My summer vacation is over. Today I sit through a whole day of meetings — University, Academic Affairs, College, and Division. Everyone has the idea of having their meetings on the same day so we have a couple of extra days to get our stuff together for classes. Whee.
I have all my stuff together. Except my brain. It’s still in summer mode.
What I enjoy most about writing is the ‘aha’ reaction I get when my mind finds a new twist or a new direction to go while writing. I am what is known as a plantser, somewhere between planning the book and flying by the seat of my pants. In this method of writing, there is a certain amount of writing with the flow, although it’s grounded in a general outline. This gives me plenty of room for ‘aha’ reactions.
I love it when I learn something new about a character, for example. I will do this while writing, where suddenly one of my characters does something surprising. I have to pause and see whether it’s out of character, and if it’s not, then I have learned something new about the character. One of my favorite recurring characters, Luke Dunstan, still surprises me at times.
Plots behave similarly. I might find a plot point flowing through my mind and onto the screen. I test it to see if it works, and if it does, it becomes part of the book. I don’t know how it happens, but it does. Maybe my subconscious does more writing than I give it credit for.
The ‘aha’ of new developments is my favorite part of writing.
Describe your life in an alternate universe.
I wake up at 5 in the morning, and the first thing I do is check my phone. It says that I have fifteen more minutes before I need to get up, so I read the phone for a while. The news announces that the President has just signed new climate accords mandating an increase in clean fuels over the next 15 years. Those in the fading coal and oil industries will be retrained in solar and wind.
I get dressed and go downstairs to my car. My car is electric, as most of the cars are. The cost has gone down enough that people can afford them. Clean tech is subsidized through tax incentives.
There hasn’t been an air quality alert in three years. Cities are cleaner and asthmatics can breathe better. The world is healing itself, given a chance.
In my office, the hypoallergenic therapy cat saunters by asking to be petted. I pet her and she jumps in my lap. I guess I needed a hug. My cats at home get jealous sometimes.
My coworkers are friendly, relieved of the stress of the environment.the world is a bit kinder of a place.
If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell?
If I had a shop, it would be a coffee shop. With cats. I would want a cat cafe. How could I resist two of my favorite things?
To spend the day in a room full of cats and coffee? That would be a charming existence.
The problem is that cat cafes tend to be non-profit, and I would need to be independently wealthy to run it without a profit. If I were independently wealthy, I would want space to travel. So much for that idea.
I still want to fantasize about it, though.
What traditions have you not kept that your parents had?
I do not make coleslaw for parties.
My mother did. Every family gathering, every one, my mother got out the Veg-a-matic and made my dad shred heads of cabbage for the salad. She would make either creamy coleslaw with Miracle Whip and lemon juice, or oil-and-vinegar coleslaw from the Betty Crocker Cookbook.
Years later, I found out that Mom didn’t like to make coleslaw. She tired of it quickly. But her sisters insisted she make the coleslaw because she was so good at it. (And likely because they didn’t want to have to shred pounds of cabbage.)
I do not make coleslaw for the gatherings I get invited to. Maybe I should?
‘Impossible’ gets my vote on an overused word in the sense of “It can’t happen here,” usually after it has, in fact, happened.
People build in 100-year flood plains assuming that repeated flooding in ten years is impossible. Nuclear power plants have been designed not foreseeing some possibilities for malfunctioning.
I know it’s said out of a sense of denial, a malabsorption of the facts. If something has happened, however, it is possible. Often there’s a sense of deniability in the word as well, as if saying “It’s impossible” absolves one of not foreseeing the possibility that it could happen.
If something is low probability, it’s not impossible.
Before I received treatment for my bipolar disorder, the predominant positive emotion I felt was elation. Elation is great until it edges upward into a state of jagged agitation and anxiety, and then crashes into despair. Elation also came with judgment lapses, and although my lapses weren’t severe, they’re things I don’t want to go through again.
Nowadays, my most common positive emotion is contentment. Contentment is a grounded state that is my default these days. It feels much more comfortable and sustainable. I feel more able to cope with the world.
Do I miss elation? Sometimes I do, because elation was a fleeting high, one which was very attractive. But then I remember the rest of the baggage that came with it, and I don’t want to go back there. I prefer contentment with its satisfying continuity.
I’m back from my adventure in New York. I still feel like I could use some sleep.
I only have two weeks until classes start again. Where did the time go?
Here’s hoping I feel like writing again before I run out of time.
I made a Big Audacious Goal that I would blog for 365 straight days and I did it!
I made the goal because I have a tendency to drop things when I get bored, and I want to break that habit. I don’t know that I have, but 365 sustained days is an accomplishment.
I’m going to take a short break and then begin to blog again. See you later!
One more day after today and I will reach my Big Audacious Goal of writing every day for a year!
Words Like Me 