Ridiculous Cute Crow

On my mind - ridiculous cute. To manage migraine, I do yoga nidra at noon each day. Most of the time, this is a solitary endeavor. Yesterday, it was not. I developed -- a growth.

Crow decided to climb into my tee shirt with me. My fluffy black 17lb marshmallow cat flopped over between my side and my arm. He pillowed his head on my shoulder and 'assisted' with my  nervous system reset.

Except.

When my session ended and I need to get up and go back to work, we came to disagreement. My furry son declined to rise. He also declined to relinquish my shirt.

Thus it is that rather than distress the sizeable feline, I risked an indecent exposure charge. Only briefly. I was outdoors, but  inside the lanai when I shimmied out of that tee shirt and grabbed a blanket from the porch swing and got it around me to get inside. Good thing it wasn't yard work day.

I found myself another tee shirt to wear for the rest of the day. 

My first one remained a place of feline refuge.

I suppose there's something to be said for being someone's sense of safety. 

One final photo of a happy, ridiculous Crow cat below.

How Not to Hurt

I’d been ready to say that I didn’t think much about ergonomics, but then I took a look around. The lifelong pursuit of anything that might keep migraine pain to a dull roar has given me a whole lot of tools in my ergonomics toolbox. Some are things I just like. The rest are attempts to mitigate or prevent pain.

In the ‘I just like it’ category:

• Positive click keyboards. Straight. I expect some acknowledgement from the keys when I type. I need that sensory feedback or writing isn’t writing and I will be deeply dissatisfied.
• Writing in front of the fake fireplace on the sofa, usually with a cat in my lap – NOT ergonomic but warm, cozy, and purry.
• Writing in bed. Also not ergonomic, but at the end of a day, it’s a lovely segue into sleep.
• Noise canceling headphones. I swear to you these are why I am not currently doing life in a deep, dark prison somewhere.
• Creeptastic playlists. Ambient music has grown up on YouTube. I can find SciFi themed creepy stuff, I can find stuff that’s themed to particular fandoms – Alien, Cthulhu, zombie movies all kinds of stuff to write mayhem to.

In the ‘No Pain, Please’ category:

• Putting my monitor at eye level and my keyboard at waist level. I have an adjustable laptop desk with legs that can be adjusted any number of ways. I use it to get my laptop up high enough, so I look straight ahead at it. I use an auxiliary keyboard and mouse on my work surface to promote upright posture and to keep my head in a neutral, upright position rather than tilted down or carried forward of my spine. There was physical therapy involved in learning that this posture was my goal.
• Stand/sit desk – this is basically a desk that lets me stand when I want or sit when I need to, I also have a treadmill desk with one shelf set at eye level for the laptop and a waist high work surface for the keyboard and mouse. Variety, it turns out, also helps prevent pain.
• Blue blocker glasses. These really help reduce migraine pain. Not incidences of migraine – but with blue blockers, I don’t start a migraine and go from 0 to 60 on the pain scale in a few seconds flat. The blue blockers give me a much gentler ramp to ‘hey stupid, get flat’. If you need these, don’t cheap out. Real migraine glasses target two specific wavelengths of blue light. Cheapy glasses just throw a filter on some plastic and call it good. The real thing gives you targeted protection that’s worth the extra cash.
• Taking a daily 20-minute NSDR break. This isn’t just for posture. It’s for the brain and your entire nervous system.
• Exercises - I have a set of specific back and neck exercises designed to keep the shoulders pulled back and to counteract overstretch in the back of the neck. Those help.

In the normal course of generating a story, writing shouldn’t hurt. If it does, there’s likely a reasonable ergonomic solution. Sometimes, it means getting a professional like a physical therapist involved. Sometimes it means breaking up a repetitive motion cycle and giving weary muscles a rest. Ergonomics come down to you conducting a set of informed experiments to find out what helps you. It’s hard to have fun when what you love hurts you.

A Change of Scenery

Happy Friday the 13th. Watch out for weirdos bearing knives. And chainsaws. And . . .

