The Rabbit Hole of Research

I’m writing a short story based on the Hidden in Plain Sight books, about some characters I spend less time with. It takes place in Chicago, and I’m racking my brain to remember Chicago, which I remember as a disconnected series of commercial and residential areas.

I try to jog my memories (as inadequate as they are) by looking at maps — a Google map and a Chicago neighborhood map. I just reemerged from a two-hour reverie of putting names and places to various places I remember from over thirty years ago. The No Exit was in Rogers Park, which is almost Evanston. My boyfriend’s mother lived in North Austin, and his grandparents lived in Hermosa. I spent a spring break at a storefront loft in “unredeemed Bucktown”, as a friend of mine from (I believe) Lakeview. I remember a great Korean restaurant in Lincoln Square and had one of the most frightening experiences of my life in Lincoln Park.

Two hours later, I have gotten no closer to writing the story. I don’t even know where I’m going with the story. But I have sorted out a series of mental Polaroids that represent my memories. As these memories are thirty years old, I had buried those Polaroids in a closet I seldom go into.

Excited? I‘m pretty mellow about the future

What are you most excited about for the future?

I don’t get excited these days. I’m sixty and I’m on good medication for my bipolar, so elation is a thing of my past. Thank goodness, because elation is exhausting, and it usually precedes a big depression.

That doesn’t mean I don’t look forward to things. I have a mini-trip to Kansas City to visit interns this week, and I look forward to both KC barbecue and getting internship visits over with.

I will be doing a major disaster preparedness exercise in August at Disaster Disneyland (official name: New York State Preparedness Training Center) that I have to prep for. I am the moulage coordinator for the exercise, which means I turn volunteers into victims.

The beginning of the school year is coming up sooner than I’d like. I am looking forward to all the beginning of school activities and teaching some new classes.

I’m looking forward to publishing Kringle Through the Snow on October 1. And, if I don’t chicken out, publishing Reclaiming the Balance on Jan. 1. I need a writing retreat, and am about to drop the hint to my husband (when he reads this). That’s something else to look forward to.

So, nothing exciting, but I have a full calendar to look forward to.

My Odd Definition of Romantic

What’s your definition of romantic?

I have an odd definition of romantic that does not involve bouquets of roses, ornate proposals, or diamond rings. What is romantic, to me, needs to be rooted to what’s meaningful to the couple in question.

For example, if your partner likes sunflowers, giving sunflowers will be much more romantic than giving roses. A public proposal is anti-romantic, serving only to satisfy the proposer’s ego, but a private proposal where you two first met has promise. Saving a ribbon, or a playbill or other memento, is a romantic gesture saying “I will remember you.”

Context, the context of the couple, is vitally relevant. Romance is a shorthand for a set of breathless feelings that the two will hopefully remember years later with the reminder of a moment. Generic content creates bland shared language.

Missing Out on My Big Audacious Goal

I have given up on my Big Audacious Goal for this year, which was having a booth at an author’s conference. I believe it the goal was too big and audacious for me, which is a hard thing to admit.

I have promoted my books at small appearances — a book fair in Maryville, MO, another in St. Joseph. I handle those fine because they’re small and local. A conference feels threatening to my somewhat introverted self. I see myself as an indie author, and I don’t enjoy comparing myself to people who get publishing contracts. This is my little hobby, as long as I’m still employed full-time in my day job.

Is the amount of sales and exposure worth a table fee and a conference visit? If Gateway Con in St. Louis was still operational, I’d say yes. That was a small and valuable conference that gave me a lot in return. I could sit a table there. A bigger conference, maybe not. I’ll be honest — I’m intimidated by ‘real authors’. I feel like an impostor in those settings.

I’m thinking of another Big Audacious Goal. In the middle of an indolent summer, none are coming to me. Little goals: Have my Loomly calendar (promotion) set up through January 1. (Done). Set up Kringle Through the Snow for October 1 publication. (Done). Prepare Reclaiming the Balance for January 1 publication (in process; still a bit chicken). Blog daily (so far, so good). Finish Carrying Light (almost done).

No Big Audacious Goals yet. Can anyone suggest one for a sleepy indie author?

Where I’d Like to Be Right Now

I’m sitting at home again today, cowering in the air conditioning because “it’s going to be another hot one,” in Midwest parlance. I’m listening to playlists that help me concentrate, hoping they’ll inspire me to finish the last three chapters of Carrying Light.

There’s a list of where I’d like to be right now:

At The Elms, enjoying time in the Grotto;
At Broadway Cafe in Kansas City with noise in the background;
At Wild Horse Pass resort in Arizona having a drink in the swimming pool;
In a cabin at Mozingo Lake, on a writing retreat;
Sitting on a couch anywhere that doesn’t encourage slouching;
At a cat cafe, self-explanatory;
In a camper at Mozingo Lake, just because it would be different;
At Starved Rock State Park, except for all the crowds.

Where I do not want to be:

OUTSIDE.

Talking About the Weather

I know that talking about the weather is the smallest of small talk, the type of inoffensive speech that makes it safe to talk to total strangers. I hate small talk, preferring to talk about people’s passions, as I am passionate about mine. But look at the freaking heat index!

