The Spiritual Struggles of a Doubter

I wanted to write about belief, and in particular my uncertain belief in a higher power. I abandoned the first draft of the blog entry in frustration.

I believe in something, but I feel more comfortable among the atheists. They seem to have some humility about their position in the universe. (I’ve not met the megalomaniacal type of atheist who sees the lack of a God as the reason to commit evil, which is what Christianity told me exists with all atheists.)

The “Price is Right” God

Some believe an all-powerful God picks favorites. I’ve heard this done by gender, by beliefs, by zealousness of practice, by denomination, by race, by social status, by sexuality. Believers enhance their position with God by hating who God purportedly hates, which is people not like them. His favorites get blessings (material or social). Very rich ministers assure the flocks that God will bring them riches. If they’re good, God will shower the believers with good things. His rejected have bad things happen to them.

I can’t buy that view of a higher power. A deity who needs worship from bribing worshippers with blessings and withholding them from people who may actually need them seems too insecure to be allowed all that omnipotence. It also turns a sacred relationship into a game show.

If I could make my own higher power

I don’t believe in the game show God. To be honest, I don’t know if I believe in God at all. My belief certainly wavers, and so I feel so much kinship with doubters of any stripe.

But if I could design my own higher power, She wouldn’t ask for church attendance; rather, She would be always available for conversations. We would not call that “prayer” because of the baggage from religion so many carry. I wouldn’t have to prove my worthiness by rejecting those not like me. She would not judge so that all the different denominations, beliefs, sexualities, genders, etc. could find her. I would find her better with other people than I am.

She would not be responsible for good things or bad things happening to people. Those things would happen without Her. I could not go to Her for divine intervention, to fix the problems in my life, no matter how severe, because She doesn’t fix things or make things happen.

Her blessings would be different. Instead of riches or life-changing events, She would give support. She would give me the strength to tackle my own problems. Open my eyes to a different way of seeing things, like opportunities and different perspectives, so I could grow just a little more.

I would be angry at my higher power sometimes because I would want her to make it easy for me or keep bad things from happening or perform my view of justice. But to expect her to do my bidding would cheapen Her, she who is Love to all.

Maybe a strange metaphor

This morning, I said to my husband, “I think I liked it better when grocery stores looked a little bit beat up.” Richard didn’t know what I was talking about, not unusual when talking to me. But I explained.

When I was young, grocery stores weren’t shiny. They had been renovated in the optimistic late 50s, weathered bravely through the Bay of Pigs invasion and Kennedy’s assassination, and visited by mothers with Green Stamp books at hand…

I stop here, and realize I’ve gotten old enough to reminisce.

The stores of my childhood seem foreign even to me now. The genteel and struggling drug store with its soda fountain, sitting across the street from a corporate store that would itself later struggle to survive. The cluttered dime store, where my sister and I spent too much money on fragrances in child-friendly lemon and lilac. The department store we meandered through, its subdued light stealing the color from the merchandise.

I reminisce, and maybe I didn’t like the world of my childhood after all, the one reflected by those stores. It was as if my community had given up when the post-war bounty faded. Maybe we hadn’t learned our lessons in small towns, nor were we immune to the edict that rules the world: “Change or Die”. We did not open our eyes to the world or touch the hands of people who came from different places than we did. We stayed uninfluenced by new ideas. Our stores reflected us.

I will look at that shiny store differently now, as I try the cafeteria’s latest concept (which may fail, as new things sometimes do) and walk down the aisles where people say hello and not everyone comes from the same place I do.

Postscript — My home still has problems despite this metaphor. Although we have a university with an appreciable international student population, Black peoples still face discrimination and harassment here. Things are not shiny, but there is a glimmer of hope.

Sunday Afternoon

This morning started with a discovery

Apparently, according to some reading about ADHD I stumbled across, people with ADHD have trouble with non-verbal working memory (referred to in one article as visuospatial working memory). I probably have ADHD given my family history. In addition, I struggle with visual and spatial stuff. I can’t remember what someone looks like very well. Maybe after 50 times. This includes my husband — I didn’t know for a couple of years if I could recognize him in a crowd. I let him walk toward me before I approached him.

