Dusting myself off and trying again

It looks like I’m going to subject myself to another round of the Kindle Scout campaign process.

I’m just finishing one more edit of the book Voyageurs for a possible Kindle Scout campaign. It, like Gaia’s Hands (which, with fewer than 15 days left, will not make the cut for publication), is a standalone book for the moment. Voyageurs doesn’t happen in the same space as the Archetype series, so it wouldn’t break up a series (which would make it unattractive to an agent).

Voyageurs is very different than Gaia’s Hands. Where Gaia’s Hands is a delicate, pastoral slice of magical realism, Voyageurs features the sardonic daredevil Kat Pleskovich and the bookish Ian Akimoto from the disastrous ecological future called The Chaos. What begins as a string of suspicious deaths among the Travellers, or time-jumpers, becomes the uncovering of a plot to destroy the world.

Although it would be easy to dismiss this book as a time traveller romance, I’ve skewed things a little too much to use that label comfortably. Present-day Kat’s streetwise manner and her prickliness make her anything but the girl who needs a big man to protect her. Ian from the future, frail and bookish, has more empathy but a tendency to try to ingratiate himself to Kat. Their mentor, Berkeley, is a frustratingly droll time historian who revels in the Socratic Method. The bad guys? You’ll have to read the book.

I would call this book a crossover — soft SF with a touch of mystery and a relationship that helps pull things together.

If you have any ideas about the timing of the book campaign, please let me know.

Thank you for sticking with me!

Moving Forward in More than One Way

I have to share this, because even though it doesn’t have to do with writing (directly), it’s so funny I have to share:

I’m going back to school.

I had long been of the opinion that, once you got a Ph.D. and hit a certain age, you would never need any more schooling. I would have been correct, except for a perfect cluster* of events:

Six years ago, my department at the University got disbanded because they had to cut something, and Family and Consumer Economics (Home Economics or Human Ecology for my overseas friends) was a low-cachet major.
Because I had tenure, they couldn’t fire me without due cause, so they put me in the Behavioral Sciences (Psychology and Sociology) department.
Our school accrediting body, the Higher Learning Commission, decreed that if faculty were in departments they didn’t have a graduate degree in, they should at least have 20 graduate hours in the discpline. This rule appeared within the past three years. I’ve been here for 20.
I fall short of that 20 hours — I believe I have 12 hours in psych/soc classes at the graduate level.
We’re going through re-accrediation here, and our provost has been hired in part to guide us through the new accreditation.
I was advised to take some grad level classes in an aspect of psychology/sociology by my chair — I was never told I would be fired, but I was told that doing so would “make me look better”.
Taking the grad classes will not improve my pay. In fact, I will have to pay for the classes. It won’t help me get to full professor status, because I don’t publish enough research. I’m literally doing this to help my university get reaccreditation.

So I have to enroll in graduate classes … and I couldn’t be happier, because I get a benefit none of them can take away from me — I get to learn and improve. I move forward, which is the best feeling to me.

I have applied to an online program at South Dakota State University for a graduate certificate program in Disaster Mental Health. I decided this by 6 PM last night, and by 8PM I had turned in my application materials, ordered a transcript, and secured three letters of recommendation from my colleagues with disaster management in their background. A reminder: I became Emergency and Disaster Management faculty simply by virtue of teaching a class in their major. The interest in casualty simulation (moulage) and CERT (community-based first responders for disasters) came from that.

As I will be taking only one class per semester, I don’t expect it will make too big a cut in my time, and I even suspect that the book about the care and feeding of roleplayers might be a independent assignment. I will continue to write, because I can’t relax by vegging — just by doing**.

So here I am, a PhD taking more college classes, even though it’s ten years till I retire. Life is strange, isn’t it?

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

* To my international friends, “cluster” is short for a very salty military swear word that rhymes with “fustercluck”.

** “Doing” is a strange word. We’re expected to read and pronounce it “DO-ing”, but if you look at the word the wrong way, it looks like a sound effect that rhymes with “Boing” and mimics the sound of a fry pan hitting a cranium: “DOING!!”

