable mentions announced each following week.

I entered the opening week (same link as the rules and prizes above) and this week (yeah, latest writing prompt link). So there's that, too. The labels on this post that don't seem to relate to the content here are about those stories. I wasn't very creative -- based both stories very strongly off myself -- but hey, they don't know that! Shh, don't tell.

Melanie! Books! Writing! Celebration!

Yes. That.

Well, you know how, last week, I wanted to celebrate The Antepenultimate Blog Post hitting 1000 pageviews? Probably not, since I hadn't linked to it anywhere else yet. Well, I did. Want to celebrate, that is. You don't have to take my word for it, you can read the post.

Um. And you know how, when I added the list of popular posts to the sidebar, I talked about (next-to-last paragraph) how I'd thought of featuring an eleventh post every now and then, as well as a post from someone else's blog?

Let it be so!!!

Or something like that.

I will start a series. In each post in this series, I will feature a blog. And a few favorites from the blog. Because I may be the one person on the internet who doesn't particularly like reading "link roundup" posts, but one blog at a time? Okay, I can do that. Today it will be my sister Melanie! Parmandil. As you know, since you clicked on the link.

I think I will also experiment with headings today. Woo, shiny.

Parmandil: Stories and Writing

Faramir

A passionate, in-depth explanation of why, in The Lord of the Rings, the movie's version of Faramir is a mutilation. Yet she understands the difference between the book and film mediums, and loves the movies, too. This isn't crazy talk or nit-picking.

Books that have changed my perspective in important ways

An amazing list of books, and some of the best things about said books, beautifully highlighted. There are just a few on the list I haven't read yet, and I'm going to have to, now.

The Diary of Briar Rose (better draft)

A draft of the beginning of a novel she's working on. I love it. I really really want to see her finish and publish it. Especially the finishing, so I can read the whole thing, and not just be stuck with a very intriguing beginning. But publishing, while it would be wonderful for her in general, would ALSO be good for the story -- editors, and whatnot. Yay! Though I and others have given Melanie a few critiques on this draft, for it could be better, don't let that fool you. It's not at all bad now. I think you'll enjoy it. Especially if you like fairy tale retellings, as I do.

The Diary of Briar Rose

This draft, while written later, is not her favorite draft of it, as the above is. But you might be interested in reading this one if you're interested in the writing process and suchlike. Overall it isn't quite as good, but there are a few things about it I really liked and would like to see included in the final version. The worldbuilding mechanics are especially good in this one, they just need to be in a less exposition-ey form, eventually. Expository. That's the word.

Quettandil: Creative Writing?

And then there's an old favorite of mine from my own blog. I'm tagging the posts in this series as "featured," and any with my own writing as "hopefully underrated." Because I do hope they are.

Masks

My posts about my mother are some of the most popular here, though that might have a bit to do with facebook tags and such. They're... highly emotional. I'll "spoil" my "Masks" poem just a bit for you by saying outright: yes, it's about my mother. It might even be the first Mom post I put up here. If my tags can be trusted, it is.

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.

Chotto...

averagecats.com: Kittens, Inc.

For those of you who don't know (um, probably for most of you then, other than... Melanie, Robert, Peter... Ron?  Sharon?), the title of this post is Japanese. Literally it just means "little," but in this sort of context it translates to, "That's a little bit..." and is a very understated (Japanese, remember) way to say "no," or "That's the craziest idea I've heard in years," or other things along those lines. It's been a favorite word of mine ever since I learned it from my Pimsleur language lesson CDs, because it cracks me up. And it's so very useful...

By the guidelines I set out in my last post, I should have written three more posts before this one. That's what I'm saying "chotto..." about this time. "I was going to do all this writing, in Sometimes Blind and here, it was going to be awesome, but I'm a little bit..." Like that. Chotto.

On April 16th I would have written that I didn't meet my goal, that I hadn't written anything since that update at the end of the April 11th post. The last post. On April 17th I would have set out a new goal for the new week, one that incorporated the previous goals I hadn't met yet and maybe just a bit of the goal I'd originally had for that particular week, but toned down some. On April 23rd... well, hopefully posting my goals on April 17th would have made a difference. That's supposed to be the point of this whole exercise, right?

So today I tell you, I have not written since April 11th. Sad face. But I will now!  Yes. Cue happy face. Mmm.

What will I write?  My goal for the week... is to write a LOT. To make up for some lost time. I mean, most of the time, when I don't meet my goals, I know it's not the brightest of all possible ideas to subsequently set bigger goals, to try to meet my unmet goals and then some. But... well, I haven't met them because I haven't been writing at all. I know I can do better than that. How much better?  Not quite sure. But pretty significantly I think, if I put my mind to it. Some of the goals were already pretty modest, I might have been able to meet them with just one or two writing sessions. And I know, going from zero writing sessions to a lot is still a big task--but it's doable, I think. If I want to badly enough.

