Petrified

I’m going to this writers’ conference this weekend, and I’m petrified.

I shouldn’t be. I have been to many professional conferences, presented my work in front of other professionals in my field, taught 25 years of classes — but I’m petrified of going to this conference.

I can count the reasons:

Because now I have to admit I’m a writer
Because I don’t know how I come off in person
Because I’m going to be around real published writers, of which I’m not one
Because I have handed off ten pages of Prodigies in an editorial review and I don’t know what ELSE I’ll be expected to change.
Because I’ll be giving a verbal pitch to real people instead of just online
Just because

I have no choice but to go. This is going to be a learning experience for me. Probably not my big opportunity, but a learning experience.

Deep breath.

Pessimistically optimistic

I miss the boundless optimism of hypomania, that magic feeling when I step out of the house in the morning, and the sun shines just so, and I just know something magic will happen, because I’m blessed that way.

I don’t miss it enough to go off my meds, because without the meds my moods shift from elation to irritability to despair within a few hours. I have rapid cycling bipolar 2, so moods develop fast, like a volatile weather pattern. And that optimism could crash into suicidal ideations with the smallest speed bump in my life. The meds help, but anything from lack of sleep to a major stressor could derail my balance.

As a counter to my hypomanic pixie dream girl optimism, I have how I was brought up in a repressively Germanic family. The motto of my family was “Don’t look forward to anything, or you might get disappointed.” So normal me without the buoyant giddiness or the crushing despair hides in a coccoon of “This enterprise is doomed.”

I have to learn how ordinary people experience optimism. I have a manuscript out to a major science fiction publisher. It’s been there for three months. I expect to hear about it any day now. Because I’ve put so much work into the book I think it has a chance, I feel optimistic — but I don’t trust it because it looks like mania. Because I’ve gotten a number of rejections from this iteration of the novel from agents, I feel I should be pessimistic, but pessimism takes a lot of energy to maintain and optimism feels better.

So I’m waiting for a report on Prodigies, trying to tell myself that I’m going to get rejected and being answered by a bubble of optimism that I don’t trust. My only answer is to hold onto hope and keep trying.

Questions I ask myself

Questions I ask myself while writing:

Do my characters ring true?

Do their emotions and actions fit their character?
Does their trajectory make sense?
Do I care about my characters?

Does the plot deliver?

Does the plot build in suspense?
Does the action make sense as it unfolds?
Do consequences logically follow actions?

Does the story flow?

Is the time and scene progression clear?
Does it avoid getting bogged down?
Is too much going on at once?

I feel discouraged looking at all these questions — how can I manage to do all this? Much of this happens subconsciously, or by trial and error. Sometimes it’s hard, because I don’t (obviously) write the whole book at once, but by bits and pieces. A lot of this I miss with my own tired eyes, which is why I have a dev editor and I let others read my stories.

So in actuality, it’s a matter of trusting myself, trusting the process, and just writing.

My Brain is FULL!

I need to get back to regular journaling. It’s been tough lately, what with planting the garden (Asian vegetables! Weeding! Cherokee purple tomato and lots of basil!), editing Apocalypse to make my dev editor proud (and to be ready for another edit), taking my online class (with a 187-page reading for the first assignment), getting ready for professional conference travel, fielding emails from interns …

My brain has been quite full. And it’s summer! It’s not supposed to be this full!

It’s a good thing. I don’t like sitting still. I like making things happen. And I have time to do it. Do I have the energy? Not so sure, but …

I have edited Apocalypse down to 70k words. Not that I want it to have fewer words, but I did have to cut out things that meandered (and as this document had been written five-six years ago and squished together from two different novels and — you get it. I will try to add some back.

I go from feeling really good about the document to wallowing in despair. I wish I could get more words in it, but I (and my dev editor) would rather it be tight than verbose (and I excel at verbose, my friends.)

So today’s tasks: I’ve already written a response to Assignment #1 (#2 is due Thursday) and written this blog entry; other tasks include writing for a while (starting at 11) and a little planting (this evening).

Wheeeeeee!

The Flow Is Not Happening

So I made my summer schedule nice and neat — only to have to revise it already.

Rain, of course. A visit to the acute care clinic. Best intentions gone to hell.

I wonder if my schedule’s too strict. I wonder if it’s just me being reluctant to follow a schedule. At any rate, the flow is not happening.

I’m second-guessing my schedule just like I’m second-guessing my editing.

I’m editing the bulk of Apocalypse, trying to cut out what isn’t necessary, and I’m struggling between “burn it to the ground” and “I can’t kill my darlings!” Some good quality time writing should solve that quickly — or perhaps slowly. If I get the hang of what should stay and what should go, I should be done by June 1 because the story has good bones.

I guess the motto is to try for excellence and not perfection. Perfection has me chasing my tail and getting nothing done.

Flow doesn’t happen when I’m nitpicking details.

Thoughts on a Cabin Retreat

If I tried to live in a cabin for real, I would probably complicate it unnecessarily. I possess too many clothes for a small dresser and a short clothes bar on the wall, and like many middle-class Americans, I have too many possessions that do not give me joy but I might need someday.

