Just One Skill?

The prompt says “One skill”. Just one? I would like to be skilled at a lot of things. For example, things having to do with my writing. I would like to be more skilled at writing and definitely more skilled at promoting. And many other things as well — I would like to be more skilled at athletic things (and as I’m starting at zero, there’s no place to go but up.)

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But here’s one skill I’d like to have that seems to be out of nowhere — carpentry. I would love to be instantly skilled at carpentry. I am so far away from skilled at carpentry that my friends keep me away from power tools because I might injure myself. This is not an exaggeration — I had three friends yell “No!” When I asked if I could use the chain saw. I took a shop class in high school and the boys in the class did all the bandsaw and sander and router work for me. I was allowed to varnish. That’s it. I have profound hand-eye coordination problems and everyone who has met me instinctively notices this. Probably in the way I can’t walk a straight line when sober.

But I really admire carpentry. To be able to build something that stays together and is useful? Yes, please! I would love to have that power. Christmas presents would be easy from that point on. Everyone needs boxes, and carpentry is based on building boxes, even if some of them actually look like chairs. Or tables.

Of course, if I could do carpentry, I would need lots of equipment to do it. Expensive equipment. Of course I would need it, because when I get a hobby I go all out with it. And then I get bored with it. Writing is probably the only hobby I haven’t abandoned after a couple of years, and even so sometimes I get bored with it. Maybe it’s a good idea I can’t do carpentry. It’s an expensive hobby.

It’s a little hard to see, but this is a family tree for Luke Dunstan’s family from the Hidden in Plain Sight universe. There are other, less expansive family trees that attach to this (I don’t have Daniel Ettner’s family tree here for example, or Jeanne and Josh’s) but this is the big one. Luke’s family gets around.

I made this on Canva, using the whitescreen function, because that was the only document big enough to contain all the family.

Officially Summer for Me

I am done with all my grading, all my meetings (I hope), all my commitments for Spring semester. I am done with the school year!

Now what? I feel like I’m done too soon. It’s not summer; it’s 62 degrees out and cloudy.

I have 10 interns, and that will give me a bit to do over the summer, but most of them are local and I won’t be doing more than one road trip to visit them. That gives me more summer to try to find something to do. I can’t believe I’m having a problem of not enough to do.

There are things I need to do. For one, sort out all my clothes from the piles they have become. Rewrite my syllabi for Fall semester. Build more posts in Loomly (social media software). Blog every day.

I am avoiding saying I need to write. Writing has been hard lately. I have a novel in mind, but the urge to write hasn’t hit me lately. The last book I wrote didn’t have an urge to write attached. Maybe boredom will help me write.

My husband has reminded me I have to pack my office up for a move across campus. I think I preferred being bored.

One Day Till Summer Break!

I have one exam (literally one exam — I have one student taking it) to give and grade, and then I am done with the semester! The school year has gone so fast, probably because I dealt with it one day, one task at a time. Very much in the present.

This summer, I will be bored unless I start writing. I have already laid out fall classes (including making them accessible) and putting my calendar in place. Other than revising syllabi to be ADA compliant, I have fall semester in the bag. I have 9 interns to visit over the summer, a lot of them local. Therefore, a lot of free time. I estimate a lot of writing and coffee. Hopefully a couple weekends for retreat time.

Here’s to a relaxing summer!

A Day of Plotting

My husband and I got to Haven Coffeehouse at a little after 8 this morning; my task for the day was to develop my outline for the latest book a bit more.

Two cups of coffee later, I’m a bit closer. I think it’s going to take place in the Spring, four years after Avatar of the Maker. The point-of-view characters are going to be Tisha, the influencer; her husband Rod, the corporate promotions person; and Gideon, the engineer at Barn Swallows’ Dance.

Things I need to remember: The children just born in Avatar are now four years old; Bergeron the cat is about the same age. (Bergeron the cat is an important plot point as he is going to be the representative of the non-standard reality of the place). Tom is still the general manager; Leah is now a vet tech and well on her way to be a vet.

Tisha and Rod are 27 and 33 respectively. Their age difference is going to be important when it comes to how they get along; Rod tends to be a little condescending to Tisha, and this is going to become a point of conflict.

Other important people (besides those named in the above paragraphs) are Jeanne and Josh, as keepers of the Garden; Amarel, as the most obvious (to them) ‘difference’, and Luke, as the lawyer.

And of course, Barn Swallows’ Dance is one of the characters. It’s ’nonstandard reality’ is going to be the invisible elephant in the room — “What elephant? I don’t see an elephant.”

This needs to be plumped out a bit more, but I can see the bones. Sort of.

A Textbook Answer

Daily writing prompt

What gives you direction in life?

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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?

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.

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.