We'll drink a cup of kindness yet ...

I don't make resolutions, because they're more wish than goal without the supports that will make it happen. However, it is my custom over New Year's Eve/New Year's Day to do all the important things I want to incorporate in my life. In other words, I prefer my superstitious tradition to the superstitious tradition of making resolutions. Go figure.

Therefore, in the next two days, I need to:

1. Write. Yes, I haven't given that up yet. I am writing this (because I want to maintain the blog) and I will hit my head against the dev edit of Voyageurs which somehow needs 24,000 words without extraneous information. Or maybe I should write the first page of a future novel. 
2. Eat well. I've actually been doing that for the most part for almost three years. I've lost 65 lbs from my heaviest. I'd like to lose 20 more pounds, but my body doesn't seem to want to, I don't want to fall back into old habits.
3. Walk. This is something I need to incorporate in my life. I need to find more supports to walking because it's not something I love to do.
4. Work. By this I mean start to organize my new semester. I will probably set up my new semester calendar today or tomorrow.
5. Self-care. Good smelling bath and a facial mask for fun. Rose perfume (which I got cheaply -- it's a sample size).
6. Reach out to others. This has been very difficult for me lately. My fears of rejection have multiplied with all the writing rejections I've gotten.
7. Laugh. Oh, hell, I don't need to try to do that. I laugh all the time.

Love and best wishes for your New Year (if you celebrate this version of New Year)!

Thoughts and Prayers

I know that most of you in the United States are people I already know. My overseas readers, for the most part, seem to be regulars, but I don't know you (or don't think I know you). I am addressing all of you.

I need your thoughts and prayers.

Not in the sense of "I need to say something of comfort so I can go back to what I was doing," as is too often the case when handling preventable tragedies in the US.

But I believe in thoughts and prayers if they occur in the sense of "I hope the best for this person." I believe this has an effect -- not necessarily to bring out a desired outcome, but to provide hope, clarity, courage, patience in the person who needs these things.

I need these things, because I'm struggling with writing. You might have noticed that I haven't been able to write daily, and that's because I don't know if I'm going to continue writing. I have no idea if I'm ever going to be published, and I'm not sure it's worth the time and money it takes to improve and make a story reading-ready.

But I don't know if I'm not going to continue writing, either.

So, if you have a spare moment and the intent to help, send thoughts and prayers my way. You don't even have to tell me you did. But I need to find clarity to move forward in whatever direction opens to me. .

Christmas Eve -- a little on the prosaic side

I write this from Ottawa, Illinois, where I am visiting my father and sister and her family for Christmas.

Things I'm thinking about:

1) I wish I could drop Northwest Missouri State (my place of employment) onto Ottawa. This would unite a college town without a college (Ottawa) with a college without a college town (Maryville). I miss the river and the beautiful state parks and the invigorated atmosphere of a town that attracts people from Chicago and the suburbs,.

2) I still have to adjust to being 55. The hardest part is that it's now unseemly for me to get crushes on younger men (maybe it was before, but I didn't notice). I've gone from being flattering to being an embarassment. This is a major adjustment for me.

3) I can be with my family without talking much. This is a relief.

4) I'm editing Voyageurs, and the big problem is that I have to "fill in" with 34,000 words. I have NO IDEA how to do this. Think good thoughts.


Merry Christmas to all my readers -- please keep in touch!

Sorry!

I haven't written in a couple days, for which I'm sorry. I like interacting with all of you.

Update:

• My final grades get turned in at 10 AM today. I have NO incomplete grades for perhaps ever. 
• I've gotten a few more rejections on Prodigies. I have to find a different strategy or give up.
• I have a lot of editing to do with Voyageurs. The "let's rearrange the chapters" kind of edit. The "I don't like your characters" kind of edit. I'm dragging my feet on the edit because I'm still braindead from the end of the semester. But I push myself an hour at a time. 

I don't know how to talk about the rejections without whining. If effort were enough, I would be published, because Prodigies went through two dev editors and should be pretty polished by now. I am getting rejected because the book "just doesn't grab them." I don't know what to do about that. Maybe that's one more thing to learn. 

Talk later -- back to editing. 

Fantasies about writing

I'm still getting rejections, despite the improvements I've made to Prodigies. I'm also getting compliments despite that -- I've been complimented for the quality of my writing, the scope of my story, and my character development. I don't think the agents are saying this just to be nice. It's just that the story doesn't grab them. Or something.

I still entertain the belief that I can get an agent, and then get published. I sometimes entertain Walter Mitty-esque fantasies that I can make the New York Times bestseller list, and then I get another rejection and realize that I should settle for getting published by a smaller traditional publisher (AKA one that doesn't expect me to do all the marketing, because I'm a writer, not a marketer.

My fantasies are out there, but at least they push me to work my hardest on my craft. Even if no agents want to take it on.

I don't seem to be quitting.

I'm done with finals! A few last-minute items will trickle in and I will have to grade those as they come in, but ... I'm done.

This means editing time. I have the developmental edits on Voyageur and the pre-developmental edit on Reclaiming the Balance. I'm not writing anything new until I get most of my written works through developmental edit.

Unless, of course, I get INSPIRED.

It could happen. There's a book (unabashed fantasy-romance again) I want to write about a librarian with the heart of a lion and a fae trying to escape the Queen of Faerie. Somewhat like the old Tam Lin ballad except with more (a lot more) escapades. Definite Heroine's Journey here. I don't know if she ends up keeping the guy, though.

We'll see. After all, this is my break ...

Pronouns

I dusted off a manuscript that I had written a couple years ago which is in line for developmental edit. The name of the novel is Reclaiming the Balance, and one of the main characters is Amarel, who is balanced on the point between young and old, wise and foolish, human and Archetype -- and male and female.

In other words, Amarel was born genderqueer, complete with ambiguous genitalia.

When looking through the story, I realized that I had used the word "him" to refer to Amarel, which was first and foremost offensive, because the pronoun boxed him into a binary Amarel didn't belong to. I misgendered Amarel.

So I introduced gender-neutral pronouns for Amarel -- ze for he/she, hir for him/her and his/hers, hirself for himself/herself. I wrote a lot of substitutions, given that Amarel is one of the main characters.

The revised novel is a bit harder to read, because I am not used to gender-neutral pronouns. This might be a good thing or a bad thing for the reader -- good in that the reader feels the discomfort of the people around Amarel; bad in that this might make it more difficult to read.

The gender-neutral pronouns also tend to add a feeling of isolation to Amarel' s situation, which is accurate. Amarel is the only person referred to as hir and ze. We still treat the gender queer as "other", as people who purposefully isolate themselves from society through their rejection of the binary gender construction of society.

If the story had been written in first person, Amarel may have seen everyone as ze/hir/hirself, which would make a pretty inescapable point to the reader. Alas, Reclaiming the Balance is a third-person novel, so it will only convey so much of the point.

Finals Week

I haven't been doing any editing lately (apologies to my dev editor) because I'm in the middle of finals week. For those of you who have never been college students, this week is a twice-a-year ritual in which professors torture students by making them demonstrate that they actually know the course material. For those of you who have been college students, this week is a twice-a-year ritual in which professors torture students by -- you get the drift.

From a professor's point of view, it's a strange week where office hours are empty and professors prowl around the halls to tell stories of the worst requests they've gotten from students. Best one yet: the student who demanded an A because his "answers were right". (Spoiler: No, they weren't.) It's a hurry up and wait time, where one waits to give exams and then frantically grades them so that semester grades can be turned in by the following Monday.

It's a time when the outside world is calling -- in December, the delights of Christmas; in May the beautiful weather. But to the professor or instructor, they are at best fleeting until the grades go in.

*****

I am giving my first final today -- actually, they are turning it in because it's an essay final. I will spend the next couple days grading it. I am wearing my ugly Christmas sweater (the reinkitty one -- think of Santa's sleigh with cats) because I need a little Christmas during finals' week.

I anticipate having grades done by Thursday to turn in, and then I'm done for the semester. I'll restart editing Voyageurs then, in the hopes that it will be a worthy submission. I will wait for query responses on Prodigies, hoping for a Christmas present.

May your days be merry and bright.

Update -- not knowing

Sorry I have not written lately -- I'm still feeling discouraged, still struggling. I've sent the rest of my queries out for Prodigies, and I know there's always a chance one of the agents sends me a request for a whole manuscript. If I don't get a nibble, I'm not sure what to do next with Prodigies.

I mean this literally. I don't know what to do.

My friend Lynn tells me that it's okay not to know. I do very poorly with not knowing. It might have to do with my disordered childhood, but there it is: I don't like not knowing. I don't like not having a plan B, and right now I don't.

Except I do. I have Voyageurs in dev edit, and I can ship it out next. I will send Apocalypse to the developmental editor next, and there are other novels to be dev edited.

I don't know when to quit, perhaps. I don't know how to quit.

Maybe if I found something else that fulfills me as much as writing does, I would quit it. But I haven't.

