The Shortest Hiatus

Twenty minutes

That’s how long it took for me to get back into writing yesterday.

So much for my “I think I’m going to take a break from writing” spell. I guess I’ve become a writer after all.

A strange hobby

Writing is a strange hobby. It doesn’t cost much at first, only the cost of paper and writing implements, or the cost of a computer. It’s not as expensive as woodworking or sewing, and one can get results with very little practice. The writer can even show the results to friends, neighbors, or the entire Internet,

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

Then, the writer gets the notion in their head that they’re going to get published. After failing at that, there’s one of two places to go: give up on being published, or hone one’s craft. Writing is addictive, however, and the writer gets drunk on possibility. The writer gets pulled down the path of honing one’s craft.

Honing one’s craft is not cheap. Workshops on structuring the story, software that helps edit, developmental editors — all cost money, and quite a bit of money. But the writer gets better, and tries to publish again, because it’s become part of the hobby. A lot of rejections follow. Sometimes the writer decides to self-publish, but sharpening one’s skills and improving one’s writing still takes priority because writers want to be recognized for their best work.

However, writing intoxicates — an elixir of possibility bubbles up whenever one takes up the pen. Writing mesmerizes its practitioners — they feel the quality of the words, the patterns they make as the words are read. Writing tantalizes — visions of the pinnacle of their art as they finish the last word of a document.

It’s a hell of a hobby.

Doing Nothing

The last few days

I’m facing the last few days before my fall semester starts, and I don’t want to do anything. No writing, no advertising, no anything but binge-watch British medical documentaries.

I may just indulge this need to do nothing. I really haven’t taken breaks from writing for about seven years. Between writing and editing, I’ve been writing for seven years. Almost every day.

A few days won’t hurt. Maybe I’ll get some inspiration, or another book ready for queries.

Or, at least, some rest.

(Anyone putting bets on when I’ll quit my break?)

Waking Myself Up

On the stereo: Funk Essentials

It’s 6:30 AM (or ‘six AM in the morning’ as they say around here). I’ve been up since 5 but not quite awake.

Sometimes, in the mornings, I just have to turn the music up to 11. Today, it’s the Funk Essentials playlist from iTunes. The coffee hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m awake enough to get my mind typing. James Brown’s ‘The Payback’ is playing right now, and I suspect that the never-ending loop of ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ stuck in my husband’s head has been derailed. Let’s hear it for the downbeat!

In the cup: Zambian coffee

The coffee’s just about ready. The coffee du jour is the bottom of the Zambian beans we got at the local cafe. It’s an interesting coffee with notes of bitter chocolate and something berry.

On the docket: Trying to motivate

The problem with writing so close to the beginning of school is that I want to soak up every drop of leisure I have left — and I have less than a week of it. I’m not that enamored of what I’ve started right now, and I have Canva advertising to play with. Ideally, I should get two hours writing today. Or even an hour. And it’s not speaking to me.

Maybe I need motivation.

Or a vacation.

The Cataract Surgery

Sorry I didn’t write yesterday

I was prepping for my cataract surgery, which means no breakfast, no water, no coffee. NO COFFEE?! I was a total wreck.

What cataract surgery entails

I arrived at the surgery center, which was in the basement of the eye center. (When the patient liaison told me it was in the basement, I entertained all sorts of gruesome scenarios of dungeons, but the surgery center wasn’t that way at all. The lights were somewhat dimmer than usual, because eye surgery necessitates dilation of pupils.)

We sat in a small waiting room with other patients. Finally, the nurse called me back. Once called back, the nurse sat me on a gurney and took my blood pressure and oxygen, and my bp was high, as one might expect from someone who’s about to take a scalpel to the eye. I’m normally sanguine about surgeries, even wanting to watch them, but slicing eyes is beyond my comfort zone.

The nurse gave me a Xanax. I informed her that one xanax would not be enough to sedate me, so she gave me an IV full of Versed (a benzodiazepene). They gave me eye drops — dilation, numbing, betadine (ow!), water, more dilating, more betadine, more water, more numbing. I didn’t feel any different, really, but I shrugged and let the nurse wheel me into the operating theatre.

The surgery itself was no big deal. They pried one eye open and shone red and green lights in my eye, and somewhere over to the side, the doctor did something that stung a little bit. I felt the vacuum part, which felt like a tugging on my eye and hurt a little. At some time, the doctor told me that I needed to look at the lights; I must have been distracted.

