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.

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.

Memories of the Dark Times

I haven’t written in almost a month. It’s been a rough month, a month of remembering, a month of irrational fear. It’s the ten-year anniversary of being diagnosed as bipolar. The tenth anniversary of being hospitalized. The tenth anniversary of not believing in myself.

It’s a harsh thing realizing that one’s invincibility is simply a state of hypomania. That one’s optimism is a mood swing. (Admittedly, it’s good to know that one’s suicidality is just a depression, but it’s hard to remember the lows when one is on a high like I was ten years ago).

Ten years later, I’m pretty stable, except for some depression in late winter and some giddiness early Spring. And superstitious worry that I will become unstable again every year at this time.

It’s a new normal for me, especially when writing, because I don’t feel overwhelmed by emotions when I write anymore. I wonder if my writing’s as flat as I feel compared to my amped-up days.

I am plagued with second-guessing my writing. I have strayed away from it. If you feel like sending good wishes, vibes, etc., please do!

Working toward writing

Looking at an outline

I have progressed as far as looking at my outline and making minor notes — mostly wrong names. I’m trying to figure out when Leah gets pregnant, because that’s a dramatic beat. Leah should get pregnant at a place where tension increases, because that’s how this is done.

I need to decide to build this story into a Save the Cat framework and move things as needed. By a Save the Cat format, I mean a story structure that walks the writer through a build-up, a tension state, the climax, and the aftermath. But I feel so much torpor, much dragging of feet. I need a good session with my husband and plenty of coffee or tea (or coffee and tea).

Camp NaNoWriMo

I hope to motivate myself to write through Camp NaNoWriMo in April. I won’t get the story done, but I will get it started. Maybe I’ll fall in love with my characters and find the energy to write the story. I hope.

Wish me luck!

Editing

I edited yesterday!

I looked at the chapters so far for unknown title (formerly God’s Seeds) through ProWritingAid to acquaint myself with what I’d already written and to fix my idiosyncratic style before proceeding.

It went well. I got rid of all of those unusual dialog tags I excel at. The problem is, I don’t know where to do from there. It’s not like I’m pantsing, where I am making things up as I go along. No, I have an outline, but it’s so long since I’ve touched it I don’t know where to go with it.

I need my assistant (husband Richard) to help me sort this. But he’s sacked out on the bed.

Sigh.

On Vacation

Writing time

I’ve got all the time in the world (at least this week) and a nicely set up office. It’s time to write.

Except that I feel overwhelmed by the writing task ahead of me — start writing on a book I started and did not finish. That is less daunting than starting a new one right now.

My writing partner just showed up:

This is Chloe, by the way. Our youngest cat and my shadow. At the moment, she’s laying in a sunbeam in the office. Eventually, she will climb up into my lap, making typing all but impossible. Some writing partner, eh?

Another cat came to keep me company:

This is Girlie-Girl; she’s a fourteen-year-old, and she’s about as grouchy as you can imagine. Right now, both are rather sedate, but I don’t expect that to last long. Not much writing will get done when they fight.

But I need to write

I keep putting the writing off — I’ve put it off for three months, to be honest. But I have seriously mixed feelings about my writing these days. I have gotten little traction, which makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with my writing. It’s more likely that I haven’t done advertising too well, and that my topics are unusual (or, as agents like to say, “imaginative” and “unique” just as they reject me.) But I think too much and get myself in trouble.

I think I’ll put this off a little more because lunch is happening soon and I want to rest before writing. I’ll let you know tomorrow if I’m successful.

My New Office Setup

Let me tell you about my office

(I’m sorry I haven’t been here the past couple of days; I got clobbered by some nasty bug (not COVID) and I spent a lot of quality time in bed. Now I’m up again and enjoying my vacation.)

Because we couldn’t go anywhere for Spring Break, and I wanted a writing retreat, Richard cleaned the office for me. To give you an idea of what this entails, the “office” is the designation of the smallest bedroom of this 3-bedroom 1913 kit home.