PS: I may be having mood swings right now because of the high stress of finals. Please be patient.

Struggling

I got three rejections yesterday.


I don't know how much more of this I can take, though. It's very disturbing to write something, work through  multiple edits and editors only to find that it doesn't connect with the agents.

I still have about 19 queries out, and I could (and probably will) write a few more. But since this is the last substantive edit I can make on the document, this will be the last time I can send it out. And Prodigies is what I consider my best marketability wise.

I go through waves of pessimism ("I'm never going to get published, why try?") and optimism ("I still have queries out") When I think of what I will do once I get this book and Voyageurs queried (It's still in edit)  if no queries pan out, when I think of how much time and effort and money I've put into what I hoped would be a second career at retirement (I've got a while, but ...) it's heartbreaking.

That's how I feel right now -- heartbroken.

But then I get waves of optimism, and I don't know whether to trust them. Should I pay attention to optimism, or is it just stringing out the inevitable moment where I find I can't go any farther? I don't know.

I will keep trying for a while. I will probably quit if I query the new improved Voyageurs and it doesn't succeed. I'll send the rest of my queries for Prodigies. Then I'll reassess.

I don't know if the problem is my pessimism or my optimism.

A hilariously bad day

Yesterday was a hilariously bad day for a writer.

First, I received not one but three rejections. I don't know whether to laugh or cry about that, since I've done everything I could with that manuscript and query letter. It might just be that agents think my stories just won't sell. I don't know what to do, but I have to start thinking of the next step.

Then my blog got five hits from Poland, and I thought that my favorite Pole decided to read my blog for once (I am not his favorite American, alas) only to find out the referring address was a porn site.

So, yesterday's theme: If I wanted recognition, it was not forthcoming.

I'm not going to apologize for wanting recognition anymore.  But the desire makes for difficult days when I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Room for improvement

I've got my development edit back from my developmental editor, Chelsea Harper (who deserves a shoutout) and there's plenty of work that needs to be done. I think it's a good thing that she caught all these places, because I as an author can't see all of them.

I should explain what a developmental editor is -- a developmental editor examines the story for plot development, character development, and writing structure -- in other words, she looks at the story with an eye for making it stronger and more readable. This can be the difference between a rejection and an acceptance, because agents have so many manuscripts to choose from that they're going to skim your work initially to see if it "grabs" you. A mild introduction, an ambiguous character, an information dump (telling rather than showing), will all turn off an agent. Even if the story idea is brilliant and daring, they won't see it through the distractions.

I think that's an important thing to emphasize -- I as an author can't see all the places my work needs improvement. I'm too familiar with the characters to see where I've shortchanged them. I'm too in love with the story to see where I've made it hard for readers to be in love with it.

I used to think I didn't need an editor, because I was an articulate person and I could catch grammatical and other errors. I was arrogant, and I was wrong. I now see developmental edits as part of the process if I want to get published.

If you're a writer who wants to get published, I suggest finding the money for a developmental editor. If you can't afford that, find someone who reads a lot to go through it -- it's probably not as good as a good professional, but it's something.

Your work deserves critique.

An embarrassment of riches

I don't know what to write next.

This, as you may guess, is unusual for me. I have eight novels (with two needing serious work to redo), and these were written in a five-year period. (And should have been edited more ruthlessly much sooner, but I didn't know better).

I want to hold off a bit on editing the two that need serious work (why? Because I feel like I haven't done anything but edit lately.)


I have a couple ideas of what to write:

• Gods' Seeds. This would be another book in the Archetype universe, taking place after Reclaiming the Balance (which needs much work) and before Whose Hearts are Mountains. and which features a brewing war among Archetypes 
• A sequel to Voyageurs, which would require a lot of history research, which I detest
• A sequel to Prodigies, a New Adult novel, with no idea who I'd be following.
• Something new and I have no idea. 

None of them are grabbing me yet. Probably because I feel guilty for having books out there that need editing. 

I suppose this is an embarrassment of riches and I shouldn't complain.

Time for me to see what ideas grab me ...

I've just sent about 20 queries of Prodigies (with the improved query letter and in in its publishing edited/developmental edited/diversity edits) to young adult/new adult agents, and I have the jitters.

The optimistic part of me thinks I've done hard work improving.

The pessimistic part of me is afraid it's not going to be enough.

The pessimistic part of me is afraid there's something fundamentally wrong with my stories and will keep thinking so unless I get picked up by an agent. Then the pessimistic part of me will be afraid there's something fundamentally wrong with my stories until I have a publisher. Then ...

The pessimistic part of me is a pain in the ass.

********
What is the path now?

• Send Prodigies queries to Young Adult/New Adult agents (done)
• Wait for a couple months. 
• Some of the agents will send generic rejection letters
• Some notify acceptances/rejections via QueryTracker (highly recommended for agent searches: www,querytracker.com)
• Some don't send anything, so if I haven't heard from them in 90 days, then they've rejected it
• If I receive a request for more of the manuscript, weep tears of joy and send it. This still doesn't mean I've been accepted.
• Wait a bit longer and resend the new improved Prodigies to the fantasy agents who got version 2.0.
• Wait for a couple of months ...

Of course, I have a new improved cover letter for Voyageurs and it's finally going through a developmental edit. Which means I will go through the process again for Voyageurs (see above).

Readers: I need your love, good wishes and prayers. I don't ask for things like this a lot, so here I am. If you can make them non-anonymous, all the better!!

Meanwhile, 

In praise of competency

I've always had a good imagination. This gave my parents and school psychologist a turn when I told them "the monsters are my friends!" (I was ahead of my time. Nowadays monsters are all the rage among little kids).

When I write, I get to make my imagination real, after a fashion. Not flesh-and-blood real, but living an existence in my pages. My monsters are now preternatural beings and people with special powers, but others can now see them.

I've always had a great vocabulary as well. In fifth grade, I used the word "flabbergasted" to describe my reaction to a classmate. When my sister protested my use of fancy words, my mother pointed out the value of the right word: "I was surprised when my classmate gave me a present. I was flabbergasted when he dropped his drawers in front of me." Obviously, I got my love of vocabulary from my mother.

What I didn't have, as a beginning writer, was competence. Things I thought were stylistic quirks were taking people out of the story, and I didn't recognize that. I could have found out if I'd sent my manuscripts to a developmental editor, but I didn't know I needed to. I thought a utilitarian query letter would work. I didn't utilize beta-readers, because I didn't think I needed those either.

I had ideas, I had imagination. I had the drive to be published. What I didn't have is competence in the skills needed to make the story understandable and engaging.

I'm working on those with the help of developmental editors and beta readers and diversity editors and publishing coaches. I'm learning from them and incorporating it into my work. This gives me competence -- enough, I hope, that I will get published.

My cultural sensitivity lesson

Because Prodigies' main character is multiracial and I am from dominant white culture, I decided to get a diversity edit done. I asked the director of our diversity, equity, and inclusion office on campus to give me a read.

Justin Mallett is doing an excellent job with the diversity edit on Prodigies . So far (and he's not done yet), he's pointed out a lot of mistakes. A lot. As a progressive/social democrat who believes myself to be "woke", I expected to find a couple mistakes, easily fixable. 

I have some choices of how to react:

1. Decide Mr. Mallett is being overly sensitive
2. Deny, repeating to myself, "I can't be a bigot. I have Native American ancestry!"
3. Berate myself for not being more culturally sensitive
4. Accept the gift of awareness I've been given and make the corrections

I'm going to choose #4. We're allowed to make mistakes when interacting with other cultures, just as we accidentally offend people we know. But if we learn that an action offends someone and dismiss their concerns, we are saying that they do not matter. If we decide they have a problem because they don't see things our way, we have become a bigot. If we believe the entire group they represent has an oversensitivity problem, we show prejudice. 

Bigotry and prejudice don't require hanging nooses or segregation. All they require is to see others, their culture, and their needs as inferior, and that starts with the unwillingness to listen. It starts with words.

I will be glad to correct the less culturally sensitive parts of my work.

Winter's Nap

I would just as soon sleep all winter.

I would have made a fine early agrarian -- farm manically all summer, hibernate all winter. In a cave wouldn't be bad as long as it was warm and comfortable -- ok, fine, I'd have a hay mattress on the floor, infested by fleas and lice. I guess I'll stop my romanticizing here.

It's hard for me to get out of bed in the winter. My husband's laughing at this because I'm always up and out of bed before he is, at 5:00 AM every morning. Honestly, though, it's HARD to get out of bed. I keep hoping to be snowed out of work even though they shoveled all the snow from Sunday's blizzard.

The world is no longer that simple as to follow the rhythms of the year. Academia, my home, follows a rhythm, which is why I love it. But winter is still worktime, and I fight the need to be cozy every day to go to work.

Christmas break will be here in two and a half weeks; I think I'll make it till then.

I'm back

Sorry I went missing for so long -- I was doing some heavy reading through Apocalypse and editing it -- it probably needs another edit. I was very focused.

