I am an associate professor of human services at a regional Midwestern university. I am also a writer of fantasy and romance, hoping to get traditionally published. I have one husband and am owned by four cats.
I do not feel optimistic for the future. There seem to be so many things to worry about — climate change, the degradation of our political system, the loss of social security … I’m not a pessimist, but these are pessimistic times.
I have been writing on a novel that has been, simply, lackluster. I don’t like the main character well, it’s writing slow, and the drama comes too late. Everyone’s sitting around talking. There’s no love story. There’s no tension. Writing it is an exercise in tedium.
Richard suggested I’m writing from the view of the wrong main character. And he’s right. Much of the main story, which in the current novel is written as a side story, is the relationship between the human Alice Johnson and the Archetype William Morris. Alice is an anthropology grad student who is persistent in following her suspicions that William is not what he seems. William doesn’t want to be discovered, but he is falling for Alice. And they have a rocky relationship, given William’s trauma and Alice’s persistence. All this in the backdrop of beings that cannot afford to be discovered.
I still don’t know if there’s enough tension in this one other than William and Alice, who eventually have the daughter Anna Johnson, later to be adopted by Arthur Schmidt. She is the main character of Whose Hearts are Mountains, which explores the mystery of her birth. But there is something to hold onto, something that might keep me writing.
When I was younger, I had a vivid spiritual life. I would find myself occasionally immersed in an otherworldly experience — under a waterfall, on a quiet street, under turmoil. I believed in spirits, because I had encountered them. Hunches were often accentuated by feelings of dread or elation that seemed to come from outside of me. It was a time of big emotions.
This stopped when I went on the bipolar medication. No more presences, no more portents. This caused me to reevaluate my spiritual life of prior years. Did none of those things happen? They felt real to me. Were my spiritual moments just artifacts of my bipolar disorder? I have trouble believing that, but the boundary seems sharp.
Or does it? I realize that those spiritual moments did not end abruptly, but did a slow fade. Through my adult years, as a professor trained in logic, I questioned my experiences. They were artifacts of my extreme moods, of stressful moments. I distanced myself from those extraordinary occurrences.
Nowadays, I don’t know what to believe. I pray, but I don’t know if I pray to a supernatural presence. I believe that praying sharpens my ability to deal with the world, a very rational thought. I don’t feel those moments as I did when younger, but I think I’ve internalized those feelings and hunches and claim them as my intuition. Perhaps the spirits were pieces of me I hadn’t claimed yet. But I miss those days.
The first thing I did when I found my error was count my lucky stars that it hadn’t been published. Now what I have to do is some research and rethinking to make the plot more plausible.
My error had to do with technology — in particular, the technology concerning encryption and the fact that my example was not secure enough. As my writing is fantasy rather than science fiction, I don’t have to get into the details of the tech. I do have to be somewhat realistic (given my style of writing, which is closer to magical realism) and plausible.
So this morning is going to be research and rewriting some sections of the book. Not my favorite thing to do, but I want my books to be good.
As far as my writing goes, not so well. I don’t know what to do with this book. It starts slow, and is still slow toward the middle. Something is finally going on plotwise, but not fast enough. I am wondering if I have to start it over from scratch. It just isn’t writing right.
As far as my garden goes — we scaled it back because of the lack of sunlight in the yard — it’s now herbs and tomatoes. I don’t mind this. Now to keep the weeds out — there’s a lot of marauding wild garlic in there that buries itself so deeply you can’t pull up the roots. That’s a bit of a pain for weeding.
As far as my diet goes, I have lost 10 pounds (I think). I’m not hungry a lot of the time, which is a good thing. I think this will work well.
As far as book sales go, do you know I have a couple of books out? I have written several. They can be found at: Lauren Leach-Steffens Amazon Page.
I have had a lot of delicious food. My favorite would have to be international food, with a special weakness for Thai and Indian. I’m going to limit this to meals that were so good that I can remember them to this day.
A friend of mine once made me a stew of curried chicken with coconut milk and young coconut meat from an Indonesian recipe. I do not have the recipe for it, for which I am heartbroken, but I think it was a kind of soto ayam. It was mildly spicy and very comforting.
At a Persian restaurant in Chicago, I had roast chicken with a pomegranate barbecue sauce. I do not know the name of the dish either, but I can remember this meal even though it was over thirty years ago. The sweet/tart glaze of pomegranate works very well with grilling. The restaurant has long since disappeared.
Curried beef brisket at Waldo Thai in Kansas City falls on this list. Anything from Waldo Thai falls on this list, to be honest, especially their curries. Perfectly balanced with plenty of aromatics from lime leaf and basil.
Banana bread and an aged sherry from a winery in upstate New York whose name I don’t remember. I had gotten there early and was sampling the sherry, which tasted of violets and leather and all sorts of flavors I had never encountered in sherry before. The banana bread was part of the man’s lunch because I got tipsy on the sip of sherry. The whole incident was almost like an enchantment.
There are good meals and then there are culinary experiences. The items on this list are definitely culinary experiences.
The question is “If you were forced to wear one outfit over and over, which one would you choose?” I have to admit that it would be a pair of jeans and my shirt of a cat drinking coffee. Something relaxed but still a little dressy. Casual but a little upscale. It’s a definite mood.
It’s just Sunday, and it’s promising to be a hot one. Time for a leisurely breakfast and some coffee. We have plants to go in in the morning. We scaled down our vegetable garden to tomatoes because of the lack of sun in our yard, but we have a full herb garden that needs a couple more herbs. Lots of basil to go in with the tomatoes.
Once the tomatoes are in, we may be waiting for rain. I would like a good thunderstorm to come through. We might go and write for a while; I don’t know. Not an exciting day, but a good one.
I ask my students in internships what they do for self-care. It’s a very important practice for people in helping professions, because of the stress levels they experience. Self-care can stave off burnout as well as help people reclaim their free time.
When I assessed my own self-care activities, I found that I was somewhat lacking in them. Writing is a flow activity for me, and flow fits into self-care, but I have not been doing as much of that lately. I’ve started walking again, but right now I can only walk for short periods of time, which makes it not as much of a self-care activity. I don’t meditate as often as I could. I am definitely lacking self-care activities.
What can I do about this? Obviously put some of these practices back into place. Walking will come back a little at a time because of my current fitness level. Meditating can start today. Writing is a struggle given my current motivation level. But it’s important to have my self-care routines together, especially for when the school year starts and I’m back to more pressure in my life.
Words Like Me 