PS: A poem about weather

The sky gets this yellow tinge

Before the tornado hits –

I sit on a fire escape,

Courting the eye of the storm.

Finding meaning in still air

Proves impossible;

Breaking the sky clears the air.

Besides writing and moulage in my life, there’s gardening.

I dream of the first emerging sprouts speaking to me.

The stretch of the first seedling breaking through the soil with the tiniest pop assures me that change is possible. And each seedling, each plant, has purpose. The lowliest weed has purpose — dandelion makes a wine whose pale nectar will break your heart. The scrubby lamb’s quarters tastes better than spinach, and purslane is rich in Vitamin A and Omega-3 fatty acids. What is toxic to man may treat your illnesses — the toxic foxglove can be processed into digitalis, a heart medicine that you might have heard of. Even the otherwise useless Cannabis sativa* is a bioaccumulator, pulling heavy metals from the ground and sequestering it in its leaves.

My basement is full of seedlings to go into my summer garden. They live in the former coal room, now a room of grow lights and reflective insulation material on the far wall, with a window that the law enforcement officials can look at and make sure I’m growing tomatoes. This may not be enough.**

Right now, the tomato/eggplant/pepper plants are partying on the top shelf with the cardoon which I thought I wouldn’t get to grow. The perilla seedlings are numerous and vigorous. Hablitzia, yarrow, pinks, and savory are popping up a little more leisurely, and I still can’t get sea kale to grow from seed. The basil — I’m a basil fanatic, but I still may have to give some away. That’s not all the seed flats — I am nearly out of room on my plant shelves, and there’s a dwarf lemon tree I hope gives me lemons for lemonade someday.

At night, when I go to bed, I imagine I hear the plants sighing in their sleep. When I feel down, I contemplate sneaking down to the basement and joining them in the dark. But I am human, and cannot sleep in a garden bed, so I wish them a silent goodnight.

***********
I’ve gardened since I was about five years old, when my second cousin Dale Hollenbeck gave me a plant of his that was dying to see if I could nurse it back to health. I did, and I did the next one he gave me. I had a lot of failures, largely because of my lack of understanding about soils — it turned out that Illinois’ hardpan soil wasn’t a great planting medium for cacti — or much else. It was at that point that I wanted to learn anything I could about plants.

My neighbor Johnny Belletini, who was somewhat of an adopted grandparent (I adopted him), taught me one day that weeds weren’t nameless and had uses people didn’t know about anymore. I was fifteen; he taught my his recipes for dandelion greens and dandelion wine that day, and I made my parents leave the lawn unmowed until I picked all the flowers to make dandelion wine***. We did everything wrong, but the result (don’t ask me how I know) was a sacrament, sunshine in a glass.

When I was seventeen, my second cousin Francis Koenig**** worked in a state park for a while and had an encyclopedic knowledge of those previously nameless weeds. At the time, I had begun my lifelong interest in edible plants. He would visit me at my parents’ house, and my family would sit mystified as he and I talked about plants — their genus and species names, appearance, habitat, and uses.

Nowadays, I have an odd quest, and that is to landscape my entire yard with edibles. I have raised beds for annual vegetables and for perennials, I will add edible weeds (tastes like spinach) like quinoa and orach and giant lamb’s quarters, and I will add herbs to the rubble-and-dirt hill by the stairs to the backyard.

Many of the edible plants I’ve never eaten before. The moringa thicket in a pot in the basement apparently has excellent nutrition for a green tree, and the scarlet runner beans are a favorite in Britain. But I’m fascinated by vegetables and fruit that can’t be found in a grocery store, just as I am interested in people and places you couldn’t find near a shopping mall.

Later this spring, I’ll give you a virtual tour of my garden (if I can get my SketchUp software running on a four-year-old Mac with no graphics capability to speak of. If you want pictures, let me know.

Thanks for keeping me company.

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

* I do recognize that C. sativa is not useless; I was just having a little fun. The plant has proven useful for wasting syndrome PTSD, chronic pain, muscle pain, glaucoma, and mental health issues. (Grinspoon, 2018). In addition, it is used as a sacrament in the Rastafari religion.