The surgery didn’t take that long, beginning to end. My eye was disappointingly blurry for the rest of the day, so I couldn’t see how well the surgery worked. I spent the rest of the day wandering with Richard to lunch, to coffee, to the follow-up appointment, taking eye drops and Tylenol.

A day later

This morning I woke up — and oh my gosh I could see! I couldn’t just see — I could SEE! The eye gets gunky at times, and it feels a bit like there’s something in my eye (which drives me crazy) but I can see again!

I’ll have to have the surgery on the other eye in a year or three, so I’ll know what to expect. But A+A+A+A+A+A would do again!

Cataract Surgery Tomorrow

What I’m not worried about

I’m not worried about how well my surgery is going to go, because it’s a minor, 20-minute surgery. The surgeon cuts a slit at the side of the eye, breaks the lens up with lithotripsy (the same procedure used to break up kidney stones), and then sucks it out. Then they put in a (in my case fixed) intraocular lens. Voila, surgery complete.

Nurse covering eye of patient by medical plaster

I’m not worried about coming out of anesthesia, because the anesthesiologist doesn’t put the patient to sleep. They instead use medicines that make the patient zone out, or as they put it, ‘not care’.

In fact, I would find this all an intriguing experience (as I do any medically-related things, including my gallbladder surgery and getting hit by a car.)

What I am worried about

I’m afraid that dissociative anesthetic is not going to be enough. My brain says, “There’s a person. With a knife. At my eye.” I find this edginess strange, because I fall into meditative states while having teeth drilled and pulled. I watch the nurse take my blood. I study pictures of injuries to improve my moulage (casualty simulation) skills. I watched a video of a leg fracture reduction last night. But my eyes — I feel rather protective about my eyes.

I’m going to need to be really dissociated. Like ‘look at the scaly butterflies’ dissociated.

How I’m going to get through it

I figure the first thing is to let the doctor and anesthesiologist know about my misgivings right off: “I’m in a cold, dim basement room and you’re going to hold a scalpel to my eye; this sounds like a bad horror movie. My next move is to scream and grab the scalpel, then make my escape. Is there any way we can prevent this?”

I think this will get me the good drugs.

Bye for now

I won’t be online tomorrow, so wish me luck today!

Starting with a Character Sheet:

Prince Dain
? • Faerie/Oneonta
Role in Story: Male Main Character/Love Interest

Goal: To woo Nina — but then what?

Physical Description: alabaster skin with a bit of a gold tint. Red-gold, wavy hair. No beard or body hair.

Personality: Playful, highly focused but ephemeral. To be in his focus is to be the only person in his life, but he has other things to focus on and he’s just as intense. He seems to be always in the present; commitment isn’t in his vocabulary because it’s not a fae thing. But he keeps coming back to Nina.

Occupation: Prince. What else?

Habits/Mannerisms: He gestures in the air as he talks, as if he’s trying to shape his stories from mist.

Background: a Prince of Faerie. Nowhere near to the throne; considered an eccentric dilettante as he works with craftsmen and creates beautiful wood and metalwork. He also spends a certain amount of time flirting with the border between Faerie and Earth,

Internal Conflicts: The pull toward Nina

External Conflicts: With the woman who wants him back.

Notes:

Brainstorming Characters

Oh, did I mention? I’m working on something new …

I’m working on a new novel, based on an idea I had in graduate school.

In it, librarian Nina meets a Prince of Faerie while he is slipping through her backyard naked. A Fae scorned casts a shadow across their dalliance, and Nina must brave the Faerie realms to rescue Prince Dain. If the landscape of Faerie doesn’t tear her apart, her adversary will. It will take all of Nina’s wits and all of her heart to save her lover.

I have the bare bones of plot; now what?

Now all I have to do is everything, starting with developing the characters. That to me is the place to start because I’m very character and relationship oriented. This is going to be today’s task and it’s going to require off-computer time.

Let me explain — I draft and edit on my computer using Scrivener and I proofread using Pro Writing Aid (now that I have it). I use Atticus for formatting and design covers using Photoshop and Canva.

But when it comes to character design, I’m in a different mode. I write and I write until I have the character developed. I interrogate my characters to find out what my subconscious tells me about the character and what I need to work out.

What do I need to know about Prince Dain?