Also, we had a blizzard here Sunday, and that plus the snow day that followed got me off my writing.

I have to go back to work today (I think) but it was nice to have Thanksgiving break as a writing retreat!

What now?

Note: This was written Friday late afternoon.

I'm done. What now?

I finished the second read-through of Whose Hearts are Mountains this afternoon and even wrote a query letter, even though it's still in need of a developmental edit. I've spent time in the hot tub and am waiting for a dinner that I suspect will be wonderful.

But part of me is like, "What do I do now?"

I get really focused when I'm writing and editing. And during a writing retreat, I'm more focused than usual because I'm in a calming place where there's just enough background noise to keep me from being distracted by silence. Lied Lodge, with its vaulting stone and wood greatroom, fits the function of retreat superbly.

But what now? Dinner, followed by part 2 of a slow-motion Harry Potter marathon, then home tomorrow before the snow hits. We're supposed to get lots of snow, which means we'll get barely three inches and I'll be going back to work on Monday.

Also, I know the answer to "what now?":

1. Get Prodigies back from the diversity edit, fix things, and query it to young adult agents with the shiny new query letter
2. Send Whose Hearts are Mountains to my dev editor
3. Look over Apocalypse a couple times before sending it to a dev edit
4. Sit on Voyageurs for a while before sending it on a dev edit
5. Try to figure out what's wrong with The Kringle Conspiracy
6. Write another book. There's at least two I could write right now.

That's enough work for three years, I think. 

Escape from Black Friday

Normally on the day after Thanksgiving, Richard and I go to a mall for Black Friday. Not to shop, but to watch people. People are generally not at their best when grabbing bargain deals, but there is still enough quirk to make people-watching fun.

Not this year. Lied Lodge (Arbor Day Lodge) is such a soothing combination of wood and stone and fireplace and comfy rocking chairs and plenty of coffee that I'm settled in here for another day of writing retreat. I might get through the second edit on Whose Hearts are Mountains to send it to dev edit (I'm pretty sure I'm sending it to dev edit first.)

We're cutting the visit a day short because Sunday is bringing a snowstorm to the area that might bring as much as 8 inches of snow. I'm hoping for a snow day Monday.

Peace to my readers.

Thanksgiving writing retreat -- and a dilemma

I am well on my way through day 2 of my second edit of Whose Hearts are Mountains (while waiting for Thanksgiving buffet at 11) and I'm left with a dilemma.

Do I send Voyageurs to my developmental editor first, or do I send Whose Hearts are Mountains?

The arguments in favor of Voyageurs:

• It's older than Whose Hearts are Mountains
• It's a romance novel, and I think it could get published as such
• It really deserves a dev edit

The arguments in favor of Whose Hearts are Mountains:

• It's fresher and might be a better novel because of what I've learned
• It's not romance (I think it's contemporary fantasy) and I don't become pigeon-holed as a romance writer
• It also deserves a dev edit
• It's part of an established series (which hasn't been published yet)

(*anguished scream*) I hate to decide!

For all of you who celebrate US Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving! For those of you who do not, my best wishes and support to you.

Writing retreat time

I'm off to Nebraska City (a two-hour car ride from here) to Lied Lodge for a couple days of writing retreat. It will be challenging -- I'm reviewing the beginning of Whose Hearts are Mountains, struck by how I could do the whole reveal of the US's collapse better. And while I'm at it, how I could improve the flashbacks at the beginning, and ...

Yes, it's a really rough draft. But there's something there worth salvaging.

For all my US friends, Happy Thanksgiving! For my readers overseas, find something to celebrate!

Miles to Go

Whose Hearts are Mountains is a mess.

As well it should be. After all, it's a first draft. In the rush to get ideas on the page, things are going to be garbled. For example, I gave one object two different names, and two different characters shared the same name. There were a hundred subtle or less subtle things I corrected on the first pass.

And I'm not done yet. I now have to do a leisurely pass through for things like language (currently not the most poetic) and character (some of my secondary characters need development) and descriptions (too much telling, not enough showing) and that's going to take a while.

Luckily I'm taking a writing retreat over Thanksgiving...

First Snow

To the snow.
To those who have gone before us.
To a warm house.
To work, which warms our house.
To our friends, and to our pets.
To our family, near and far.
To laughter, may we have it in abundance.
To the snow.

-- First Snow, 11/18/18, Maryville MO

One of those sex scenes (warning: no sex. I'm a wimp.)

At that point I had heard too many horrible things: the deaths of several Travellers, Harold’s motives, Ian’s impending death. I started crying, horrible sobs. Ian gathered me into his arms as he murmured in my ear: “My dear Kat, all we can do is be and find meaning in the moment.”

I hiccuped trying to stop the tears. I wondered what he meant.

“I want to stretch this moment into timelessness. With you,” Ian breathed.

That I understood. It was a Traveller phrase, “stretching time”. There were few ways that Travellers could escape time, and sex was one of them.

“Yes,” I barely managed to speak. “I would like that very much.”

He took my hand and led me to my bedroom, and I remembered that he had been tutored under Berkeley, so he would know the layout of the house. I struggled to determine what year that would be. Then he backed me against the wall and kissed me, and math didn’t seem so urgent.

When we backed off from each other, panting, we stared at each other. “Are you going to back off again? It’s okay if you — “

“No, I want this.” And I dropped to my knees before him and began to undo his pants.

“No,” Ian said, squatting before me. “Not like that.”

“That’s the only way I know how to do it,” I sniffed. “If you don’t want to …”

Ian put his arms around me. “You’re no longer the girl who lived on the street. You have a say in this. You have a right to joy. The only thing is,” he sighed, “I have no idea how to do this.”

“You’re a virgin,” I guessed.

“I haven’t had much time to date,” he shrugged. “But it puts me at a disadvantage. What would you like me to do?”

I thought of what my Johns never did, things I’d only read about. “I want us to take our time and kiss a lot. And touch a lot. I don’t want things to be over right away.

“Let’s see what we can do about that,” Ian smiled. “I have a good imagination…”

As he laid me on the floor and slid on top of me, I had to agree.

Four Sex Scenes

I've finished the latest edit on Voyageurs, and it's ready to go into dev edit as soon as I do one more thing.

Write four sex scenes.

After all, it's a romance novel, or at least a soft SF novel with romantic elements. There are four places in the novel where they're having sex, but I don't go into detail. I suspect that romance publishers will need sex scenes.

I'm terrified.

I have nothing against sex -- in fact, you can think of me as sex-positive. But I have seen so many bad sex scenes in my writing time that I fear that sex can't be written well. There's over-the-top tentacle sex . There's overwrought adjective sex, where the men and the orgasms are bigger than life. There's contractual obligation sex scenes and there's tab A- slot B clinically detailed sex scenes.

I don't want to write any of these. I want to write something emotionally fulfilling, heavy on relation and light on mechanics. I don't know if I know how to do that.

If you hear me screaming today, know it's because I have to write four sex scenes.

Interrogating the villain -- Harold from Voyageurs

Harold strolls up to me while I'm sitting at my computer typing. I feel his presence before he speaks, and I look up.

"Harold Martin," he says, shaking my hand and sitting down across from me. "But you can call me King." His air is self-deprecating arrogance, as if the arrogance was a put-on, but I can feel the tentacles of the con reaching out for me.

"Hello, Harold," I respond firmly. "What can I do for you?"

"I have a favor to ask," he said smoothly. "No -- hear me out."

I sat there, waited for the pitch.

"You're writing this book, right? The one where people keep messing up my arm?" He gave me a knife-sharp smile. "There's no reason you couldn't let me win, right?"

"Well, except for the fact your goal is the obliteration of humanity, no." I paused, curious. "Why do you want to obliterate humanity?"

"I want to be best at something. To do something nobody else has done." His eyes glittered, and I understood at that moment that the suave exterior contained an evil insanity.

I spoke carefully, knowing that I sat across from a madman. "Why do you have to be the best?"

"My brother was always the best. My father said I wasn't manly enough, and he did anything he could to make me more manly. It worked -- I became what my father wanted. Still it wasn't enough; my brother got all the compliments. I finally found a way to deal with both my father and brother, who disappeared in 2003. Families go missing all the time." He smiled, and this time it was a genuine smile that reached his eyes.

I felt my muscles crawl, and I counted the steps to the exit.

A bout of depression

I'm sorry -- I have been gone for most of a week.

A week is not long enough for people to wonder what happened to me -- perhaps I was playing catch-up on my grading (I was), or dealing with student projects (I was), or editing my book (I was).

I was also falling into depression.

The medications are not perfect -- some need to be adjusted or even replaced after a while. Stress or tragedy can kick someone into depression, and some medical conditions such as vitamin deficiencies or low thyroid can cause or exacerbate depression.

In depression, my survival mechanism is to just keep pushing myself to go to work and get things done. It's a good survival mechanism, because it keeps me from digging myself deeper. I may do nothing but sleep when I get home, but I get my work done. It preserves my identity.

