Journeys

I've actually had an amazing amount of personal stuff get in the way of my usual activities, some of it health related, some of it family related, and a whole lot of it disruptive.  Things appear to be settling now, for the most part, and I've made a few changes to make my days easier for me.  Not sure they will get me on this blog more than usual, but they are already helping with the writing aspect of things.  Now we just need the weather to be cooperative...which is not likely to happen consistently any time soon.  We need the water, don't get me wrong, so the rain is welcome.  The tornadoes and lightning, however, really aren't as necessary as they seem to think they are.  ;)

Of course, the biggest concern has been my health.  I had to go back on my iron to combat anemia, and finally gave in and went to the doctor when the last 2 weeks proved to be far more difficult than they should have been.  He's put me on medication as a stop gap measure (which is already working) and is having testing done to see what we can do to keep the issue under control in the future.  A lot of this has to do with my weight, and a lot of it has to do with my age.  I was taking tiny steps towards a healthier me when the newest wrinkle showed up.  With the temporary measures already having a dramatic affect for the better, I'm already trying to get back into some of the habits that were helping me before.  I may hold off on exercise for a bit, though, just to allow things to stabilize before I go adding something back into the mix.

One of the biggest changes I've made is to my schedule.  I'm not sure why, but months after leaving my substitute teaching job, I was still on the working girl schedule: up early, awake all day, to bed around midnight.  For most people, this works...except maybe the midnight thing.  For ME, this is a nightmare.  I hate mornings (I like to say I'm allergic to them) and have always done better with a night time schedule--meaning to bed at 3 AM (or later) and up at 10 or 11 AM.  I don't even start to feel creative energy until 1 AM or later, so being in bed at midnight robs me of my most creative time.  After talking with the husband about this, it was agreed that I should try to go back to my own schedule, with a small change: I still have to get up to get the kids off to school.  I just go back to bed once they are on their buses and sleep until 11 or noon.  The old work schedule rears its ugly head still, so the shift over is proving a bit more difficult than I thought it would be, but, as I said earlier, the positive results are already being seen.  I've been working A LOT faster on A.C. than I was before starting to switch over.  Nothing beats working within your own creative cycle.

The editing job has also gone through some changes.  Our acquisitions editor resigned for personal reasons that had nothing to do with her love for us.  She just didn't feel it was the right fit for her.  As a result, my position as senior editor is now merged with acquisitions, and I've had to do some shuffling around with my responsibilities to get everything to fit.  Fortunately, it's still quiet for us.  It may not stay that way once we have our August launch and release.  I'm looking forward to it, but we also still have a lot to do to get 3 of our 4 books ready on time (the 4th may or may not be ready, and we're okay with that).

In other news, my essay "When Tears Fall" has been reprinted in Voices of Autism, an autism anthology.  I am VERY excited about this antho.  It's already received at least one wonderful review:

The fifth entry in the Voices anthology project from the Healing Project, this work includes over 40 different stories and vignettes written by parents, teachers, and people with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) that showcase how families and caregivers measure perseverance, understanding, and success. Many of the selections stand out, including an author’s account of her autistic son, a seventh grader’s perspective on her two siblings with autism, a memoir by an adult with autism who relied on a tire advertisement to get through tough times, and an account of the challenges of dating an adult with Asperger’s. The book’s real strengths are the adult-penned passages, which will give readers a better sense of what autism truly is. Taken individually, the stories show glimpses of the impact that autism has on individuals and those they love. Taken collectively, they paint a rich landscape that many will find familiar. Highly recommended for public libraries and academic libraries with disability collections.

-- ­Corey Seeman, Kresge Business Administration Library, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor

I hope you will consider picking up a copy.  Autism is probably one of the least understood but most prevalent disabilities in the world today.  1 out of 166 people are diagnosed with autism, and it affects everyone in the autistic's life.  Probably the most frightening part of the disability is that those who have it look normal.  It's not like so many disabilities where you can tell there's something different just by the person's appearance.  When you combine this with the lack of knowledge about it, the result can be devastating for the family.  I've been a target of the blame game, of being told I should get another opinion because it's probably not autism, of having to fight for everything that my son is supposed to get by law.  The only thing that will help is education.  The essays and stories in this book come from our personal experiences as family members of autistics and from those with autism.  Nothing could inform better.

