A Textbook Answer

Daily writing prompt

What gives you direction in life?

This is probably going to be a boring answer, because it is literally a textbook answer — in fact, it’s in one of the textbooks I teach from.

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Goals give me direction in life. They give us all direction in life — that’s what they’re there for. Without goals, our life is without focus.

It could be said that our values give us direction in life, but they do so by spawning our goals. We take our values and ask, “How do I manifest this value?” and we get goals. “If trying new things is a value I have, how do I achieve it? I go to this new restaurant featuring Thai-Italian fusion.”

Goals can be general or specific. Specific goals have singular ways of fulfilling them, such as that goal to go to the Thai-Italian fusion place. General goals give way to a myriad of specific goals one can use to fulfill them. It is more flexible to have general goals because one can fulfill them in many different ways.

I like to have Big Audacious Goals. These, in my life, usually represent big accomplishments (big to me anyhow) that I hadn’t imagined being able to do. Losing 85 pounds has been my latest one; others include writing my first novel, walking 20 miles a day for three days (can’t do that now!) and teaching Disaster Psych. I may have to start that Big Audacious Goal of walking again — maybe walking to Grey’s and back again for salad bar? It’s 8 miles round trip.

What is your favorite current goal?

Do or Do Not …

Daily writing prompt

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

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“Do or do not — there is no ‘try'”. This, if you don’t recognize, is a quote from Yoda, the wizened green guy from the Star Wars movies. I live by this quote, because I believe that if one gets the option to ‘try’, they will give themselves an excuse not to achieve.

In real life, I do not always succeed. Nobody does, but I don’t look at my efforts as ‘trying’. I have done my best, with no excuses.

I don’t ‘try’ new things — I do new things. Sometimes I do them very badly, but I give them my best.

I see Yoda’s quote as an impetus not to do things half-assed.

Christmas (My Favorite Holiday)

Daily writing prompt

What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?

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My favorite holiday is Christmas, which goes from the day after Thanksgiving through January 1st. (The Episcopal Church says most of that is Advent, which Christmas lasting from Christmas Eve through January 6th, but I am using the secular definition of the season.)

Christmas lasts a whole season, with an aesthetic for everyone. My favorite is Victorian Christmas, with its velvet ribbons and candles. But there’s also Peanuts Christmas, Redneck Christmas, Mid Century Modern Christmas (think bubble lights and aluminum Christmas trees with rotating light wheels), Country Christmas, North Woods Christmas (moose) and many others. There’s an aesthetic for everyone, whether you want bright red and green, burgundy and gold, silver and blue, or muted red and green.

Christmas is full of nostalgia. I’m not a universal fan of nostalgia, knowing that a certain amount of it promotes regressive policies and repression. But the Christmas nostalgia seems harmless, as we all think about our childhoods when we weren’t so skeptical. For those of us who had bad Christmases, we can retreat into the Christmas we always wanted to have and make our own holiday. From there comes nostalgia.

Christmas lends itself well to romances. I write a Christmas romance every year at Christmas time. It’s part of my season. The one year I didn’t write one, I missed it terribly.

My Christmas is very secular, I realize, but these are the things I like about Christmas.

The Shaky Plot

I finally have the latest book laid out. Mostly. I hope. It looks a little slow and a little shaky right now, and I think it needs some thinking about. But here’s the latest on it.

The book is a comic look at influencers, especially tradwives and their idealized views of homemaking. Rod Lewis, PR worker at a health food conglomerate and his wife, Tisha, an influencer sponsored by the same company, discover Barn Swallows’ Dance, an ecocollective nestled among Illinois farmland. They think it would be an excellent space to film some guest spots. The residents think this would be good PR for the collective’s farm operations, as long as the cameras don’t capture the preternatural residents, the esoteric gifts among humans, or the flying cats.

Rod and Tisha bring in their film crews, the size of which alarm the residents. Tisha and Rod, on the other hand, are alarmed by how messy the farm chores really are. A flying cat is captured on film, dismissed as an optical illusion. The Lewises fall in love with the collective and try to move in there.

