Baby Steps Back

Right now, I’m considering going back to Whose Hearts are Mountains — not to finish it up yet, but to sit down and look at the 70,000 words I’ve already written to see how I can balance the travelogue through a post-Collapse United States with the protagonist’s personal reactions — and field notes, because Annie IS an anthropologist.

I also have to make it plausible that the myriad of “incidents” (i.e. attacks) Annie experiences could be random malfeasances rather than the signs of a plot by Free White State’s government to capture her. I’m covering this for the next book in their series. I have to make the dreams and hints hint only toward her identity as a half-human, half-preternatural creature rather than the conspiracy that will be in the next book.

I also should work on the mental health book, which is going to require some primary sources. I’m too much an academic to use the Cliff Notes of bipolar disorder, Bipolar Disorder for Dummies. (I kid you not. Not even a tiny bit.) Biological psychology and psychiatry articles don’t intimidate me that much — ok, biopsych intimidates me a bit — it’s just that there’s so much “We don’t know what causes bipolar, but neurotransmitters are involved somewhere” that I can read without my brain going numb.

Yes, this is a lot of work I’m doing for something that may just be for the fun of it, given my total failure to find a agent. I may take a friend’s advice and try for literary fiction agents but not right now, not while I’m fighting off depression. Part of me wonders if writing, or at least putting 85,000 words into a novel (and I’ve done that with six so far) is a waste of time if I can’t get published. I like my creations to have an audience and speak to people, just as knitters want their family and friends to appreciate the gifts of socks and hats.

This is my dilemma, the one I have to get a handle on before I write again.

Conversation with A Fictitious Author

I sat at an isolated seat in Starbucks sipping at a blonde espresso. My computer sat before me, unopened, as I wondered how to start writing again. I glanced up, and a man in his thirties, dressed like a professor in a red sweater and white Oxford shirt and jeans, strode toward me. He didn’t look like any of my colleagues, although as time passed, it seemed I knew fewer and fewer of them. This man could have blended into a faculty reception without notice — of middling height and slight build, myopic brown eyes behind round steel-rimmed glasses —

I recognized him as he sat down, and understood why nobody else noticed him. The wide, vaguely almond-shaped eyes crinkled when he smiled at me —

“I figured I’d find you here.” Josh Young, chronicler of the sociomagical experiment known as Barn Swallows’ Dance — and writer of magical realism to the outside world — peered at me. “How’s progress on the book?”

“Books,” I corrected. “Two fiction and one not-so-fiction.” I studied my paper cup of espresso. “They’re not going well. I’m having trouble getting back to writing after my latest round of rejections, but you wouldn’t know that.”

The New York Times bestselling writer, who had won that distinction by the time he was thirty, suddenly seemed a little taller and more substantial. Of course — it was his connection to the earth-soul Gaia, to the sprinkling of trees that grew outside the library Starbucks. Nobody else, again, noticed. “Do you know why I’ve had the success in getting published?” I heard leaves whisper in his tenor voice.

“Because you’re really good at writing?” I met his gaze and his challenge.

“Because you wrote me that way. Because you wrote me as someone who studied writing fiction and wrote literary fiction and sent it to literary fiction agents. You wrote me as someone who not only had great talent, but great luck.”

“I wrote you to be a better writer than me?” I stammered.

“I can’t be better than the person who’s writing me — you see?” Josh chuckled, a dry sound that reminded me of leaves again. “I will say, though, that you wrote some lofty aspirations for me. If this wasn’t fantasy, I’d get rejected just as much as you do. The idea is to tell your truth, and tell it over and over until someone listens.” Josh walked his fingers toward my espresso, and I tapped his hand with my spoon in warning.

“But what if no one listens?” I threw the rest of the quad espresso down my throat as if it were a shot of whiskey and slammed the paper cup on the table.

Josh raised his eyebrows and peered over his glasses at me. “Then that’s their problem, because if you don’t listen and discern, you don’t learn, you fail to adapt, and you die. The first law of nature.”

