The Recitation

Let this be

A good day
A productive day
A rewarding day
A beautiful day
A day that gives me hope.

Lately I have been using this to start my day. I don’t think it’s a prayer per se, because I have very mixed thoughts about God answering prayers, as much “Should God answer prayers” as “Does God answer prayers?” I see this more to focus myself, to choose the actions that will best advance the day the way I want to.

Left to myself, I have good days and bad days. I have productive days and days where I do little but surf, largely influenced by what is due that day and how I feel. This works great when I feel possessed by an idea, in creative mode, perhaps even in a micro-mania, or if I’m down and have the time to relax. Right now I have classes and emails and panicked students and struggles with the writing.

With the — meditation? Litany? Shopping list? My days haven’t changed so far. On Wednesday, I had a good, productive, rewarding day at work with students right on target, work getting done at a good clip, an affirming conversation with a student. On Friday, my students couldn’t focus on class, and I felt argumentative.

Today, Saturday, I started the recitation again: “let this be a good day, a productive day, a rewarding day, a beautiful day, a day that gives me hope.” The blog has been the first productive act, and I will put up a tik-tok and start editing a problem child of a manuscript by noon today. Hopefully, it will be a day that gives me hope.

Nothing Left to Lose

I’d like to get to where I have nothing left to lose with my writing. Not to stop writing, but to write without an external reason. Not for readers, not for recognition, not for money, not to see my name in print. Just for the sheer joy of writing (when it is joy; sometimes it’s tedium).

I’m not there yet. I don’t care so much about the money, having probably earned only a couple hundred dollars so far. But I want people to read my books, comment about my books, and like my books. I have books with five reviews or fewer (and I have no way of knowing how many copies they’ve sold).

My dream is to have people want to write fanfic about my books, which I would let them do, keeping in mind the restrictions of the world I’ve built. I’d like to be a non-evil version of Marion Zimmer Bradley. This is far from the desire listed above.

Maybe the desire not to care is because there’s such a gap between where I am and where I’d like to be. Like I shot for the stars and ended up in the neighbor’s backyard. On the other hand, the freedom of not caring is exhilarating.

Taking Stock

I have readers!

I’ve discovered in the past few days that 33 people have read Kel and Brother Coyote Save the Universe. I don’t know how many people have read any of the Kringle books because I only find out about those who have reviewed it, but I have a few reviews on each. There are a few reviews on Gaia’s Hands as well. There is hope.

I would like more readers. Of course I would. One purpose of writing is to have something for people to read. I could act selflessly and deny that, but I don’t do selflessly well. My goals are to have a readership and maybe make enough money to defray the costs I incur for writing and editing programs, the occasional book cover, and conferences.

Mission and vision

My mission and vision are important. My mission is what I want to accomplish now and my vision is the dream.

My mission: To write books for geeks of all ages who like their fantasies romantic and their romances fantastic.

My vision: To write worlds interesting enough that other people want to play in them.

I’m definitely fulfilling my mission. I need more of a readership to fulfill my vision, although my husband has written in the Archetype universe.

From here

I think I need to post my mission and vision statements on the office wall, along with my two posters from books I created. This should focus me toward what’s important to me — the writing and the connecting.

Weather and the Writer

I’m sitting by the window at Starbucks. My husband sits across from me, finishing his first screenplay, based on my first Christmas novel. The Kringle Conspiracy has sold a few copies, and I have distributed free copies to almost 5000 people on BookFunnel in exchange for registration on my mailing list.

It looks like it wants to rain out. It rained earlier, but we could use more rain. I could use more rain, wind, and petrichor to remind me that summer will be over soon. I talk about the weather a lot, because the weather always surrounds us and engages our senses.

Writers use weather to inform their scenes, but not always in the way we expect. Do happily ever afters always happen under sunny skies with rainbows? I can see scenarios where the last scene, the big kiss, happens in the pouring rain, or in a snowstorm. Each of those would communicate two different feels — the pouring rain might be tempestuous or cathartic, the snowstorm cozy or threatening. A battle in a torrential rainstorm would be grueling, but on a sunny day, be ironic.

I want you to take a moment and imagine some weather, either some that you love or some you hate. Then tell a story about what happens in that weather, describing the air, the sky, the precipitation (if any). Make the scene about the weather and what happens in this weather. Write it down.

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You are now a writer!

Forcing Myself to Write, Pt. 2

Today, I went to Starbucks with my husband, who was definitely going to hold me to being there for at least two hours. I actually got 1000 words done, which is more than I’ve written for a couple months. I’ll have to force myself to write now that the fall semester is about to start!