Meanwhile, the conglomerate sees the footage Rod and Tisha have filmed, and they charge Rod to approach them with a business proposition: to buy Barn Swallows’ Dance and make them a subsidiary of the conglomerate. This doesn’t go so well with the collective, being seen as a sellout. However, it is not completely without proponents, because the collective is at a financial difficulty that may put them in the red soon.

Barn Swallows’ Dance opts out of the buy-out, which makes the conglomerate turn to threats of regulatory harassment and lawsuits. Meanwhile, Rod and Trish are facing some blowback from the collective, which is trying to drive them out. The collective’s strategy: show them all the things they’ve been hiding from the duo. Make them think they’re crazy.

Tisha and Rod confront the collective to find out the truth about the strange things they have been seeing. They see why Barn Swallows’ Dance does not want to become a corporate extension and ask for membership there, and calling off the conglomerate.

I feel like there are holes in here and that this is a shaky plot. I’m hoping that writing this helps me to see the holes and to fill them.

My Most Disastrous Camping Trip

Daily writing prompt

Have you ever been camping?

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Years and years ago, I went camping at Illinois Yearly (Friends) Meeting in McNabb, IL. At Illinois Yearly Meeting House were primitive dorms and an even more primitive camping spot across the road. My friend Joan and I chose the campground, knowing we would have to walk across the road in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. We were okay with that. We put up the tent when there was just enough sunlight to light our way, and then we settled in for the night.

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I thought I had found the comfortable spot in the tent, only to realize that the air mattress settled on top of a tree root and was not quite as comfortable as I had hoped. Joan was likewise settled on top of a tree root, and there were no comfortable spots in the tent. That was okay; I still had the great outdoors to hang out in.

In the middle of the night, I woke up to rain. How cozy! I felt a bit less cozy and a bit more exposed when I heard lightning, but we were pretty protected under a tree. Had I been thinking better, I would not have felt cozier under a tree, but I was somewhat sleep deprived and not thinking clearly.

When we woke up the next morning, I realized my air mattress was floating. The whole tent had taken on about an inch or two of water. So had our sleeping bags, our spare clothes, and the rest of the contents of our tent. We had to take everything and hang it in the tree to dry. Luckily I had some clothes that had stayed dry so I had something to wear that day. Everything else was in the tree to dry.

We spent the next two nights in the dorm, having ended our grand camping experiment.

A Morning Person

Daily writing prompt

When do you feel most productive?

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I feel most productive in the mornings, starting at about 7 AM and going until 2 PM. After breakfast and coffee, because I get up at 5 AM to capture this productive time.

I get a lot done in the morning. At work, I get lectures written and assignments graded in the morning when I get here at 7:30 AM. Today I’m getting my blog written because I didn’t write it the day before. That’s how productive I am in the morning — I almost get ahead of myself.

I’m not as productive in the afternoon, but often work to keep from getting bored. By 4:30 PM, though, I’m ready for a rest. Dinner, then vegetative time. Then bed by 8. I have a boring night life, but it works for me because it keeps me productive in the morning.

Off to go work now.

Talking About Writing with My Husband

Daily writing prompt

What topics do you like to discuss?

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I talk to my husband about my writing. I see him as a co-conspirator to writing the novels I write. When I can’t come up with an idea for a new novel, I bounce ideas off of him. I don’t usually like his ideas, because he’s big on history and I don’t think in terms of history. But the conversation knocks my own ideas loose, and then I have an idea for a new novel. We came up with the latest idea, a comedy about what happens when a tradwife influencer and her corporate shill husband come across the ecocollective Barn Swallows Dance, where the unexplainable is waiting to be revealed, much to the discomfort of its residents.

He asks questions that make me consider plot. Sometimes his suggestions are silly — “You could have the Nephilim cats do a fly-by or something.” Actually, that’s a plot point I am considering in the latest novel. This novel is a comedy, and Richard is very good at silly details. On the other hand, much of the time he understands my characters enough that he anticipates what they will do. “Would Luke do this?” is a common question of his, and oh, yes, Luke would do that.