Apparently, people with non-verbal memory problems have trouble visualizing, including visualizing what a successful result looks like. Does this relate to my writing crisis, where I’m not sure if I’m doing “well enough”?

Planting thyme

I segued from analyzing my mind to planting herbs. We have a hill of rip-rap, upon which the past residents laid a bare layer of dirt on top of. I planted herbs there; the mint loved the bottom of the hill but the top killed off whatever was planted there. So my husband and I laid soil at the top and planted herbs. I love to cook, and I like fresh herbs.

I’m a little tired now, but closer to the completion of the planting season. Looking forward to lovage in my soup and mint in my namya (Thai noodle dish).

Music in the evening

Listening to a new singer-songwriter playlist as I type this. It’s a good day. All I have to do is sort out the writing thing and try to figure out how to visualize success to motivate myself. Any ideas?

A Writer with Identity Issues

The advice about understanding one’s writing market seems to be what’s screwing up m y identity as a writer.

My identity crisis started when a developmental editor told me I was writing romance. ‘Ok,’ I thought, ‘I guess that’s what I’m writing.’ But I wasn’t writing the same type of storylines as the romance writers around me wrote. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but my writing wasn’t as outrageous as theirs. No ultra-rich bosses, no reverse-harems, no bad boys saved from a lonely, incorrigible future, and no alpha wolf shapeshifters redeemed by the love of the pack’s reject. No space aliens of exceptional prowess. I will not disparage these, as these genres make buckets of money, and I do not.

The thing, though, is that those topics don’t speak to me. I write fantasy grounded in the real world, with a few variables tweaked. Sometimes there is a romantic subtext; in one case (Gaia’s Hands) the main story line is a relationship framed by unusual happenings and a personal vendetta against the protagonists. There is one commonality in my writing: The fantasy world hides in plain sight among the familiar. I don’t write escapist fantasy or romance.

Today I heard the phrase ‘literary romance’ as a contrast to ‘escapist romance’, and suddenly I felt like I had found a home. Literary romance, literary fantasy. Something to hold on to, something to be, after feeling totally out of place in (escapist) romance.

I have a writing market, and I have to learn the rules of the market, once I figure out if I actually belong there. Literary romance, literary fantasy. Now there’s the problem — I don’t know if my work truly fits there. I’m not sure it matters as much to me as it does to the writing markets. At least I hope not.

I guess I haven’t resolved my identity issues yet.

Taglines

What to say about a book

I’ve written this fantasy book that hasn’t been “discovered yet”. Part of the reason it hasn’t is that I haven’t done a good job of selling it. Maybe it’s impostor syndrome; maybe it’s my inability to write good taglines. But here goes:

Gaia’s Hands

Professor Jeanne Beaumont designs oases of edible plants. Josh Young, English instructor, sees visions of danger approaching Jeanne and her talent for making plants grow inches overnight. Josh’s visions prove true as Josh and Jeanne install her dream garden — to face trial by fire.
Professor Jeanne Beaumont’s plants grow impossibly lusher and taller when she talks to them. Josh Young sees visions of Jeanne surrounded by a vast garden with a violent storm on the way. Josh and Jeanne must weather dire events and their eerie adversary — and they will face fire in Jeanne’s most ambitious garden.
Josh Young sees a vision of horticulturist Jeanne Beaumont standing in a lush garden, facing a deadly storm. He must work with her to help her face her talent of making plants grow inches a day. Soon they face an ever-increasing threat which will try them by fire.

So, any of these? None of these? I’ll try longer ones later.

Writing Retreat

Barn swallows dance

Out the window of the cabin, I watch the barn swallows preen themselves. Blue-black shoulders and rusty chests. They soar and flutter to catch their daily quota of bugs, and then they preen.

A big guy has arrived to weed whack in the backyard, startling the swallows. He’s wearing a Bearcats Football t-shirt. He’s probably a football player. Football players don’t get cushy jobs here in Bearcat Nation. That’s part of why we have the best Division II football program in the US —

Richard is not here — he’s at work. I’m at work, too, if you count the emails I have been answering. It’s hardly a job; I’m down to about 3-5 per day from the 40-some during the school year. Hence the mini-vacation.

Hence the writing retreat.