** There is also a window where any curious law enforcement officer can look into to assure themselves that there is no Cannabis grow operation here. I still feel a certain sense of unease about having a grow room in my basement. I’m not kidding. Not Marijuana

*** I made my first batch of wine at age 15. I did my research first — although there was a law against drinking until age 21, there was no law against making wine at any age unless you made over 200 gallons a year and/or sold it.

**** Francis Koenig died of drowning in 2009. I point this out where I otherwise would have because 1) he was family and 2) he lived lonely because of his neurodiversity. I believe he was on the autism spectrum, as he worked at a sheltered workshop until he retired. I want you all to see that the neurodiverse have lives and feelings and deserve to be members of society to the extent they feel they can. Thank you, Francis, for telling me that hawkweed had edible roots — I look for it often, and I think of you.

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

Grinspoon, P. (2018). Medical marijuana. Available: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/medical-marijuana-2018011513085. [March 13. 2018].

The conclusion — for now.

It can’t be helped.

As I crawl out of the other side of my depression, I find that writing is too much a part of my life to quit it.

My characters are almost family members, their stories important to tell. My husband and I talk about them:
“Do you think Grace’s parents had talents?”
“No, but I think they figured Grace had a latent music talent, and that’s why they hid her in the Renaissance Children school.”
I sometimes wish I could have coffee with one of them — the fey Josh; the acerbic Lilith; androgynous, impish Amarel; intense and troubled Greg.

Their worlds are hidden in plain sight from mine, and if I turn around just right, I’ll be at Barn Swallows’ Dance or the coffeehouse where Jeanne and Josh met or the Ancestors’ Room in the Chinese restaurant in McKinley Park neighborhood or the meeting room in the main Kansas City library, sitting in while Future Past meets. I have not managed to find these places in real life, so I write to create them.

About publishing — I’ve decided I will try Gaia’s Hands, the one that’s currently not winning the Kindle Scout process, with a Quaker press. My only sadness about this is, if it’s published, it will be preaching to the choir. I’ll turn Voyagers in to Kindle Scout somewhere around then. If those don’t sell, at least I’ve published and can kick that off the bucket list.

I will always be looking for leads. If you have a friend of a friend who knows of an unusual publishing house, please let me know.

From the sequel of a book I haven’t finished

Last night, I had a vision of looking out a window at a muddy sky at rain sheeting down upon the tops of buildings. I felt like I was waiting for someone, and that if he arrived, there would be an intense conversation. The room was a chunk of the top floor of an old brick building, spacious and dark but for the light from the window.

When I tried to write a poem about it, I realized that I wasn’t the person looking out the window. I told my husband, and he pointed out that I was Ayana (from my book Prodigies) waiting on Grzegorz (another character from Prodigies) that would happen in the next book. (I have visions and Richard interprets them — we’re spooky around here sometimes.)

Maybe I better keep writing.

***********

Reader from Poland — I need your help with the highlighted portions below. The XXXXs are where I need the Polish phrase for the English phrase that is also highlighted.

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

Ayana stared out the window of her garret apartment, hardly noting the amber-grey clouds dumping sheets of rain on the tarred roofs of the shops surrounding her. It had been a week since Greg had left the apartment with nothing but the clothes he wore and what he could stuff in the worn military backpack he carried.

She had made a mistake, she had intuited in the aftermath of the argument that broke their relationship. No saving face there — the bout had scoured civility away. She couldn’t figure out how the fight started, except that he had said one word — “xxxxx”. Marriage. And then he had said he’d take care of her and the child she carried low in her body. She had panicked, fearing the loss of her autonomy. And out of her panic, she had lashed out at Greg. And he had lashed out at her. She couldn’t tell if it was her rejection of his offer or the words she used. She didn’t remember what she has said except that it was in his native tongue.

The knock on the door startled Ayana. She stood from the chair by the window, feeling the discomfort in her back as the baby’s weight shifted. “Who is it?” she called out both in English and Polish as she plodded toward the door.

“XXXXXXX,” she heard Greg’s low, rough voice say.