If I lived in a cabin for real, I would have to pick one with a good patch of full sun so I could garden. A patch of woods at the back would be dreamy; I could forage for mushrooms if I trusted myself to pick the right ones.

But I could see myself buying all the accoutrements for an upscale, organic backwoods lifestyle — an electric composter, solar panels, a small tractor and plow for the big garden patch … and my life would not be any simpler. The so-called simple life could get expensive.

And living in a cabin wouldn’t be like having a retreat there, because after a while I’d get used to the four walls and want somewhere else to be inspired.

However, if someone has a camper they can lend me for a summer, I’d strongly consider camping at the RV park here for a season. Just sayin’.

More Rain

I am blessed, sitting in a small, knotty pine cabin in front of a fireplace while the thunder booms outside. What a delicious writing retreat. Oh, and there’s coffee.

If I could do this every day, it wouldn’t be a retreat, would it? No, this is special time. This is a change of scenery that hopefully will let me see my writing develop. The goal for today is to finish the massive rewrite of the first third of the book. That’s no more than 3000 words in my estimation, but it’s a thoughtful three k.

Time for me to quit staring at the fire and start writing.

Writing in the Middle of Finals

I’ve been pushing myself to write at least 600 words a day on the novel despite finals week. That’s not a lot of words per day to be honest; in November (NaNoWriMo month) I can write 2000 words per day easily.

To write, I need to have at least two hours blocked off. That’s not a big problem finals week, because I have fewer classes and more flexible time. The big problem is unfettered time to think. During finals week, especially Spring semester, everything seems urgent: Grade all the end of semester student work. Write and grade finals. Prepare end of semester/end of year paperwork. Pledge to do things differently next semester.

So this week I don’t have the space in my brain for ideas to flow. The ideas feel frustratingly compartmentalized. I check Facebook entirely too much.

This too will pass, when I take a deep breath after turning my grades in, and then schedule a summer routine where (between interns and a class I’m taking) I will schedule time to write.

Hard Work

Got a rejection for a short story yesterday. I’m not too upset; I think I shoehorned my entry into the theme and it didn’t quite fit. I only have one thing out there now, and that’s Prodigies with a major press. The likelihood of this being accepted is very low, I’ll admit, but it will still hurt a lot if I get rejected.

What from there? Try to shop out the dev-edited version of Voyageurs, which is short at 70,000 words but we’ll see. Work on the rewrite of Apocalypse (which will take a few months at best guess) and send it back to my dev editor. See what tweaks might help Prodigies‘ saleability and shop it back out. Send Whose Hearts are Mountains to dev edit. See if I can salvage Gaia’s Hands in case Apocalypse gets sold and it needs a prequel. Write something else, maybe finish Gods’ Seeds.

It’s hard work, and so far has been fruitless. But if I’m going to be published, I want it to be my best, and my expectations have been raised by beta-readers and dev editors and my own revelations about where my stories could go.

Someday, I hope,my hard work will bear fruit.

Excerpt from Apocalypse rewrite

Forty-five minutes later, as Laurel finished fluffing up her masses of curly golden hair, she heard a knock on her door and opened it to a grinning Adam. “May I come in?” he asked gallantly.
“Adam, you sure like to live dangerously. Someone could have seen you. Where did you teleport into?”

“Transport, not teleport. We transport ourselves, we teleport apples. And we’ve barely touched on transporting — there’s certainly more interesting places to go than your porch, true?”

Laurel smiled despite herself, despite the total disorientation of the past couple days. “I admit teleporting — um, transporting — would be an easy and ecological way of getting places. As long as nobody was there on the other end to see you. So where are we going today?”

“What is a place where you’ve been before, that you can visualize well enough that you can take us there?”

“Safely? Without people seeing us pop in from the middle of nowhere?” Laurel asked skeptically.

“You have a point there. Maybe we should wait until dark. We have some time to kill — a couple hours, I suspect.” Adam crossed his legs and leaned back. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Well, given that I only remember the last twelve years of my life, there’s not much to talk about. I woke up in the hospital, broke out, and spent a twilight existence working under the table for subsistence wages. I’ve slept in basement apartments, squatted under bridges, lived in homeless shelters. I’ve …” Laurel looked over at Adam, her eyes blinking. “I’ve kept apart from others. I’m not used to talking to people, because I’ve been afraid I would give away something, like my freakish ability to heal. I’ve lived a solitary existence.”

“Most Archetypes live solitary existences. We were created that way, as Archetypes who gather together could be a danger.”

“How? A danger to what?” Laurel leaned forward, as if she could find a clue to herself in Adam’s revelation.

“Remember,” Adam said, steepling his fingers. “The Maker created us as vessels for human patterns. If we die, the humans whose patterns we carry die as well. We’re nearly indestructible, but that small possibility can’t be risked. Conflict could set us up for battle, and battle against other beings like us — strong and swift and almost indestructible — could result in our death and the death of the millions whose patterns we carry. So we are kept apart from each other.”

“Whose patterns do I carry?” Laurel asked.

“That I don’t know. I’m sure the information is in the Archives somewhere …” Adam trailed off, remembering his own unique status as an Archetype who carried no patterns.