Friday, March 23, 2018

Some Good Short Things

Thought it might be time for some positive things, all short...

I've been running in the mornings again! Very short, and I have NO endurance, but even to want to get up early and run is a big deal. And oh, I love watching the sky at this time - when it's clear it's the most beautiful deep iris that slowly lightens - when it's cloudy might be even better, I love watching the clouds move across the sky, lighter streaks of blue across the dark that then catch the sun as it rises.

I've been reading some amazing short stories this winter - I'll do a list at some point with links and all - both speculative and romance. It's been hugely inspiring and has made my fingers itch - I have some ideas I want to explore that don't fit in any of the novels currently living in my head (plus right now I'm back in research mode but not writing is making me cranky).

One short grumble: After going several months of wondering why I wasn't falling asleep as well as I was used to I lined up dates and realized this had started at the same time as I started reading ebooks. Silly me, I've been careful with the kids about no screen time right before bed, and I don't get on the computer at night, but I didn't think about my tablet being a screen. So this week I've been trying out only reading print before bed and I've been sleeping better. Only problem - when the hell am I am supposed to get to those books that demand reading straight through?

Then a quick skim of the music in my head this morning:

Allen Toussaint - Brickyard Blues

Bomba Estéreo - Soy Yo


I missed Bomba Estéreo at Ruido Fest last year, but am planning to go this year - the lineup was just announced, with Panteón Rococó, Ana Tijoux, Kinky, Combo Chimbita just a few of the acts I want to see - so I am clearing my calendar for that weekend and putting together my pennies.

What's giving you life this week?
Annie

Friday, March 16, 2018

It's Been A Tough Week

I'm so glad to get to the end of this week.

Quick reminder: I did NaNo last year all by hand, and have spent the last three months transcribing those pages, researching, and editing - but I've had no new material (on that book at least). So I was excited to jump back in over my birthday mini-vacation... but no. And then not in the days after. I couldn't even get myself to try. Convinced I had nothing to offer and nothing I've written is in the direction I want to take it in anymore...

So this week I made myself start again. Just write something. Anything. For fifteen minutes at a time, that's all. I could do that, right?

Oh. my. God. So painful. It reminded me that writing truly is a muscle, one that has atrophied over the last three months, just as my running endurance has. But I made myself go on, moving pen over page. Dry, dull, though at least I ended each session knowing what was coming next... a series of sticky notes the breadcrumbs to get me started the next day. But nothing interesting or useful for a few days.

And then? Maybe a little glimmer of something interesting? Maybe only a marsh-light but still more than I had? I'll keep following it and see where I end up. But oh so daunting after having felt so sure of this in the fall.

And I need to read more of what I aspire to in my writing. Lately it's been a lot of escapist stuff (end of winter, y'all). I'm okay with that but it's not where my own writing lies.

My movement towards writing was interrupted a few days by a doozy of a migraine. Typically I get auras, maybe some pain - that's not too bad as I get older and especially not if I take something right at the start of the aura, and then a period of impaired thinking for a while after. Nothing horrible, I just can't focus well or think as easily or quickly as I'm used to. If it's a really bad one I might have some numbness around my mouth, but that hasn't happened in a while. Air pressure and hormones are the usual triggers for me, sometimes light. But seriously, my migraines are not usually a big disrupter in my life.

But Monday. Woah. Almost as soon as I woke up the aura was on me and I could tell it was going to be serious. I didn't realize it would be so trippy. Memories, memories of dreams, memories within dreams, random sense impressions all colliding together, even as I was getting myself and the kids dressed and moving towards school. As if my brain was bifurcated and all that was happening on a second level. I could focus on what needed doing immediately, but only that - no planning, thinking ahead, decision making. The kids were asking questions (and both talking at once, as usual) and I had to let them know I wasn't going to be able to explain anything to them or answer anything not relating to right in front of me, right now. Got them to school (did not drive, we took the train), and then came home to cancel phone meetings and let my boss know I would not be coming in, then spent the rest of the day on the couch reading - if I was going to be in an alternate head space I wanted it to at least be a cohesive world something one created, rather than the fragments of mine I was experiencing and didn't know if I could trust.

Things mostly cleared by mid-afternoon but I was wiped out by then and still not certain of my thinking. I went into work the next day but only lasted a couple of hours before another aura started and I headed back home, though it was nothing near as painful or strange as the day before. And the rest of the week has been trying to recover from all that, going to bed earlier, drinking more water, trying to eat well. I'm still feeling a little fragile though not horribly so.

