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Updates and Musings

  1. A question for myself: What is more important — success (not really), recognition (maybe), or skill/talent/competence (heck yeah!) I will always choose improvement and growth, given the circumstances. And I can see many situations where success happens because of factors that have nothing to do with competence and honing one’s craft.
  2. I’m feeling like I have to blow some cobwebs out of my brain. I don’t know if my muse is still on the job (if you’re reading this, Muse, send me a smile!) I need some fantasy, some novelty, some surprise, a little mysticism, fairy wings, talking cats, a rainbow in a dandelion. I need a charge to help put the young love in this damn book I’m working on. 
  3. I will continue writing. I’ve decided what my pdoc was addressing was my sense of perfectionism and inability to stop at some point of “good enough”*. So, although getting published is a nice to have, it’s not a measure of moderate proficiency. While I’m employed, I might have to settle for moderate proficiency, whatever it is. Or maybe not — I don’t have some of the more time-wasting habits like Netflix and excessive Facebook use, so I might have time for both.   
  4. I find out tomorrow or Tuesday about my Kindle Scout submission. I don’t think it will get adopted into the (now defunct) program. Try, try again. I’m not quite ready to throw it in the abyss of self-publishing.
  5. Any love and support  you can give will be appreciated. Even if the only people reading this are actually bots from Russia or Poland.
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* I often can only focus on one thing at a time because it has to be constantly getting better; I can’t stop at good enough. This is why “walk a half-hour daily” becomes “walk four miles a day and eight miles a day on weekends” becomes “walk the Illinois-Michigan Canal in a week”. (Note: Running isn’t part of the plan. In my case, running isn’t part of God’s plan.)

Seed starts

It’s gardening season.

I have spent the whole dreary winter working in my basement greenhouse planting seeds, most of which have grown into cute little seedlings (or in the case of tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers, big monsters.)

I’m trying to find places for all of them in my yard. This is a good problem to have.

I’ve had far worse years for plants. The only seedlings I completely lost were hyssop, purple mitsuba, and Canadian garlic. Most of the herbs that I’d planted last year survived the winter; the exceptions were parsley and rosemary (the sage and the thyme are fine).

I can’t plant the monsterous tomatoes, pepper, and eggplants out till Mother’s Day, nor can I plant their overly abundant basil companions, but I have lots of baby perennials that, in the worse case scenario, can put up with a little reemay over them. Basil thyme and savory; campanula, pinks and yarrow; hablitzia; the humongous perilla (who knew?)

I don’t know if I said this before, but all the things I plant need to be edible in at least one part — the rampion has edible roots; the cardoon has edible leaf stalks as does the surprising fuki that I planted two years ago and just saw peek up from the ground yesterday.

Someday, I will have the urban Garden of Eden I’ve always wanted.

So, what is writing “good enough”?

I talked to my Pdoc (psychiatrist) the other day about how I don’t just want to be good at things, but excellent at them. I don’t just want to write, I want to get published; I want to earn awards at school, which makes me discount when individual students thank me for helping them, etc. (I’m sorry students, it’s not that you’re not important or good enough! It’s my problem!)

Dr. Jura suggested that I look around at what is held as the standard definition of good and then reduce it ten percent.

I would love to be doing things good enough rather than try to be the best, especially as I’m the best only in my dreams. I would love to write “just for myself” — much less strain, much fewer down moments. But I don’t seem to be able to settle for “good enough”, especially to writing. I associate love with accomplishment, and I want to feel loved. (Yes, Richard loves me, but my inner child is a voracious monster who needs love every moment of every day.) I want to earn being loved (I didn’t grow up with unconditional love). I want to —

I obviously have a values conflict here between “I want to win” and “I want to be accepted on my own merits. I need to resolve it.

I’ll be back to creative excerpts tomorrow.

Post-semester crash, or "My brain shut down".

(Note: I love the Victorian way of titling books with the “or” in the middle, such as Syphilis, or the French Disease). So I decided to try it.

My brain, in a word, is empty right now. It’s a form of inertia. It’s what happens if I spend two weeks laser-focused on getting final projects and exams graded — and I fun out of grades. Like I’m plowing a field, but then I run out of field and crash face-first into a wall. 
I’m trying to write on a story, any of my stories, editing, scheduling, ANYTHING.
But my brain seems incapable of creating right now.
I hope it comes back soon.

Autographs

I asked for an autograph from a friend yesterday. I may or may not have gotten it, depending on whether the Instagram post was meant for me.

What my friend doesn’t understand (even if he’s given it some thought) is that I did not ask for the autograph because he was an up-and-coming actor, but because he was my friend.

I don’t like the whole concept of autographs. They disturb my Quaker sensibilities by putting someone else on a pedestal — “I’m so honored to have breathed the same air as you!” They treat famous people like trading cards — “Hey, I got Ryan Reynolds!” “Oh yeah, I have Elvis Presley! Mine’s much more awesome!” And finally, because I’m arrogant, I want to respect the person and want them to respect me as well.