I'm on my way back up, and I will be writing again in this space. Glad to be back.

The best use of my time

I have decided to quit NaNo this year. Not because I can't finish it, but because I don't need to finish it. I have serious editing to do on everything I write because a bad habit of mine has been pointed out to me (telling rather than showing). My past dev editor didn't pick these problems up, but the current publishing editor (who missed the problems in my query materials) did. Go figure.

I need to learn to deal with these myself because I don't know if I can afford another dev edit on the same document. I need to get better, and someday I might be good enough to publish.

I'm scared I'll never be good enough to publish, but if I can't find the problems in my writing, I know I'll never be good enough to. Becoming Kringle can wait -- the best use of my time right now is re-editing.

One week down on NaNo ...

At the end of the first week of NaNo, I've written 16,000 words or an average of 2000 words a day, split halfway between Becoming Kringle and Whose Hearts are Mountains. I'll be honest -- writing lately has been challenging, with a lot of self-doubt after working with one of the publishing editors I tried. This week has been vindicating.

(A hint from case management class to editors of various types: You have to talk about the strengths as well as the failures of a client's work, not for flattery or reassurance, but to remind the client that the manuscript is worth the work being put into it.)

I've finished Whose Hearts are Mountains -- by "finished", I mean "written a very rough draft that has plot holes you could probably drive a truck through, and desperately needs an edit or two." I remember when I arrogantly thought my drafts weren't rough and so I sent them out. Writing has been a humbling exercise.

From here on out, all of my words are going to Becoming Kringle. I think this will be more of a challenge, in fact a huge challenge, because I have the barest of outlines to go by.  On the other hand, with yesterday's snow, it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Day 7 NaNo -- one week of writing

I've finished 14,000 words so far (2000 words average; I like to round things up) and I'm still going. If I have any NaNo readers out there, how are you doing? Post in comments.

I'm nearing the finish line with Whose Hearts are Mountains, which as you recall is a book I started 30 years ago while sleeping through a kidney infection. The thought that it might be done (not done-done, because it needs a fierce edit or two) floors me.

Then it will be back to Becoming Kringle for the rest of my words. I am going to try to stick to the NaNo credo: Write first edit later.

Day 6 NaNo -- still chugging

I can't wait to write again today.

This is what NaNo does to people, I hear -- somehow writing without self-censoring (which is necessary to get 1,667 words a day in) -- makes your connection to your words and your characters and your plots flow. 

By the end of this, I should have Whose Hearts are Mountains' rough draft finished, and probably 30,000 words on Becoming Kringle, which I will finish in December as the bells jingle along. 

Off to write. Sorry this is so short, but maybe I'll drop an excerpt of Whose Hearts are Mountains tomorrow.

Oh, yes -- up to 12,000 words as of this morning. 

The Beauty of NaNo

Last night, I hit the 10,000 words mark -- twenty percent of the novel is done! No, not really -- first of all, there's the fact that I'm writing between two novels. Second, 50,000 words is not the optimal length of a novel.

But it's a big, round number, and that's the idea. Not even NaNo pretends that you'll have a publishable final product at the end of November. But you'll have something to start with, or something that you keep to yourself and say, "I wrote this!"

Progress as it stands -- I can see the finish line of Whose Hearts are Mountains, knowing that I have a lot of work to do afterward. Richard has restored some of the stuff I took out in the edit of Gaia's Hands and emphasized things I need to emphasize. He has lots of work to go. It's nice to think that that novel can be salvaged.

I'm still waiting for the other publishing editor to come up with edits of the first 50 pages of Prodigies. I am beginning to wonder about her -- she couldn't find anything wrong with my query letter, whereas the other publishing editor helped me improve my query letter in ways even I could see. I would work with one of these people again -- not so the other one.

I'm beginning to feel like a writer again. That's what NaNo does for me.

Day 5 NaNo -- and a big surprise

Something strange happened on the way to my NaNo count yesterday. I started becoming interested in writing on Whose Hearts are Mountains again. I don't know how it happened, but I looked at it yesterday after getting my word count yesterday, and I started writing.

NaNo is surprisingly lenient about this -- they say you have to write 50,000 words, and they count writing exercises (word sprints) toward this. I suspect I'm legal writing on two books during this time, and if not, I'll just have to shrug and say "I'd rather ride this wave of success".

I'm discovering that Whose Hearts are Mountains is going to be shorter than I'd thought at probably 75,000 words. That's 4500 words more. It's probably long enough, and it will get a little longer when I come back and add in some descriptive stuff and other editing. But I'm writing more than 20 words a day on it. Yay NaNo!

I'm still writing on Becoming Kringle, and I will probably work more on it as we approach the
In other developments, Richard is editing my problem child (now our problem child), Gaia's Hands.
The Gaia stories overlap with Apocalypse and Reclaiming the Balance, but deal more with humans. So we're co-authoring, and wondering if we should have both our names (I vote yes) or the combined pseudonym Lauren Richards (his vote yes).

So I'm re-energized for writing, and anticipate that December is going to be an editing, rather than a writing month.

More NaNo --Day 4

I've been doing something different this year for NaNo -- I'm not trying to push myself too hard, because I'm afraid I will burn out. I'm writing 1667 words a day, which is the minimum it takes to win NaNo in 30 days. (Ok, I might write more today because it's only noon but...)

My favorite searches so far on Google: tall slim male body measurements, cool summer seasonal color palette, cool summer seasonal color palette reds, silver grey, cool winter color palette, bright winter, fops, Father Christmas.

I continue pretty much flying by the seat of my pants, and frankly, it's fun!

Day 2 Summary NaNo

Yesterday, I got to write some villains. Two twenty-somethings in Paris with an eye to the main chance, as they say in England. There are no jewels to heist (if indeed Alex is a jewel thief like he told Clarice) and pickpocketing isn’t lucrative. So why not blackmail?

Clarice knows of a philanthropy that seems, to her, like it’s got something to hide. And she and Alex need to come yup with a project quick, before Alex explodes. So why not Yes Virginia, an organization supposedly there to support Christmas charities?

Day 1 Summary NaNoWriMo: Time for Pantsing

I wrote my first 2000 words yesterday, flying my way through the first chapter. The good news is that the writing was easy. The bad news is that, if i go through my outline at this rate, I will be done in 16,000 words, which is 34,000 words short of a win.

It might be time to start pantsing.

To explain (and review for my longer-time readers), there are three modes of writing:

• Planning, which means writing with a meticulous outline; 
• Pantsing, which means flying by the seat of your pants;
• Plantsing, which is somewhere in-between.

I think I've said in these pages before that I'm a plantser, which for me means having an outline with enough leeway to fill in the blanks. But it's not working this time -- perhaps I didn't put in enough of an outline, or I wasn't as sure about the action. So I will be pantsing a bit.

What encourages me is that the more I write, the more the layers of the characters reveal themselves to me. These characters need to be complex, because the story will demand that my characters grow and develop -- and become the spirit of Christmas.

First 100 words of Becoming Kringle

Sunshine Walton wondered what kind of mess she’d gotten herself into.

She sat in a dimly lit, sparsely furnished office. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the flash of red neon against the dark outside through broken shutters. And Santa Claus sat across from her, behind a battered desk.

“My name is Jack Moore,” the avuncular man said, shaking her hand with a twinkle in his eye. “But folks call me Santa Jack.”

“Really,” Sunshine murmured, kicking herself mentally at the veiled sarcasm of her words. Not appropriate for a job interview.

Santa Jack, her prospective employer, merely raised his eyebrows and chuckled.

PS: My Halloween Costume

This is me as a Preppy. I have a secret passion for plaid woolen skirts. 

Tomorrow is NaNo

Tomorrow, I commit myself to writing 2000 words a day for the next month, I'll be honest; I'm not as motivated for this as I'd like.

I have a lot of documents to edit (now that my developmental editor lets me know what's not working). I have a novel that needs 25,000 more words.

On the other hand, there's feeling a part of something bigger than me. NaNo is huge. NaNo is worldwide. NaNo comes with its own motivation.

Oh, this is such a hard decision! I'll keep you posted.

Clarice Returns

As I attempt to settle down for coffee at the campus coffee shop, a spacious, dimly lit Starbucks with sensible tables to work at, a woman quickly walks up to me and asks, "Can I talk with you?" I notice belatedly she has a toddler with her, a towhead with a wise face.

"Hi," the woman says serenely, "I'm Clarice. You wanted me to come by?"

I took a look at Clarice again. She seemed so very calm with her hands folded on the table, her pale complexion and strawberry-blonde hair, that I had trouble envisioning her as my villain. "What do you have against Brent?" I asked her abruptly.

"I have nothing against Brent -- I kinda feel sorry about him. He's the type of guy who gets used by women. He was certainly helpful to me when I lived in Denver. Treated me and the kid to lots of meals. He took it way too hard when I left." Clarice smiled the mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa. "I really don't know why he took it so hard. Poor boy had it bad for me."