I don't know what triggered this - it's been maybe twenty years since I've had a migraine this bad. But I'm not counting out the news that exploded in the queer romance world.

It's been awful. I suspect the majority of readers of this blog know nothing about this and I'm not going to try to explain. The rest of you either know all about it or are Russian bots, based on my stats. But it's just been... ugh. Vile behavior from an author exposed, which then led to the exposure of awful behavior from an editor and a publisher - all of whom had power in this corner of the writing world, the corner I consider home.

I have no skin in this - I'm just a little fangirl over on the sidelines who dreamed of maybe someday submitting something to that publisher because they were the first queer romance press I encountered back when I was all *starry eyed* THIS EXISTS?! Since then I'd heard enough murmurs about that publisher and encountered enough other presses to be over my hero-worship but it still feels rotten to see what's been exposed (and what's been unleashed afterwards as people find out and react all over the place). All the more so because an author I truly admire and had some exchanges with was at the center of exposing things, and my heart hurts for him and everyone else who has been hurt by Riptide and Sarah Lyons and the people going by the name Santino Hassell.

Some good is coming from this, thankfully, I've seen more lifting up of authors of color in the past week than before and there have been some amazing outpourings of generosity and effort across Romancelandia to the authors affected by all this, but... ugh. Shit shouldn't have had to happen for growth to occur.

But hey! Aren't our teenagers amazing! (Speaking of something else that shouldn't have had to happen...)

Sad and tired and wanting to put my arms around the world,
Annie


Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Birthday Roundup - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

My treat for myself this birthday was two days off - no work, no kids (well, during the day at least). I should have also put, no expectations, but more on that later.

Things I was looking forward to:

  • Going running after I drop the boys off - so then I can come home and take my own sweet time cleaning up and getting dressed.
  • Re-shelving my books!
  • Reading!

Other things I had planned: Way too long a list.

What actually happened:

My first day off was mucky to start. Rain into snow, with a nasty wind coming off the lake. So no running for me. Instead I finally used the exercise bike I'd assembled 10 days before (a Christmas present from my parents).

I've been needing this for a couple of years. When we moved I lost easy access to the gym (we also cut back on spending). The first year I continued to run in the mornings, even muscling through the winter months, but as I've focused more on my writing I've found it harder and harder to keep a consistent exercise schedule, and I've missed it. Physically for sure, and mentally as much so. So it was a big deal to ask for this (and took me months to actually give them the model info).

Before I got to that point in the day, though, I had to deal with my head.

Birthdays always trip me up emotionally. I don't know why, but they do. And usually well in advance of having them. This year, though, I had been looking forward to it, so I wasn't expecting my first response once I dropped the kids off and was heading home to be a pervasive sense of "I suck and nobody likes me."

Looking back I can see what led to this but what I knew at the time was, no way do I want to sit in this all day, and, screw trying to understand why I feel this way, I just need to take action to stop it.

So I do what I do when I feel isolated and alone. I emailed friends to set up phone dates. I confirmed movie plans. I stayed off of social media.

(I've written elsewhere about my frustration that I can't easily handle impromptu social interaction, so I'm not going into that here, but, no, I could not "just pick up the phone".)

And then I had a lovely day re-shelving my books and finally using the exercise bike and reading. Just like last year. Oh, and going to see Hamilton, which was The Dude's birthday present to me this year. (Oh. My. God. I have all the feels about this musical. Don't get me started.)

Then the next day dawned bright and sunny and I could go for my run and come home and laze about and read and eat chocolate before I even took my shower and it was lovely...

Until I thought, well, it's time to look at that list of Things I Was Going To Do With My Time Off.

Never do that. Not for a birthday vacation. Not ever, really.

My problem was that almost everything on that list was writing related, so in theory I was looking forward to it all... but in reality I have routines set up for my writing and outside of those routines I find it really hard to work on it. And having two days off is WAY outside of my routines.

Plus I just finished a massive chunk of work on it and maybe should have planned to give myself a little bit of a break...?

Long story short, I spent the rest of my day trying to force myself to be productive and failing, and that's never good for my head. And not a good way to end my time off.

Next time, I'm setting my to-dos like this:

RUN.
EAT CHOCOLATE.
READ.
Maybe putter a bit if it makes me feel good.
BUT MOSTLY READ.

Learn from my mistakes so you don't make them,
Annie