That being said, I think there are reasons for autographs, and I actually have a few. Most of my autographs have been from children’s book illustrators, because I admire the art of translating ideas into pictures. I also knew the illustrators in question, and I wanted them to know I admired their work. I have an autograph from Morgan Spurlock, because I admired his documentary series 30 Days, and because he showed me appreciation for being a college professor.

In other words, I find the relationship between artist and audience not to be that of the little audience in front of the huge stage (ask me how I feel about stadium concerts!) but of connection between a performer or a writer and their audience.

Or maybe I just want to adopt creative people into my life.

PS: Thank you for the virtual autograph. If you didn’t mean it for me, thanks anyhow.

Editing, as much as I dislike it, may be where the magic happens.

Writing is delightful, full of beginnings — meeting the characters, exploring their world, setting them on an adventure. Writing feels like the first of May — trees in bloom, journeys started.

Editing feels like carving into a knotty tree with a chainsaw. Every spare subplot, every awkward sentence, every cliche causes the saw to buck. And then, when all the negative space is trimmed out, the question becomes whether or not what’s left is the true seeming of the story.

I had a revelation about where a couple of my stories  (novella? novel?) should go, and I’ve been wielding the chainsaw lately. I think they’re getting better. I think. It’s sometimes hard for the one with the chainsaw to judge.

Failure as an opportunity for change

What should you do when someone reviews something of yours badly?

Find the truth in their comments.

It’s the hardest thing to do, to accept that the quality of your output is low, that you haven’t accomplished what you set out to accomplish, that you’re not as shiny as you thought you were. It is easier to excoriate the messenger, to discount their observations, to explain away all your responsibility for your poor performance. It’s easy, as well, to indulge in self-pity, becoming the misunderstood one.

But none of that will kick you out of your complacency. None of that will help you grow.

The rhetorical “you” is not fair to you, the reader, because I’m speaking from my own experience. This week I got what could be called a bad review, where I performed below the evaluator’s expectations. This forced me to look at my performance and say, “Yes, I performed below my expectations.”

I had reasons, mind you — I had been depressed and foggy from medications, but my work still wasn’t what it could be. And I had to admit that.

But it was liberating.

I gained a sense that my evaluator cared.

I gained a sense that I could bounce ideas off someone.

I gained the belief that I could improve.

I started to develop a plan.

I need to find a way to do this as a writer. I have had horrible trouble finding beta-readers, because novels are long and everyone is busy. I don’t have the money to hire a developmental editor. But I’ve faced the truth in one area of my life, and I survived. Time to face the possibility of negative criticism in another.

Another detour

Note — this is finals week at Northwest Missouri State University, where I finish out the school year by giving final exams and hearing last-minute entreaties from students who forgot to turn in 50% of the assignments.  I feel for the students — there were classes I missed 40% of when I was a student, but I didn’t ignore due dates in a class and ask for mercy on the last day of class.

Poor Prodigies — it may be the novel that never gets written at this rate. After editing Gaia’s Hands into a novella — the best decision I’ve made thus far — I’m doing what needs to be done with Mythos and Apocalypse given the time frames and moods — splitting them up into a novella and one novel.  I think my instincts are right here.

I’ll get back to Prodigies. And Whose Hearts are Mountains.  Sometime this summer.  In-between intern visits, writing on one of two non-fiction books, working in the garden, and maybe some sleep somewhere. Oh, and exercise. I promised myself some exercise.

Excerpt from Gaia’s Hands (the novella).

An excerpt from Gaia’s Hands. Warning: Very indirect references to sex — less so than in a romance novel.


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Josh couldn’t sleep. Images of the last several hours swirled in his head: the fruit trees in the forest, Jeanne’s face at a particularly unguarded moment, the blues band at the café, Jeanne’s body, all curves and sags and comfort like a favorite easy chair. He could smell lovemaking, had never been aware before that it had a smell. 
The vision — the garden; Jeanne standing in the garden, tending it. Jeanne — the garden and the gardener, the secret and yet not the whole of the secret. He chased the thoughts around until they became the Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, the infinite. The lovemaking — she had been Eve to his Adam — did I just go there? he groaned. He would not put that phrase into his next poem. Something, everything — Josh did not act on impulse, yet he had. 
Josh threw on dry jeans and shirt, and dragged his bike back down the stairs and out under a clearing sky. “Who am I?” he queried himself as he rode toward Eric’s apartment. An introvert, an observer of human nature, a practitioner of aikido, an aspiring writer, only son, half-Asian. He dug deeper: a dabbler in Shinto, a pacifist, a former problem child. He felt heart and gut, ai and ki. And now, something bigger than himself — not just a lover, but a holder of a vision, a mystery. He would not tell that last part to his best friend Eric.