If I had a tagline, it would be the tagline for humans in the book TheHitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is “mostly harmless”. I’m pretty innocuous, being almost 60 and overweight and thus doubly invisible to the general public. I write relatively light romantic fantasy (If I weren’t female I don’t know if it would register as romantic at all, given gender biases). I have a silly sense of humor. My only vice is sweets.
I didn’t say entirely harmless. That suggests there is some small fragment of dangerous in me. After some soul-searching, I’d have to say that it’s my ability to argue. I have logic, metaphors, and a great bullshit detector on my side.
I consider my ability to argue dangerous because it can change minds. Sometimes. There are some people who don’t want their minds to be changed, who cling to falsehoods and spurious sources. They want to argue to convince themselves they’re right. I will find the truth in their statements and abridge my arguments, and if they’re right, I will change my mind.
Truth is dangerous. This is why little old me is “mostly harmless”.
I am, as you might have guessed from my content, a writer. As a writer, I have favorite places to write, and not-so-favorite places to write. I don’t pretend to be representative of all writers, but I think I have commonalities with many other writers.
I have three criteria when it comes to writing: comfort, space, and activity level. I look for optimal levels of each, not necessarily maximum level. And when I find an optimal place, I really can write better.
Comfort
I look first at comfort. There is an optimal level of comfort that is neither too little nor too much. That may sound counterintuitive, but there is such a thing as too much comfort. Too much comfort and I fall asleep in my chair, which is not conducive to writing. I find the chairs at my local Starbucks, especially the ones at the round tables, friendly to my back. The other corporate coffee place in town has chairs that are at best indifferent, while the booths are downright hostile. Nothing says “Grab your coffee and get out” quite like those booths. At home I have a Serta desk chair (used; love those bargains!) that makes my office very comfortable, and a couch downstairs that’s slightly less comfortable.
My second criterion is space. This refers both to the confines of the room and the physical atmosphere. Despite the Serta desk chair and the dual large screens, I have trouble writing in my office for very long because of the space. The office is a small, cluttered room where one can’t stretch out without hitting something. The desk (actually a library table) abuts the wall and I find myself staring at the wall when I need to think between words. My eyes take up the clutter and it makes me grumpy. I’m just not going to warm up to the office to write unless this is fixed. The living room loveseat is a far better place to write space wise. I am not crowded unless I let too many books pile up. Coffeehouses have wonderful space, neither too crowded nor too spacious. There is art on the walls, textures in wall coverings and furniture.
Activity Level
Third, I pay attention to activity level, the stirrings of things around me. At home, on the loveseat, there are cats to help me write and short breaks to check the mail or drink hot beverages. The office is quiet and no cats allowed. Music helps, but it gives me nothing to look at during breaks except the Internet, which is a black hole my attention gets sucked into. Writing in public — cafés, hotel lobbies, libraries — usually gives me the right balance of activity level to quiet. Public places, such as my aforementioned Starbucks, can get too noisy at times but overall are just busy enough.
Conclusion
First off, I need to do something with the office to make it more conducive to writing. I’m talking with my husband right now about this. Working with the door open (which increases perception of space and allows cats inside) may be helpful. Playing music may help. Getting a coffee machine in there might be asking too much.
Second, Starbucks will be a regular destination for me as long as they have comfortable seats and coffee drinks (which is part of their corporate mission, so forever).
Finally, I will need to keep going on writing retreats (to places with excellent coffeehouses or lobbies with computer tables).
There are ways around the disaster of an uncomfortable place to write: fix up the place or go elsewhere. I can do some of both.
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
Three books that have had an impact on me. Hmm… I’m glad the prompt is not “THE three books that have had an impact on you” because there have been many more than three.
The three I’m thinking about right now are all in the fantasy genre because that’s what I’ve been reading most of my life, and because I write in those genres. Keep in mind that I’m almost sixty years old, and so are some of these books. I consider them foundational in my life.