"Jack, then? What do you have against Jack?"

"Santa Jack, you mean? Just that. My uncle has been Denver's epitome of Santa Claus for a couple generations. He actually gets stopped on the streets by little kids who want to know if he's Santa, even in his street clothes in the middle of March. He wasn't my Santa Claus. He didn't save me from my horrible mother and her stream of 'daddies'."

"I'm sorry to hear about that," I murmured. "So you're trying to get back at Jack?" 

"I don't know if I'm trying to get back at Uncle Jack or at Santa. If there was really a Santa Claus, wouldn't he have rescued me from my mother?"

I felt numb. I didn't know what to tell her. 

Becoming Kringle soundtrack

Because the upcoming book, Becoming Kringle, is about Santas and Christmas, most of my mix tape (or as I call it, soundtrack) music is going to be Christmas music. To go with the other theme, which is noir-ish, I chose a lot of Brat Pack and other crooners for my music. The mix is as follows:

Blues for Guy -- Andre Hossain
Christmas Memories -- Frank Sinatra
Mistletoe and Holly -- Frank Sinatra
The Merriest -- Various
Sympatico -- Howard Shore
Santa Baby -- Eartha Kitt
Winter Wonderland -- Frank Sinatra
Bucket of Blood -- Pino Donaggio
I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm -- Dean Martin
Silencio – Angelo Badalamenti

I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – Perry Como

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas -- Frank Sinatra

I hope I don't get tired of Christmas songs by Christmas...

And no, I don't know why that song is called "Bucket of Blood". 

Meet Brent Oberhauser

I walk into one of my favorite coffeehouses, all blonde wood and warm brown walls, with an iron and wood staircase which ascends above to a quiet place above the counter. Under the stairwell are more tables, and at one of the tables sits a tall, bony young man with a shaved head and nerd glasses. I sit down; piercing blue eyes regard me from behind the glasses.

"I was expecting you," he said, cocking his head. "You're the author, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm the author. Are you on break?"

"Yeah, for a few minutes. Want a coffee?" He called out to the counter, "Bettina, Dr. Leach here needs a coffee. My treat."

A moment later, I'm settled across the table from the man. His long fingers cradle a cup of coffee.

"Your name is Brent Oberhauser, right?"

"Got it in one." He leaned back in his chair. "This is what I do when I'm not writing my dissertation. Or teaching American History."

"So," I asked, "You're going to be a professor, right?"

"I didn't have much of a choice. My parents are both professors -- political science and chemistry -- and I think they'd have died of shame if I didn't go for a PhD." He leaned forward again, setting all four feet of the chair on the floor. I heard his foot tap, and I wondered if he ever truly rested. "Me, I'm history. Not that that's helping me with my latest dilemma."

"What dilemma?" I inquired.

"I have to be Santa for the Yule Ball this year. I mean, last several years we had Kris Kringle -- I mean Kriegel. Short guy, ginger, runs a toy shop. He put the outfit on and he became Father Christmas. I'm gonna put it on and it's going to barely hit my knees and I'm going to look like a stork in a skirt or something. I'll scare the kids away ..." He rubbed his eyes under his glasses. "Why did Kris have to move away?"

"I don't know," I shrugged, knowing that as the author, it was all my fault that Kris Kriegel and his new wife Marcia had moved to Missouri.

"I'll quit whining," Brent shrugged. "It doesn't look good on me." He unfolded himself from the chair and threw his apron back on. "Stay a while. I have to get back to work."

And so I stayed.

Meet Sunshine Walton

As I peered into my computer screen, a low and modulated voice broke into my reverie. "May I sit down?"

I look up, and the cafe became solid again. A tall, slender woman with brown skin and fine black braids pulled into a sleek bun stood with her hand on the back of the chair facing me. She is dressed in a red skirt suit with sensible black heels. Her air of calm competence left me feeling a bit awkward.

"Sure," I said, nodding to the chair.

She reached down to shake my hand. "My name is Sunshine Walton. You asked to see me?"

Oh, I thought. Oh. Of course I had asked to see her. I had thought I needed to see my characters for my latest book more clearly. I hadn't guessed ... "Yes -- yes. I did ask to see you. I just didn't expect you so -- quickly."

Sunshine smiled bemusedly. "Did you want to ask me some questions?" She sat straight, almost primly, in her chair.

"Yes. What is your background?"

"I'm a military brat." She sobered. "I think we moved five times by the time I finished high school -- no, six. " She chuckled, a low pleasant sound. "I got to see the world. It was a strange childhood. It was hard to get to know anyone outside my family, because then they'd leave, or we'd leave. It was a vivid and lonely childhood."

"Any romances in your life?" I wasn't sure that was a good question to ask, but I asked it anyhow.

"Oh, I had a grand romance in high school -- that was ages ago ..." Sunshine chuckled. "I was convinced he was the love of my life, and then -- "

"Then what?" I asked impatiently.

"We moved again. Apparently it couldn't last long-distance. He never wrote. Since then, I've been too busy to have a relationship -- college, finding a job in my field ..." Sunshine gazed in the distance, then shrugged.

"What is your field?"

"Accounting. But I also have some management skills. I think I have an innate talent for management, but I thought accounting was safer."

"Safer?" I queried.

"More likely to get a job. I don't like the thought of starving." Sunshine raised her eyebrows. "That's why my dad ended up in the military, I guess."

"One more question," I stated. "How do you feel about Santa Claus?"

Sunshine laughed. "I haven't believed in Santa since I was seven. I guess he's a good thing for the children. I suppose if I have kids, I'll do the Santa thing with them, but ..." Her voice trailed off as she gazed into the distance, then she shook herself.  She checked her watch. "I have to go -- I have an appointment across town in fifteen minutes."  She stood in an efficient motion, nodded to me, and strode out the door.

I smiled. Sunshine's studied calm was about to be upended by a bit of Christmas magic.

If you're interested in hanging out on my Facebook page, especially if you want to read shorter posts and interact, you can find and like my page at: Laurenwriter

My chat with the publishing coach -- part 1

As I noted in these pages prior, I am trying out two publishing coaches (this happened by accident when I realized I'd verbally committed to two different people). I spoke with coach #1 yesterday and this is what I learned:

1) My cover letter needs to be more personal. I had no idea of this -- I'm used to writing business letters, and that's what I did. I rewrote my cover letter keeping this in mind.

2) I need more of an online presence. This blog, for example, is an online presence, but few people know about it. I have a twitter account which posts links to this blog. I'm putting up a page on Facebook and have invited friends -- but few people etc. etc. In other words, I haven't been letting the agents into my online presence. I'm fixing this.

3) I have a writing quirk that could be dropping readers out of the story -- and it shows up on the first page. The quirk is that sometimes I give background in a blunt manner rather than through narrative or other storytelling. I break the adage "show me, don't tell me". My publishing coach is going to look for this in the first 50 pages; I need to edit the rest of this.

Being a serious writer, it turns out, is hard work. In my arrogance, or perhaps my ignorance, I thought my writing was publishing-ready when I finished it. I thought all that was needed was to proofread and change up some awkward language.

At the same time I'm grateful for my coaching and editing and I'm sighing about having to go through the document again.

But hello, online presence! Thanks for sharing the day with me!

Facebook, Stories, and Getting to Know You

On Facebook, getting to know someone looks like this:

Have you ever been arrested? Y/N
Had a parent die?  Y/N
Traveled overseas? Y/N
Gotten married? Y/N
(My answers are, in order, N, Y, Y, Y).

I don't think that's getting to know someone. Getting to know someone involves listening to the stories behind the answers above. In doing so, one can detect the feelings and thoughts of the person who's telling the story.

It's hard to do this on Facebook. People don't tell their stories when they don't think the other is listening, and it's hard to look like one's listening behind a screen. Nuances are lost. Emotions are lost.

That's not to say that I don't feel connected to people on Facebook. I feel connected to the people I'm friends with in real life. They're the ones who have my stories.

Facing my fears (writing related)

My worst fear about writing is that, after developmental editors and publishing coaches, I will be left with this choice: Write what I love or get published.

I have gotten several rejections by agents. I don't know if anyone will read me if I self-publish, because I've never been good at self-promotion.

There, I said it.

This has been my fear all along, that I will hit a dead end in my writing career -- and yes, I think of it as a career, or at least the start of a career.

If that's the worst thing that can happen, what are the possibilities?

• I keep trying to find an agent, with the great possibility that revising my query materials will not attract an agent.
• I self-publish, trying to get a readership on my own, which scares me to bits, because I hate self-promotion. I am convinced there's a psychological disorder called "Midwestern Female Syndrome" in which sufferers display inward perfection while at the same time striving to look mediocre to others
• I give up writing novels, because it's really a waste of time to write novels that nobody reads.

I don't have more than three possibilities in my mind. My mentor Les says that's a bad thing, because there are always more than two options. I, however, cannot quit until I've exhausted all avenues.