We’ve tried to co-write a book, but we don’t succeed with that. He has written in my universe, and I even used one of his main characters as a main character in a later book. But we never get past the idea stage when we write together. I think it’s because I have control issues in my own universe, which is understandable.

We’ll probably discuss the book on the way down to Weston, where we will be taking a short writing retreat. And it will be better for having been discussed.

Taking a Risk

Daily writing prompt

When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?

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The last time I took a risk was when I republished Reclaiming the Balance. I had taken it off of sales because of some editing I had done, and I was satisfied with the edit. I deliberated republishing it because it was different than other books I have published. First of all, the villains in the story included well-meaning but complacent residents of my utopia, Barn Swallows’ Dance. Second, though, was that my male protagonist was non-binary — and, in fact, was born intersex.

Writing a love story with a person who is literally androgynous is not a typical action, but Amarel was one of the characters that arrived in my mind. I wanted to tell their story, and I wanted to tell it sensitively. I had a sensitivity reader whose child was transgender read the novel. Still, I felt it was risky to publish something that went against the status quo.

When I was younger, I would not have hesitated. Strangely, I have become more risk averse as I’ve gotten older. It might be because of the medication that keeps me from being manic (with the wild abandon that causes), it might be because the Internet is full of doxxing and bullying, or it might be because I understand consequences better. On the other hand, I have the assurance that I have survived everything so far, which should be a moderating influence.

What has happened? Not much, as I don’t have much readership for my novels. It has been a non-starter. I have not been called a bleeding-heart liberal (which I am), a weirdo (which I am), or a commie pervert (which I am not). Maybe I need to take more risks, because I don’t like being this risk-averse. Hopefully, my send-up of tradwives and influencers will be a bit of a risk.

The Risk of Moving Away

Daily writing prompt

Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.

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I moved out to Missouri because of a guy, and I ended up breaking up with him after three years. I don’t regret this a bit.

Moving here, at first, was difficult because the town I ended up in was rural, very rural. It did not have the upstate New York ambience with its cafes, restaurants, and quirky people. It did not have the beauty of the hills of Oneonta. But I was here because of a relationship I thought had promise.

It didn’t. After three years of stagnation, I broke up with the man, and I was stranded in middle of nowhere Missouri. I made the most of it, got tenure, and was well-established in the town by then. After my childhood in a small, violent town, I could live just about anywhere, and so I stayed in Missouri. I bought a tiny house and established myself.

Maryville was not a great place to find a husband. Most professors are already married, or else there is a reason why they are not. Then I met my now-husband over Match.com. That’s the beauty of a small town — the Internet still reaches there. It was a long-distance relationship for a while, but only 2 1/2 hours away. We dated long-distance for a while until he finally moved down here. And then we got married in our small town.

Meanwhile, we’ve had several cafes over the years, and this has helped make Maryville hospitable. Cafe culture livens up a town and feels like community. We also occasionally go to the big city — Kansas City or Omaha or Des Moines — for a weekend writing and eating good ethnic food.

If I hadn’t moved here, I would never have met my husband, because Des Moines is far from Oneonta, NY. I probably wouldn’t have met anyone to be with, because Oneonta had the same problems as Maryville for dating. I probably couldn’t have afforded a house (much less the bigger house Richard and I moved into). I don’t regret a thing.

This Semester Has Gone So Fast

After this week, I only have one week of classes and one week of finals left, and then it’s summer break. This semester has gone so fast!

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I think spring semester always goes fast. Maybe it’s the sunny weather promising that summer isn’t far away. Maybe it’s the activities that wrap up the school year, like my annual review, which went well. Maybe it’s just that time flies when you’re older.

Summer is a different feel for sure. I don’t teach any regular classes, just the internship, which is something I can schedule around other things if I have to. I travel around a bit to visit interns, but those trips get me into towns that have good ethnic food, so I can’t complain.

I get a lot of free time. A lot. So I can get rested up, write, come up with new ideas.

I’m looking forward to the summer.