Listen. I haven't been to a conference in a very long time. I'm not likely to hit a conference for a very long time. Between Covid and cash, me traveling to conferences just isn't likely. So count me out on those. Networking with like-minded authors will have to happen some other way for the foreseeable future.

But writing retreats. Mmmmm. Let's chat about writing retreats. Here's my TLDR:

1. Writing retreats are best done solo.
2. Writing retreats are best done when you're the kind of person who needs a shot of the unfamiliar to jolt you - to put you in beginners mind where you wonder at all the things you've never seen before.
3. Writing retreats are *necessary* if you feel like you are in an environment in your home wherein you cannot fully inhabit your creative self without masking.

Here's my attempt to explain. Aka: The deep dive.

1. Writing retreats - go solo. Unless you are some titan of discipline, going on a writing retreat with other people means no writing will happen. I know going in when someone says 'let's go here and write' that what will actually happen will be lots and lots of talking, lots and lots of eating, and absolutely zero writing. We might talk about writing, but we won't actually put words on paper. The point of a writing retreat, for me, is to isolate long enough to begin hearing my own voice. Not everyone else's. Not my partner's. Not my parents'. Not my boss's. Not even my own set of 'shoulds' that I plague myself with on a daily basis. A retreat needs to present a place where I can exist without any responsibility to any other living thing other than myself for a few days. 

2. A retreat works best for me If there's something new and different to see or experience. A simple change of scenery can work magic. Going somewhere I don't know kicks me out of cognitive ruts and I can come to my stories with new vision. Beginners mind sees everything as if for the first time - without preconceived thoughts or ideas. That allows room for new approaches, if they're wanted.

3. We all wear masks. Most, we wear joyfully: parent, partner, friend, etc. Some are less joyful, but they are the sum of what helps make us acceptable to others. This is basic socialization and there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that we live in community with other humans and should probably strive to work and play well with others. The trouble comes from not having a safe place to unmask. Some of us are lucky enough to be partnered with someone who values who we are when we're not masking. Some of us aren't. Because masking accrues a cost, it can contribute to burn out. So retreats are a lovely option for people who need a safe place to take off all the masks and remember who they are in and of themselves - not who they are as defined by anyone else. This may not be a universal experience. It may be a spectrum thing. Take it if it resonates for you. 

So yes. I love writing retreats. I love wandering off into isolation, to exist in silence for a space of time, speaking only to order food, if I want. I love spending all that silence listening to what's going on inside, writing as fast as I can, uncovering whatever needs to be heard or seen or perceived.  I often pick up new stories on retreats. I hope they can be as fertile for you. 

In the Company of Like Minded Others

 I am a contradiction. I complain about never having time alone in which to write, yet I do write in company. Most of the time, I rather like having a set meeting time and space. It does wonders to lend legitimacy to my endeavors in my family's eyes. If I want to write for an hour but there's no one else involved, my family are more inclined to interrupt. The instant I say I'm meeting so and so online to write for an hour, they back away, loathe to interrupt what their brains interpret as a 'meeting'. The cats are inconsiderate writing companions. They won't judge my facial expressions but they will judge me for paying attention to a keyboard and not them. Usually by walking on or crashing on said keyboard. Or paralyzing a typing hand because your hand makes the best pillow.

I currently have three groups running at any one time. One meets painfully early in the morning on Google chat. There's a brief good morning said, maybe a check in on how everyone is doing, and then we get to words for an hour. The other two are on Discord. One group is enormous and is for reporting purposes only. There's very little chatter. It's self-driven. Other people are out there writing at the same time you are, but you may never know who or interact with any of them. Though there are live write ins offered on YouTube for the next few weeks. They generally run in 30 minute sprints with a break. The mod is on camera guiding (and writing). That group emphasizes spending time in your story and focuses less on word counts. Sprints are available and certainly you can arrange to hang out with someone and write and chat. Competition is not my strong suit, however, and sprints offer mixed results at best. The other space is very personable and friendly and encouraging. We all make an effort to lift one another and celebrate any success.