I remembered when Josh was a college student, a little more frail with spiked hair and bright t-shirts. This man, thirteen years later, was no less beautiful, but he had calmed from the black-clad, precocious poetry slam artist to an equally precocious, wry and weighty scholar. He glanced down at the table, breaking eye contact. “Yes?” I asked.

“There’s a question I need to ask.” He paused for a noticeable increment of time. “Will I outlive –“

I knew the end of that question, and why Josh wanted to know. The love of his life, Jeanne Beaumont-Young, was thirty years older than him, which I guessed made her about 63. Of course, I had written about the end of this committed couple’s life together.

“Jeanne will live an extremely long life,” I ventured slowly, “and she will outlive you, but by only six months.” I withheld his cause of death, an undetected aneurysm, because it would make no difference — the fatal defect would be inoperable.

Josh nodded. “You could have taken the easy way out and had us both die at the same time, or you could have made me wait twenty years.” He stood, shook my hand, and wandered off, looking like any other professor who frequented the campus Starbucks.

Soon, to my surprise, he returned, eyes twinkling, with another stout blond espresso. “Writers need their coffee,” he grinned, and faded into the crowded coffeehouse.

Thank you — and a guided meditation story

Just a quick thank-you for listening. I know I’ve been writing pretty heavy stuff lately (except for Marcie segments), but I write from the heart, and that is where my heart is right now. It will not last forever, nor will it end in heartbreak. I have a purpose in life, even if I don’t know what it is right now.

********

Last night, I decided to do a guided meditation. I suggested to my walking mind that I find a safe place, and I ended up in a forest, a fantasy forest as if illustrated by a gifted child. The forest was full of huge trees with plump purple trunks that grew so tall I couldn’t see their branches. Pillowy moss grew underneath.

I sat, huddling against the immense trunk of a tree.

What do you need? A voice, a mother’s voice but so much not my mother’s.

“I don’t need anything. I take care of myself.” Even as a child, I saved myself. There were never any princes to rescue me. I shifted against the rough, black-grooved bark of the tree.

I love you.

“That’s what you say. Of course you love me. You’re me. I know how guided meditation works.”

Yes, but that’s where all things start.

“What can you do for me?” I snapped. I asked for little; I demanded even less. “Can you make this hurt go away?”

I can be there for you. I can remind you you’re never alone.

“Of course you can. You’re me. That makes me feel worse rather than better.” There I sat, in an imaginary forest, having a conversation with myself.

But I’m always here. Who else can say that? When it’s three in the morning, or everyone else is busy, or they don’t understand what you need, I’m here for you.

“I guess that makes sense.”

I curled up and fell asleep under the trees.

For the bipolar book — and for your understanding.

The things you don’t do while depressed:

· You don’t drive alone on deserted country roads where there’s no speed limit.

· You don’t stay alone. Even if you want nothing more than to be alone, complete solitude allows nihilistic thoughts to take hold. Coffeehouses remain a favorite refuge, even though you have to make small talk occasionally.

· You don’t tell acquaintances you’re depressed. It makes them uncomfortable.

· You don’t pick up broken glass without a sturdy pair of leather gloves.

· You don’t smash the things you love. You don’t delete all your writing or destroy next summer’s garden under the grow lights, even though your writing and plants are living things and you are not.

· You don’t give up your livelihood. You do not stay home from work no matter how bad you feel. You do not slack off on your work even though you’re sometimes so confused you don’t remember what to do next.

· You don’t do anything that would put you in a behavioral health ward, because it will wipe out what little self-esteem has not been scoured away by the depression. The things the behavioral health ward does for your health and safety – taking away your phone, prohibiting you from doing work, taking your shoelaces, leaving you almost no alone time – depersonalizes you. Being in the ICU seems almost cheery in comparison – at least the nurses talk to you in kind voices there instead of flat parole officer voices.

· You don’t let yourself eat or drink too much, do anything too reckless, or even speak the desire to flip your middle finger at an uncaring world.

The things you do while depressed:

· You read the inspirational quotes your friend posts on Instagram and Facebook and assume that they’re not for you.

