Wish Me Luck

After editing my many-times-edited first novel, I have submitted it to a digital imprint of a respectable American publishing house (for those curious, HarperLegend). I'm a little reluctant to do digital-only, but they do handle some of the marketing and sometimes bump someone up for paperback.



One of my difficulties in getting published, I think, is that I write a different sort of fantasy than people expect (at least I hope that's it and not that I can't write.)

Are there gods/goddesses/mythical creatures? Check.

Are there talents and abilities not found among the human population? Check.

Are there epic battles? Yes. But the good guys are pacifists and trying not to kill anyone. HUH????

What's the main conflict of Reclaiming the Balance? Civil rights for half-human beings with superior strength. (And falling in love with an intersexed half-human being is the B plot)

Any epic gods? Well, Lilith (remember her?) forgot her identity for many years and became a psychology professor. Oh, yeah, the Garden of Eden was staged for legend's sake.

And Lilith ran off with Adam. (OMG, that Adam?) Yes and he's an incorrigible flirt.

You get the picture. Wish me luck -- and drop me a comment! 

OMG Motivation

I've just finished with my spring semester grading and -- I'm having trouble motivating on my editing.
I start a chapter of one of the books, and so many things seem much more interesting -- Facebook. Instagram. My blog -- oh, wait. I'm in my blog, aren't I?
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Oh, sorry. I just checked Facebook again. Nothing happened. Isn't that always the case?

Why do people procrastinate? Sometimes they're afraid they're not up to the challenge. Sometimes they have very low attention spans. Sometimes they're bored -- ding ding ding!

Editing isn't sexy like writing is. In writing, I meet (and fall in love with) my characters, they talk to me, their actions and beliefs and feelings flesh out the direction of my outlined plot, I get to know them. I create a world that's more diverse (but perhaps no more tolerant) as the one I grew up in, one where a dying elderly woman can fall in love with a faun.
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I've checked Instagram twice and Facebook once. Just saying.

How to do a boring task like editing and do it well? Break it up into little pieces. Start it and promise yourself you'll quit if you haven't warmed up to it in ten minutes. PUT AWAY THE iPHONE.

Or maybe I just need a break. Where's my iPhone?

Ups and Downs of Writing

The first thing I'll do here is break a taboo -- I have a mood disorder. Specifically Bipolar 2 -- half the mania, twice the depression. No, I'm not crazy -- I have wonky biology. Just like you do.

Is there a link between bipolar and creativity? Collingwood (2017) reports that there have been many creative people known to be bipolar, but that this may be due to a third variable. She also points out that people with bipolar disorder are more productive and creative when they are managing their condition.

This has been my experience. I could not have written a novel without my medications, which is why I'm a late bloomer (I wasn't diagnosed till five years ago). Self-maintenance activities such as regular sleep, eating regularly, not overworking myself, and avoiding alcohol supports my creativity as well. In other words, all those things creatives are reported not to do.

My imagination still functions with all of this -- better, even. Thanks for reading.

I hope you find
at the end of the day
that the yammering words
chained and rechained in the switchyard
fade into a night of indigo
with the texture of a cotton eiderdown.













Collingsworth, J. (2017). The link between bipolar and creativity. Available: https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-link-between-bipolar-disorder-and-creativity/ [April 27, 2017].

Melancholy Pt: 2 -- a poem about Limerance

Limerance

There’s a push to ask you for your name,

And a pull ‘cause I have no right to know,

As I stand in the corner of the venue

With nothing in my mind except the color of your eyes.

There’s a push to sift through every word

And a pull to flee from disappointment

Still I remember and I polish all your words

And call myself the author of the author of their shine.

There’s a push from my husband and he’s laughing,

And a pull from my husband ‘cause he’s scared

And I’m standing on one foot while juggling cats

And I don’t want what I want,

And I don’t want what I want.

NOTE: No husbands were harmed in the writing of this poem. Said husband says he's merely bemused, not scared. 

NOTE2: This may not be the finished work.

Melancholy makes for good poetry.

When someone paints a portrait of a poet in their mind, they picture the poet as brooding, head resting in hand or fingers steepled, drinking coffee absentmindedly in a cafe with walls the color of storms.* The word "Byronesque" comes to mind, appropriately.

There's a very good reason -- melancholy makes for good poetry.

Why? Because poets bear the feelings of their society. Not just the positive feelings -- all the feels.  The feelings we don't want to deal with, the feelings we're afraid to deal with, the feelings we wished others understood. Poets even imbue poems about stealing plums from the refrigerator with interpretable, moody meaning.