A character sheet for writing tends to center on basic questions:

Role in story
Appearance
Motivation
Likes and dislikes
Internal and external conflict
Habits and gestures
Background

Which is necessary but not sufficient when writing a supernatural, alien, or other “other” (sentient dogs, etc.) Other things about the character must include how the character interacts with the other (i.e. our) world, which means figuring out the differences between us and them. Thus, character gets intertwined with worldbuilding.

In this case, there is a large body of folklore and stories, and it’s up to me to design this world borrowing from the stories. I know that I will include the traditional trickery/honesty of the fair folk, so: Irish legend, yes; Laurell K Hamilton, no.

From there, who is Prince Dain? This is what I have to find out. I only know at this time that he’s one of the fair folk, he has some sense of royalty, yet is a dilettante who crafts exquisite things and wanders through the crack between worlds, which is in Nina’s back yard. He is somewhat arrogant but charming, and at the beginning of the story very romantic but a bit fatuous. (I want my audience to question romance vs love.) He’s gorgeous, of course (and a ginger, which is one of my weaknesses when I am looking at pure male beauty). Ahhhh…

I’m back now. I need to have some conversations with my characters now.

P.S.

I looked at depositphotos for a male faerie picture. I saw none. So the realm of Faerie is all female like the Amazons, only with flowing robes?

Rain

Rain today

We may get lots of rain today, particularly welcome after a 113 (F) heat index (45 in Celsius). We’re in a 1-3 inch range, and I would like to see a gullywasher where the rain is sheeting off the streets and you can hardly see through the drops.

A few of my favorite rains

I love rain in all its permutation, but here are some of my favorite rains:

Midwestern gullywashers, as stated above. Rain that roars on the rooftop, that causes instant puddles in the gutters. Gone almost as soon as it’s started. On a summer day, when encountering a gullywasher, one should give up trying to find shelter. One must just accept that one will be drenched to the skin. I remember walking barefoot and singing loudly in the storm, knowing that I had found freedom from being well-dressed and well-behaved.
The sunny afternoon rainbow sprinkle of rain. There are clouds bringing rain, yet the sun still takes up the sky, and the combination yields a rainbow if one comes round right.
October evening thunderstorms. I love walking out in October thunderstorms. It takes some good rain gear — I used to have a long wool cloak with a hood that negates most of the rain. October thunderstorms are moody and romantic, the Midwestern US version of a stroll across the moors.
Light rains in April which green up the grasses and invite the daffodils to awaken.

The western states need rain

The American West is in what is called a “super-drought”. It has not rained at all in a few places for a couple years. Wildfires burn in several states. I cry when I think of those places, and I hope they will be rained upon, making their reservoirs fill and their fires extinguish. If we could get a handle of this global warming (hint: corporations pick a reasonable level of profit and make their processes cleaner) we might have a chance.

So when I watch the rain today I will pray (which I seldom do) that the West sees an abundance of rain and that we as humans see an abundance of wisdom that will help us make the decisions that will stem global warming.

Heat Wave in Rural Missouri

The sun burns sagging porches,
bleaching petunias and salvia.
The afternoon gasps its last.
From my window, nothing stirs –
I alone live, breathe.

Swooning,
I spy you strolling through a deluge of rain,
bearing me pansies and muguet,
your bowler and grey linen suit still crisp,
the last mirage before I fade – 

Knowing I exaggerate, and my demise
is not imminent in this air-cooled room
does not detract from my reverie.

The summer winds down …

I’m privileged

Being a professor means that I get a wide-open summer (well, if you subtract internship time and setting up classes for fall.) Most people don’t get that, but it’s part of the reason I became a professor. It’s a privilege I will accept gladly.

I needed the break

After a school year of drastic COVID mitigations, life not normal, lack of a social life, talking to nobody, the summer was welcome. Unfortunately, with the Delta variant, we may go back to that soon. But at least I had this summer to recover.

I admit I’m been a bit of a hermit, writing/editing and staying cool. But it’s been a good, relaxing summer, and I’m grateful I had it at the right time.

Two weeks left

I don’t know how summer went by so fast — I’m now two weeks out from the beginning of semester meetings. I’m contemplating taking these last days napping and watching British ambulance shows on YouTube. I probably won’t do much of that, because there are projects I want to do. (Really? I can’t think of any.)

Whatever I do, I plan to make the most of these few days, and be ready for the fall semester.