Imagination Living Beside Reality

When I was a child …

When I was a child, I was an imaginative sort, and my imagination lived beside reality. I knew the tree wasn’t sentient when I spoke to it, but at the same time I had an attachment to it as if we had a relationship. The tree wasn’t and was sentient. I was and wasn’t a human.

I didn’t put away childish things

As I grew older, I discovered creative writing and received lots of encouragement from my English teachers. I mostly wrote poetry back then, prosy poems that tried to communicate emotions, and to this day I’m not enamored of my poetry.

But I wrote stories. My stories tended to involve imagination living beside reality — Santa Claus as a young toymaker in a small town (see my romance novel for how that worked out),an anthropologist who discovers a collective of otherworldly beings (which has been written and now needs a home), an unstable woman who meets the ghost of the boy she killed in a car wreck — or did she?

What I developed in college and later was the concept of world-building. I had to show people that there was a reason why the trees were talking telepathically, why the titans struggled with their too-human longings and why the humans struggled with their sudden preternatural gifts. The basis of my writing is the tension between the hidden and ordinary worlds, the stories hidden in plain sight.

My world today

My world is one where I keep my foot planted in both worlds. No matter what genre I start in, two things will show up: 1) that other world hidden in plain sight; 2) relationships between people who are coping with that “other” world, whether they be from the hidden or ordinary worlds.

I would love to share this world with you

Please let me know in the comments if you would like to know more about my writing!

Looking for Inspiration in the Hiatus

As time expands, inspiration goes down.

It’s practically end of semester at Northwest Missouri State. We’re in the middle of Prep Week (often called “dead week” by the number of faculty who are overwhelmed by the end of the semester) and I have nothing coming in until Friday to grade. I’m in t-shirt and sweats mode, only because I have a student appointment over Zoom today; otherwise it would probably be PJs. In other words, I have three more days of Nothing. To. Do. But. Write.

Photo by Tobias Bju00f8rkli on Pexels.com

I have a massive amount of time to write. Am I writing? No. I’m looking for more work to do. I’m halfway to the end of the Internet. I’ve fallen in love with three Internet cats and could dissect the modus operandi of successful cat influencers (photos plus merchandise plus charity). The inspiration to write is nil.

On the other hand, when I’m grading midterms, I suddenly explode with inspiration. If I have deadlines to meet, I feel like writing a novel. NaNoWriMo, the international writing event in November, is perfectly nestled between surviving midterms and prepping for finals. I write the beginnings of novels during that time.

But now? I’m staring at the screen drooling on myself.

Making a plan for summer

My whole summer is wide-open. Although I have interns to supervise, I can work around them pretty readily, and will probably do most of my meetings on Zoom. But the thing that takes up most of my summertime, the online class, isn’t happening. I need to write this summer to keep me sane.

I can make some plans to increase my inspiration:

Write this blog daily as warm-up
Spend allocated times at the Cafe for discipline and change of scenery
Work on outlines for short stories
Sketch brainstorming notes on paper with fountain pen (this slows thoughts down)
Find a muse (hopefully he’s a-muse-ing too)
Only surf the Internet for 5 minutes an hour
Find a writing sprint timer

Some of these are writing rituals, meant to separate writing from the mundane world. I’m all about ritual and its ability to make space for important things.

A question for you

If anyone out there has some ideas for getting inspiration (especially some fantasy-based prompts) please tell me in the comments!

The Day of Writing Prompts

First, drink too much coffee.

My husband and I went to the local game cafe (Board Game Cafe in Maryville MO) for the sole purpose of brainstorming some writing prompts for me for the summer. And, I guess, drinking coffee, whereas we drank too much. Three cups of coffee later (plus the two we had in the morning) and we had not only come up with some prompts but we were overcaffeinated enough that I could hear angels singing in my dental work.

Second, come up with some writing prompts.

We discovered that it’s hard writing prompts for someone else. My husband’s prompts are awesome, witty, catchy, and science fiction. I’ll play with them, but I’m a romantic, atmospheric, emotional fantasy writer. So I need to figure out how I will write “Writer who has to keep writing or reality stops”. I don’t know if I can write these. I can’t feel them. Does that make sense?

But I’m having trouble writing my own. I’m very character-based, and that’s hard to convey in a short story prompt. I have written some pretty good standalone stories (although I haven’t found the right place to send most of them because they’re fantasy) but most of my writing has been within my universe. So, reader magnets instead of submittable short stories.