The secret of my success in these spaces is that no one can see me. At no time am I on a camera for these meet ups. If there were a need to for me to be writing with my web cam on, I'd be locked out of focus. Yeah, I don't know why. I just know it's the case. I'm told to know myself and in this case being perceived while writing is bad. It's the core of my protests about needing to be alone to really dig deep and write. I prefer to pack up and leave the house to write because resting bitch face is my default. It goes really, really grim, though as I'm working on story conflict. I'm out here murdering people in fiction in some terrible and gruesome ways. I'm not going to be smiling while I do it. I have to be there in that scene as I write it. If you're around while I write it, you're going to see stuff in my face you do not want to see. I'm done and super impatient with my family freaking out and asking if I'm okay while I'm in the middle of a horrific scene or really tense conflict. Worse by far if I happen to be in the middle of a sex scene. Long way of saying that I am not in the least interested in being perceived by someone on the other end of a web connection while I write. I don't want that deep into their writing process and I do not want them all up in mine.

For me, there's inherent discipline in knowing that someone is waiting for me to check in and get started. On the days I'd just skip writing because I wasn't feeling it, having someone waiting for me drags me to the page regardless of my feelz. And that's a habit I want to encourage. Turn to the story no matter how I feel. That feels like a solid foundation.

Starting Off Right

 You've had excellent advice from those who've written about starting stories so far. I second everything they've said. I'm coming at beginnings from a slightly different angle because for me, a beginning need do only one thing: Make me care.

I want to care. It's why I pick up a book with hope in my heart. I want to care about the story. I want to care about the characters. Making me care is a a three step process folded into the beginning of your story.

First tell me the goals. What does the character want? Even if they're wrong about what they think they want in the beginning of the book, what is that? The sooner I know what that is, the sooner I can identify with that character. I don't need to like the character. The character doesn't even have to be human. I just need to appreciate what they want. Usually there's some truth or universality to whatever this character wants or needs and that's enough to hook me in if you're communicating it via that character's unique voice.

Second, tell me the stakes. I need to know very quickly what's at stake in a story both internally for the character and externally for the character and the world of the story. What does this character stand to lose? This sounds like the answer should be 'well, they either get their goal or they don't' and I assure you that is NOT the answer. The answer is deeper than that. It's connected to a core wound in the character - whatever this character lacks inside themselves that makes them want what they want. It's connected to this character's faulty belief systems. The hard part is that at the beginning of the story, characters don't know they have wounds of any kind, much less faulty belief systems. Still, in the beginning of a story, I need the faintest whiff of what the character lacks. Maybe she's the sole survivor of a space ship wreck. It's been awhile. No one's coming to save her. S'okay, though. She's carved out a means of survival. Lonely? Sure. Sure. But, you know. She wasn't the the type to be belle of anyone's ball so it didn't much matter. This was peaceful. Lots of time for figuring out how to make paint from local resources and painting anything that stands still long enough - oh, hey. Is that a shooting star? Or -- holy shit. A ship. What's at stake for this character? Loneliness. Isolation. Companionship. Belonging. Possibly, if it's a romance, what's at stake is being proven wrong about not being the type to be the belle of anyone's ball.

Finally, tie is all up in a bow and tell me why. Why do the goals and the stakes matter? This is where promises are made. I won't say kept, because promises made at the beginning of a book are rarely kept through to the end of the book - at least, not those about plot or character or goals or even stakes. Word to the wise, though. You might want to keep your genre promises. The why gives me a hint about how the goals and the stakes are going to start generating conflict. Painter girl from above has lots of potential stakes. It's possible she had a goal before the shipwreck - get an important secret somewhere to stop a war. Without a ship and without rescue, that goal is null and void. She had to switch to a single goal: survival. Once that was secured, she could expand to becoming the greatest painter in the world which, notably, only she inhabits. Another ship coming in long after she'd given up ever getting off the rock, opens the door for you, the author, to tell me just how screwed our poor, cast away heroine is. Either that ship is crashing, too, and she's just going to bury more bodies but maybe she can repair the ship, or they land, leap out and shout, "Millions have died! You had one job! Where's the secret thing??" or it's some renegade band running from the law, trying to repair their ship, and they are not happy to see her, nor do they have any intention of getting her off world, or . . . I realize this may feel like the end of the beginning of a story. It isn't. It's the end of the inciting incident.