On the flip side, how would I measure success?

• An agent, and eventually a publisher if going the traditional route
• At least 1000 copies sold of a self-published book, without having to resort to buying the books myself and reselling them
• In the short run, at least breaking even on the investments I put into coaching, editing, and other items.

My vision, or where I would like to be:

• Money to supplement my retirement in 10 or so years
• A devoted readership
• A book signing tour 
• The confidence to say I'm an author

I think my goals are realistic -- perhaps too modest, but realistic. 

This is where I am, world.

If you could send encouragement (non-anonymous preferred), prayers, wishes, or advice I'd greatly appreciate it. 

The glory of age

I sit in my writing chair, keenly mindful of the leaves outside which have turned, brilliant colors we don't usually associate with wisdom and aging. Exuberance, we think, is for the young and for their springtime. yet the flames of the trees in fall should remind us that those of us who have grown older have our own glory.

Breaking through the writer's block

I just finished my outline (rough) for NaNoWriMo this year, two weeks early. I think I told you I'm writing the sequel to my first Kringle book of years ago (which needs a lot of work and I don't even know where to start!), Becoming Kringle.

It's a rough outline, but I at least have an idea as to where the plot starts and how it gets to the end, which is better than I have been doing.

I unblocked my writers' block once again, and I'm not sure how I did it. I think it might have been talking to Richard (my writing buddy), who asked the right question. 

Maybe, just maybe, I'll make a writer someday.

Half awake

The feeling when you're half-asleep and you can hear things around you move and stir; you let the sounds wash over you as you lay still, hanging onto the lassitude of your muscles and the fuzziness of your mind. You could move, break the film that separates you from the awake state; instead you lay suspended between the two states as long as possible. Outside is cold and things are expected of you; under the covers holds you in the arms of your childhood for just a few more moments.

Struggling to write (Warning: rambling a bit)

Ok, folks, I'm struggling to write lately.

In the last week, I've only met my 1-hour writing goal once, for outlining my NaNo book. I wonder if I'm going to have the ideas and the fortitude to write it.

I don't think I'm depressed, just a bit listless and pretty tired. And clumsy. I'm really clumsy. I banged my nose on my car while putting my computer inside. Word for today: proprioception. As in I have none. But that doesn't have to do with my struggle to write unless I inadvertently gave myself a concussion (no evidence that I did).

I think I'm also having an identity crisis -- I am trialing two developmental editors with two different books (as I mentioned earlier, Prodigies and Voyageurs), and I'm scared that they're going to say that my queries are great, but my books are not going to sell. At least I will know if that's the case. I tend to think if things come to that, I will go back to poetry and short stories that I don't feel people have to read.

I don't feel like a writer right now. That's the problem.
I don't know how to feel like a writer. A writing retreat would be good, but there's no place locally to retreat (except a cabin at Mozingo, but they're all occupied). I have to figure out how I can boost my feeling like a writer in lieu of an acceptance.

Any help you can give me would be appreciated.

Autumn is a great time to find oneself.

Autumn is a great time to find oneself.

Autumns force one into introspection, during those chill October drizzles that remind us that we have a home to go to, whether physical or spiritual or familial. Fog obscures the familiar and forces us to face the feelings of navigating in a strange world. Thunderstorms -- the glory of October thunderstorms! -- inform us that sometimes anger clears the air.

The indolent fantasies of summer -- the beach books, the margaritas, the vacations where we swear we'll move to San Francisco to start a coffeehouse or Florida to retire -- fade in the wild emotions of autumn, where idyllic sunlight through golden leaves becomes the crystalline silence of frost or the bluster of a wind that knocks down piles of the golden leaves now fallen.

Autumn is my season. I want to be the blustering wind, the crystalline silence, the fierce storm. I want to broadcast my emotions and make others feel, flush them out of the hiding places of their summer, make them see the richness of the fiery leaves even as they spiral around us in the gust.

I want to be autumn, for it's a great time to find oneself.

Publishing coaches

Because I don't know when to quit, I've pooled some money into working with publishing coaches. I have the query materials for two different books (Voyagers and Prodigies) out to two different publishing coaches.

To give you the idea of how publishing coaches work, I have to explain what query materials are. Think of them as a promotional/sales packet for the book. This packet -- a cover letter, a professional bio of one paragraph, a two-page (usually) synopsis, and the first so many pages of the novel, provides the agent enough information to ask for the whole novel to read or reject it. (I am not convinced that it really provides the agent enough information, but I'm not an agent).

So the agents are going to start by helping me revise the query materials. I don't know if it's the query materials, to be honest. I'm a pretty good writer. On the other hand, I am really bad at self-promotion. Ok, I'll qualify this -- I have done well promoting my work in my career as a professor. When it comes to creative writing, I'm more like "oh hai, could you read my stuff and tell me I'm a writer?"

I don't know what happens afterward. If it's self-publishing, I'm missing some of the things that make for self-made success: A published author who will vouch for me, previous published books, a lot of friends who will read my book and like it ... I hope there are alternatives for me because realistically, I don't have these. Maybe I should just put my book on Amazon and let it languish, because at least I'll have closure. (That sounded bitter. I didn't mean to sound bitter, whoever's reading this.)

Of course, I don't know what the publishing agents have to tell me. I need to stay optimistic.

I'll let you know.

The Problem with Illusions -- my confessional

This is a companion piece to the blog post I wrote on disillusionment. I believe we weave illusions to try to fulfill needs that our hungry inner children need to believe in.

I suppose I could start with Santa Claus. Children need to be loved and cherished and to have their hungry tummies fed. Santa Claus reads children's lists and metes out justice and fairness to the deserving and undeserving, answering for all the childish fears of abandonment, hunger, inadequacy. And adults have created a narrative about Santa and, deep down, believe the illusion is precious enough that they lament when their children are too old to believe. If their children are too old to believe, so are they themselves.

The illusions I have clung to have a lot to do with having meaning to someone, especially a male, for symbolic reasons I will explain. I was let down by the men around me growing up. I was sexually abused by a few people, not believed, not protected. My illusion grew -- that if I were important to someone, the abuse would never have happened. I would have been protected. Someone would have believed me. If I was important to someone now, it would be a magic spell that would make the damage in my past heal into inconsequentiality.

The problem with illusions is that they don't feed the hungry parts of our souls. They carry the seeds for their own destruction by our doubts and feelings of unworthiness. They wither when held up against the light of reality.

I have a friend out there that I owe an apology to -- friend, I wanted to be important to you because in the belief that it would heal something in me.

Disillusionment

Disillusionment, in a way, is a positive thing.

Yes, it's rough to believe in a thing or a person only to find out that what you believed to be real was mere illusion. We build all sorts of fantasies in our everyday life around things, and when we're disillusioned, those fantasies fall like building blocks.

Disillusionment feels like a chill wind to our face. We can perceive that wind as bitterly cold, or we can perceive it as bracing.  Disillusionment brings clarity, the sharpness of a winter day with the greys of tree trunks and the white of the snow.

With the death of illusion comes the birth of possibility. The future hinted at by the illusion crumbles, leaving everything, every path, every direction. It can be overwhelming, because we like the predictability of our illusory future, but it's possible that there's a direction even better than the one freshly closed to us.

Seeking clearness

I want to hear your thoughts. I'm thinking about where to go with my writing.

I have come to the point where I need to think seriously about whether to continue writing and whether to continue my quest to be published, which are related but seperate things.

Thoughts:

1) One doesn't write novels "for oneself". The rough draft of a novel is about 80,000 to 100,000 words. I write about 1000 words in an hour when I'm in the groove; much fewer when I'm not. This doesn't count the number of hours editing and re-editing, which I would estimate at least another 60 hours.

2) If I could share with people for free, I might be inclined to keep writing. I have trouble getting my friends (that's you!) to beta-read or read for the heck of it. The time I tried serializing on WattPad or that other platform way back when, nobody read. People don't read much anymore, I'm told.

3) It's easy to say "If I get an agent/get published/get readers then that's a sign from God that I'm supposed to keep writing." What if I don't get these? Is it a sign that I'm not supposed to work toward getting published anymore?

4) I will be working with a publishing coach, probably to pursue the self-publishing route. But the recommendations are likely to be "find some friends to read it, and have them write reviews". This bothers me because a) it seems like gaming the system and b) #2 above.

5) Without people to share my stories with, I'm losing the thrill. I want you to know my characters. They're like family to me -- the immortal lawyer Luke and his Denisovan consort Su, the dark Grzegorz, the droll Weissrogue, edgy Kat, and others.

I need your thoughts and your help.

The Romance of the Storm

It's a grey day outside == the temperature is dropping into the high thirties, and the leaves blow off the trees to make sodden yellow piles in my backyard. Any beauty autumn normally has seems lost in the grey sky, in the mist, in the cold.

It is because of this that autumn is the most romantic time in the world. Not so much because it's tempting to go inside and cuddle with someone over jazz and hot chocolate, but because fall is tempestuous, and asks us to meet it wearing nothing but our starkest selves.