Between personal stress at home, work, weather, and a few other things, not much work has been done on my own writing recently (note previous entry).  However, I have finally reached the current halfway mark in Assassin's Choice in terms of chapter numbers.  I may be past that in actual word count because there's a huge chunk towards the end of the book that may get cut.  Phoenix Rising also got a nice, healthy word count addition this week--I now have a Friday buddy that I meet with to work on "alternate" projects.  Hopefully meeting with her every week will help keep me on track with it.

In publication news, two of my short stories are now available on AnthologyBuilder.com: "In the Blood" and "Intended".  One of them even received positive comments from the site editor.  I need to update the site to reflect that, I suppose.  ;)

There's little else to post about really.  I'm ruminating a new Meta and considering writing a new article on critiquing (yea, like we all ne4ed another one--but this one comes from something I realized about the crits I receive and how I react to them).  I'm still working on a short, and, yes, it's very odd for me to plod my way through a first draft of a short like this.  I just finished a S. L. Veihl book and have one other novel and an omnibus lined up for me to read.  For work, one manuscript has been returned to the author for round 2 edits, and the second manuscript is about done with round 1.

I did start trying out a new hard copy method for tracking my submissions.  It's going to take a bit to get all the old stuff in the columnar book...and I may end up having to do it all over again because I'm not so sure I like it.  I like the idea of a book and the information I'm trying to keep (in general), but the book is a bit...big.  I'm thinking of making my own template then having it copied and bound at Staples.  We'll see.

And...that's about it.  Told you it's been quiet.

Despite the title, writing through stress isn't something I do well.  When stressed, I tend to veg out and watch TV...anything on TV (well, almost anything—you couldn't pay me to watch Flavor of Love...actually, pay enough and maybe—we could use the money), or play on the PlayStation.  There's just something about killing bad guys on the PS that even non-violent me can get into.   But it also sucks up my brain and my time.  So after editing for the day, I take my chapter down to the living room (where I keep an eye on my son after school) with good intentions, and yet I never follow through.  I end up playing instead (especially now that the cable is out...DVDs?  what are those?)  And it usually doesn't help with the stress/depression.

Which really has me wondering how well I'll do when I actually have a novel out and another that should be on the way., but that's probably for another entry/discussion since there's a whole lot more that plays into that concern than the stress factor.

The last week and a half have been very stressful.  Most of that should be alleviated tomorrow, but it still means almost no work this past week.  I did manage a decent bit this past weekend, but that was early enough in the situation that it wasn't as bad as this week.  This week has made it clear to me that I need to find a way to keep working despite the stress.  I'm already 5 chapters behind schedule on A.C.  It might be my own schedule, but I imposed it to try to learn to meet deadlines, which I'm so not doing right now.  I met 99.9% of my deadlines in college, but that's a whole different kind of writing (although, some of my ECS projects were totally killer)—it wasn't nearly as hard as novel writing.  And not nearly as time consuming.

Regardless, I've got to find a way to keep working despite the downs of life.  I suppose the first thing is to resist the PlayStation (oddly enough, I can write/revise when the TV is on—it provides a way for me to handle the ADHD but doesn't seem to take over unless I'm too stressed and tired and can't find the energy/motivation to do more than just lay there and stare).  I'd take today and toss in a season of Stargate SG-1 or a movie or something, but I have editing to do.  My overly developed sense of responsibility won't allow me to let other people down if I can help it.  I've got deadlines coming up and authors waiting on me to get their work published.

