Nothing Left to Lose

I’d like to get to where I have nothing left to lose with my writing. Not to stop writing, but to write without an external reason. Not for readers, not for recognition, not for money, not to see my name in print. Just for the sheer joy of writing (when it is joy; sometimes it’s tedium).

I’m not there yet. I don’t care so much about the money, having probably earned only a couple hundred dollars so far. But I want people to read my books, comment about my books, and like my books. I have books with five reviews or fewer (and I have no way of knowing how many copies they’ve sold).

My dream is to have people want to write fanfic about my books, which I would let them do, keeping in mind the restrictions of the world I’ve built. I’d like to be a non-evil version of Marion Zimmer Bradley. This is far from the desire listed above.

Maybe the desire not to care is because there’s such a gap between where I am and where I’d like to be. Like I shot for the stars and ended up in the neighbor’s backyard. On the other hand, the freedom of not caring is exhilarating.

A Quiet Day

It’s a Monday, a quiet Monday, with no visitors and an hour till class. I’m prepared for class, as prepared as I’m going to be. I even cleaned the sticky residue of stickers from my employer-supplied laptop. No chaos, no disasters.

Knock on wood.

It’s the first full week of classes, and if I think things will stay quiescent, I have learned nothing from my 23 years (24?) here. Something will happen, whether it’s me passing out from the residue of Goo Gone fumes, a student with an out-of-commission car (Oops, already happened!), or the Internet crashing. I don’t trust the calmness.

Frighteningly, I don’t relish the calmness. Not wishing a disaster on someone, but I like at least some activity in my office hours. The student who can’t find the supplemental book at the bookstore, the visitor asking for direction to an office, or the visit from a former student —

None of which is happening now.

I’ll keep you posted.

Taking Stock

I have readers!

I’ve discovered in the past few days that 33 people have read Kel and Brother Coyote Save the Universe. I don’t know how many people have read any of the Kringle books because I only find out about those who have reviewed it, but I have a few reviews on each. There are a few reviews on Gaia’s Hands as well. There is hope.

I would like more readers. Of course I would. One purpose of writing is to have something for people to read. I could act selflessly and deny that, but I don’t do selflessly well. My goals are to have a readership and maybe make enough money to defray the costs I incur for writing and editing programs, the occasional book cover, and conferences.

Mission and vision

My mission and vision are important. My mission is what I want to accomplish now and my vision is the dream.

My mission: To write books for geeks of all ages who like their fantasies romantic and their romances fantastic.

My vision: To write worlds interesting enough that other people want to play in them.

I’m definitely fulfilling my mission. I need more of a readership to fulfill my vision, although my husband has written in the Archetype universe.

From here

I think I need to post my mission and vision statements on the office wall, along with my two posters from books I created. This should focus me toward what’s important to me — the writing and the connecting.

I’m Already Tired

Yesterday was the first day of classes in my 28th year as a college professor (and my 48th first day of school). I had coffee with a colleague (Thanks, Amy!) My students kept me busy during office hours. My first class was lively, and my second class had the post-lunch sleepies, and then that first day went in the books.

I didn’t write when I got home; I was exhausted. I’d like to say the first day of classes didn’t exhaust me when I was younger, but I know better. It’s universally exhausting.

I’m still tired, and today’s my workday at home. Of course I have been working at home and haven’t had time for writing. Until now, so I’m taking this moment to blog, and hopefully will have time to write rather than just collapse into a nap. (I’ve done this already, too.)

If I were doing this right, I’d go to Starbucks for a coffee and some writing time. But then I’d have to get out of my sweats and put on a bra. (TMI?) What a dilemma.

Ahh, what to do. Time to make stuff happen… or not.

Weather and the Writer

I’m sitting by the window at Starbucks. My husband sits across from me, finishing his first screenplay, based on my first Christmas novel. The Kringle Conspiracy has sold a few copies, and I have distributed free copies to almost 5000 people on BookFunnel in exchange for registration on my mailing list.

It looks like it wants to rain out. It rained earlier, but we could use more rain. I could use more rain, wind, and petrichor to remind me that summer will be over soon. I talk about the weather a lot, because the weather always surrounds us and engages our senses.

Writers use weather to inform their scenes, but not always in the way we expect. Do happily ever afters always happen under sunny skies with rainbows? I can see scenarios where the last scene, the big kiss, happens in the pouring rain, or in a snowstorm. Each of those would communicate two different feels — the pouring rain might be tempestuous or cathartic, the snowstorm cozy or threatening. A battle in a torrential rainstorm would be grueling, but on a sunny day, be ironic.

I want you to take a moment and imagine some weather, either some that you love or some you hate. Then tell a story about what happens in that weather, describing the air, the sky, the precipitation (if any). Make the scene about the weather and what happens in this weather. Write it down.

Photo by Ralph W. lambrecht on Pexels.com

You are now a writer!

Forcing Myself to Write, Pt. 2

Today, I went to Starbucks with my husband, who was definitely going to hold me to being there for at least two hours. I actually got 1000 words done, which is more than I’ve written for a couple months. I’ll have to force myself to write now that the fall semester is about to start!

Forced to Write

I haven’t written in a while, having spent some time querying and some time prepping for classes and some time traveling the past two weeks. But I’m here at Starbucks, waiting for my husband to show up for lunch. It’s only 10:45 and I expect him here at 11:30. Or noon. And I have to do something.

So I’m forced to write, starting with this blog. The words are flowing out after feeling blocked for the longest time. From here, I’m going to look at Maker’s Seeds and see what might have inspired me in the hiatus and tweak, then find new purchase in the story.

Maybe I should trap myself into writing more often. That should be a good way of forcing me to write.

Rituals (again?)

The semester is approaching, and I’m sitting in the neighborhood Starbucks. Two days until my freedom (such as it was) ends, and my fall semester begins.