The room itself seems too small for a bedroom at all, being about 10×12 total. It could be the kid’s room — that is kid, singular; it would be hard to fit another bed in this room unless they were bunk beds. As an office, it’s an ideal room. With peaches and cream walls, bookshelves, and a classic library table for a computer desk, it’s a comfortable space.

Except that we cluttered it the way middle-class Americans do: with old technology that failed to deliver its promise; with paperwork we haven’t yet filed; with half-used legal pads bought and forgotten over the years. There’s a celebratory poster from my first novel that I need to frame. And a box of cookbooks I got from my mom when she died we haven’t shelved yet. If we ever had to move, we’d have to rent a bevy of semis.

My desk (there is still clutter to the side of me that may never go away)

A present for me

My husband cleaned the office for me, as I stated above. This meant taking most of the boxes of detritus and stuffing them in the closet. That worked for me, as I didn’t open the closet door the last time it was full of detritus. That’s what happens when one cleans out a closet: other things take its place because we’re used to shoving things in closets.

Right now, Richard is dusting down the office. (Yes, he’s the sexiest man on earth when he does housework.) It’s feeling like a real writing retreat and we have designated it as mine unless I need to lend it out to Richard.

All the room is waiting for are my posters celebrating my book publication.

And for me to write already.

Feeling the Tug of Writing

It’s about time

I didn’t write yesterday, but I really wanted to. I was tired after a day of meetings and taking care of my husband (the stomach flu, not anything dangerous). But I felt the Spring in my bones, and I felt my muse over my shoulder and I wondered if I could get back into my story that needs writing.

Stories on the docket

I have, in fact, two stories that I could write. One of them is contemporary fantasy, taking place on my fictitious collective Barn Swallows Dance, and in the realm of the Archetypes, InterSpace. Changes happen such that the Archetypes are slowly being fired from their task carrying the essence of humanity and thus humans’ lives. The Archetypes explode at their sudden lack of purpose. The only person who can stop the bloodshed, if at all, is a pregnant eighteen-year-old girl who carries the gift of influencing history randomly. To do so, she faces the dangers of a human in InterSpace.

The other is fantasy romance, about a thirty-something librarian who encounters a charming neighbor who she falls for, to her friend’s surprise. When the man disappears, the librarian meets his goblin accomplice, and she embarks on a journey to rescue her man from a very possessive queen of Faerie.

So there are two stories that I could write — and a third option, which would be to come up with a new story. I don’t know that I have any knocking around my brain right now. I am inspired by the extrordinary relationships of ordinary people, the surprising things hidden in plain sight, and the unexpected consequences of seemingly ordinary things. And people, beautiful people who I can write fanciful things about.

All I need to do is write.

The Muse

Meet my muse

My muse showed up in my dream last night, pale and red-haired and willowy, and kissed me on the forehead, then darted away.

My muse, the Muse of Things Hidden in Plain Sight, reminded me of my purpose when I thought I had long lost it.

My muse appears as a friend of mine, but isn’t really, because that person would not kiss me in dreams, however chaste. I would also not want to get in trouble with my friend’s wonderful wife. I understand symbolism, however. Long red hair and mischief speak to me. Muses should be wild, unpredictable, capricious. One does not possess muses. Muses possess one instead. So, of course, he would appear like my friend, knowing it would rattle me.

The message

What is the message when my muse leans in and kisses my forehead? The first message is that Spring is here, even though we don’t feel it yet? Astronomical Spring is in 20 days (or so), and the weather has become warmer. The robins aren’t here yet, but the mourning doves are making plans for chicks. Snowdrops haven’t broken the ground yet, but my seedlings in the basement are making their way to true leaves.

The second message is that it’s time to write, and that there are reasons to write. I write about relationships — some of them romantic; others not. The muse’s kiss awakened my characters and gave me the blessing to write about them. The muse reminds me of who I am and what makes me who I am.

The end of winter

I guess I have been going through Winter. The last time I wrote significantly was November (but to be fair, I wrote a book that month.) I didn’t feel like writing; I didn’t feel inspired to write, and I didn’t know if I was a writer anymore.

For me, to be a writer is to be beautiful and mysterious, to hold within oneself multitudes, to hear strange harmonies. I think I might be there again.