Every morning I create the sun,
dandified provider of the morn,
huge and lurid rose against the dawn.
Every evening, I create the moon,
cool and glorious minder of the night,
phasing in and out and back again.
Every midnight, I create the world,
anchor for the stuff of dreams unfurled.
We all need a place to feel safe.
Whether safety means the need to get away from a hard day at work, a sense of loss from trauma, or an immediate threat to one’s well-being, sanctuary is necessary.
Some find sanctuary in a closed door, a meditation session, or a safe community. Some find sanctuary in writing, or art, or other engrossing activity. Some find sanctuary in family or friends, or in religion.
Inside each of us, no matter how old we are, is our memory of childhood, which was safe or not safe, That part of fears the unknown as something dangerous. That young self yearns for sanctuary.
My idea of a creation story for this earth: The world was created in a burst of passion, with the raw materials for life combining in a great explosion of potentiality.
Without risk, there is no reward. There is only buckling in to the forces inside and outside of us.
Many examples of healthy, responsible risk-taking exist. Investing money for return on investment, dating, expressing one’s feelings, submitting creative works for publication, going up for a promotion. Confronting corruption and injustice, changing the status quo and being authentic also take risks.
Risk instills fear — of rejection, of failure, of loss, of negative consequences. Many people focus on the loss instead of the potential gain, and we call them risk-averse. Avoiding risk has its cost — lost opportunity, lack of progress, and a dearth of fulfillment.
Choosing risk for its potential rewards may require changing one’s mindset with one or more of the following:
I’m contemplating scrapping a novel.
Gaia’s Hands, my first book, needs so much help. I can’t even explain why, except that it just isn’t up to my standards. The B story (Jeanne and Josh’s relationship) doesn’t feel quite right. The A story needs a few adjustments. The magic seems intermittent and just wedged in.
All in all, I am frustrated with this story, even though I’ve rewritten it so many times it’s ridiculous.
It’s down to a short novel. Maybe if I cut enough, it can be a novella. I don’t see it getting larger again.
Wish me luck.
All my life I thought I was an extrovert. I loved hugging people, I loved being around big crowds of people, I loved to talk. But then, when I passed through one of my frequent depressions, I felt like crawling into a hole and not talking to anyone.
Fast forward over a diagnosis of bipolar II, and a life change with medication, sleep protocols, and other lifestyle changes (no alcohol), and my moods are stable. However, I’ve discovered what I thought was natural extroversion was actually my hypomanic moods, and my normal state was introversion.
Yesterday, my psychiatrist agreed that I am, indeed, an introvert.
This may be one of the hardest adjustments to make with my bipolar — that some of what I regarded as natural aspects of my personality were actually traits fueled by chemical imbalance. This adjustment is harder than it sounds — I find myself quoting a Myers-Briggs score from 20 years ago that is no longer valid, and it hits me with a small shock.
What will it mean for me to be an introvert?
Here’s my writing goals list for the year as of today:
Yesterday, an agent asked to see my full manuscript for the first time. Mind you, I have sent out hundreds of queries for my five novels.
Let me be honest — I have sent out queries for books that I hadn’t sent through developmental edit or beta reading. I have sent out queries not knowing how to write a query letter. I have, rightly, gotten rejections.
I have learned a lot from my failures. The visual above doesn’t really show the road to success because it doesn’t incorporate learning from failure. One can work hard but wrong, and all that effort means nothing.
This is not to say that I will get an agent out of this. I could get rejected by the other 27 agents I have queries out to. The agent who has my manuscript might pass. Hard work and learning from failures may not be enough. The book might just be “not what we’re looking for”.
But it’s a glimmer of hope, a glimmer of success. I’ll take it.
Under the Weather
I’m feeling decidedly under the weather (literally — this weather is weighing on me) and uninspired. Not a good thing for a daily blog. I’m writing this because I know I have to write something or else I will fall away from writing the blog after 1000-some posts. And that will really depress me.
Free Writing
So I’m going to use this as a free writing exercise. In free writing exercises, you put your pen down on paper (or fingers on the keyboard) and you just write without editing. It’s a great way to come up with ideas.
Here goes:
Brother Coyote and Kel are returning the twins (Kira and Nala) to Ridgeway III, a restricted planet. Thus what Kel is doing is borderline illegal, just as Coyote’s leaving ridgeway III was illegal. Nonetheless, he’s going on a walkabout of sorts with Kel, offering his uncanny talent of opening wormholes to her shipping business.
One of the interesting problems they will meet with arriving at Ridgeway III is Coyote’s mother, the Convener of the Moot (i.e. Prime Minister). Coyote’s mother is a charismatic, expansive person who thinks Coyote and Kel are a good match. Given that they’ve just met and they get along like cats and dogs, she’s sorely mistaken. Probably.
Ridgeway III is a closed world through their own choice — they don’t want their beauty planet defiled by commerce, and they’re a bit edgy about how outsiders will take their occasional inborn talents — of which Coyote’s talents are an extreme example. But Coyote is their test case, and Kel and Coyote have to keep his talent under wraps out in space.
Reflection
Note how the free writing isn’t that organized. That’s okay; it will still make a good start of a story. I hadn’t gotten these ideas hashed out on paper; now I feel more anchored to what this story will flow like.
Sorry I skipped yesterday, but it was a full working day for me. I sent out some queries for Whose Hearts are Mountains yesterday, and I will send some out today. And again.
It’s not the first time I’ve sent queries out. I’ve never received a good response on queries, but I keep improving and I keep sending queries out.
I believe in my work. Maybe I believed in it too much when I sent the first queries, before I discovered dev editors and harsh re-edits. Maybe I believed in my queries too much before I learned to write queries (and I hope I’m doing them right now).
I hope this time around is the time I get an agent.
Words Like Me 