· You answer, “How’s it going?” with “I’m doing pretty good”, even though you’re not.

· You push yourself, push yourself, push yourself – until you can’t push yourself any more for that day, and then you sleep. Sometimes dreams are the best part of the day.

· You try to find value in yourself and come up empty. The encouragement people give you seems to have come from a different world with different rules than the one you now live in.

· You look for one thing, just one thing, to go well, knowing that your mind will merely dismiss it as irrelevant. You experience all bad things as the world’s way of telling you your demise is near, death by a thousand papercuts.

· You call your psychiatrist, of course, and make an appointment. You feel like a failure doing so, even though you took your meds as instructed. You feel like a failure even needing to call your psychiatrist.

· You wonder if you were being delusional all the times you felt you were accomplished, literate, and likeable.

Callings and the Household’s Stories

First off, Marcie says hi. She’s just about done with her first novel, Chucky the Cat Saves the World. She’s tried to convince Chucky to illustrate it, but the negotiations haven’t been going well.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to convince Girly-Girl, who’s sitting next to me, to write a memoir. I’ve suggested the title I’ve Seen Everything and I Don’t Care Anymore. She didn’t care for that.

i’m trying to convince my husband to seek out an agent. He writes in science fiction and he understands the genre very well — its subject matter; its focus on machines, science, and battles; its masculinist roots. I believe he could find an agent pretty quickly, and I wonder if the reason I felt called to writing was to get him to write, and find him a career.

I’m still confused as to what I’ve been called to do, and whether I’ve been called to write. Callings are very important among Quakers — we believe that if we sit quietly enough, God will show us our callings. I haven’t felt anything as a calling for so long that I feel adrift.

When I start writing again, calling or no, I don’t know what I’ll start writing on again. I’m afraid of the creative memoir about bipolar disorder. Although it’s attractive being heard, I don’t want people to think of me as “THAT person,” the one you have to keep an eye on. Yes, as open as I am about my situation, I am afraid of people who judge. Sometimes I want to run away from this blog because I’ve talked about it here.

I feel stymied by Hearts are Mountains. It’s reading like a depressing travelogue, and I don’t know what it needs. It’s a bit flat. I might want to go back to Prodigies, but I wonder if that’s going very well either. I doubt everything since all the rejections.

I hope that I find my direction soon — in or out of writing, I don’t know. But I hope I find my calling.

I haven’t written in two weeks.

I’m still trying to sort out my relationship with writing.

If’ you’ve followed this blog for long enough, you’ll know that I’ve said this so many times that you figure I’m crying wolf. You’re probably right — I say this when I’m deeply depressed and I can’t shoulder any more stress and I don’t want to think of those hundred-some rejections I’ve received so far in my life.

Here are the questions I need to consider:

1) Why do I write? I think with me, it’s complicated:

30% because I have ideas
20% because I want to improve as a writer
30% because I want people to read my stuff
10% because I want my world view (diversity, nonviolence, interdependence) to further get a toehold in the mainstream
10% because I want to get published.

What makes this complicated is that it will take getting published for people to read my stuff; it will take an editor to improve my writing; it will take getting published mainstream to get those ideas looked at in the mainstream.

2) Would I be comfortable being self-published?

Likely not. The great thing about self-publishing is that anyone can do it. The bad thing is that everyone does, regardless of talent. I’ve read a selection of self-published books — Cassandra Bruington, your memoir was awesome. The romance novels — lowest common demoninator, not written well — the exception is when one of my favorites Robin D. Owens self-publishes, and she’s a professionally published author with a large number of romance fantasy books. And then there’s the others — writing that could best be described as barely developing the plot outline, plot lines that only exist to justify a book-long sex scene, and the occasional Twilight clone. In the first scene of one book, which had the promising title of King of the Gypsies, the author was obviously getting too turned on by the antagonist’s thoughts upon watching the woman he was going to rape and kill. I had to take a bath after reading that chapter.

I don’t like my chances of getting read in this scenario.

