Returning to a work in progress

I’ve decided to write on Prodigies again, and it’s been at least three months since I’ve touched it, because I’ve been working on my NaNo book, Whose Hearts are Mountains. I’m being drawn back to that book because of a few things:

First, the mystical sense of the book. One character survives a fatal shooting, and another can bring the freshly dead back to life. Discussions . We have a character who dreams. Characters have to deal with their religions, their morality, and where these change.
The group of four main characters are in close space a lot, and they’re being pursued because of their talents. They get on each other’s nerves.
There’s humor. I wasn’t aware of how little humor there has been in Whose Hearts are Mountains, as if nobody laughs after the collapse of the United States. People laugh in even the worst of circumstances. I don’t know what I was thinking. I think some of the best situational humor I’ve written is in Prodigies.
I love the characters — two teens and two slightly older adults: Grace, who is by turns blunt and guarded, denies her talent; Ichirou, an odd introvert, is so interested in the effects of his mind-influencing art that he doesn’t consider the moral implications; Ayana, Ichirou’s teacher, holds secrets that may endanger their lives; while Greg’s talent disturbs their sense of what is possible.
It’s a coming of age story from the viewpoint of Grace, an emancipated minor who spent her childhood in boarding schools.

I’m going to have to re-immerse myself into the characters, their conversations, their goals and purposes. I’m going to work back into feeling their voices in my head and heart. And then, hopefully, bring that attachment back to finish Whose Hearts are Mountains, which I feel has been lacking the humor and the heart that I’d been developing in Prodigies.

OMG, a close close call!

I organized my computer today. It’s running out of storage, and I hate iCloud and am moving my cloud storage back to Dropbox, which works more like a backup system.

The reason I hate iCloud is because it has a tendency to take forever to sync. I cannot reliably get to it as a storage medium. It’s not a backup medium. And, sometimes, I wonder if it loses my files in the ether.

Like today, when I’m moving files back to Dropbox, zipping photo files and getting rid of the originals, because I have almost no storage space left on my 5-year-old Mac. I have a really good filing system for the most part — I always keep photos away from everywhere else, and I always keep Scrivener (writing software) files in either my Scrivener folder or my writing file. But then this happened …

One of my Scrivener files went missing. This is how I learned iCloud’s uselessness as a backup.

I checked everywhere — on Dropbox, on my Mac, on iCloud, on every possible place it could have been. All I found was a 3-chapter sample, while the document I remembered was eight chapters long. Prodigies, one of my works in progress, had vanished. (Mr. Borowiec, this is the one I asked you to provide me with some Polish dialogue for. No, don’t feel guilty.)

So I panicked. Richard, my husband, did not. While I was getting weepy, he looked through his Dropbox account to see if he’d read a draft in progress. Sure enough, he had the full eight chapters. I went from anguished cry to happy cry (just as drippy but not as red-eyed miserable).

Thank you, Richard. You’re the MVP today.

My plate contains a smorgasbord

I have three books I’m working on at the same time. Three.

I don’t know how it came to this — well, I do. I was working on Prodigies, a dystopic contemporary fantasy about two teens born with unusual capabilities in influencing emotions and thus actions. Because of this, they are in danger from shadowy entities who find them potentially useful. Yes, it has shades of Heroes (a TV show that played from 2006-10), but it has multiple differences, too. This might become a YA novel if I finish it.

Then, my husband and partner in crime suggested I write the 20-something-year-old idea then named “Dirty Commie Gypsy Elves” by a friend of mine. That was my NaNo project, it’s since become two books and I’m working on expanding on the first so it’s a novel and not a novella.

Finally there’s my non-fiction/poetry/prose/story/research book explaining life with bipolar. That project is currently called “Ups and Downs”.

OOPS. I’m also editing a book on roleplayer support in disaster simulation exercises and writing two chapters of it. That’s four books.

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The most compelling project right now is the non-fiction item because it’s creative, informative, and autobiographical. But both of the other books are begging for attention just now. Did I say I was going to quit writing because of too many rejections? (Oops, I forgot to quit.) Do I worry that my ideas don’t seem to quit? (Yes, I do, a little. Is it time for a med check?) Do I still wish someone would publish my stuff so people would read it and I would have money to put into a new computer that had more storage and could handle graphics? (Absolutely.)