We need to talk.

She flipped the light switch and a soft but inadequate glow bathed the room. She gazed out the peephole to see Greg, wet hair straggling around his face and down his shoulders, his coat soaked. The peephole distorted his wild-eyed looks so he looked like an oni, a demon, and the expression on his face did not bely his seeming.

“Yes, we need to talk,” Ayana murmured as she turned the locks on the door.

Greg stepped in, and he didn’t look any less frightening. His eyes looked shadowed, his skin bone-pale. He bent and tugged his boots off at the door. That was oddly the custom in both their cultures, odd because those cultures were otherwise so different. Ayana watched him, her heart aching at the familiar scenario.

Ayana stood frozen, speechless, because she wasn’t prepared to cut all ties with Greg. She wasn’t ready.

“I brought blackberry syrup,” Greg twisted his mouth. “We can’t make the baby unhappy, can we?”

“Why do you feed me?” Ayana seethed as the two of them walked to her couch that folded out as a bed. “I think I can fend for myself.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever done anything nice for you?” Greg muttered. “I want to do for you and the baby like I never got to do for Anna.”

Ayana felt a hint of what she feared, being trapped by Greg’s solicitousness. “Where is Anna, anyhow? Tell me she is not with her mother!”

“Anastasja will never be with her mother again. She would be always in danger of her life if she were. No, I have taken her to Shemisław’s. She happens to think of Shemisław as her grandfather. She’s safe while I go through this madness.”

“Madness? Is the PTSD with you again?” That would explain the hollow eyes, the beaten down demeanor.

“No. I was mad when I last left you, and I was mad when I didn’t come back sooner. I walked around like a zombie –“

Ayana studied Greg’s Medusa locks. “I thought you were a demon,” she smirked, feeling a bubble of optimism, then sobering again. “This food thing — is this part of taking care of me? Will you keep me small and harmless? Will you make me stay home with the children and not work with you and Shemisław?”

Ayana glanced again at Greg, and he looked as if he was stifling a laugh. “It’s hard to picture you being small and helpless when you can swear in — how many languages?”

“All of them,” Ayana shrugged. “Including ASL.” Again, the bubble of amusement tickled her mood. “Don’t forget my skills of evasive driving.”

“I don’t know if Iwanow Jr. will ever forgive you for what happened with his Varsovia outside Wroclaw,” Greg grinned, and Ayana remembered her joy in Greg’s fey moods, his quirky sense of humor, and his daring. She had become daring, a spy against the Renaissance movement because of him.

“When you said you’d take care of me, did that mean keeping me shut up inside the house and not working with you?” Ayana hadn’t spoken so clearly in their last argument, choosing instead to use the subtle language of her homeland. She heard the sharpness of her voice, and wondered if she had lost her Japanese communication style forever.

“Oh, you don’t know how much I’d love to,” Greg’s face fell into grim lines. “My whole family died in the bombing of my parents’ house, and I think now and again that I could have saved them if I had only been at Sunday supper instead of busking downtown. Especially now that I know my talent, although I would have exposed myself — and possibly killed myself — resurrecting five people. I would die to keep you from getting killed.”

Ayana noted that Greg had scooted closer to her. She felt his warmth, and it was welcome. “I would die to keep you from getting killed as well,” Ayana sighed. “And I want to work with the others, the Renaissance Children, and to do that I would have to carry at least some of the load and use my talent — and my skills — to help with our forays into Second World Renaissance and their compatriots.”

“I should have taken that into consideration. I warn you, though, I am going to try to protect you from danger from time to time, and feed you whatever you want when you’re pregnant, because I’m a bit of an old-fashioned chauvinist at times.” Greg took her hand in both of his.

“And I’m going to have to tell you to back off, because if you were expecting me to be submissive, they failed to teach me at the orphanage.” She waited a beat or two, and asked the question that sucked all the air out of her lungs when she thought of it. “Are we still together?”

“Would the thought of marriage scare you — that is, if I make my best effort not to make you small and harmless?”

“Could we not do a Catholic service? I’m not willing to convert.” Her Buddhist/Shinto roots kept her from being totally assimilated into a Western culture that more openly courted violence.