3) Would it help to take a break?

It wouldn’t hurt — I have six completed novels, two novels in progress, and two non-fiction ideas in progress.

4) What about that editor?

We’re going to see what we can afford when the income tax return comes in.

5) Will you still write this blog?

If you’ll still read it. Let me know what kind of posts you like to read. (I know you all love to read Marcie, but Marcie will continue to guest-write rather than take over this blog. She has homework to do, and she keeps insisting she’s writing her first novel of ten pages.)

Marcie shows up to class

Hi, it’s Marcie. Remember me? Aunt Laurie let me come to class on Tuesday because she said it’s about happiness. My aunt gets to teach a whole class about happiness! I want to take that class. It sounds a lot more fun than math.

I was the youngest person in the class; everyone else was almost as old as Aunt Laurie. I mean, not old-old, but grownup. Aunt Laurie talked about two different types of happiness — they had big word names, but the first type of happy was the happy you get when you eat ice cream or binge on Netflix — I think she called it “hee-DON-ick”. I think the “ick” part is when you eat too much ice cream. The other was called “ew-die-MON-ick”, and it has nothing to do with dying. It’s the happy you get when you’ve done something good, or you do something you really like and you’re good at it, and then Aunt Laurie said you feel those two types of happy differently —

I knew about this from talking in one of Aunt Laurie’s other classes! So I waved my hand real big and Aunt Laurie, who was of course wearing her teacher clothes and looking all official and stuff, called on me. I explained to the class that when you eat ice cream, you get a biiiiig happy that goes away quickly, and when you do something good, it’s not as big a happy but you feel it longer. I think I should be a teacher when I grow up.

Yesterday, one of Aunt Laurie’s students walked up to her before class and asked her if she could bring me in because his best friend was having a birthday and he wanted me to pop in. So I did and I told him that having a birthday felt like a big happy and then, the next morning, you wake up and say “I’m older now!” I know I felt like that when I turned seven.

I still feel happy when I think of that. I think I did a good thing for someone.

Foolhardy thoughts — repost. OOPS

I’ve gotten at least five more rejections since the last time I’ve mentioned it, and I’m contemplating something crazy — querying non-genre (i.e. literary/upmarket fiction) agents to represent me.

Maybe it’s the depression talking — “You have nothing more to lose. You might as well set yourself up for rejection and get it over with.”

Maybe it’s that a friend of my husband’s (a writer in the small-press horror genre) said I write too well for genre fiction. I don’t know if I believe him — I might, however, write too subtly for genre fiction.
Maybe, though, I write too subtly for any fiction.

I don’t think I stand a chance. I write about ordinary people rubbing elbows with preternatural creatures who together face supernatural warfare that is in some ways all too human. I write about the intersection of time travel and global warming. I write complex, imperfect characters who may not be human, with all that means. I don’t know if literary or upmarket wants to read that.

I’m still thinking, folks. I’m still thinking.

Wish me luck.

Depression and Creativity

There’s nothing that crushes creativity quite as thoroughly as depression. Depression crushes everything in its path, but creativity is its most obvious casualty.

I stare at the page; no ideas come to mind. My mind is filled with fog, like that of caffeine withdrawal, but coffee doesn’t touch it. If I write about the love of my five cats — yes, they love me unconditionally, even when they avoid me — I get weepy because I doubt I deserve their love.

If I write about death, I fear that someone will put me in the inpatient ward, where they strip you of all the autonomy of adulthood — no phones or computer to stay connected, no shoestrings, mandatory group sessions, the position of having to ask for everything you need. I don’t understand how depersonalizing the patient helps them heal, but that’s the process.

If I write about anything else — I draw a blank. I cannot find the words, and when I do, they demand to be dragged out of my mind one. word. at. a. time.

Depression is not sadness — sadness is draped in dignity, and writing about sadness evokes a broad, snowy plain where the air is so still the trees might shatter. It’s not anger — anger burns clean and hot like a flaming sword, and in some cases the angel’s righteousness flows through the anger.

