In a Stuck Place

So I’ve been told by my developmental editor that I need to rewrite Apocalypse — not because it’s so bad, she says, but because it’s so good. My developmental editor, Chelsea Harper, knows her stuff and I know she’s right. Apocalypse is the combination of the second and third books I’d written, and I didn’t know things that I know now.

Still, I’m finding it hard to rewrite. First, because my semester is winding down, I have end-of-semester items in mind even when I’m not doing them yet, things like the final exam and projects to grade.

Second, because — well, basically what I have to do with the rewrite is:
1) Stretch out three chapters into the first third of the book
2) Rewrite the rest of the book with fewer points of view
3) Cut out some of the lag from the second half of the book
4) Add more tension and loss.

I think I can deal with 2-4 relatively easily, but I struggle with stretching out that first three chapters to eight chapters. I’ve tried outlining it (being a plantser, or someone who roughly outlines and fills in) but I don’t feel the inspiration.

I think I need to sit with it a while, talk with my characters and see what it is they want to do.

Wish me luck.

Day 42 Reflection: Truth

Truth sets us free, but often in a way that feels like a wrecking ball. Or the silence just before the tornado hits, with its gut-crawling suspense. The silence after the crash, after the storm, shelters the whisper of two words: “What now?”

My truth: I have been struggling for seven years, ever since my diagnosis with bipolar and the loss of my original department. I have struggled with depression when my medications fail and when I face major setbacks. The tricks I’ve learned (cognitive journaling and meditation) bring me to zero but not above. Some days, I cycle through contradicting my negative talk and affirmations almost constantly. I believe that, because I make mistakes, that I am worthless.

My truth: I need to go back to counseling for a spell.

The silence left by the wrecking ball. I, a shell of a building, waiting for the materials to rebuild.

Light

This time of year depresses me — literally — with its dark mornings and uniform bleakness of the terrain. It’s not the deep despair of my bipolar depression, but a constant sense of flatness, of anhedonia, of just wanting to stay in bed. The festivities of Christmas that buoyed up my spirits have long passed; all now is grey.

My psychiatrist has prescribed 1 hour a day in my grow room for light therapy. There’s plenty of light in the small basement room, supplied by eight fluorescent light fixtures. And, although it’s a small room, there’s a table and chair where I can sit and even an old iPad I use to maintain my plant records.

And then there’s the plants. Right now, I have starts of herbs like hyssop and calamint, celery leaf and Asian celery, and my tomatoes and peppers popping out of the ground. For the most part, they’re tiny seedlings with their seed leaves no bigger than a baby mouse’s ear. But they’re alive, and I almost believe I can feel the light of their lives brightening my day.

In the gloom of this season, I will take all the light I can get.

Back to Camp

I’m back at CampNaNoWriMo, Camp NaNo for short. It’s the second summer session for the virtual campers to work on books. I’ve signed up for 30 hours of revising (yet again) Mythos after my beta-reader went through it.

I’m feeling the heat of the summer deep in my bones, weighing me down with indolence and a total feeling of “meh” about writing. I don’t feel hopeless about being published, I don’t feel distraught about not being published, I just don’t feel like much of anything, especially as regards writing. I don’t like feeling this way — ok, I like not being drenched by despondency, but I rather miss that belief that something could happen any day now that could result in a writing career.

Perhaps this “meh” feeling is what I end up with. If that’s so, then maybe it’s time to give up writing. I know, I keep threatening (or promising) to give up writing, and I don’t. But if it ceases to spark something in me, I may have to find something that does.

This might be depression — I’ve been struggling with that for a while, no matter how happy and bouncy I look. I have an eye on it.

Perseverance

I’m re-editing Mythos (how many times has this been now?) on the advice of my current beta-reader (beta-reader #2 has gotten very busy and hasn’t gotten back to it). Most of what we’ve found are little mistakes I should have caught myself, contradictions (oops!) and awkward and vague sentences. I’m halfway through the book correcting these.

I’ve also rewritten a couple scenes to be more suspenseful, but as always, the big question comes:

Will agents like it as much as I like it?
Yes, I’m about to go through the rejection cycle again.