“As I’m sure my talent would send me to Catholic perdition when I die, I think I should avoid the Catholic church myself. Can I tell you I love you? I’ve tried to tell you, and you’ve not been receptive to that.”

Again, the bubble of happiness, the effervescent feeling of joy filled her.

Dissecting Gaia’s Hands and Learning Nothing Yet.

Maybe Gaia’s Hands wasn’t the best book to enter to Kindle Scout.

I’ve proofread it, demolished it, paired it with another book, trimmed that back so that I have two instead of four main characters, re- and re-proofed it, and still when I look at it I wonder if it’s a solid novel.

I’ve never known what to do with it. I love its plot lines — discovering one’s mystical abilities, a convincingly menacing pattern of harassment to one of the main characters, a taboo May-December romance (taboo because the woman is older than the man). I adore its characters — a talented botany professor, a precocious young poet, his best friend the surly engineer, the refined yet hangdog lab assistant Ernie, enigmatic waitress Annie, and even the smooth dean and hostile department chair Jeanne has to face.

But I’ve never known what to do with the book. The scenes almost come off as vignettes, with the connections between strands unapparent at first. The plot is subtle, not as action-packed. The characters carry it, but I always wonder if the book starts too slowly. I edit it again and feel something’s not quite there, I don’t know what the “something” is. With all the improvement I’ve done in writing for the past six years, there’s something in Gaia’s Hands too quirky for prime time.

Gaia’s Hands strikes me as a YA, except the male protagonist is too old at 20, the female protagonist is way too old at 50, and there’s not enough angst. (For all the harm Twilight did to women’s expectations of men — it’s okay to be a stalker? Really? — it did angst exceedingly well. And it sold.)

I look at Gaia’s Hands and feel like it’s missing something. Despite my greater level of experience, my writing skills, better knowledge of writing dynamics — my writing is missing something, and I can’t tell what. Maybe my style, my “voice” isn’t acceptable. I don’t know, but I wish I could figure it out.

Another Excerpt of Gaia’s Hands

Trigger warning — this excerpt deals with PTSD/rape. The description is not from a salacious point of view, but from traumatic memory.

This is an excerpt from Gaia’s Dance, which I don’t know if it should be in the book even though it survived three edits. But it mixes trauma, magical realism, and relationships, and may be a quintessential part of the plot, even though it’s a sideplot:

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On his way to Jeanne’s house, he rode past throngs of students drinking in costume or just drinking. He swerved around a pony keg that had rolled out into the street. Past downtown, he rode his bike under a tree full of birds flocking for migration south. Jeanne had called them starlings, but their frenzied voices mocked him. Josh imagined them as the tengu, bird kami, of Japanese folklore and hoped they would protect him.

Josh arrived in front of Jeanne’s bungalow, a cream-colored cottage with brown trim, the landscaping brown and desiccated by the frost. He remembered her saying that the trees in the back hosted islands of lush edible growth – vines, bushes, creeping greens, all dormant now. Her koi pond slept, dreaming of spring.

He rang the doorbell. Jeanne, pale and weary, let him in and shut the door behind them. He stood in an apricot living room with burgundy and gold accents. “Pick a seat”, she said tersely. He chose one on the wood-framed couch, leaving enough room for her if she wanted to sit. She stood.

“What’s wrong?” Josh breathed, his stomach clenching. “I’ve missed you.”

“Oh, Josh,” she fretted. “I’ve been really busy lately.”

“You have never been too busy for your friends. I worry about you.” And about me, he thought. And us, even if you don’t think there’s an ‘us’.

“There’s a lot going on –”

“Did I do something wrong? You act like you don’t trust me.” He remembered seeing her flinch that day in September when she shied away from talking about her past. He searched his memory to see if he had ever been aggressive, had ever overstepped his bounds.

“You don’t understand. It’s not you I don’t trust, it’s me.”

Around her, he saw snow fiercely blown by the wind. He stood up, faced her, close enough to touch but not touching her. “What do you mean, you don’t trust yourself? I trust you.” As she shook her head, he realized he had said the wrong thing. He took a deep breath and started over. “Could you tell me what you don’t trust yourself with?”