Finding yourself wandering at the edge of the woods after a forest fire, smelling damp, burnt woods and finding the carcasses of birds and small animals of the ground. You have no home anymore; you have no phone, nor anyone nearby.

That’s depression.

Writing prompts and Storytelling Circle

I started a tradition among a group of friends when I was a graduate student in college called Storytelling Circle. We didn’t do it more than a half-dozen times, but the process created not only interesting stories (if a bit disjointed at times). but profound insights. I tried to write down one of the stories from memory, but the magic of the story was in the telling, and it didn’t seem as mystical as it did in the darkened chapel of Channing-Murray as the six of us sprawled on the floor in a circle facing each other.

I put the idea of the storytelling circle in a book, Apocalypse —

AAAGH! I can’t find my copy of Apocalypse!
Richard, thank goodness, says he has a copy of it. Let’s try this again …
(Half an hour of stubborn technology later — )

*******

That evening, after dinner, the residents set up a large semi-circle three rows deep facing the risers. David Beaumont sat in the facing seat, Allan’s walking stick in his hand.

“The rules of a storytelling circle are as follows. First of all, it’s not necessary to follow someone else’s story; you tell the story that’s within you. Second: When you feel you’re done with your section of the story, hand someone else the stick. Or if someone feels moved to speak, go up there and ask for the stick. Third: If someone hands you the story stick, you can either take it or pass it on. If you really don’t want the stick at all, you should probably sit outside the semicircle.

“I’ll start the story, as I’m in the hot seat.” Mr. Beaumont made a show of settling himself into the seat, then looked at those assembled. Most of the collective had attended. “Once upon a time, as people say, there was a woman, an average woman. She was neither beautiful nor homely, not tall nor short, not fat nor thin. She was, in all ways, ordinary, or so she said — Jeanne Marie Beaumont, you sit down right now!” David Beaumont chuckled and chided his daughter, who waggled a finger at her father, then sat down.

“Anyhow, before I was rudely interrupted by my impudent daughter … ” Mr. Beaumont, with his excellent timing, waited through the group’s laughter. “This ordinary woman had only one thing special about her — she could cook. She could cook fabulously. She could have been the chef at any fancy restaurant in Chicago, or even New York City.”

“Woo hoo, Mary!” hooted the kitchen crew to their leader. Mary ducked and smiled.

“Our cook, let’s call her Sheila, thought this wasn’t a very handy skill if one wanted to, say, change the world. And she wanted to change the world. Or at least her little corner of it. Because — “

David Beaumont stood up slowly, then stepped off the riser and walked around and around the semicircle a few times. He handed the stick to Larry Lindenwood, and sat in Larry’s seat after Larry vacated it. Dr. Lindenwood stepped up the riser and settled himself.

“Everyone, deep down, wants to change the world. It’s the nature of man. Everyone wants to remake the world in their own image. That image might be fascist or capitalist or communitarian, green or materialistic. In Sheila’s case, however, she wanted to — “ Dr. Lindenwood stood up and reached over to give the stick to Celestine Eisner, who stepped up to the chair in her dancing gait.

“Sheila wanted to make the world beautiful. She put a lot of time into thinking about what a beautiful world would look like. After all, some people think steel skyscrapers are beautiful while others think forests are beautiful, and some people think that Picasso’s beagle in Chicago is beautiful even though some people think it’s a rusty piece of scrap metal. So what did it mean to have a beautiful world? After much thinking and thinking and thinking, she decided — “ Celestine skipped over to give the stick to Micah Infofer, the nine-year-old son of Sarah and Brock. Micah ran up to the stage and plumped himself down in the folding chair.

“Sheila decided that beautiful meant color! Why did barns have to be red when they could be purple? Why weren’t there any red-and-white striped houses? Shouldn’t trees have colored streamers hanging from them? She was really getting into this, and then she thought — “ Micah ran back to his mother and handed her the stick.