I know we’ve been through this before. I get excited, I send queries, and I get rejections. Why do I keep trying?

I guess I have perseverance. It might be one of my best qualities — not giving up. It may be one of my worst, as shown by the time I let a Siamese cat scratch me 28 times until I finally petted it.

So I’m probably going to resubmit Mythos soon, as well as the freshly renovated Voyageurs. Both have been rejected. I don’t know if I’ll have luck this time, either.

Richard has instructed me not to submit any queries until I’m over this dysthymic (low-level depressive) episode. I’m working on it.

Dark thoughts

I go through periods of time when I have dark thoughts. Most people don’t talk about their dark thoughts, unless rhey are screaming at God (a pretty healthy thing to do) or if a very talented therapist pulls them out. I have had very talented therapists and I didn’t even talk to them about the dark thoughts.

The dark thoughts are like existential questions, but the answers already seem set in stone. Thoughts like “I have not contributed anything to the world”. “I don’t feel like I truly know anyone”, “I have always been weird (which is worse than strange, I could accept strange)”, “Nobody would miss me if I died”… And that’s where the abyss opens up and swallows me.

With my imagination, it seems like I should fantasize about my heroic self fighting my way out of the dank forest, but part of the darkness is that I do not believe that I deserve good. I get triggered by failures, small and large, and how could there be a hero within me?

I wish I could tell you that all it takes to get me out of dark thoughts is for someone (my husband for example) to say, “But I love you! You’re worthwhile! People would miss you if you died!” It’s not as easy as that. I can argue with the best; I’m capable of convincing you that I have no intrinsic value.

Sometimes something breaks through. Sincere words to hug to myself, small gestures, a chance encounter on the street. A memory of something that went well. Writing things that we’re not supposed to talk about, like dark thoughts.

Progress and Struggle

Sorry I didn’t write yesterday, but I was busy getting a good stream of writing done. I’m actually about 2-3000 words from the end of Prodigies, doing the wrap-up and solidifying a few surprises I added in. I can’t believe I’m getting done with this!

My next steps are:

Waking up my beta-readers for Mythos and see if they’re having trouble starting the document or it’s just life stuff keeping them from reading.
Finishing Hearts are Mountains
Revising Prodigies and Hearts are Mountains
Find more beta-readers
Keep myself from falling into an ugly cycle

More on the ugly cycle. I’m struggling in the aftermath of Anthony Bourdain’s suicide. I think it’s hitting me, even though I didn’t know him personally, but because I share his philosophy of experiencing cultures through their foods. I don’t have the ability to travel as much as he did, but I still let that desire for adventures with people and hospitality to guide my steps.

I’m also struggling with it because I’ve had times where I have had suicidal ideations, those moments where I consider dying as the only way to get rid of an avalanche of pain. The surprising thing is that these moments don’t often happen in a depressive state. They’re just as likely to happen when there’s a triggering event that results in a downward spiral of emotion. During these times, I actually try to talk myself into a suicidal state out of habit, choosing the darkest and most miserable things to think about. The typical dark thoughts go as follows:

I’m not good enough
I’m too weird
Nobody loves me/cares about me.

These are hard to argue against, because they’re opinion and not fact. Depending on one’s yardsticks, my viewpoint is just as legit as an outsider’s, and my proofs are just as valid as someone else’s. Fighting these rationally only drives me further down the hole.

What I have to remember is that these feelings come from a place deep inside me, where my child-self hides and needs to know that she is loved no matter what. And she wants to test it and make it real, because she’s been disappointed too many times.

I love her and will stay with her no matter what. I will not threaten to leave her if she’s not perfect, or if she’s a bit embarrassing. I will always be here for her no matter if she panics, or she snaps at me or argues with me.

I will not let her fall.

A happy note about bad things

Sometimes the things I need are not the things I thought I needed.

I needed the bad yearly evaluation, because without it, I would not have been able to talk honestly with my boss about what I had been going through for the last two years illness-wise. I would not have gotten the kick in the butt to do better, nor would I have realized that my boss cared about how I was doing.

I needed to have my writing rejected, because I would never have been pushed to get beta-readers on the job. Not only do they help me improve, but they are reading my stuff and that feels good.