“I don’t trust my judgment. Not when it comes to getting close to people.” She shivered as the snow billowed around her in the warm room.

“Why not?” He would not allow her to walk alone in the blizzard.

“I’ve let the wrong people into my life. Over and over, because I wanted attention,” Jeanne murmured.

“Don’t we all want attention? Love?”

“Not when people hurt you with it …” Her voice broke. Her eyes swam with tears. “Not you, Josh. Just …”

“Who was it, then?” Josh winced; he spoke too loud.

“Something really bad happened when I was young.” Jeanne’s voice was small, barely audible.

“Tell me. Please.” Josh took a deep breath against the churning of his stomach.

Jeanne responded in a soft monotone, “It was a sunny day in March. The phone rang at four in the afternoon. My sister Clarice was at Eastern, and my parents worked Saturdays. I thought the call was for one of them. Instead, it was for me.

“My neighbor Malvin ca
lled. He had two little girls, 4 and 6, with platinum blond hair and pretty blue eyes. I used to go over with my sister and help her babysit them, so the girls got to know me pretty well. He asked me to come over and do the girls’ hair so he could get them portraits at the mall in Champaign.

“I knocked on the door. I remember I felt this chill across my shoulders despite the nice weather. I didn’t understand why. There were people Mom didn’t let me visit, and she never let me have male babysitters growing up because she said she didn’t trust them not to hurt kids. But Mal and the kids — they weren’t strangers, they were neighbors.

“Mal let me in. He seemed nervous. His hair looked sweaty and greasy, and he smelled of beer, and something didn’t sound right about the way he talked — he sounded like he read off a script. He wouldn’t really look at me. He told me the kids were in the back room. By the time I realized that I didn’t hear the girls, he pushed the door open and shoved me in.

“I trusted Mal. I trusted him; heck, I helped him with the kids all the time. The kids weren’t there, they were with their mother, and he and his friend told me they had a different game in mind.

“I won’t tell you, not even you, all of it.

“When they had finished, they threw me out of the house and I ran home. I saw blood and slimy streaks in my underwear, bruises where fingers had dug into my arms. I felt pain, shrieking pain, where those two men had no business going. So much for being a virgin till marriage.

“Oh God, I didn’t do anything,” she cried. “Mal and his buddy said things to me: ‘Hey, fat girl, let me see your tits. Do fat girls put out? Are fat girls easy?’ I didn’t even know what they were talking about, never heard the words before. But they showed me, and it hurt. I tried to stop them, I tried, but I couldn’t.

“They laughed when I screamed. That hurt me the worst — my neighbor laughed when I screamed.

“I buried the clothes; I scrubbed away the evidence so my parents would never know.”

Josh felt weak, vaguely ill. He remembered the drunk woman at the house party, and how scared and ashamed he felt. Multiply that by a hundred, and maybe that was how Jeanne felt. Age thirteen, two men, no way to fight them off. Only powerlessness and pain. Too much darkness, too much, and he could do nothing to redress her past. He knew that he could only give comfort. He took a deep breath to center himself, then caught and held her gaze. “You didn’t cause it.” His hands rubbed up and down her upper arms to try to remove the chill that had nothing to do with ambient temperature.

“No I didn’t,” Jeanne breathed through tears, “I’ve come to believe that. It took a long time.”

“Not just the assault.” He couldn’t bring himself to say rape. He had to keep his composure for her.

“Don’t blame your judgment either.”

“I trusted Mal – “

“Your parents trusted Mal. You believed your parents. We believe our parents at that age. Your judgment told you to run when your mother’s guidance told you everything was ok.”

“Oh, God,” Jeanne paused, then broke out in sobs, “Oh, God, you’re right. I never trusted Mal. He looked like a rockstar, but I could feel something mean about him.“

Jeanne crept into his embrace and cried, and they walked through the blizzard together.

***************
Now, that you’re at the bottom, a question: would you like to read this book? It’s likely going to be something I self-publish on Kindle, but my readers deserve to get a free copy, which I can send to you.