Sarah Inhofer strolled to the chair, stick in hand, and sat down. “Sheila, as we’ve said before, was a cook. She didn’t know how to paint a house purple or put colored streamers in trees, even though she could see in her mind what they looked like. She could, however, make incredibly pretty cookies. She could make cookies that looked just like flowers, or bunnies, or all sorts of amazing things. So that is what she did. Violet bunnies and blue roses and polka-dotted cats and plaid tulips and … all sorts of amazingly pretty things. She sold them at a lemonade stand to try to make money toward making the world even prettier. One day …” Sarah abruptly stood up and walked toward Larry Rogers.

“Aw, no, lady,” Larry groaned as she approached him.

“You don’t want to play?” Sarah put her hands on her hips.

“Well, okay.” Larry Rogers took the stick and clomped up to the chair. “One day, there was this guy, let’s call him Steve — “

“Larry?” Stephan Olasz glared at Larry. “Be careful what you say.”

“Sure, buddy,” Larry grinned ferally. “No problem. Steve stopped by the lemonade stand and looked at Sheila’s pretty cookies. ‘Hey, those are really pretty cookies, ma’am,’ Steve said. ‘I think I’ve got some sheep that would go good with those cookies.’

“’Mutton and cookies?’ Sheila asked. ‘Eww.’” Much of the room agreed vocally with Sheila’s assessment.

“’Naw, Sheila, I’ve got rainbow sheep. They’d look great in the same corner of the world as your cookies.’

“’Ohh,’ Sheila responded. ‘We need more things in the world than cookies and sheep. We need purple barns and red and white striped houses and trees with streamers tied to them.’”

“’I got some friends,” Steve said.

“’Really? You have friends?’ Sheila marveled.” Stephen stood up and glared at Larry again. ”I guess it’s my time to hand off the stick — “ Larry ambled down and handed the stick to Ty Gordon. Ty unfolded his lanky limbs and sauntered up to the chair, then chuckled as he sat down.

“Well,” Ty began, then paused. For a long time. When the laughter subsided, Ty began again. “Everyone knows you can’t save the world with two people. Or perhaps you can, because Sheila’s lemonade stand brought together quite a few people. Builders who built purple barns and striped houses, people who tied streamers in trees, and even farmers who raised violet bunnies. The polka-dotted cats moved in on their own volition, because cats do that. Enough people who did enough different things that they could make their corner of the world colorful. And so they did — “ Ty leapt out of t
he chair and handed the stick to Luke Dunstan, who peered curiously at it, then stepped ceremoniously up to the chair and sat down.

“However,” Luke said ominously, “some people are jealous of those blessed by creativity. One such person was a man named — hmm … “ Luke paused, because Archetypes struggled to create.

“There’s already a Steve, so —“ He stood up, and strode over to Adam, who took the stick with a fey grin and glided up to the chair.

“There was a man called Zhengfu,” Adam began as Allan commented, “Did you look that up in the Chinese dictionary?” Adam looked down his nose at Allan, then smiled and winked at him, the smile transforming his Asian features into something quite lovely. “Zhengfu felt threatened by anything he could not understand, and he could not understand this town — for it had grown into a town — that had exploded in a riot of color and music — yes, they held impromptu accordion concerts on festoon-strewn street corners and classical concerts in the park under the trees. Even the cats held concerts, and avant-garde aficionados attended their concerts. But Zhengfu thought to himself — “ Adam grinned at everyone, and then swiftly delivered the stick to Allan. “Your turn, sweetheart,” he whispered loud enough for everyone to hear.

Allan sauntered up to the chair, sat down, and paused for a moment. “I must stop Christmas from coming! But how?” Much of the room howled with laughter, although most of the Archetypes and Nephilim seemed puzzled at this. Adam and Lilith laughed loudest, because they had been on the run Earthside for millennia and had caught on to popular culture catchphrases.

“I’ll explain it to you later,” Lilith reassured her father, Luke.

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Just as Allan handed the stick to Alan Sutton, Eric stood up. “I don’t want to alarm anyone,” he said in his dry basso voice, “but I just saw about five people with guns approach the gate.”