Which leads me to bonus points. Bonus points for starting on action. I may get hate for this. Or, possibly, you've clucked your tongue, rolled your eyes, and said, 'not every genre can do that'. Yes, my friend. They can. Action, when we speak of story, isn't all about guns and car chases and explosions or ships falling from the sky. Action is about collision. Character in stasis (normal life) + inciting incident (whatever sideswipes them) = action.

In this case, character with goal + stakes (why that goal matters to them) + inciting incident (ship falling from sky) = mental, emotional, and physical chaos.

I'm here for it. Bring it. The faster I can scoop that up like ice cream, the happier I am.

Beginnings of stories must do a bunch of things all at once, yes. Your dawning awareness that there are far more than just three things that beginnings must do is - yeah. Beginnings are tough and you may be shocked to find that ton of authors leave until last. No joke. There's a lot of pressure on your beginning and on you. Some of the best advice I ever had was to start a story where I knew what was happening. Sometimes that's the middle. Sometimes the end. Occasionally, it's the beginning. But, when I don't know a beginning, I can figure out what it needs to be based on how the story ends. So. Never be afraid to say 'I don't know' about a beginning. Get to the end. See where everyone ends. Then you can work backward to a starting point for your characters. You'll have their change arc already in place.

Fallin' for the Hero

 I'll be honest and admit I'm on an anti-romance kick at the moment. Not that I dislike romance as a genre, I LOVE the genre. It's just not for me at the moment. So when we speak in terms of book boyfriends, I have a reflexive ick response. Don't worry. It's just a phase. It happens from time to time. I still read romance. I still write romance - though I'm not, right now. I'm just not in the emotional headspace (or maybe heartspace) for romance right now. That doesn't mean I don't have a favorite hero, though. I do.

The award for my favorite hero that I did not write goes to: 

Murderbot. 

Hush. No one said my fav had to be entirely or even remotely human. Gotta like me a hero of few words who's logical, effective, and efficient while suffering a long-term, major existential crisis. How can you not love someone who says: 

"Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency."

Murderbot is my people. Even if I'm lacking the weaponry. And computer interfaces. And armor. 

Now. If we want to talk about favorite TV heroes, come chat with me about gay pirates.

Careful with the Cringe

Current 'panther' friend

Three stories. First, the everything-but-dinosaurs-and-aliens story. It had it all: a castle, a princess fighting to save the kingdom, pirates, and a black Jaguar named Scott. Oh, and sword fights. Did I mention the sword fights? Lots of sword fights. I don't know that it had terrific narrative flow. Or even a plot. But I was 12. So that book covered ALL the cringe. That young Princess was a fencing prodigy, a horseback riding prodigy, and the black Jaguar was, naturally, her best friend. Of course, her father's Kingdom is under threat from within and from without as the pirates are raiding the town below the castle. Our heroine can't immediately address the internal threats, but she can keep the pirates from harming her friends in town. In the course of trying and failing to fight the pirates, she makes things worse by getting kidnapped by them and held for ransom. This is ransom no one is going to pay. See the aforementioned internal threat. It's all fine, because naturally, the pirate captain falls for her. I mean why wouldn't he? So now, insert redemption arc for pirates who are going to help her bedevil the internal threat and reclaim the Kingdom. Much swashbuckling, big Goonies energy, tons of fun. Totally reads like I was 12. This one is buried deep and so it will stay.

Second, fanfic. ALL the fanfic. Scads of it. All tucked safely into archives where it can’t get me into trouble for writing inside someone else’s IP. Was it cringe? Maybe. It was 100% self-insert into worlds that fascinated me, but at the time I was writing fanfic, AO3 didn’t exist. I could write whatever I wanted with the knowledge that none of it could be published, ever.

Unless.

It finally occurred to me one day that one could pub fanfic if no one knew it was fanfic. If I could change names and alter the world enough to be its own thing, I might have a viable product. And that’s how I found out it was far easier (and just as much fun) to build your own world and your own characters.