I guess I can’t NOT be a writer.

Setting a Reminder

Right now, my writing routine is disordered. It’s the first week of Spring semester, and I expend a lot of energy setting the scene in my classes for the semester. The creative space in my mind is filled with strategies for getting students to interact more in my class. My cognitive skills grind in the background on new tricks for explaining concepts.

When I get home from work, I’m tired. I’m “I can’t think anymore” tired. “Let’s watch some cat videos — aren’t those cats darling? (*sniffle*) tired. I study potential garden plants for my edible landscaping project, and somehow noting that Nectaroscordum tripedale is in the Allium family and will grow in USDA zone 5 takes up fewer brain cells than writing.

The exhaustion gets better once I get back into my routine. Three weeks from now I won’t even flinch at the everyday chaos — trudging through blowing snow into the building; the rare bedbug scare; the projector that refuses to project. My class plans will need adjusting but, hey, I’m a professional here. But those first two weeks wring me out.

I force myself to write during those times. I write this blog, even though I stare at the screen at times like this, searching my brain for topics. I set a task on my reminder software to write an hour every day.

It turns out that I don’t want to lose my writing, even if I never get published. I want the discipline, I want the joy of finally doing something with my creative side. I’ll have to take breaks, I’m sure. But I’ll fight myself — my exhaustion and my discouragement — to keep writing.

My 250th entry!

Today marks my 250th entry in this blog.

I’m really surprised. Previously, blogs I have started have generally lasted about two entries before I didn’t know what to write anymore. I think this is mostly because they were just journaling, out loud, when I was feeling bad about something. They weren’t so much blogs — they were emotion dumps, and I was so embarassed by them I couldn’t let them continue.

My husband and I (mostly my husband) kept a blog together once. This was more of a journal about our lives — “This is what happened today”. I think the reason we quit writing that blog was Facebook, which is largely a forum of short-form “This is what happened today” essays. Facebook proves that we are all writers at heart.

I tried something new with this blog. A combination of observations about writing, essays about writing skills, and personal works, this blog strives to talk about what it means to be a writer, and that one can be a writer in spirit without ever publishing. I hope I have done what I set out to do.

Thank you for reading!

Marketability — I don’t know if I want it.

I got three more rejections day before yesterday. Some days are bad.

But I’ve decided (at least for now) that writing to be marketable may not be something I want to aim for. I’ve observed bookshelves and read articles and have noticed what is marketable in science fiction/fantasy. I may be biased (disclosure: pacifist Quaker, pro-diversity), but the trends I’ve found discourage me:

Military SF or sword and sorcery battle-based fantasy — for example, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga, The Lord of the Rings, David Weber’s Honor Harrington series. The battle provides the tension, the climax — the whole plot.
Male authors — many emerging female writers of the 50’s-60’s used gender-neutral or male names to publish: for example, Andre Norton and Marion Zimmer Bradley. We have obviously female authors now, but many are writing strong male leads (such as in Bujold’s Vokorsigan saga again) This is not unique to SF/F: my terminal degree was in an almost entirely female field, and the most lauded work in the field was written by a male outside the field, who received a Nobel Prize for a piece of work that uses circular arguments and misuses the human sciences knowledge base. There are certainly examples of female authors — but many female authors still are discouraged from writing in SF/F. My favorite authors — Sharon Shinn and Connie Willis — have succeeded in the field. (If you’re reading this, drop a line and tell me how you did it.)
Male lead characters — preferably alpha male. A strong, accomplished male lead gets tagged as a “Competent Man”– Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars saga; a strong female lead is dismissed as a “Mary Sue” — Rey from the Star Wars saga. Yes, not all fanboys are calling Rey or Black Widow or the female lead of almost every story “Mary Sue”, but agents don’t want to take risks. They want guaranteed sellers, and it’s easier to dismiss a character as a “Mary Sue” than to risk putting their bets on saleability. Women writers report being scared of writing female characters. By the way, in the mostly female romance genre, a true “Mary Sue” like Bella from Twilight is perfectly acceptable.
No three-dimensional relationships to anchor the tale in humanity — we have the term “love interest” instead. A love interest lives in the background, doesn’t have to be well-developed. The “love interest” is almost invariably female. Or if they’re male, they’re often the savior.