Oh, and I can always under-write. Maybe that journey home will be much more... concise than it otherwise would have been. For now. As Chris Baty put it in No Plot? No Problem!, speaking of under-writing to finish your novel during NaNoWriMo instead of after, "It can be disheartening to realize that you aren't going to be able to write every scene in your novel before the month ends, but I can tell you from experience that it is much easier to fill in connecting scenes and interludes during rewriting than it is to have to conceive and write the final five chapters of a story after the month has ended."

Better to meet my coupon-redeeming deadline at the end of June with a skimpy novel rather than a chopped-short novel, right?  I think so.

Okay, so for a more concrete goal than just writing "a LOT," this week I plan to write that dreaded Healer scene (from Beth's perspective, this time), her journey home, and at least the beginning of the scenes at home.

For tonight, I'll begin again on the Healer scene. I don't have to finish it. Just start. This will be victory enough. I may even use pen and paper, with my Kindle for reference for my notes and the rest of my draft, and type it up later. Maybe.

Oh, and one other goal for this week: To decide on how much of the next portion of The Miller's Granddaughter I'm going to share with Neo-Inklings on May 4th, and begin editing again, explicitly with that time in mind. At the last meeting I shared everything up to the first section break. But there are more frequent section breaks after that first one. And the first chapter is long. Will I be able to share the rest of it?  Not sure yet, I need to take a look. How much work will it need?  Not sure of that, either. Just taking a look for now. Bulk of fixing later. Maybe.

If these goal posts don't work and I need more incentive, I may start sharing the rough pieces of Sometimes Blind with a few of you, as I write them. With the idea that you would push me to keep going. Not sure about that yet, either, though. Rough drafts are bad enough to share as it is, I'd rather see what the whole thing looks like before sending it out there. But if it helps, it helps. We'll see.

An Experiment in Writing Accountability

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Despite the poor spelling and the Photoshopping, I like this one.

I've decided that very concrete goals may be more helpful for my personality and writing productivity than abstract goals, even very specific abstract goals. Like trying to finish certain scenes, rather than meeting certain word counts. Like now, rather than during NaNoWriMo. Well, NaNoWriMo works well, but there's built-in accountability and general excitement and so on during NaNo that word count goals at other times of the year don't have. And word counts aren't as helpful when you know you want to finish a novel (er, the rough draft of a novel) by the end of June but you're not sure how much you have left.

Um, this is relevant because Melanie gave me a coupon for Christmas, good for the free printing of my novel into nice bookish form. (Very bookish. Being, well, a book. Um.) It expires at the end of June. I'd use it for The Miller's Granddaughter, but I already have a nice copy of the Miller's rough draft (courtesy of another Christmas), and Miller's won't be in its final, beautiful form by July. And why some random middle draft?  So I decided to use the coupon on Sometimes Blind. Which gives me motivation to finish the darn thing. Erm, the lovely thing. Yeah.

So, I've decided to break down what I know of what remains of Sometimes Blind into equal portions. How equal these portions will actually end up being is anyone's guess, but as I learn more (as I write!) I'll revise the goals. Also, having no idea whether or not I've assigned way too much work to the back end of the project will motivate me to work ahead, and make sure to meet the early goals. Maybe.

I mean, I haven't met any yet, but I'm feeling quite angsty about the fact. More than usual, perhaps. That's a kind of progress. Ooh, and I'm so going to write this afternoon. There you go.

I've created goals for April, for May, and for June. Further, I've created goals for each week in April.

I did not meet last week's goal. Maybe I'll meet it today. We shall see.

I'm thinking of posting my goal (or a vague version of it, in case anyone minds spoilers for My Very Own Rough Draft) every Sunday, and whether or not I met my goal every Saturday. Granted, I could post them together on Sunday, but I like the twice-a-week idea better, for some reason.

So. Last week: To write the scene with the Healer. (One scene?  How difficult can that be?  Heh. Given that she's blind in this scene and doesn't speak the same language as half the people in the room, it has its own trickinesses. On the other hand, no one said I have to write it well.)

This week: To write her journey back home. Darn it, I wish I knew how to make that more vague. Oh, well. Now, those of you who want to read it someday, or have read some of it already, you will know: She goes back home!  At some point!  Before the end of the book!  Possibly (if I'm writing these scenes in order) after some scene with a Healer!  Um. Yes. Self-mockery aside, I really do wish I could be more vague. I should just say, "her next journey." Yes. Um. Too late. I've already said the one, and there's no possible way of changing that. None at all. Doom, doom, doom and destruction.