I promised myself I would write some short stories for submitting for publication rather than novels (I have too many) or more reader magnets (I have enough to fill a chapbook). So I will work on these prompts and come up with some on my own.

Please help me!

Here’s where I need your help. If you can come up with any writing prompts (especially in the fantasy/science fiction vein) I’d love to hear them!

Need some Inspiration

One of the problems with COVID-19 is the lack of inspiration. I am having trouble writing because there’s no break in the scenery. I could sit outside and write, but my more portable laptop currently has the problem of not working (and I can’t get it fixed because of COVID).

I’ve been out three times since the stay-at-home order came out. I’m getting pretty tired of my living room. I’d love a cabin retreat somewhere, but our local cabins are perpetually full, probably from people in the same predicament as I’m in.

The Game Cafe is open next week, and I’m contemplating going there to write with my mask and my hand sanitizer. I’m still scared about COVID, of course, but I’m so tired of my living room.

(I have been writing this with my “broken computer”, which was suffering from a missing cursor. It just updated — so far, so good. Let me see how this works out — oops, there it goes)

So I need to think about workarounds. How do I get motivated? How do I find new scenery? What is it I need to be doing right now?

But First, Coffee

My summer class (the one I’m taking) hasn’t started yet, and the summer class (the one I’m teaching) is chugging along, so I have time to revise. I’m still working on Apocalypse, and it’s not been very systematic, because I’m almost to the end and I’m thinking of what I should have done Back There. I figure I will finish and go back, making for a long process.

But first, coffee.

Our local coffeehouse (Oh, how I miss the Game Cafe!) delivered two pounds of Oddly Correct’s “Meat and Potatoes”, which is a solid yet somewhat esoteric brew. I have a cup right now, and it’s a blessing during quarantine when we’ve run out of our roasting beans for a few days.

So I will work today, caffeinated, hoping my inspirations will catch hold and I can make Apocalypse even better than it was.

Day 30 Lenten Meditation: Inspiration

As a writer, inspiration is where the universe and my imagination connect, whether that be the world outside my door or the world inside my head. And where the two interact, sparks fly, and I am driven to put pen to paper and translate the gestalt impressions of the interaction.

Inspiration is open to all of us, not just creatives. It still marks the intersection point of internal and external worlds even if one is inspired to clean the kitchen or plant a garden.

How can we encourage inspiration? We can by being open to the world outside our heads. We have already experienced, and are always experiencing, the world inside our heads. We need something new to reflect on and to ruminate on.

A change of scenery helps. Sheltering in place during the pandemic makes for a monotonous experience, but one’s scenery can also be changed by reading or watching videos. All that is needed is inducement of the spark by external experience.

Open-mindedness certainly helps. We all interpret the world according to an inner framework, a set of rules that governs our perception of reality. Don Juan Matus, in Carlos Castaneda’s writings, called this the tonal, but that’s not important. What is is that our inner construct of reality filters our world for us. If we let go of it, even a little piece of it, just for the briefest moment, we can see our world differently and be inspired.

Right now, we need to feel inspired. We need to feel that spark to motivate us, whether toward mundane or glorious tasks. Inspiration will help us see our social isolation as opportunity and allow us to remodel our inner and outer spaces to be more creative, more pleasing, and more nurturing.

Feeling the need for inspiration.

I’m wrestling with the whole writing thing again, which I understand is part of writing.

In my mind, the struggle manifests itself as a lack of inspiration, a general blah. I’ve written five novels (and need to edit two but have lost my dev editor), which is a big accomplishment.

I think what bothers me most about not getting published — when I accomplish something (a novel), I want a stretch goal, and getting it published is a stretch goal. Otherwise, once one has written one (or five) novels, what else is there? I’d like to be published so that I feel that the goal isn’t totally unattainable.

Lately I’ve written some short fiction, which gives me something to enter on Submittable for a feeling of accomplishment, and hopefully publication. I have nine items in review, another nine waiting (I think I’ve said this before). I still wish I felt motivated toward editing/writing the longer stuff.

Oh, yes, my flash fiction, Becky Home-ecky, now can be found in the A3 Review Volume 11, found in finer bookstores somewhere in the UK.