Maybe that's a clue for writing through the stress and making deadlines (especially if the novel ever gets submitted/accepted):  somehow seeing it as my responsibility to others—the agent, the editor, the publisher, someone—and using that to stay on target.  Right now, the only person I'm responsible to is me.  For me, not meeting the deadline just means another delay in starting the query process, and that's just not enough to kick me in my arse and get me back on track.  It should be, but it's not.  There's no money riding on me finishing on time, no one else I'm responsible to for it, not even a grade involved.  It's quite possible that having a contract will change the whole deadline process for me because then something WILL be riding on finishing on time.

Definitely something to think about.

There is a downside to doing everything on the weekend: tornado weather can get in the way.

This weekend, I didn't get much done because the weather pretty much took me offline for about a day and a half.  If I owned a laptop, it wouldn't have been as big a problem, but all I have is the ol' desktop. Since I can't afford to replace it should anything happen to it, I tend to be a little over cautious with it.  As a result, not so much done this past weekend.  With this being just the beginning of the spring storms, it's going to be an interesting couple of months.  Then we get the humid summer, followed shortly by hurricane season.  Why, yes, one of these days I really do need to get a laptop.  *g*

This week I actually need to focus a little on world building.  I used to love world building, but I think I burned myself out on it and never quite recovered.  So why do I do it?  Because, simply, I'm forgetful.  I want consistency in my worlds.  So I use world building to set things in my head a bit and to check things when I forget.  And, yes, I have used my files to check on things.  I pretty much have to write down every background decision I make or it gets lost the next time I come around to it.  One downside to being both ADHD and anemic is a really poor memory.

At any rate, I've finally hit the chapters in A.C. where I left off my world building.  So this week I need to do a little before I continue onwards.  Then I'll have 4 or 5 chapters before I need to do more.  It used to be that I'd do a whole bunch of world building at once before I even needed it, but I've not been as into it, so now I just do it when I need it.  I try to be thorough--get everything on that particular profile complete all at once--but I don't build ahead much any more.  That may change when I have another world that needs the basics, but most of that stuff is done for Alden.

But, for now, I'm off to do work.  I'm going to try to carve a little time out of my day for my own writing work and see if I can get started on the one profile I need.  I'm not so much behind on the one manuscript that I need to dedicate my whole day to the editing job now.  It'll be nice to have my hour back.

I think I'm finally figuring out how to make the editing job/writing career thing work.  Of course, I shouldn't say that too loudly--could end up having the whole thing not work out for several weeks in a row and then where would I be?

Pretty much my weekdays are when I wear the editor hat and do my LP work.  Mornings are devoted to slush pile reading, afternoons to editing.  If there's no slush pile, then I work on editing all day with a nice break for lunch and house things (like, you know, dishes).

When my son gets home around 4, I get off the comp and use the afternoon and evenings for revising Assassin's Choice (or anything else I need to tackle).  This has worked pretty well so far; I actually managed to get chapters 15 AND 16 into v5 last week by doing it this way.  It allows me to revise by hand (which I still seem to need to do despite being able to edit on the screen) and keeps me from my usual internet distractions.  ;)

Weekends are devoted to new words and world building and the like.  This is also when I do all my DII admin stuff.

And last week, following this pattern netted me over 12k in words processed.

Now to just try to get it to work like that EVERY weekend.  ;)

I'm trying to get back on track here, but it's proving to be slower going than I imagined.  I still have the cough from being sick, though I suspect that, for the first time in almost 4 years, some of the issue is my asthma flaring.up.  It's weird having to deal with that again after so long without it.  There's also a little congestion left and the two are waking me up intermittently through the night.  The lack of uninterrupted sleep isn't helping any, either.

One of the biggest things I'm having trouble with is working on my own stuff during the week.  The only thing I can think of as being a hindrance is that I do editing all day.  So, when ti comes time to work on my own writing, I'm about writing-ed out.  I've already processed a couple of thousand words.  A couple thousand more, even if it's my own, just overwhelms the brain.  I'll have to work on that, obviously, in the meantime, it looks like it was a very good idea to make Friday a part of my writing weekend.  Even though I'm not getting much done during the week, I do seem to be fairly productive on weekends (over 7k this past Saturday and Sunday alone).  I just know I could get more done if I would just take advantage of my evenings.