Poets have a solid qualification to write about society's moods -- poets are moody.  They ponder in ways that bring feelings to the surface. They flirt with limerance and relive heartbreak. Their words bleed on the paper as they write with fountain pens in cafes with walls the color of storms.

But you need our melancholy, because you need to visit your own.

Portrait of the author on a blah day.

* Correction: only the male poets. The female poets always look perky, even though some of the moodiest work ever was by women like Maya Angelou and Gwendolyn Brooks.  And Emily Dickinson. And Sylvia Plath. And ...

Editing as a form of Revisiting

I have been participating in Camp NaNoWriMo this April, pledging 60 hours to editing a book (which turns out to be all five) by the end of the month. I can only edit as much as my writing knowledge and my fallibility let me, and my husband and co-pilot looks at them afterward (more slowly than I do). I MAY HAVE TO PAY SOMEONE TO EDIT.

The fun part, though, is that I get to revisit some of my favorite people -- the thoroughly modern psychologist Lilith (yes, that Lilith) and her consort, the fey Adam (yes, that Adam); Lilith's father Luke, a 6000-year-old supporter of humanity and suspected Serpent in the Garden; Adam and Lilith's daughter Angel, the iconoclastic creator of immortal cats; the practical botanist Jeanne and her younger and mystical lover Josh and their relationship with Gaia; Amarel, who was born on the point between human and Archetype, old and young, and male and female.

If you've read the previous paragraph, you will catch some of the issues that may prevent me from getting published -- subverting the Garden of Eden to find a different message; a young transgender individual (who will fall in love); an exploration of No One True Religion; an older plump woman in a relationship with a much younger man.

Other issues stay hidden: a battle plan without bloodshed; corporate plots to bury opposition; liberals that act in opposition to their morals; no vampires, werewolves, or over-the-top sex scenes.

I worry that this isn't "marketable", because it's not urban fantasy, romance, or sword and sorcery. It's not what the Sad/Rabid/Dead Puppies want to see. I write about the Peaceable Kingdom and our failures in getting there. If you know of someone who will publish this (not self-publishing yet) let me know.

In praise of being ordinary

Yesterday I showed my students a Ted Talk by Brene Brown, a psychologist. She spoke about invulnerability as a major deterrent to well-being in the US. The major factor she cited as the root of invulnerability in the US was the need to be extraordinary.

Think about it: writers not only want to be published, they want to be on the NY Times Bestsellers' list. That list has only so much room on it, and by its nature it does not mark the best books, but the best sellers. How many hurdles does an author need to jump to get on this list? An agent has to read an excerpt of the book and declarable it marketable. "Marketable" has less to do with its quality than it does how well the book will sell. Then the agent shops the book to potential publishers, who evaluate the book in terms of -- yes, marketability. Not that the agent or publisher will ignore quality, but the final criteria is marketability.

I understand this -- my book may be the result of blood and sweat and fantasy, but to the publishing industry, my book is a potential moneymaker. As there are a limited number of publishers in the fiction market, the best strategy is conservative -- that is, choosing books similar to those that have already sold.

I have had to give up my need to be extraordinary to have the courage to write at all. I would love to be published, but I also know I write on beloved topics that don't sell well in the mainstream -- a pacifist ecocollective, the tension of living with diversity, alternate religious myths, Reason as a deity in the pantheon of human deities, and more. An all-too-human utopia that has become Brigadoon because of its secrets.

I would like to be published, but I know I will struggle. I know I will get more letters that say "... but it's not what we're looking for at this time." And I will relax in my status as ordinary and write some more.

Calling all Creatives

To any reader who considers themselves creative:

1) Describe the moment that you first considered yourself creative.

2) Describe how others reacted to you at that moment.


My story -- I could give any number of anecdotes for the first question, but I will pick the moment I wrote my first poems in third grade. My third grade teacher taught us poetry forms, including diamante, sonnet, and haiku; I enjoyed building words into new structures and quickly took to the tasks.

My third grade teacher, I suspect, thought me her prodigy and posted one of my poems on her classroom door. Some classmates and many teachers stopped me in the hallway to tell me it was a nice poem. My sister, ten months older, was livid. My parents hardly acknowledged my accomplishment because they worked hard to keep my sister from low self-esteem.

(Edited for ambiguous pronouns and nouns in the last paragraph, like a good writer ;)   )