Rituals and the new school year

Fall semester, for faculty, begins with an all-faculty and staff picnic at the Pavilion on campus. It’s a ritual, one of many that start the school year. The Friday meetings (I’m booked from 8-4 and expect my eyes to glaze over by then), fireworks, even cleaning my office and buying office supplies I don’t need are my beginning of semester rituals. (I tried to convince my husband that a new iPhone fit the category of something I didn’t need but he didn’t jump on it.)

Rituals as a part of my life

I am a great fan of rituals. Perhaps this comes from my childhood as a marginal Roman Catholic that helped me spot rituals in the least likely places (like a Quaker meeting) and caused me to make my own. Rituals help me focus, help me change my direction or rededicate myself to my intentions.

For example, let’s take the shopping for office equipment. Even though I do almost all my work on computers, I still associate pencils and pens with cognitive work and scissors and markers with creativity. Hence my ritual of buying those for the new school year. To be honest, I do use them (although with the markers, not as often as I should.)

Applying this to writing

I’ve been struggling with writing lately, focusing instead on marketing and this blog and TikTok. I wonder if rituals would help me in writing as much as they help me at the beginning of the semester. A new start, a refocus — I need this in my writing because I have drifted away from writing again.

What would be a good ritual to start me writing again? I asked my husband, whose response was “I don’t know”. Guess I’m on my own for this.

I don’t think I need new pens for motivation. I might need to do something in the office to make it feel more mine and less like some place my husband has sentenced me to. I used to work in the living room, and I felt more motivated because I wasn’t alone. The office is small and cluttered, and there is little to be done about it because much of it is items needing to be filed with no room to file them.

A ritual … I’m going to have to think about it.

A Conversation with my Family

I spent time with my family for the first time in over two years (longer in a couple of cases). COVID and distance kept me away from them; time passed faster than I noticed. But here I am in my hometown, catching up with my family.

My family, for the most part, talks a lot. Much of our communication manifests itself in storytelling. Seldom does someone ask a leading question like “How was your hotel?”, although those happen, particularly from the men in the family (outnumbered by females.) We tell our business through stories, we relate to each other through stories.

My older niece Robyn pointed out that the meaning and context of words is very important to our family. She’s right; we pay attention to these things and pride ourselves on the use of words. It would be understandable to think we’re a college-educated family, yet I am the only one who has gone to college.

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

As an illustration, Robyn launched into a discussion of swear words and what they mean in context. In a church-run coffee shop, with judicious use of the F-word. (I thought we would get thrown out of the place because the owners didn’t understand that F*ck meant different things in different contexts.) My niece Rachel expressed her preference for non-swearing creative phrases. As she is an artist, this is not surprising. Nor is it surprising that Robyn, who plays on a co-ed hockey team, dropped an approximate 18 F-bombs. My F-bomb use was limited to six or eight.

The introverts in the family (my dad and sister) ask questions and impart information. I suspect they despair at getting a word in edgewise. My husband is also an introvert, and he sits in the corner and interjects things so that nobody can hear him over the loud conversation. I thought I’d become an introvert in my old age, but if I can hold my own in my family, I figure I must be an extrovert still.

I find myself tired after a conversation with my family. Stretching back into our histories, slipping into challenge, playing with words, putting forth ideas — all that invigoration takes a toll on me. But I’m spoiled with conversation like this, so I have to get it when I can.

The Trip to New York Hope

(Strange things are happening to my font and typeface size here. I’ll try to work with it.)

I just returned from a road trip from far Northwest Missouri to Oriskany, New York (near Utica) and back. My husband and I, five youngsters (college age), and two fellow faculty members, piled into a 15-person university van and drove cross-country to arrive at New York Hope, a disaster training exercise. (I have written earlier about my responsibilities for the exercise, making people look like disaster victims.)

Photo by u0412u0430u043bu044cu0434u0435u043cu0430u0440 on Pexels.com

And it was a trip. Highlights of the trip included:

The buddy show in the front seat. The retired Brigadier General and the younger modern historian bond over a couple thousand miles in close quarters. Hilarity ensues.
The first night’s stopover. We arrive at a church camp after some twenty miles of gravel in the middle of the dark to this rustic modern-in-the-80’s main office, the place where one registers. Only nobody is there. After 20 minutes, someone comes in to inform us we were not on the register. As we had registered (or so we thought), much tense discussion ensued. We produce an email trail that proves that we had started the process but that it had not been completed. The camp gives in and assigns us to the Retreat House.
Ah, yes. The Retreat House. A fine example of a shingled 1920s home renovated in the 1970s and painfully neglected since then. The place smelled of disuse and wood rot. I was not expecting ornate, and in fact have spent enough time in church camps that I expected primitive. I did not expect a miasma of trapped wood rot. Bonus: The odd accumulation of kitchen appliances which included an avocado range next to an old commercial oven.
Moulage duty. Four of our role-players were high schooler/middle schoolers who were an absolute riot to work with. We got to give them various bruises, bumps, lacerations, broken bones, and gunshot wounds. The adults were fun, too, but we bonded with the younger ones over cat pictures and stories.
Stewarts’ ice cream. We wanted dessert, and I introduced the crowd to Stewarts’, a New York gas station chain with ice cream. I’ve never seen people as mad about ice cream as New Yorkers. I won bonus points for that suggestion.
The flat tire pulling into Cleveland. Luckily, it was a slow flat, so we didn’t get stranded in the middle of the interstate. We ate lunch, got the tire fixed, and went on our merry way back to the Retreat House.
Arriving back home, finally. Blissfully, incredibly. Only to get a message from one of our younger passengers that he had a positive COVID test. Yay. So far I’m negative.

What did you do over your summer vacation?