Update later in the day: I have now written that scene with the Healer. Mostly. Just... not from her perspective. And it's going to have to be from her perspective. I'm pretty sure. Stuff and botheration. I mean, I knew what I was doing when I started writing it from a different character's viewpoint. I just... didn't expect to write two thousand words that way. I guess. Though that counts some words that were cut and replaced. Bleh.

Don't get me wrong. It's fun to write. Really it is. It's just simultaneously frustrating. And at this point, I'd rather enjoy the writing of a different scene. Meh.

Meditations on a Parent with Dementia

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3/28/11 Update: I am retroactively making this blog post an Alzheimer's Blogging Competition Entry. To enter the competition, donate $1 or more, write your post, and email the organizers. For more details, see the Disabled Shop Blog.

For those of you who don't know, my mom was diagnosed with vascular dementia last October. I hadn't told all that many people until recently, but I bet many of you who read this are my family members, so I'm pretty sure you're aware of it.

But for those who didn't know, I'll answer the FAQ I've noticed from telling people in person: She's only 69, not as old as one might expect, for dementia. It's probably because of her heart problems, since it's apparently reduced blood flow to the small blood vessels in the brain that's causing her difficulties.

I've played with the idea off and on since the diagnosis of blogging about it. There's just so much that feels odd about the whole situation to me. I suppose it comes of having a new experience, never lived through before, which is fortunate. I'm glad it's my first time living through a parent having dementia. Sometimes I feel guilty that I can be so detached at times -- not so much caught up in the event itself, or concern for my mother, as in writing in my head about my own reactions and emotions, and even writing about writing about it!  But it's not necessarily as bad as all that -- I think writers can have a tendency to sit back from themselves and observe moments of grief, like C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, although I won't compare myself to him in any other respect. Writing is how writers make sense of the world, and we have to observe to write.

Yesterday the church I work at had a Mass for Alzheimer's patients and their families, and I was able to attend part of it. Thinking about going, that morning, is what made me start to take notes on my voice recorder as I drove to work, about actually going ahead and writing this post, and about what I wanted to say. I'm glad. Whether it's a helpful thing to read or not, it's very good to get it all out and off my chest. It was a beautiful service, too. Maybe next year I can bring Mom with me.

I must make the disclaimer, though, that this is my own personal reaction to her dementia, and it doesn't necessarily share anything in common with that of my siblings. Every person is different, and every relationship with a parent is different. I cannot speak for them. (Or for you, perhaps I should say, if you are the ones reading this.)

While I'm doing disclaimers, I should explain that Mom is still in pretty early stages. She can still recognize people, her memory isn't all that bad. It's her processing speed, her words, and her decision-making that seem to be most affected for now. She gets confused easily and has trouble telling stories. Ah, those are understatements. Everything is much more so than what would first come to mind when you hear a symptom like "confused easily." She can be left alone, but she couldn't live completely on her own. Her declines seem to come in spurts; she'll seem the same for a while, then get worse really fast, then stabilize again, and so on. I'm not around nearly as much now that I'm not working for Jeff anymore, but I know that's how it was.

Now, disclaimers and explanations aside, time for my couple observations. Maybe my first observation should be about that "meta-observation" I've already talked about, that sitting back and writing in my head. In a more sinister form, I have a tendency (in everything, not just this) to secretly want everyone to know, to understand and pity me. I want to be the hero of my own story. It's... human, I suppose. Especially growing up in such a big family, without much attention. I've come to peace with the fact that a certain amount of desire for attention isn't sinful -- we all need love, and no one can love without giving attention. It's okay to desire love, it's just important to be more focused on giving love than on receiving it. That doesn't mean one can't think about receiving it at all. I think. And attention seems to be the same way.

It's understandable too, as a writer. Framing your life as a story may not be a bad thing; so long as you realize that you aren't the hero of the story, or even a hero at all, necessarily. So I try not to take a sick pleasure in pain (not really an issue in the most painful moments), and remind myself that yes, this is a big deal; and yes, it's okay to want your friends to know.

I suppose my second observation is that pain comes and goes in waves. Sometimes I sincerely feel fine, and it doesn't seem difficult at all. It's the way things are, the way things have been, and putting it into words feels melodramatic and unreal; not an actual reflection of my life and my relationship with my mother. A side-effect of gradual change, perhaps. In fact, when my mom and dad and sister first got back from the neurologist and I heard how it went, the predominant emotion was relief; finally, we knew what was wrong, what to expect, and someone had taken her seriously. This story certainly didn't begin at the time of diagnosis, though diagnosis made the story easier to tell, easier to frame in one's mind. It was an answer to prayer.