In spring, we hide behind our bright faces, wearing our delight like lambskin, meeting cute and gamboling through light conversations. In summer we discover the needs of our bodies and souls, and we don't know how to articulate them.

In fall, we are scraped raw by the freshly sharp, cold wind. We are stripped from artifice like the denuded trees outdoors.  We have nothing but ourselves to offer. We are cold and hungry, shivering and in need.

There is nothing more romantic than the meeting of self to self without the trappings of status, prejudice, and superficial rules.

Homecoming Day

These lyrics tell about the ritual that happens across the US this time of year in high schools and colleges to commemorate football and community. They also hint at the dark side of community. I wrote this years ago, but in this #MeToo climate, others might find themselves in this song:

1. Chicken wire and crepe paper
wrapped around a hayrack
towed behind a pickup
in the Homecoming parade
In a town as small as this one
maybe smaller but that was
too long ago
my distant past
my childhood a charade

Chorus  (2x):
I had a dream last night
you turned around and asked me why
I wasn't coming home again
I couldn't tell you

2. Traps set in the corners
of the hallways of the high school
memories like serpents
poised and ready there to spring
tried to do my best  to be invisible
but that was impossible
a waste of time
a waste of everything

Chorus (2x)

3. Tried to tell the people
with their eyes glued to the TV sets
to look at something else
outside the color of their hate
I was just a child then but I wasn't
but that was 'cause
I couldn't be
it wasn't fair
you can't go back and change my fate

Chorus 2x

I couldn't tell you

Dear Universe (warning: frustrated writer)

Dear Universe:

I don't know how I feel about my writing right now. When I started writing, I felt I had things to say, things about true heroes meeting the world with kindness, peacefulness, and acceptance of others. I wrote about these things, edited my stories, and eventually submitted them to agents. And I got hundreds of rejections for them.

I realized I needed help making my works better, and I submitted my work to beta readers and a developmental editor to polish the stories, Then I submitted a few of them again to agents. And got many, many more rejections.

There is a Quaker concept (yes, I'm a Quaker) called "praying for a way to open." I have been doing that for a long time, even though I wonder if I have a right for the way to open given how much more privileged  I am than too many people out there. I have not seen a way opening; in fact, every time I feel a glimmer of hope, another door closes. I pursue ideas for publication -- the Kindle Scout program, which shut down just as my book was submitted; asking a successful author to put in a word for me; submitting directly to presses that take direct submissions. None of these have succeeded for me.

It is not that I am not trying, Universe; I have tried harder than (I believe) most. I do not say this because I want to guilt you into opening a door to me. I say this merely to point out that I need some guidance so I know whether to keep trying or not. I need to know whether I really have something important to say or if this is just a matter of my own self-importance. It seems to me that kindness and peacefulness, not to mention acceptance of others is even more needed now than it was when I started writing.

So here I am, asking for a way to open -- or for a clear indication that I shouldn't seek out publication anymore.

Love, Lauren

Becoming Kringle

I need to start planning my NaNoWriMo book -- well, as much as I plan these things. This is what I know so far:

Name: Becoming Kringle

Genre: Romance/cozy suspense

Main Characters: Brent Oberhauser, History grad student/barista. Tall, pale with black-framed glasses; shaved bald because of premature balding; tall and thin.  Looks like a young Moby.
Sunshine Walker, accountant for the philanthropic organization which hides the Secret Society of Santas. Tall, medium dark skin and braids pulled back into a neat knot at the back of her neck. Dresses neatly -- professional dress on the job; slacks and shirts off duty. Seldom wears jeans.

Basic plot: There's the A plot, which is Brent and Sunshine try to uncover blackmail against the SSS which the philanthropic organization covers. There's a developing romance between Sunshine and Brent. The B plot is that Brent gets drawn into the SSS through having to take over some of Kris Kriegel's (protagonist of The Kringle Conspiracy) duties.

Outline -- I have three chapters but there's no A plot there, just the romance. Big mistake.

So I have a lot of work to do here.

Plantsing

It's less than two weeks till NaNoWriMo, and I'm working on motivating myself for another year. I don't have any new ideas for books, but I'm writing a book I tried to write for NaNo in 2016. It's light and fluffy -- it's a romantic mystery that involves Santas, and I'm going to have to find time to outline it before I start.

There are, according to NaNos, pantsers and planners. Pantsers are those who write freestyle, by the seat of their pants. Planners are those who come in with a complete outline and follow it carefully.

I'm a plantser. Plantsers have a bare sketch of topics and fill them in freeform, and later edit for sense. We have not so much an outline as a list of chapter headings and a bare idea of what those prompts mean.

It's a fun way to write for someone who trusts their imagination and trusts they can pick up all the plot holes in the edit.

***************
For all my Maryville MO readers, NaNoWriMo starts November 1st. You can sign up -- you know you want to write a novel! -- at nanowrimo.org And if you decide to write a novel, please come drop in to the Board Game Cafe Thursday nights in November (November 1st, 8th, 15th, 29th) from 6-10 PM for a writing space with other writers! 

Interrogating Daniel

I finally got an hour of writing yesterday. Not a good hour -- I really need to get a feel for my characters again, because it's been so long since I visited Whose Hearts are Mountains, given my editing forays ...

I sit in the cafe with its bright light, tables and chairs from some old diner, and shelves of board games against the wall. Inspiration fails me; I stare at the letters I typed into my story. I'm bored with the story, bored with the process of writing.

A tall, lightly muscled man with black braided hair and dark skin strolls into the cafe. He is not like anyone else in the cafe; his presence washes the atmosphere with a certain surreality. I watch him order coffee, trade banter with the owner, and amble toward me.

"I'm Daniel," he says in a resonant baritone. "You must be Lauren." He reaches his hand out to shake mine. His grip is firm, his hand dwarfs mine.

"I am," I respond, "but how did you know that?"

His speech is easy, slow like honey. "Because you're my writer. You wanted to get to know me." He leans back in his chair as if settling back to tell a story.

"Tell me a little about yourself."

He chuckles. "You sound like my mother, the anthropologist. She can always get a story out of someone that way." He pauses, large hand wrapped around the coffee cup. Black coffee, of course. "I'm an Archetype, an immortal, but unauthorized. Earthbound, we call it." He takes a long sip of coffee. "My mother is the Kiowa Archetype, my father Valor Burris, the Archetype engendered to hold the cultural DNA of the African diaspora. I was born as an experiment, I guess, to create an Archetype Earthside, as it were. We didn't know about Lilith at the time. She's been around far longer than I have."

"An experiment?" I ask. "I thought Archetypes weren't good at creating new things."

"Those of us who are Earthbound, whether unauthorized or drawn Earthside like my mother, have spent a lot of time around humans. We've picked up a lot of things from them including, I have to admit, coffee and cozy spaces." He studied the coffee mug, then raised his eyes to mine. "We are babes in the wood compared to humans, who have shorter lives but more extensive folklore, more skills handed down from generation to generation, more identity as part of a whole. Except for the Earthbound, our generations do not interact, and each of us have to earn our limited experience anew. Thus we do not create -- but we among the Earthbound are developing abilities to synthesize information, to create. This is frightening to other Archetypes, which is why we're prohibited from entering InterSpace, the Archetypes' dwelling place."

"You're not allowed in InterSpace?"

"No," Daniel sighed. "We are Prometheus. We carry fire to our people, and we are punished for it."

The nature of a muse

I look in the mirror,
and over my shoulder
at the back of the room,
I see my muse --
maddeningly far away,
too far to touch,
too close for comfort.

Crazy

I hate the word "crazy".

When we call someone "crazy", we are assigning the label to someone's entire identity,  as if a mental disorder is the entirety of who they are. Their behavior may be crazy, but they themselves are a complex human being who happens to have a disorder.

I am one of those people. I have bipolar 2, and I have to do a careful balancing act to keep episodes of depression and anger/impractical elation at bay. I'm functional, although sometimes I get stressed enough that the symptoms don't break through.

When people think about the fact that I'm bipolar, I also want them to remember my sense of humor, my drive, my intelligence, my alluring beauty (just kidding), my love of cats, my relationship with words.

If someone uses the word "crazy" around me, I fear that they forget everything but this label. If you're trying to describe someone who is not functioning well with their disorder, use the word "dysfunctional".

Using the word "crazy" is a hard habit to break, but a bad habit to keep.

Recovery

"Here, this won't hurt a bit."

This is my favorite picture from Missouri Hope's moulage headquarters. Here I'm demonstrating various techniques on one of our moulage artists who was kind enough to let me bruise and cut her up pretty badly.

I estimated from yesterday's stats -- 180 roleplayers in three shifts, 4-6 moulage artists per shift -- that boils down to 7-10 roleplayer moulages per person per hour.

I haven't totally recovered yet. I feel like I have jet lag although I haven't gone anywhere -- except to the mythical country of Atlantica, torn by tensions between north and south, crippled by an earthquake and its aftermath. A country I helped create.