Third, the contemporary romance novel that lacked a single shred of internal conflict. I had a great time writing it. It was my attempt to prove that you could in fact write a rock star romance and make it work. Except, you know, for the fact that I didn't. It was supposed to have one of those 'annoying big brother' books. Curmudgeon and ray of sunshine things. The heroine is there out of necessity, in a position the hero doesn't want her in, but his meddling sister is intent on setting the two of them up. It was big on bickering, low on actual conflict, and it was a hoot to write. It still lives in a box under the bed. It is likely to remain in that box under the bed. I look back at it now recognize a slew of problematic tropes. There's nothing wrong with the heroine trying to prove herself. This story took it wicked too far. This heroine ends up a martyr. The power dynamic between hero and heroine was super dysfunctional. Granted, at the time I wrote it, I had some crappy relationship templates and what was ‘normal’ for me at that point wasn’t, in fact, normal. So yeah. I credit this book with being the one that started me on the journey of actually learning and understanding what makes a romance a romance. The story is okay. But reading it now, I flinch at all the stuff I see that’s wrong. I’m careful not to judge past me by what current me knows. But still. This book, while it holds together, won’t likely see the light of day, ever.

While I can freely admit that my early efforts at fiction might not meet the bar for publication, I want to say that when I use the word ‘cringe’ in this blog, it’s with a fond smile. Cringe is one of those words that has been swept up by society to judge and make fun of something. I don’t want to judge or make fun of someone learning how story works. Not even – or maybe especially not even – when it’s me. We’re allowed to be bad at something we love or are fascinated by. We’re allowed a visible learning curve. There’s art and grace in developing as an artist. The thing that gets lost when we talk about the lack of skill in our early efforts is just how vital and necessary those early efforts were to our survival. These stories I talked about will never be thrown away or deleted. They got me through times I didn’t think I could get through. If our early story efforts are called cringe because we get sexist BS terms tossed at us like ‘Mary Sue’, as if every action movie ever made isn’t some dude’s 14-year-old self-insert fantasy. There’s a fine line between acknowledging that our early works weren’t ready for prime-time and disparaging ourselves as creatives. I bet that if someone could find the first painting Picasso ever did as a child, it could reasonably be called cringe. It would also likely fetch millions on auction.

Getting Unstuck

Getting stuck. It happens. I hate it. There's a lot of fear and angst in getting stuck. What if you never get unstuck? What if this is it? You're just done? Finished. It's possible. It's just not likely. So you have to try to get unstuck. The common advice goes 'what worked before?' I don't know if repeating past patterns helps anyone else out there, but for me, if my brain sees the trick, it's not going to work the second time around. Frustrating. So then it becomes a question of why I'm stuck.

There are as many reasons to be stuck as there are people on the planet. Probably multiples of that, actually. Regardless. It's on the stuck author to start asking questions. Only, there's one question that will not help. That question is: Why am I stuck. Isn't that funny? There's a secret, though, from brain science. Brains are literal chucks of goo. Asking yourself why you're stuck just perpetuates a list of reasons justifying your stuckness. That list only reinforces being stuck. Instead, you want a list of your own. Behold. A list that should be a flowchart but I am NOT logging into Visio to build one tonight:

1. Is this a story problem? If yes, dissect the story problem. Ask for help, if need be, from an outside source who can help bounce ideas around. I like FFS Media.  Clare talks about theme and breaks it down in a useful, comprehensible way that your high school English teacher only dreamed of doing. Based on her information, I've been able to look at a story I've been stuck on for years and realize like a bolt from the blue that the story I thought was about revenge, is actually about family. No wonder I was stuck. IF you're stuck on story, you can get unstuck by engaging with a mentor or by doing some digging in the story to see where things went off the rails. If it's NOT a story problem, then:

2. Is this a you problem? You problems: burned out, too little time, not enough energy, depressed, anxious, sick, etc.  These are almost always matters of deferred self-care and I'm going to be mean here and point out that writing is the least of your worries right now. Failing to take care of your mental, emotional, and physical health isn't something that can be made up for over a long weekend. Burn out can take a very long time to recover from. Energy is a function of nutrition, exercise, and sleep efficiency. They can all be addressed. Too little time? Social media fast. Seriously. Break up with your phone for a few days. If your mental health is suffering, you must speak to a physician and ask for help in resolving the danger to yourself as soon as possible. Writing takes a number and stands in line until you are well and feeling like you again. Yes, there are chronic illnesses that sometimes must be pushed through. They exact their own price. Those of us experienced with the push/pull of chronic issues have learned how to balance it. Most of the time. You can't push through burn out. Or depression. Not without making things much, much worse. So practice some steely-eyed honesty with yourself here. Assess. Treat. Recover. THEN write.  If this is NOT a you problem, then:

3. Is this a values shift? What matters to you in this world? Don't look at the things you just scribbled on the pad in front of you. Those are what you THINK you should value. We're looking at what you truly value - not in word, but in deed. Where do you spend the bulk of your time? What commands your attention each day without fail? What and who would you die or kill for? There's a financial guru in the world who likes to say that people will fall all over themselves to tell you what they value, but he's only interested in looking at their calendars and their bank statements - values are actions. Where you spend your time and your money - those are your values. Sometimes in this life, values change as we change. Maybe writing and creation were a part of your value system at one time. Maybe your values have shifted. Do you hear a voice in the back of your head whispering "We've been here and done this already, enough." It's legitimate to look that thought square in the eyes and follow it through. What if you don't write? What then? What DO you want to create in this world? Who do you want to be? You have permission to keep going. You have permission to put down the keyboard and say, "I don't need to do this anymore." The world doesn't end. And you're free. You're free to walk away to a new life. You're free to turn right back around and commit to trying yet again to write through the fear and uncertainty. There are no right answers and no one will give you a gold star here. Not for anything. If it's NOT a values shift, then: 

4. Other thing known only to you.

Reasons for being stuck are personal. So are the solutions to them. We all share some commonalities - writers get stuck from time to time. Human beings flail. There's nothing inherently bad about it. In fact, half the time, I feel like the judgement of 'being stuck' is 90% of the problem. There is no part of the writing process that recrimination and rising anxiety can't make bleaker and more problematic. The key to getting unstuck is being willing to change. Adapt or die. If you're stuck but cannot give up then you have to batter yourself against the wall of your stuckness until you know every aspect of it. Then you have to transform yourself to slip through, slam through, dig under, or fly over stuckness.

Those are the only options. To quote Yoda. Do. Or do not. There is no try.

Career Mulligans

 Who among us hasn't wished for a mulligan in career, relationships, or just life in general? We want do overs for a rough day or a shitty week or, if we really messed up, for an even longer stretch of time. Whether it's wisdom or naivete on my part, I don't entertain regrets about career much. There's no point. If I make a mistake, my only goal is to learn from it and do better going forward because there is no going back.

That being said, I feel pretty strongly that every book offers us a do over for free. I won't lie that I wish some things about my career, my life, and about me in general were different. I do. I wish I weren't a slow writer. I wish I weren't enmeshed in the life circumstance that I am WHILE AT THE SAME TIME recognizing just how privileged the circumstance is. I'm insane and I own that but I don't have to like it.

I did discover something quite by accident the other day about procrastination and I'm still processing it. It feels a little bit like a I got to pull all new cards from the deck, though, so I'll mention it on the off chance it's helpful to someone else. If you self-sabotage and you've done all the regular self-help work around it but can't seem to get traction, it's because you need to forgive yourself for past mistakes. Whatever they maybe. This can be old trauma - anything you wish had never happened. Maybe you hurt someone's feelings and were never able to make it right. Maybe you were a 9 or 10 year old kid home alone when something bad went down outside and you didn't know what to do, even though you tried, and there was no one around you could trust to ask for help and because of all of this, someone died. Oddly specific, I know.