I just hope I get out of this slump soon.

Day 7 Reflection: Resilience

Resilience is a concept that has passed from the psychological lexicon to everyday language. The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors” (American Psychological Association (APA), 2019). More simply put, it is the ability to bounce back.

The person with resilience as a trait recovers from being let go from a job by planning to regain employment rather than falling into helplessness. They recover from life-altering trauma stronger than before. They star in our inspirational stories, and we admire them for their blossoming in the face of adversity, their ability to bounce back.

We need to remember two things about resilience. The first one, as the APA (2019) reminds us, is that resilience is a common trait. People in general have displayed this trait countless times, after major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina; terrorist attacks such as 9/11 and Oklahoma City, as well as during common events such as illness, death of a loved one, and loss of a job.

The other thing we need to remember is that resilience is fostered by a series of internal and external factors. The biggest factor in resilience, according to the APA (2019) is “caring and supportive relationships both inside and outside the family“. This is not a small thing; people need other people to make sense of adversity and tragedy.

Other factors include:

· The capacity to make realistic plans and take steps to carry them out.

· A positive view of yourself and confidence in your strengths and abilities.

· Skills in communication and problem solving.

· The capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses. (APA, 2019).

To become resilient, we can work to develop these networks and skills. Those of us with disordered childhoods or other challenges may choose to see a therapist to get coaching on how to develop these skills, and we should view counseling as a positive.

We can also contribute to others’ resilience by providing that community support needed to foster resilience. As such, we need to embrace people in their messiness and neediness, allowing them the process of bouncing back from their crises and challenges. As much as we want to take the pain of the crisis or challenge away from someone, our role may simply be to listen and hold space for that person.

Resilience is not a rare gift. It is a key aspect of our humanity, to be nurtured and developed.

American Psychological Association (APA) (2019). The road to resilience. Available: https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience[March 12, 2019].

Day 4 Reflection: Dreams

It’s hard to write about dreams these days without sounding trite. Whether dreaming big or following one’s dreams, it’s been said before.

I want to talk about dreams as the cauldron of our subconscious, where our minds process the bits and pieces of our day into scenarios that twist through our sleep. Luxurious scapes, clandestine relationships, twisted corridors with monsters from our id, these are the denizens of our sleeping hours.

When we dream, sometimes we wake with decadent stretches and a purr, a grin on our face. Other times we sit bolt upright in bed clutching our blankets. Throughout the day, we revisit the dream, mulling it over in our head trying to find meaning in it, to use it to inform our day or to banish the tendrils of nightmare.

Or to harness its power in a story. Many years ago, I suffered through a kidney infection for a few days, spending much of the time asleep. I spent the time in dreams — in one long dream that passed for hours, where I found myself in a desert commune after the experiment called the United States had crumbled into city-states. The contrast between the strife outside and the people who pledged to peace, and the hope that peace lent to those the peaceful folk encountered, stayed with me when I woke, as did the relationship between myself as protagonist and a member of the commune.

I wrote what I could remember, the bare bones of a couple scenes, too long for a short story and too sketchy for a novel. I didn’t write novels back then, feeling overwhelmed by all the words needed.

This spring, after four or five novels under my belt, I revisited that dream with all its dread and promise. I was ready for the dream, for its message, for all its words.

The book, some seventy-thousand words long, waits for its developmental edit. Sometimes we manifest dreams into reality, one way or another.

An embarrassment of riches

I don’t know what to write next.

This, as you may guess, is unusual for me. I have eight novels (with two needing serious work to redo), and these were written in a five-year period. (And should have been edited more ruthlessly much sooner, but I didn’t know better).

I want to hold off a bit on editing the two that need serious work (why? Because I feel like I haven’t done anything but edit lately.)

I have a couple ideas of what to write:

Gods’ Seeds. This would be another book in the Archetype universe, taking place after Reclaiming the Balance (which needs much work) and before Whose Hearts are Mountains. and which features a brewing war among Archetypes
A sequel to Voyageurs, which would require a lot of history research, which I detest
A sequel to Prodigies, a New Adult novel, with no idea who I’d be following.
Something new and I have no idea.

None of them are grabbing me yet. Probably because I feel guilty for having books out there that need editing.

I suppose this is an embarrassment of riches and I shouldn’t complain.

Time for me to see what ideas grab me …