Life will be back to normal, back to writing, in a day or so, when I find my feet on firm ground and arrive home again.

Another year of Missouri Hope in the books.

Role players: 185

Amateur moulage artists: 6

Scenarios: Earthquake, car bomb, refugee camp, water rescue, beatings by marauding gangs.
Injuries: impalements, burns, disembowelments, cuts, scrapes, plucked out eye, bruises, lacerations, broken bones, drowning, cholera, old injuries badly treated.

Real world emergencies at the moulage headquarters: 0

I'd say we had a successful Missouri Hope at the moulage building.

Moulage mode

I can't talk about writing today, because my brain is completely into Moulage Mode.

I walk around the house looking for random objects that look like they'd make good impalements.

I have a gallon and a half of fresh fake blood by the basement door and I wonder if it's enough.

I have gone through two and a half pounds of powdered plain gelatin and I wish I had more.

I was told to prepare for lots of impalements. I have prepared 28 impalement prosthetics thus far.

Unflavored gelatin smells like burnt hair. My house smells like burnt hair.

I am dreaming third-degree burns.

I love this.


I'll write when I get time. It's going to be an intense couple of days moulaging for the biggest exercise that Consortium for Humanitarian Service in Education holds.

Naptime

What I could use right now is a good nap.

I think it's the change in the seasons, even though it's supposed to get up to 85 degrees today. Or maybe it's because midterms are coming up, or Missouri Hope is coming up, or ...

I am falling asleep at the computer while I type.

I miss my morning naps from kindergarten, when we put rugs on the floor. I didn't nap back then, instead staring up at the bare bulb in the hallway outside the door, and imagining conversations with it. If I had known that my future would be bereft of morning naps, I would have taken advantage of the time and slept.

Napping, especially in the middle of the day, is oddly satisfying, Thoughts of what needs to be done retreat temporarily and comfort seeps into my bones. My mind wanders into dreams of sorts, and then shuts off. Then I wake up 20 minutes later with my mind less cluttered and my body rested, and it's time to enter the fray again.

I really need a nap right now.

Autumn is not for you

Autumn is not for you, my misty faun —
The primroses long dead, sunflowers gone.
I walk alone on the last fair autumn night,
With memories seldom held to light.
Before too long, you’ll fade into the rain
While autumn and its penances remain.

The Art of Gorifying

Last night, I made shrapnel. Lots of shrapnel.

Missouri Hope is this weekend, and all my creative brain cells are occupied in making prosthetic plant-ons for casualty simulation. These are used to simulate impalements, and can be glued on someone's skin with spirit gum. I learned this from Will Lanfear, who is a professional moulage artist in New York state.

I made a quart of special effects gelatin -- 2 cups each of water and unflavored gelatin, 1/4 cup each of sorbitol and glycerin. It's actually fun and soothing to make, and it can be frozen.

The loops of intestines are ready, and all they need are fake blood  (1 jug liquid starch, 1/4 cup red food coloring, 1 teaspoon blue food coloring).

Yes, moulage (casualty simulation) is gory. It's a lot of sitting around the dinner table talking about the color of day-old bruises and how laminating plastic makes good glass debris. It's googling pictures of hand deglovings (this is exactly what it sounds like) and third-degree burns, and then figuring out how to recreate those injuries. It's buying a large wheeled toolkit to bring supplies in to the site.

It's being nicknamed "The Queen of Gore" by a retired Army brigadier general.

Yes, it's creativity.

ISO publishing coach

I am shopping around for a publishing coach, because I don't seem to know how to get myself published.

I'm serious about this writing thing. Even if I have to self-publish, I want to find a way to get my words out there and not beg my friends to buy my books. I know I'm not going to make a lot of money on this (breakeven from all the coaching and stuff would be nice, though). I dream of being well-known and well-liked, but this may not happen either. But I want to be read.

Jackie Kibler, one of my colleagues and a motivational speaker, has gotten me started on this venture. She, like I, think the traditional agent-publisher route is broken by too many writers vs too few publishers. Like any situation where there's a limited number of sellers/producers (otherwise known as an oligopoly), competition in the marketplace is that of branding, not of price or innovation. The marketplace of ideas is no exception.

So I am working on something new. Send happy thoughts and encouragement.

Positive today

I find it miraculous at times that I am still writing, that I still consider myself a writer, despite all the rejections and the setbacks. Maybe this has become part of who I am, and getting published will just be, as they say, the whipped cream on top of my mug of hot chocolate.

(Note to readers: Tell me your favorite hot chocolate recipe. I will feature you in a future column.)

It's Sunday, and I'm going out to write today. I'm finally done with the major revision of Apocalypse and all I need is a pass-through to send to my dev editor. My goal is to try to finish Whose Hearts are Mountains before NaNo time, so I can have fun writing a Santa-filled romance novel (more quirky and meet-cute than Hunky Santa in a G-String, if you know what I mean.)

I have not given up.

Happy National Coffee Day!

I am sitting in my usual table at the Board Game Cafe, drinking my first mug of coffee for the day and writing.

Coffee appears to be the favored drink of writers, and I don't think it's just because of the caffeine (although I'll admit it's part of the draw). Coffee has romance -- whether this is because of the hard-boiled detective detective swilling black-as-sin cups, the dark thick cup of coffee with friends in a Turkish coffeehouse, the Parisian espresso or the cup of joe in a dingy city diner.

Coffee drinkers share an image that suits them well as writers. Coffee drinkers are facing their early mornings and lack of sleep with a bracing beverage that bolsters their courage to face the world. Armed with a computer and a cup of coffee, the writer can slay dragons.

I've finished my first cup of coffee. Time to write on my latest work, sitting in the Board Game Cafe on a cloudy, rainy early morning. The street sign reads "N. Main", and the traffic sign says "Walk", and at the moment, full of coffee, I think anything's possible.

Happy Coffee Day!

Name Me

Name me
and I will carry that name
like a standard into battle,
and hug to myself
the secret behind that name.

what I needed to believe

So I thought I was going to quit writing for a little while. Too many rejections. Too much hard work with no payoff. Too much frustration about the process.

But yesterday in class, I was teaching my students a technique of getting clients to set goals. The method uses a simple question: "Tell me what  you want your life to be like five years from now." I had the students try the question on themselves.

So, naturally, I turned the question on myself. And do you know what?

I still want to become a published author, even though I have been working on that goal for five years and it hasn't happened yet.

I also finally figured out what I'm writing for NaNo.

A romance novel featuring the Secret Society of Santas. Novel #2 in that series. (Novel 1 needs a dev edit, but it's somewhere down the line).

I'm not giving up yet.

Nothing to see here, move along

This page left deliberately blank.

Warning: Political Post

This is what I learned this week from the Republican Party about sexual assault:

It only counts if you weren't drunk.
It only counts if you weren't dressed attractively.
It only counts if you fought back.
It only counts if you reported it right away
It only counts if other men saw it and sided with you.
It only counts if the assailant was not white, powerful, and wealthy.
It only counts if it won't ruin the man's career by prosecuting it.

Otherwise, it's not sexual assault.

****************

Sexual assault is assault. It's violence. It's being used to keep women "in their place". It has to stop.

Old song today

There is music that goes with this:

Turn the corner
to a street beyond a map,
walk much further
till our feet forget the path.
We have walked here,
but only in our dreams;
then we wake up
never knowing what it means

Turn the handle,
slide back the creaking door
as I wonder
if you've been here before.
Weathered iron
is rusting in its sleep
as we sit here
in the silence that we keep

In the morning
if the snow has turned to gold
does it matter
in a story never told (2x)

Turn the corner
to a street beyond a map,
walk much further
till our feet forget the path.
We have walked here,
but only in our dreams;
then we wake up
never knowing what it means

In the morning
if the snow has turned to gold
does it matter
in a story never told (4x and fade)

I don't know what to write!

NaNoWriMo is approaching, (November 1st)  and I don't know what to write.

I've been in editing mode -- Apocalypse is a good amount of the way done edit-wise, while I just got handed back my first novel, Gaia's Hands, from the developmental editor. I have enough editing for the next couple months at least.

But NaNo is about writing, not editing.

I haven't written new for a while because of my editing needs. Although I haven't finished Whose Hearts are Mountains, there's not enough material left to make the 50,000 word total for NaNo.

I need an idea for a new novel by November 1.

I have a couple on the back burner: the sequel to Voyageurs, where our two characters time travel to stop the end of the world due to climate change, but that doesn't appeal to me. In fact, I feel like I've backed myself into a corner writing a book that obviously has a sequel. It's not just the research I would have to do, but the fact that I don't know if I have enough plot to support the 80,000 word minimum for whatever genre it is.

The other involves an Archetype war with hideous implications for humans. I am so far away from the Archetype universe right now that I don't know if I can create this.

I need inspiration -- help!

Muse, if you're out there, inspire me!