Other times I don't feel fine at all. Very soon after that relieved, calm moment when I first found out, I decided to look into descriptions of vascular dementia online. That was a mistake. I freaked out, and no matter how often I've started writing this blog post in my head, I haven't thought much since then about what Mom's dementia could look like in the future, or how it might progress. Steadfastly ignoring the future might sound unhealthy, but I'm not sure.

You see, a diagnosis is helpful in terms of what to expect. You stop suspecting yourself of going crazy. Even though I knew before that neurologist appointment that something was wrong that my mom couldn't control, I've been much more patient in my interactions with her afterwards. It's so much easier to be patient. Simple interactions now seem overwhelmingly sad, but at least I don't get mad at her. Normally.

But on the other hand (and this is where I come back from my tangent to talking about ignoring the future), in some ways it's not helpful at all, because even now no one can tell you what to expect. My brief stint looking it up online told me that very quickly. It just varies too much, from person to person. There are averages, but no one can really tell me how much longer my mother is going to live, or what's going to happen in the meantime. Apparently the decline is faster (on average) with vascular dementia than with Alzheimer's, but that was about as definitive as anything got.

So... I could play out painful scenarios in my mind, but maybe (yeah, I'm not quite sure) I'm glad that my brain seems to be shying away from that. I can think about everything else relating to her dementia, in the present and in the past and in every aspect of my own reaction to it, but the future... I think maybe one thought, then flinch away, like the instinctive reaction to testing a broken bone. All I know is that I want to have kids while she can still recognize them.

I suppose... When I was a kid, I think the very first time I heard about Alzheimer's I thought it sounded like the worst thing that could happen to a person. It seemed incredibly sad. I wouldn't say the worst, anymore, but it still seems tragic. Maybe that's why I won't let myself imagine it going that far with my mom. And maybe that's part of what makes it seem so unreal right now -- yes, it's hard, watching her seem to... lessen... but it's not yet what I would visualize, thinking of dementia or Alzheimer's. The worst hasn't happened yet, and I can't quite make myself believe that it ever will. Though the possibility still has a weight, to nag on the edges of my brain.

One aspect of pain coming in waves is that, when I'm already sad about something else, those are often the times I start thinking about Mom more, and I become sadder. It's like it's just waiting there, in that emotion, for me to join it and think about it. Which may be a good thing. Intermittent grieving... it may be too much to handle, to feel the full weight all at once, or all the time. If gradual change is what gives me the ability to not always feel pain, all the time, at the loss of the person my mom was, and the relationship I had with her, such as it was... then I'm glad of gradual change. Even if it means living with it for longer. I think.

I haven't been very close to her, not for a long time. But she is still my mom. The exasperation I first felt, when her symptoms were first appearing and sometimes seemed exactly like how my mom had always been, only more so... well, that exasperation shifted to guilt shifted to sadness. I suppose I grieve the impossibility of ever having a deep relationship with her, now. I already knew I couldn't, to some extent, but this made it more real. At the same time, I do have a chance to change in how I respond to her. I have a chance to be patient and loving with her... in the extreme, actually. There's a book I plan on reviewing later, After You Believe by N.T. Wright, which talks about the gradual formation of virtue, and how it takes practice for something to become second nature. Well, if dealing with a confused parent isn't good practice in developing patience, I don't know what is. And... it's a good thing, to have that chance to deal kindly. Not that one can "make up" for earlier, impatient times, but it's still good, I think.

And that's all I have to say about that. For now. I'll keep you posted.

I Crack Myself Up

So, on my dinner break at work tonight I've been going through what I have of my rough draft of Sometimes Blind thus far, just making quick little edits, trying to make it ever so slightly more presentable as a rough draft for a First Reader.

Now, Word has a handy dandy little "insert comment" feature that I like to use liberally as I write and edit, to keep me from getting bogged down when I need to keep writing rather than stopping and making the changes immediately. I came to one of those comments tonight.

For a little context, this is after the main character has stepped through a portal into a different world, and I've already made clear that only a few people in this other world speak English, and each of them for very specific reasons. So the comment that amused me reads, "Um, an issue here of…. Why the heck does he speak English?!!! AAAAaaaaaahhh!!!" That character... hadn't, earlier. Since that comment will NOT be making it into later drafts, I thought I'd share my amusement with all y'all now.

40,609!

At this rate, I'll hit 50,000 in another two months. Of course, I don't know if the story will be finished at that point. For all I know, this is a 100,000-word book, in which case it'll be another year, writing at this pace. But I think I might be at least halfway through already. And I can speed up, if I need to. I think maybe.

Ah, poor Beth. I'm sorry, real Beth, because I'm definitely putting the Beth in Sometimes Blind through a lot of crap. I don't know that you'll be happy about sharing names.

Oddities

It's weird how much sitting down and writing helps with writer's block. Uncanny, I tell you. At this rate, I may find out what happens next after all.