I will only be here a day or so; I relish a mini-vacation, a writing retreat, a hope that I will reclaim myself as a writer. Small steps, this blog first. A cognitive exercise if I need to dissipate my feelings of mediocrity. And at least a few words of writing.

The writing is the hard part

Inertia is the supreme force of human nature. Remain still, and one will find the couch incredibly tempting. Force oneself off the couch, and movement and industry flow. I am not a vegetative sort; I enjoy making things happen.

Right now, I am facing my nightmare of inertia: I am away from my other time demanding activities, the gardening and the researching thereof, and I don’t know if I want to get off the couch. It’s like being tired of the thing that gives one identity.

One of those procrastination tricks.

I will now trick myself into writing. Richard says I only need to write a little, so I will promise myself 15 minutes. If I can’t write more than that, I’ve done my bit of writing. If I can write longer than that, then I’m breaking the barrier of inertia.

Gang Aft Agley

(Bonus: What does the above line come from and what does it mean?)

My plan is not working

I put prompts in my calendar to remind me to write in this blog every other day and post a TikTok every other day. So far, I’m three blogging days behind, although I did my TikTok this morning, after a fashion. This self-promotion thing is not going very well.

Next to tackle — my fears

I know what’s impeding my writing — any of my writing. All of my writing, from books to blogs to Facebook posts — the fear that I’m not good enough at writing. The fear that I am, in fact, boring.

Therefore, the block to my writing is psychological, and since I teach in a behavioral science department at the local college, this should be easy. Except that my discipline is not psychology. And I don’t do well psychoanalyzing myself. Oh, and things that hinder me erect roadblocks that make it harder to resolve them.

For example, I think I don’t write interestingly enough. In my heart, I feel it. The lack of sales/readership seems to support my feelings. I know I don’t promote enough, and I know that focusing on the bad is confirmation bias, but my mind still fixates on the failure and my suspected reasons for it.

What my psychology friends would tell me to do

I don’t consult my psychology friends at work, because 1) Most of them aren’t clinical psychologists, or psychologists who see patients; 2) It’s not cool to ask psychologists for therapy for free; and 3) I would end up with messy dual relationships — therapist AND friend? Ugly. So, truly, they would tell me to F* off if I asked. (You didn’t expect this paragraph to go like this, did you?)

But I know better, because I’ve had Therapy with a capital T, owing to the lifespan of baggage that comes from childhood trauma and bipolar disorder. And, as therapy at its best provides a set of tools one can use to manage themselves, I can go back to the learning experiences of therapy and find a tool to use with myself.

Today’s tool is called cognitive-behavioral therapy, specifically the journaling piece. The aim of the journaling is to contradict what are called cognitive distortions, which are thought processes that do not make logical sense. I will illustrate below:

Thought: “I must be a boring writer.”

What I would have said before: “You’re not a boring writer. Some people have read you. It’s just a matter of marketing. You’re really not a terrible writer.” I can counter-argue everything I just said because it’s a combination of opinion and not-very-comforting facts.

Placation doesn’t work. Try demolishing the illogical:

“I must be a boring writer.”

This is an all-or-nothing statement: There’s a lot between boring and best-seller. Are you saying everyone thinks you’re boring?
This is a mind-reading statement. How do you know how people think about your writing?
This statement is “awfulizing”. Is “boring” a realistic assumption regarding your writing?

Note that I’ve argued the merits of the statement this time, not perceptions of reality.

Now, I replace these thoughts with new thinking:

I have come a long way since I started writing and have clearly gotten better.
The people who haven’t read my book can’t call it boring.

And finally, a call to action:

I will make a promotion/marketing plan and stick to it.

I will continue to write.

It’s been pretty therapeutic to type this out, suggesting that I could use this more often. Maybe I’m ready to write today.

Time to Face my Existential Crisis

Officially done with Spring semester!

This past week was everything a finals week could be: Students missing finals because I told them the wrong time, students sleeping in, potential academic dishonesty (it wasn’t), a good annual review, a lovely lunch with my colleagues, plants coming into the mail to remind me that there will be gardens … a great finals week.

Now for the existential crisis

I can’t postpone my confrontation with my writing any longer. I make excuses: I have to make a batch of bokashi to raise my compost game. After the semester, I should take a break.