We’re under a heat advisory here in Northwest Missouri. The heat index (a measure of how heat and humidity get together to cause misery) is 108 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature without the heat index will be 98 degrees F. People die of heat stroke at these temperatures. I won’t be going out today because I take medications that make me prone to the consequences of high temperatures. (Of course, human nature being what it is, I desperately want to go to Starbucks to write.)

I think about climate change a lot when the weather gets like this. It’s not just my imagination; scientists note an increase in weather incidents like this. On average, our world is getting hotter. I think about this from the viewpoint of someone sixty years old: I remember when we didn’t worry about this. I don’t want to worry, but I am worried. How will this affect the world’s people?

As a Midwesterner (United States), I’ll be far away from the flooding and some of the extremes as they come. But how will people in poverty fare? People without air conditioning? There are ways of living, but do we still know them? Do we remember how to do them? What will we have to give up of our 21st Century values to enact them?

Photo by Fabio Partenheimer on Pexels.com

I wonder how life will change. I wonder if I cannot change my life enough to make any difference in the slide into turbulent weather. Thinking this as I sit in my writing spot is a lonely moment, because it’s sobering to think about a future I can’t control. To think it all goes downhill from here.

I could be wrong. We are always on the brink of great innovation. Change is always possible. Maybe someday, riches will be measured in how we relate to others. I do not feel optimistic at this moment in 98 degrees F.

I had horrible taste in boys as a child.

Daily writing prompt

Write about your first crush.

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My first crush was when I was five years old. His name was Randy; he lived out back of us in a grey tar-shingled house by the tracks. He was in my kindergarten class; I think I got a crush on him because of his collar-length hair and his smudgy face. I was a tomboy at this stage in my life despite my clumsiness; he suited just fine.

My mother dealt with this with stoic despair for the entire month of the crush. I don’t like to think of my family as classist, but I think there was an element of classism there. Mom went to visit his mom at one point; I got the impression from her afterward that This Was Not Going to Happen Again. I myself didn’t see the problem with Randy. Our house wasn’t nice either, although it was a lot bigger.

My mother needn’t have worried. My crush dwindled because Randy had figured out I was a girl and quit talking to me. For my part, I quit getting crushes on boys until fifth grade, from which point I made myself quite miserable with them until I was well, well past adolescence. And then one morning, I quit having crushes. I think I’m happy about that now.

Passionate at 60

What are you passionate about?

When I was younger, I was passionate about a lot of things, so many that I was an exhausting person to be around. So said my mother, anyhow. I have mellowed as I’ve gotten older, and I suspect some of that is the medication I’m taking to keep my moods in check.

I don’t miss being passionate about everything. It’s nice that not everything has the same weight; it’s nice waking up in the morning and not being at 110% for every little thing.

But I’m still passionate about things. Writing, for example. I’m passionate about the process of writing and the results (most of the time; I’m not passionate about the current WIP.)

I’m passionate about getting things done. I like end results and getting there. This mostly applies to work-related projects. I wish I could get passionate about housework. (Does anyone get passionate about housework?)

I’m passionate about diversity. Not just that diversity is fun to be around, but that it’s necessary for a healthy world.

I’m passionate about well-being. Not necessarily happiness in that hedonic sense, but contentment with purpose. Balance and mindfulness.

I like where my life has settled. I don’t need to be passionate about everything, just the things I’m passionate about. 🙂

Writing about Writing about Writing

Sometimes I write about writing. I don’t do this nearly as often as I should, because I don’t have meta-thoughts about writing that often.

I could write about exposition, for example. What wisdom do I have about exposition? Only the big one: Show, don’t tell. And the not so big one: Conversations can be a form of exposition if you’re not writing things like “Did you hear about Betty? She ran off with the milkman last week.”

I could write about writing characters. Where do my characters come from? They come from an amalgam of people and stories I have known. Then I “interrogate” the character to see if they feel consistent in who they are. I have conversations with the characters, I put them in situations. I talk to my husband about characters — for example, “Would they talk back to the police?” Gideon would; he tends to be human and somewhat anti-authoritarian. Most of my Archetypes and Nephilim would never talk back lest they be discovered. They’re not quite immortal, after all, and they would alarm the authorities. Luke would talk around the cops, though. He’s a lawyer, after all.

I could write about publishing. There are many steps to publishing yourself; some of them go surprisingly smoothly, like most of the process on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP for those in the know). Others become a great source of frustration, like putting my book cover up on KDP.

I could write about hitting it big as a writer. No, I can’t, because I have not hit it big. Nor is it likely that I will, but that’s okay. I have a story to write, and it nags me at night. My characters (Sage Bertinelli and Forrest Gray at the moment) demand to be written.

I need to write more about writing, because there are so many topics … thank you, Hannah, for obliquely suggesting this!

Writing with Chloe the Cat

Today, Chloe is helping me write the blog. Chloe is my second-youngest cat at age 4, and she is peculiar:

We adopted her as a kitten from the Humane Society — she was the one who spent her visit climbing all over me, so we knew what to expect.

The kitty we nicknamed “Itty-bitty-bitty-bitty-BABY-BABY girl” has grown into a chubby adult. She sits with me when I’m in my writing spot (a loveseat in the living room) or sits nearby, looking out the window. Often she asks for attention so it takes longer to get things done.

I’m trying to figure out what to write today (if anything). She is not helping any, choosing instead to sit on the back of the couch and read over my shoulder. Just now she ran toward the stairs for no real reason at all.

I guess I’ll just write on my own, then.