Forced to Write

I haven’t written in a while, having spent some time querying and some time prepping for classes and some time traveling the past two weeks. But I’m here at Starbucks, waiting for my husband to show up for lunch. It’s only 10:45 and I expect him here at 11:30. Or noon. And I have to do something.

So I’m forced to write, starting with this blog. The words are flowing out after feeling blocked for the longest time. From here, I’m going to look at Maker’s Seeds and see what might have inspired me in the hiatus and tweak, then find new purchase in the story.

Maybe I should trap myself into writing more often. That should be a good way of forcing me to write.

Rituals (again?)

The semester is approaching, and I’m sitting in the neighborhood Starbucks. Two days until my freedom (such as it was) ends, and my fall semester begins.

Rituals and the new school year

Fall semester, for faculty, begins with an all-faculty and staff picnic at the Pavilion on campus. It’s a ritual, one of many that start the school year. The Friday meetings (I’m booked from 8-4 and expect my eyes to glaze over by then), fireworks, even cleaning my office and buying office supplies I don’t need are my beginning of semester rituals. (I tried to convince my husband that a new iPhone fit the category of something I didn’t need but he didn’t jump on it.)

Rituals as a part of my life

I am a great fan of rituals. Perhaps this comes from my childhood as a marginal Roman Catholic that helped me spot rituals in the least likely places (like a Quaker meeting) and caused me to make my own. Rituals help me focus, help me change my direction or rededicate myself to my intentions.

For example, let’s take the shopping for office equipment. Even though I do almost all my work on computers, I still associate pencils and pens with cognitive work and scissors and markers with creativity. Hence my ritual of buying those for the new school year. To be honest, I do use them (although with the markers, not as often as I should.)

Applying this to writing

I’ve been struggling with writing lately, focusing instead on marketing and this blog and TikTok. I wonder if rituals would help me in writing as much as they help me at the beginning of the semester. A new start, a refocus — I need this in my writing because I have drifted away from writing again.

What would be a good ritual to start me writing again? I asked my husband, whose response was “I don’t know”. Guess I’m on my own for this.

I don’t think I need new pens for motivation. I might need to do something in the office to make it feel more mine and less like some place my husband has sentenced me to. I used to work in the living room, and I felt more motivated because I wasn’t alone. The office is small and cluttered, and there is little to be done about it because much of it is items needing to be filed with no room to file them.

A ritual … I’m going to have to think about it.

Feeling the Tension

I’m once again querying, sending out a manuscript and all the trimmings to agents looking to see if any of them want to represent my book.

It’s a nerve-wracking proposition, especially as I have had no luck so far with getting agents to look. It’s difficult putting one’s best work out there, not knowing if this time it will get some traction. Face it, rejection is difficult to face, and no, I am not used to it.

I’ve sent ten queries out today and I don’t expect to hear from any of them today, as it’s Sunday. Tomorrow, the early rejectors will reply, and I will wait on the others as I send out more queries. I’ve done this before.

I have made some important changes to this version, some having to do with grammar throughout and the more important ones having to do with something I should never have attempted with the story.

Wish me luck!

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

As the End of the Summer Approaches …

I can feel the end of the summer. The County Fair is over, the weather is boiling, and I’ve done all my digital setup for the fall semester. I always do it early, according to my Facebook posts from years past, mostly to prepare myself for the fact that my days will be fuller and more carefree, and there will not be nearly as much free time to write.

School starts August 17, less than a month from now. Meetings start a week before that, and there will (hopefully) be a beginning-of-semester cookout for faculty and staff which represents the beginning of the semester more than any ritual could.

What have I accomplished? I’m a quarter of the way through one book, an eighth of the way through another, and I don’t know which one to write. I have finalized It Takes Two to Kringle, which is waiting only for some last minute putting together before I submit it to Kindle. I have edited an old but (in my opinion) outstanding book called Prodigies, which I hope to send off to agents soon. I neglected my garden again. I relaxed.

Life is good and I passed through the summer doldrums without much damage. Soon I will go through the beginning of semester highs (If this sounds like bipolar, it is, sort of). But it’s my cycle of the year and I will do my best to meet it.

Blessings in Disguise

I have a tendency to feel rejections keenly, thinking that they are a personal judgment of me. But what if they’re blessings? What if they’re there to keep me from really embarrassing myself with a mediocre (or worse) submission?

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I’ve been going over old works I have written. I’ve written so many half-developed character sketches that aren’t stories, so many poems of the same, with no hook. Novels with plot twists that became deal-breakers.

I’m not a poor writer, but I want to be a better one. I want to be accepted for publication more often. Someday I want to have a novel professionally published. This won’t start happening unless I see these rejections as blessings in disguise. (Or even if I do, I suppose, but I’d like to be optimistic.)