The actual, the ideal, and the "ought" self

Yesterday in class, I taught about self-discrepancy theory as a form of motivation. In this theory, we have ourselves — our current selves — and two states we aspire to, our ideal self and our “ought” self. Our ideal self is what we aspire to be, while our “ought” self is who we feel we have to be.

Our “ought” self is all about obligation and sense of duty — go to work, save money, pay parking tickets, don’t scream in the middle of a train station. Think of the “ought self” as “I am the person who shows up to work on time, doesn’t litter, and pays my taxes.” I can envision ought selves that are bloated with rules that are not so much obligation and sense of duty but fitting in as well — I talked with a friend yesterday and we both grew up with the command “Don’t act smart — boys don’t like that.” That’s a pretty useless ought unless women are obligated to undermine their own rights, and that’s not right.

Our ideal self is about accomplishment. I would distinguish here between experiential activities — “I would like to go to Disney World” and true accomplishment activities — “I would like to walk a half-marathon.” The accomplishments we choose to define us go into building our ideal self. A map of ideal vs ought selves might look like this:

Ideal Ought
Engages in deep conversation Votes
Performs skilled volunteer work Practices compassion
Takes 10-mile hikes Gets enough sleep
Writes novels and poetry Yada yada yada
Publishes books

Those are actually part of my ideal vs ought selves. (Ought selves are not as interesting.) Ideal selves help us to set growth goals, whereas ought selves help us to set maintenance goals.

Note the last item on my Ideal list. This could explain my fixation with getting published. My ideal self is a published author. It’s not just my desire to be read and to reach people — it’s that I like the image. My ideal self gains some cachet by being a published author. Society expects accomplished (i.e. published) authors to be eccentric; eccentricity without a credential is perceived as weird.

It’s going to be a struggle, because of my history of rejections. I have to see an alternative ideal version of me that’s creative even though nobody’s watching (I got zero nominations on my book in Kindle Scout yesterday). That’s hard, because my ideal self is someone that others would look up to — not fawn over, not idealize nor idolize, maybe not even admire, but respect.

I’ll keep writing for myself, but I’m going to have to find something else that takes the place of getting published, something creative that can gain me respect and some visibility. And as I am very bad with my hands (I cannot knit, crochet, sew, weave, color within the lines, or walk a straight line), crafts are out. I’d love to do carpentry, but I’d also love to have all ten fingers. So this brings me back to writing.

How do I parlay writing into something that’s not just for me, but has an audience, has usefulness, and fulfills my ideal self?

The Valley of Love and Delight

I can’t give up writing.

I hone my words (although sometimes I miss spelling errors) to share my visions of the Peaceable Kingdom, where we have quieted our lives enough to discover the biggest secret in life — each other.

Perhaps what I write is what I seek — less distraction from material things, less status-seeking and dressing for success and hero worship. A place where discussions beyond “How are you?” are possible, and we choose connection over possession. Where people aren’t rejected for being different.

Of course, the utopia in my books is far from perfect. People who pride themselves on being open-minded shut their hearts toward those they view as “other”. Factions stash guns and explosives on the grounds of a pacifist collective, and one of the pacifists delights in slugging the antagonists. The Seven Deadly Sins still exist, even among the good guys. But the Peaceable Kingdom is an ideal, not something to be shunned for power and fame.

Because of their perpendicular shift from dominant culture, my books have a gentle tone to them that is decidedly “girly”. More My Little Pony than GI Joe. My characters have mostly holed themselves up in a safe place, but are under siege from inside and out. The emotional wars trump the explosion of hand grenades. My characters come to realize, however, that they have failed the world in hiding their light under a bushel, as Jesus would put it. If I had to describe my writing in terms of the snarky one-liners that pass for elevator pitches, I would say, “The Friendly Persuasion with otherworldly complications”.

I’m still trying to figure out how much more time I want to spend bashing my head against the outside world to get published. I know I’d rather live in the world I write about, where our hearts strive to “find ourselves in the place just right,” as the song Simple Gifts would put it.