Motivation.  It's such a fickle thing.

I'm not sure how much I'll be able to work on this little problem in the near future, however.  Because of being sick, I'm behind in my editing work, so I've had to drop the hour I reserve at the end of my work day (before my son gets home) for my own writing—I need to use that time to get a little more done on the manuscripts in my care.  I'm also stepping in for the Acquisitions Editor who needed some personal time, and had to adjust my daily schedule as a result.  So, right now, work is very busy, which makes me even less inclined to work on my own writing in the evenings.

I'm about 25k behind on my word count goal and 4 chapters behind with A.C.  I still have world building I really need to get done for A.C. (and my other Alden novels in general), and I've picked up Novel Plot Building as an in progress project again.  I really need to find a way to get past this block I have on doing my own writing in the evenings.  I'm participating in a writing challenge to hit my problem areas, but that won't do any good if I don't find a way to get past my own blocks.

It's sad.  I rarely suffer writers block, but I do have large amounts of motivation block.  All these ideas and projects, and I just can't seem to push myself to get them done.

Have to find a way.

I've just been sick.  Really, REALLY sick.  It's definitely been a week to forget--everyone in the house caught it, including the husband who kept trying to act like he had nothing.  It kicked his butt too.  As for me, I slept.  A LOT.  A good 3 days of sleep.  And didn't eat much.  And didn't write at all.  Or work, for that matter.

I'm pretty much behind on everything at the moment.  I'm even 30k behind in my word count goal for the year.  All I can do now is hope the rest of the year gets better from here, really.  Most of this week will focus on catching up with work and taking care of things on that end.  I'm still getting pretty tired after being up for a few hours, though, so catching up may not be the operative word yet.  I don't want to push myself too hard and end up relapsing with this stuff--it was bad enough the first time around.  I have goals for the week, it's just slow and steady is going to be the mantra.  If I don't make the goals, so be it.

I've spent the last couple of weeks dealing with some unusual (for me) insecurities.  One had to do with family, but was indirectly related to being a writer, the other was directly related to writing and led to a realization about how I need to work.  I've also been learning that even established authors still deal with insecurities when it comes to writing.  Which is kind of depressing in the sense of "oh my Gad--you mean I'll never be free of this crap?!"  But it can be reassuring too--maybe I won't piss off fans with my own sense of self-importance the way a few authors have in recent years.  (I've already told friends that if I ever get to the point where I think I don't need an editor, they are to slap me silly.  I can't see myself ever becoming a popular enough author to warrant such arrogance or ever getting over my own insecurities enough to ever think I don't need help, but who knows what the future holds?)  The thing about insecurities, though, is you have to find a way through or around them to keep going.  You can't let them strangle you.

My first demon had to do with not providing financially for my kids.  Writing doesn't pay much for most authors.  MY writing doesn't even cover the cost of supplies yet.  (Are you kidding?  Ink alone wipes out what I make in a year!)  while the amount I make is rising, it certainly can't be called a paying job.  I'm in that "paying my dues" phase of my writing career--and may be here not only for a very long time, but for the entirety of my career.  We have to be somewhat realistic: writing is a brutal business and, even with more opportunities to get paid publication, only a few really ever make this a supporting career.  The funny thing about all this is that I've only ever wanted to be an at home mommy anyway.  Now that I am, because of some issues that prevent me from working, I'm angsting about it.  I guess it would be easier to deal with if I'd had more of a choice in the matter instead of making the only choice that made sense (because, yes, there was another option open to me, but taking the option that reduces our income when we barely get by as it is hardly makes any sense at all).