I needed to feel like I was the most uninteresting person on earth (isn’t depression grand?) so I would see the places where I am geekily interesting — edible plants and herb garden, persistence in fishing even though I catch nothing, wanting to learn everything, moulage, the ability to talk to anyone about anything, addiction to coffee, dedication to writing …

I needed to have that terrible school year — two terrible school years filled with depression and illness. Even though I have a lot of work (writing, disaster mental health class, redesigning a class) this summer I feel relaxed because I can take a day to go off to St. Joseph and drink at a quirky old coffeehouse.

I needed to break my heart on that crush, because it showed me how understanding my husband is about my periodic idiosyncracies in looking for the muse, a person who subtly infuses my creative soul with energy. (Crushes would lose their power if one did anything about them, so they’re supposed to go nowhere. Dear muse, if you are reading this, thank you.)

I needed to feel alone, because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have realized how much it means to me that I have readers. I love you all!

Potentiality, optimism and cognitive journaling

As I think I’ve said before, I’m in love with potentiality. Potentiality is the possibility — not the probability — that something will blossom. (I’m all about the blossom motif today, even though it’s too cold for anything to bloom still.)

I think that the love for potentiality is what sorts those who seek change and those who hide from change. Change is scary, rejection hurts, but those who seek change recognize the potential pitfalls. There is a term for those who seek change — those people are morphogenic.

What morphogenic people don’t always do a good job of is deal with disappointment when the desired goal fizzles. No amount of effort, good planning, or knowledge will guarantee success; there are so many other factors. I have an optimistic friend who takes rejections very well — in public, at least. I don’t know how he takes them in private. He seems to be an optimist anyhow.

I don’t deal with rejection well. I tend to prognosticate more rejection and failure when I’ve failed, as I have with not getting published over and over. Honestly, getting rejected has improved me as a writer, but that’s not what I see when I don’t get published. I tend to beat myself up, saying I’m not a good writer, I’ll never get published, etc.

This is where cognitive journaling comes in.

The theory behind cognitive journaling is that, when something bad happens, our brain reacts in automatic ways — maybe from parental or cultural conditioning — that causes an even more bad mood than previously, and that path in your brain from happening to feeling becomes (figuratively) a groove your mood gets stuck in. These bad ways are usually encapsulated in what are known as cognitive distortions — such as “I’ll never get published,” above.

Cognitive journaling seeks to replace the cognitive distortion with more balanced thoughts. For example, let’s tackle my cognitive distortion:

CD: I’ll never get published. I’m a bad writer.
What are some ways we can identify these as cognitive distortions?

I can’t predict the future
I’ve already been published — several academic articles, one essay in a progressive religious journal, and a couple poems in Lindsey-Woolsley (the Allen Hall literary magazine at University of Illinois

These become the basis for contradictions to the cognitive distortions:

If I quit trying, I’ll never find out if I can get published
I really can’t predict the future (otherwise, how come I can only predict bad things and not the latest lottery winners?)
People liked my writing before, it can happen again.
This rejection may have nothing to do with my writing.

If I write these down and look at them occasionally, I can (the theory holds) program my brain into thinking more positively.

*****

If I knew about this already, why did I not use it earlier? Because I was depressed, and deep depression tends to believe that everything negative is true. I couldn’t get myself to use cognitive journaling because I really wasn’t a good writer and I wouldn’t get published.

The irony was, in not doing my cognitive exercises, I was pushing my depression further by getting stuck in my negative rut. I’m not saying my depression was my fault because I didn’t do my cognitives, but my refusal was a factor in how deep the depression got.

So I’m journaling again, and hoping that it returns me to my optimistic self.

The Curse

Atlantic Hope has wrapped up, and although doing moulage again was satisfying, med problems and stress have put me back into depression. Here’s a poem:

I am a mote of dust in a sunbeam,
a whisper lost in a hurricane gale,
a child fallen down a well in the woods,
an old woman freezing to death at a bus stop.
I am the scene on the cutting room floor,
the news that doesn’t fit the narrative,
the character edited out of the story.
I am a mote of dust in a sunbeam.