The first book is not just a book, but a series: The Dark Is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper. Before we had categories like young adult and middle school, these books appeared in my small town junior high library. Our librarian recommended them to me, and my life changed. People my age facing mythological beings, trying to stop the forces of evil — I know, it sounds like a thousand stories. But dressed in British folk custom, with evocative descriptions, I could read it again as an adult.
The second book was one I was turned on to in college, and it has stayed with me as if I’d read it yesterday. The book is Godbody by Theodore Sturgeon, in which an itinerant man leaves interpersonal miracles in his wake. Is he the second coming of Jesus? The parallels of the narrative suggest so. The book advocates a less hierarchical, more personal relationship with God, and a view of love that transcends the restrictive culture of man. This book has informed my view of religion and spirituality and continues to do so.
The third book is, again, a series, and a lengthy one. The series is Darkover, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and I cannot post this without mentioning the serious and credible allegations against Bradley made by her daughter Moira Greyland. It’s with some uneasiness that I put Bradley’s books on my list.
Darkover isn’t just a series, it’s a world. Not a perfectly realized world, but one where characters recur from book to book, where the reader can trace a family tree over a few hundred years. There’s lore and reputation and conflict — this has been as attractive to its fans as its sword and sorcery, with psychic powers substituted for the magic. Darkover fans have done genealogy with the characters, developed persona in the world, and made a role-playing society of it. I have taken my love of character development, convoluted relationships, and my dream of creating an all-absorbing world from Darkover.
So there are my three books. As I’ve said, there are many others. But these are perhaps the most influential of the fiction items.
Right now, I am in the lobby of the DoubleTree in Chesterfield, MO. I’m writing at a computer table. And I am freezing. Mind you, very seldom in my life am I cold, much less freezing. I am jiggling my foot under the table to keep from turning into an icicle.
This is a business hotel, which means they have a Conference Center, which is a fancy way to say a building with conference rooms. They have a decent cafe for breakfast and lunch and really bad coffee for guests, and they have a broken thermostat in the lobby.
I wish I had a swimsuit. The pool would be warm, right? Warmer than this lobby.
I could go upstairs to my room to write at what is euphemistically called a desk, right? That setup where my face is approximately a foot from the wall? I like a little space myself, which is why I’m out in the lobby at the computer table. It’s a nice computer table.
Eventually it will be lunchtime, and I will go into the slightly warmer cafe to have something that will warm me up.
I suppose if worse comes to worst, I can grab the duvet off the bed, wrap it around me, and sit in the lobby. Nobody would notice, right?
I have an irrational fear and have had it for most of my life, which is quite a few years. Hydrophobiaphobia (I’m told this is what it’s called) is fear of contracting rabies. I fear that someday some animal is going to bite me, or even slobber on me, and I am never going to see it again, and then I’m going to get rabies and die.
Dying is almost inevitable in rabies. Only 29 people have survived rabies ever. Even with the Milwaukee protocol, a method of supportive treatment, most don’t survive. Luckily, rabies is rare. Only one to three people in the US die of rabies each year. This is in part because of the over 60,000 preventive vaccine series given each year.
That does not stop me from my fear. I’m better than I used to be as a kid when I would pet cats and dogs and ask myself if they’d bitten me and I just couldn’t remember. I would lose sleep at night checking for brain malfunction.
Nowadays, I just worry a bit and keep an extra close eye on my cats. It’s necessary because we have bats in the house. Cute, fuzzy little rabies vectors that cats like to play with. So it’s a matter of vaccinating the cats and making sure to bring the bats in to the Public Health Department to test for rabies. I think about the actions it takes to get the treatment if it comes to that. And my fear is much better, because I have a solution.
One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about living in Maryville is what I call the Silly Season. It runs from April through July, and it features little oddities that I’m not sure most college towns (or towns of any sort) have to weather.
The Silly Season usually starts on campus with art projects. Like giant rubber duckies on Colden Pond, or a doorframe set up in the middle of the sidewalk. The Northwest Yeti. Little things like that. Then it spreads to the town, with horses at the local drive-in tied to the order kiosk and a large cow in the grocery store parking lot. Not so much madness as a head-shake and a chuckle. This is our excitement. It’s slow around here.