So, right now, regardless of the financial implications of my writing, I'd be home anyway.  However, this doesn't mean I don't provide for my kids, and I had to realize this.  I keep us from losing more money by giving my husband the hours he needs to work.  I keep us from paying for childcare--which would probably eat up most, if not all, of any paycheck I would get.  As a sub, there's no guarantee I'd be working every day--though I did work most days because I was one of those subs teachers wanted in their classrooms.  And over the last year, it's become more and more obvious that I wasn't getting paid enough to really offset the cost of me working.  So, even when I was bringing in a traditional income, I wasn't really providing financially for my kids.  Towards the end of my subbing career, I was even paying for me to work.

Then there are the non-financial reasons for me to stay home.  I provide something for my kids that a daycare never could: me.  My time, my presence, my interaction.  I help them get ready for school and see them off, make sure they've done everything they need and have everything they need.  I'm here when they get home and can listen to their day and make sure they get their homework done and do whatever else they need to do.  When my husband is late, I feed them (he's usually our cook).  I provide stability in the routine of the day, something my son really needs.  In this house, quality time goes hand in hand with quantity time.  They get me, their mom, and no one can replace that.

So I do provide for my kids.  Maybe not with money, but I do provide for them.  And, since I'd be home anyway, I might as well write.  There's ways to keep the costs down and ways to increase the income, both of which I'm working on.

Demon #1 dealt with.  Hopefully for good, but angst has this annoying tendency to resurface, so we'll see.  At least I now have this post to look at when it does.

Demon #2 is an odd one for me.  I'm used to crises in confidence, but this had nothing to do with confidence.  This one had to do with what I "should" be doing with my time.  I wasn't thinking "hey, you're a lousy writer, give it up."  I was thinking, "I may be an okay writer, but should I be writing?"  I'm not even sure it came down to money, even though I'm sure that was part of it.  I am selling, not frequently and not everything, but I'm seeing more sales now than when I started.  But should I be trying to get published?  Perhaps this was more of "how much of a waste of time is this?" kind of thing.  The solution to this demon came down to two things for me:

1.  Going back to the kids a bit here: I'd be home anyway.  The press I edit for hasn't taken off enough for it to take up all my time, there's only so much housecleaning a person can do (if they even want to do that much housecleaning at all), and I'm not a TV and bonbons kind of person (even the PlayStation gets old after awhile--something it's starting to remind us of lately)...and I've always wanted to be a writer.  And...I'd be home anyway,  Might as well fill that time with what I love to do.

2. Oddly, what helped the most was writing fresh words.  Not revising.  Not checking for sense, technicalities, or anything--just getting a story down.  It'll need to be revised later, yes, but, for now, I can just write it.  Apparently, I need that to keep sane about my writing.  Revising is about fixing the problems.  Focus on nothing but fixing the problems, you begin to wonder if it's what you should be doing because all you're doing is fixing problems and there's always problems to fix.  I don't like revisions.  I know they're necessary, but, no, revising isn't a part of writing I enjoy.  I don't enjoy them and see so much wrong with my writing that it's hard to feel like this is what I should be doing.  To keep my love of writing alive, to think I should be doing this writing thing, I need fresh words.  This means making sure I have a novel in that early part of creation while revising another project.

Once I wrote some new words on Phoenix Rising, that feeling that maybe I shouldn't be doing this dissipated.  I just have to remember this the next time I get that feeling that I maybe I shouldn't be doing this writing thing.  Granted, it may not come back, but I should plan for it anyway.  For one, I tend to hyper focus.  It's part of the ADHD, believe it or not.  At some point, I'll get so totally focused on Assassin's Choice that nothing else will get worked on.  Assassin's is in revisions and will be for the rest of the year.  No (or very few) fresh words.  So it will be easy to get caught back up in it and let anything fresh just slide because this "needs" to get done.

Demon #2 dealt with...for now.