My problem is that I know these trends, and I write to subvert these trends.

I want to communicate that bloodshed isn’t the only way to settle things. Even the “War is Hell” plots treat war as necessary. I’m a pacifist.
I’m obviously a female author, although “Lauren” might be gender-neutral enough that agents don’t know that.
My leads are almost always female with a full range of gender manifestations, and my male characters run the gamut from very alpha male to androgynous. One of my strong characters is a true androgyne genetically.
The most important thing is that I write these things without treating them as more important than the plot. I assume that pacifism is a possible option, just as military SF assumes war is the only option.
I assume multicultural and non-white groups are the norm.
I assume the protagonist can have a supportive relationship rather than a girl back home waiting for him. I don’t preach, I just describe.

But then there are the ideas that go around in my head as I send queries. “Is it worth it? Is my writing good enough? Is my work too strange to be taken seriously? Is it not SF enough? Do I have to start writing romance? (Oh God, no; I hate writing sex scenes. Everyone’s orgasms are over the top every time, and how can you name genitalia without sounding ludicrous?) These alone might be causing my suffering every time I get rejected, because it’s hard to shut the monologue up. The thing is, I won’t know until I work with a developmental editor, because it will take one to help me understand if it’s my writing or not.
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I have an idea for a shirt: “Writing is my dysfunctional lover”. Anyone want one? A t-shirt, I mean 🙂

The theoretical book outline

The theoretical outline of the book I’m thinking of writing looks like this:

I. Intro and Foreword

II. About Bipolar Disorder

III. Mania and Hypomania

a. Racing Thoughts/Words Piling up like Boxcars

b. Higher than Normal Drive/Project Obsessions

c. Hypersexuality/Sex, Fidelity, and The Other

d. Increased Spirituality/Transcendental Experiences on a Daily Basis

e. Plummet into Depression/The Words Crash Down

IV. Depression

a. Pessimism and Hopelessness/Living Cursed

b. Lack of Enjoyment/The Grey World

c. Feeling Empty/The Emptiness In My Center

d. Coming Out of Depression/Breathing Without Pain

V. About Medication

a. The Toll on my Body

b. The Day I Couldn’t Stop Walking

VI. The Rest of My Story – How I Manage

It’s scary contemplating writing a book about how I experience bipolar through the lens of my creativity. It’s easy to talk about what’s going through our heads when it’s within the realm of normal, but sometimes I live in a different world than you probably do. As I have Bipolar 2 — half the mania, all the depression! — my mania is mild and perhaps even functional, but my depression can be hard to fight. Most of the time my medication works; I have an excellent psychiatrist who keeps an eye on things. But sometimes it fails — I get my dosage wrong, I hit a very stressful time, the seasons change — and I am left to navigate through a slightly skewed landscape. When I am hypomanic, the colors are brighter, the lines sharper, and I imagine the trees glow with knowledge. When I’m depressed, I walk through the aftermath of a forest fire, in the snow.

I hope you don’t see me differently — no, I hope you do see me differently, as someone who is neurodiverse, whose brain is wired a little differently than yours. I hope you don’t see me as a curiosity, as a victim, or as an undesirable. My world takes fantastic turns in the the old sense of the word — tinged with grace and otherworldiness; tinged with horror. That’s all.

In the End, I’m Still a Writer.

I wake up at 5 AM US Central Standard Time every day — yes, I know that’s really, really early — so I have time for getting ready, and eating breakfast, and prepping for the day at work — and writing.

Yes, that’s how much writing has become a part of my life. It’s like a dysfunctional boyfriend. Writing flirts, it teases, it demands my attention on its schedule, and when I need it to be there for me, it flees, taking my ideas with me. Still, I can’t break up with writing, because it fascinates me. I sit at the coffeehouse and hope that writing will show up for me.

On the flipside, my imagination may be the chaos that writing seeks to tame. I, and my passions, may well be that muse that challenges me at coffee (“Tell me who you think I am”), who I have personified as an incarnation of Pan, all intensity and chaos, joy and panic, abandon of all things sensible. (I’ll admit this is disappointing in a way, because Pan is sexy as hell.)

I am the storm; I am the storm’s eye.

For this reason, I have to write.

Thank you for listening.