No, it’s going to happen now. I’m going to confront my feelings about writing right here and now.

Artwork by Edvard Munch by The Art Institute of Chicago is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

Who I am as a writer

This is the first issue for me as a writer: who I am. I write fantasy with some relationship elements. I write fantasy romance.

Most of what I have let out to the public, however (as opposed to most of what I’ve written) is the fantasy romance Kringle Chronicles. Those books are fun, relaxing, and put me in the holiday mood.

The problem is that I am not a romance writer. I have hung out with romance writers, and they talk about (in harmony) things I do not at all want to read or write: alpha males, shape-shifters, explicit sex scenes (I’m not anti-sex, I’m anti-unrealistic-sex), BDSM, and just everything over the top.

It’s about fantasies. And I can fantasize a lot about things, to where I’ve had my writing considered very original, but I want my relationships to be reasonably, well, healthy. I want my readers to think about the possible.

And this is where the crisis starts

We writers are told to write from the heart. My heart, whether in fantasy or romance, wants the people to be real and complex. In my fantasies, we have realistic characters thrown into fantastic situations. In my romance, same thing, except that the developing relationship is the primary plot point.

And I’m not sure what I’m doing sells. People apparently want alpha werewolves who are deadly but just and protective toward their mate, who until they showed up was the bullied and rejected waif (this is the synopsis of about 14 novels advertised to me on Facebook).

The crisis is that I can’t write this.

I write with the attitude that the alpha werewolf and the beleaguered waif don’t need a story. They’ve had a story for millennia. If I’m going to write Cinderella, I’m going to write it in a way that someone hasn’t done before — Cinderella is a librarian who has nothing but hard work and her garden, until a mysterious neighbor named Dane Prince sweeps her off her feet — but then she has to save him from the land of Faerie. (Actually, I am writing that story — it’s one story I’ve taken a break from).

But that’s the lingering feeling. I don’t know if the world needs my stories. I don’t know if I care about that, if my stories are good. If I found out that my stories nourished people, but the stories that sold were popcorn stories, I would want to keep writing nourishing stories.

But I don’t even know if my stories are nourishing, because I’ve had trouble selling them.

Which brings me to the other thing: marketing

I don’t sell books because I am terrible at marketing. I am terrible at bringing myself to carry out the strategies of marketing and pretty bad at the strategies themselves. Post on Twitter 12x/day? Write an interesting newsletter? An eye-catching visual on Instagram? Heaven forbid, a video on Tik tok?

Again, I write what my heart tells me to, and I’m afraid it’s boring.

What it boils down to

I know what this boils down to: I think too much, and more than anything, I think I’m boring. If anyone has a solution to that, let me know.

The Summer Beckons

The gentle breezes call me …

I am 5 hours away from summer. My office hours (which I’m sitting in right now) are deathly quiet as students are taking exams or packing to leave. Some will graduate this week and find new lives. Others will return, and I will have a small portion of them in my classes. The cycle of my life, organized around the school year, turns again.

Then again

It turns out that my calendar has filled in, at least for tomorrow morning. One interview with the local news channel about Biden’s student loan initiative and my annual review with my boss. I took a break from writing this to answer the phone, which shattered my glorious plans for doing nothing tomorrow. Oh well, maybe I can eat a peaceful lunch today.

After a Hiatus

I’ve been fine …

I’ve just been very busy. That’s something built in to the month of April at a university — finishing class instruction, grading end-of-semester assignments, shepherding interns through the search and sign-up processes. And then there are the plants and the gardens. I think I have over-committed, but as always, it’s how I roll.

Feeling the breezes of Spring

This is the first Spring semester I can say has flown by quickly, even though we had inconvenient snowfall through March and even into April. Today the apple blossoms sway outside my office window and my youngest cat, Chloe, stares out.

Chloe turns 1 today, so perhaps she’s celebrating.

I’ll be celebrating soon. By the end of the week, I will be in full summer mode, where I have about 1/4 of the work I normally have, with a largely open schedule for three months. This means time to blog, to organize my thoughts, and to get past thinking about writing into actually writing.

Winter is behind me. Time to enjoy.