That has not happened this year. Nothing has startled a smile out of me on campus, nothing unusual has been sighted in town, not even a Weinermobile. I am worried that the Silly Season has expired in Maryville, and I miss it.
It might be time for me to figure out how to revive the season. The trick is that one cannot try too hard to be silly. One can try to get attention, but not try to dictate what kind of attention one gets. And the most important thing, one has to do it without any self-consciousness. One gives in to the awkwardness and goes all-out. It’s the difference between wearing a mascot costume and doing that mascot dance wholeheartedly.
I have too much self-consciousness lately, and I blame my meds for that. Bipolar has a great correlation with unabashed weirdness, but it has a great correlation with other things I’d rather do without. If I had less, though, I’d consider adding some silly to people’s lives here. Set up (with the proper permits) a lemonade stand downtown. Walk in bunny ears through Walmart. Put signs on my car reading “Lauren Leach-Steffens for Whatever” in campaign style. And more.
I hope the Silly Season comes back. It’s good for some Facebook posts from home.
I feel a detachment from the outside world, which dresses itself in an indecisive grey-blue sky. I want it to thunder, with a torrent of rain. Life has gotten dusty.
I dress myself in an equivocal mood: I want to stand in the deluge; I want to rest inside.
Everyone I’ve run into today has struggled with today being Tuesday. They must have had a good Memorial Day weekend.
Mine was restful. Almost too restful, as I slept in and read all day. I got a blog post done, some writing, a bit of fretting about writing. I ate grilled bison burgers and some roasted Brussels sprouts. Hence a Tuesday that feels like Monday.
A little kid at the next table in Starbucks just asked “Today is Tuesday?” So it’s even happening to the younger generation. What day is it? It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?
But isn’t it great to discover that it’s Tuesday, and the work week is one day shorter? That extra day off gives an extra bonus at the end of the week when Friday should be Thursday. It’s a new, happy kind of math.
I’m going to go home and get some work done, with an internal smile that today’s Tuesday and not Monday.
What does “having it all” mean to you? Is it attainable?
One of the things I have taught and researched is well-being. Studies in economic well-being explain that when people are asked whether they’re satisfied with their income, they respond that they would like (on average) ten percent more. I suspect that if the researcher would ask them in terms of material wealth, that 10% more would hold. So money and material goods — can we have it all? Apparently not.
And if it’s not money that becomes the confining resource, it’s time. As we only get 24 hours in a day, we find ourselves making decisions on where we put our time — work, relationships, hobbies and side hustles, family obligations, relaxation. We can buy substitutes for our time: restaurant meals, nannies, maids, time-saving appliances, but they only go so far.
In other words, our expectations expand with our acquisitions. If we don’t have a car, we want one. If we get a car, we want a new or better car. A new set of dishes. A bigger house to put all the things we’ve bought into. A Roomba. A hot tub. An RV. Jewelry and paintings. A professional level kitchen …
We can’t have it all unless we define our own “all”, which will require us to go against what might be our innate human nature. Can we decide we’ve acquired enough? There’s lots of advantages to this. Less stress, more room in the house or apartment, fewer things in landfills, less need to have yard sales. Some would argue more time with people because we have to work less to buy things.
I’m going to find time to write today. I will not be a writer if I neglect the writing. First, I have to take the dead bat that my cats were all playing with to the Health Department to make sure it doesn’t have rabies. Good jolly morning we’re having here, especially if you’re the poor dead bat.
I’ve been thinking of Gaia’s Hands, and that one of my friends considered it “a fun read”. I never thought of it as a fun read, but I guess in some ways it is. A sentient monster vine, a rampant green thumb, an unlikely romance, a bad folksinger*, a little snark.
It also has escalating acts of aggression within academia, scientific method**, a breakup, a menacing presence, and computer espionage.
Ok, honestly, I can see how it would be a fun read. My favorite line in the book is when Josh, the male main character, says “Everyone has to start somewhere” at what might be an inconvenient time. Read it if you want to know how inconvenient a time.