Writing is such an odd profession.  It's generally not thought of as a career unless you're Stephen King or J. K. Rowling, neither of which would be told by their spouses or parents to go get a "real" job.  Even visual artists get more respect and support than your average writer.  Despite the number of markets out there, it doesn't pay a living wage for most of us--a lot of which has to do with what those markets pay (or, more frequently, don't pay), but there are other reasons in there as well.  So it comes with these "extra" demons.  It's bad enough to be fighting feelings of insecurity, but we have to deal with all this other stuff as well.  And it's a constant thing.  There's this subtle pressure to prove yourself (by selling BIG, of course) or get out of the way.  And that, apparently, never goes away...except maybe for King and Rowling.  ;)

All of which makes me kind of glad I'd be home anyway.  If I end up being able to fall back on nothing else for my writing, I can always remind myself of that.  Hopefully, that, and the few publications I get each year, will be enough to keep me going despite my demons.  I'm home anyway.  Might as well do something I love to do.  :)

I spent most of last week fighting sinus crud and generally being sick.  By Wednesday, I gave up, crawled in bed, and pretty much stayed there.  By Friday, I was feeling better, but I decided to keep taking it easy--I've been fighting a lot of ickiness since I stopped subbing.  My kids haven't been sick, so I'm not sure where it's coming from.  Rather than rush back to work and risk another relapse, I just stayed in bed.

I did manage to get alden.nu back online and in working order, though.  That took all of the weekend, but its done.

Now my plan is to focus on getting A.C. back on track.  Have other stuff in the works as well, but A.C. is the priority.

We had a wonderful holiday, but I'm glad it's over.  My oldest daughter and her family came down on Christmas Eve and spent a few days with is, middle daughter was over for the day with her boyfriend (who left right after we ate), and the kids father was out for about a week or so.  The gift pile was just scary, even taking into account there were a lot of people doing the giving and a couple of extra people receiving.  Not much writing done in December at all--just too busy.  The kids went back to school on January 3, and I've spent most of this last week trying to catch up on a few things.  But now it's time to get back into the groove...or to find a groove to get back into.  ;)

My first priority is A.C., which I want done and out to beta readers by November.  It's a late date, but I have the current v4/v5 combined revision I'm doing to finish, then some major changes for one of the characters to make in a v6 revision.  I'm keeping a to do list for v6 as I work through v4/v5.  Most of it is nit picky things, but I'm changing the race of a character (dropping the previous race completely out of the Alden world) and that will require some larger changes.  I suspect beta readers will find places where I missed things.  ;)

I'm also working on Phoenix Rising.  The notes draft is going pretty well, but is minus notes and I suspect has some redundancy.  I'll finish it, print it, make notations of what needs to be fixed, and revise the notes draft before moving on to the building draft.  I need to work on world building for it (and A.C. as well).  I've also got Stolen Priest out for me to look at, but it's a pretty low priority for me right now.

Nine shorts are in various stages of being worked on: "A Single Parent In A Married Relationship" (essay), "Blood Whispers" (Vampire), "The Reckoning" (SF), "Gift of Writing" (Supernatural), "Magda" (??), "Iris" (SF), "Rebuilding After Rejection" (Article; being updated), "Promises" (Vampire), and "Fairy Dragon" (brand new Fantasy).  Most of these are in various stages of being revised, although "Fairy Dragon" is so new the rough isn't finished.  Several are a couple of years old, which is my problem with shorts--they aren't a priority for me.  They'll eventually get done; I'm just not one to impose deadlines on them since they tend to get pushed aside more frequently for other things.

The only other project to worry about is fixing Alden.nu.  I tried to give it a start this morning, but there's a problem with the MT install, so I have to wait until the fella who handles the server gets back online to fix it for me.  Alden.nu will take awhile to get back together anyway--most of the areas that have problems have to be restored page by page.  That's a lot of pages to have to get back online.

Goals for 2008:
» 450,000 words
» Finish A.C. and get it out to whole book readers
» Finish Phoenix rough draft and revisions to v3
» at least 1 professional publication (no, I never learn)
» finish "Letters", "Single Parent", and "Blood Whispers"
» write 6 new shorts
» read 1 book a month

The only thing I'm worried about on that list is the 6 new shorts, but the rest should be quite manageable. :)