Ups and Downs — Bipolar, Academia, and Creativity

Now, Shelly and Lanetta, I’m not saying that I WILL write this book, and I’m not saying that I WON’T, but here’s the introduction:

*******

If you look around the walls of the main library at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, you may find the name Lauren Leach on a Bronze Tablet dated 1981. This denotes I graduated in the top three percent of my graduating class. It doesn’t tell the story of breaking down in my last semester of college with moods that could fluctuate from destitution to a mild euphoria in a matter of hours.

If you were to look at the faculty roster at a moderately selective regional university, you would be able to find me under my current name, Lauren Leach-Steffens, as an associate professor in Behavioral Sciences. You would not find the story that my prior department, Family and Consumer Sciences, had been disbanded, nor that the impending news of its demise caused a shockwave of stress that led to swings of terror and agitation, racing thoughts, and a month of less than two hours of sleep a night. I finally received a diagnosis for that episode and the myriad episodes I had experienced for most of my life — bipolar 2.

I could have kept my diagnosis a secret, as many people have throughout the ages, but then the only bipolar stories people would identify are those of addiction, disturbing behavior, suicide. The celebrities people vicariously watch and judge, the co-worker whose wake includes hushed voices behind the hand — yes, these people exist, but we assume that they will invariably break down in the middle of the street or die with a needle in their arm. We may even push them into those dark scenarios with our generation of stigma.

I’ve chosen to embrace the stigma. I can afford to — I am white, highly educated, a recipient of lifelong white privilege. I will not be shot in the street by cops, as has happened so many times with people of color. I’m not likely to lose my job unless I violate ethical standards or fail to do the essential responsibilities of the job. I think being open is a great way to use privilege for good. I would like to show people a story that doesn’t look like a sensationalistic biopic (which, truly, nobody with my condition truly resembles.)

This is why I tell stories.

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When I’m not being a professor — and even sometimes when I am, I tell stories. Many of the stories aren’t mine — for example, humorous typos from my students, an illustrative example in class, other people’s funny stories.

Some stories become writings. I write short stories based on my fantasies and dreams, I write novels based on my nightmares and my periodic feeling of hope, I write poetry when I want to get the most of my feelings into the tiniest number of words, I write songs because they’re contagious and a great way to spread ideas that need to be heard.

I write when I experience a transcendental moment and when I feel despair. I write when I look at someone and that moment tells me they’re so beautiful that I have to unburden that beauty onto paper. I write when I know that I will never know them. I write when climate change looks unstoppable.

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I think there’s always a little bipolar in my life even with the daily medication that causes me a handful of physical woes — manageable, a touch of moodiness here and there. You wouldn’t know it to talk to me, because I’ve been able to function through it all my life. But I tell stories through my ups and downs, small and big, because in the end, that’s the only way we will know each other’s stories, get to know each other — and ourselves.

Depression and how it feels

I stare out the window at a bleak landscape of snow and dead trees. I can’t go outside; the doors have drifted shut. The walls of the house whisper to me that I will always be trapped in this house and the others will leave me to die. Time passes; I can’t tell how much time, but now the walls tell me that when I die, I will have left nothing behind me. I will disappear as if I have never existed.
Nothing will change; nothing will ever change.
*****
Note: I’m not REALLY hearing the walls talk to me. This is figurative, damn it.
*****
I’ve been struggling with depression. It happens sometimes; if it persists or gets worse, I will have to see my doctor. I don’t usually struggle with my neurodiversity — i.e. not being wired like everyone else, which refers to a variety of mental differences one could have such as bipolar, autism spectrum and other mental health issues. However, when my moods go too far above or below the imaginary line of normal, I struggle.

You may have heard that depression is not just a “bad mood”, an accurate description. I can present to my students an enthusiastic facade. I can even be that enthusiastic, chipper person while I’m teaching. I can even “catch a mood” and feel chipper for a while afterward. But in depression, that state doesn’t last long, and I fall back to a feeling of hopelessness.

I’m ok; I’m doing what I need to do. My husband is keeping an eye on me.
Still, pop in and say hi if you’d like.

*****
It looks like I’ll still write — although I may not go the novel route for a while. I’ve never cared about getting anything else — like my poetry and essays — published, so I won’t deal with the rejection. I’m here because I think I have things worth saying.