I'm not saying you have to forgive someone else. If you were hurt, you don't have to forgive whoever hurt you. I'm saying it's time to give yourself grace and forgiveness. It's vital because no matter what happened, until you forgive your younger self for not knowing enough, not understanding enough, not being enough - you subconsciously carry around a weight that says you don't deserve any good thing. Forgiving oneself isn't easy but it is necessary. We're monstrously unfair to our younger selves because we look back with the wisdom of knowing what we ought to have done, said, or been and unfairly judge the ignorance of our inexperience.

If you're in a position to wish you could have a do over for just about anything in life, it's a fair bet that you need to practice forgiveness for yourself first. Recognize that you did the best you could with the information you had at the time. Then get busy shaping your future.

Social Media Trap or Marcella Goes Off the Deep End

"I wanna be where the readers are.
I want to see them reading.
Carrying around those -what do you call them? Oh. Right. - BOOKS.
Out in the sun. Or in the shade.
On the beach or in a cafe.
Read in a bar.
Wish I could be a Tik Tok star."

My apologies to The Little Mermaid.

Social media is hailed as The Way to sell books. You need to know Facebook ads, Amazon ads, Tik Tok, YouTube, Instagram, the rotting corpse that was once Twitter. . . It gets overwhelming fast. Publishers push authors to do all the things! Yet experienced indie author Kristine Kathryn Rusch likes to remind authors that the best advertisement for your current book is your next book. Cal Newport argues that your best, most creative work  comes from flow state and that flow is achieved best in deep work - those times and places where the external world goes away and you descend into deep brainwave activity wherein you lose track of time and are absorbed in your material. This state is predicated on not being interrupted, not having your attention fractured by anyone or anything. He argues that readers shouldn't necessarily have access to you. You have a job. Writing.

I suppose if you compartmentalize extremely well, you could make an argument for engaging in deep work for a few hours each day and then indulging in a little social media promotion. Fair enough. I'm having to think a little harder about that because I don't compartmentalize well. Maybe not at all. It doesn't help that earlier this week, I heard someone mention that cell phones are black mirrors. This rocked me. 

If you aren't familiar, black mirrors are scrying mirrors used in ritual and divination. They are powerful tools and most of us familiar with them keep them carefully wrapped and hidden away from casual glances. This is because a part of you travels when you scry. Part of you goes bye-bye. It's one thing to do that intentionally and for a purpose and then to shut down the mirror after and to reclaim every part of you that went traveling. 

Black mirrors drain energy. It's not malicious. It's just part of the work done with them. They don't have intent, but their utility is the emptiness that draws practitioners out of their human shell to journey for answers to a question or for a vision of something. Used consciously and safeguarded appropriately, they're harmless and helpful. 

If cell phones are black mirrors, they are black mirrors that are used utterly unconsciously. They aren't warded or guarded. We stare into them without regard for where we go when we do. Just try to get the attention of someone absorbed in their phone. Where do we go when we stare in that black mirror? Where does our energy go? I'm not saying that cell phone are traps devised by the Fae. I am saying that if the Fae wanted to build irresistible traps for mortals to fall into, they could have done worse than to have invented cell phones.

Social media, cell phones not withstanding, isn't evil. There are plenty of benefits: engaging with people you enjoy but maybe have never met in real life, finding new-to-you info and books and music, in a world still constrained by pathogens, social media can be a glimpse into a larger, more diverse world. We should absolutely enjoy and contribute to those things. But if we're going to social media *just* to sell books rather than build relationships we enjoy, we'll do more harm than good.

So before you stare into that black mirror in your hand, think long and hard about what you want to get out of it so you know exactly what and how much to put into it.

What's On My Mind

I wish I had something sexier for you. I don't. What's on my mind is Covid. Not just because it's surging in the US and around the world but because it came in my door 14 days ago. It got Mom first. Then it go the rest of us. We did the Paxlovid thing and are dealing with the rebound now. Y'all. There have been SO many runs to Urgent Care. It's silly. Anyway. You know why I missed last week. I felt like hot garbage. I'm feeling better than that, now, but this rebound nonsense is zero fun. 0/10 do not recommend. 

So. Stay safe out there. We masked everywhere that wasn't home and it wasn't enough to keep us safe. Thankfully, so far, my father (the objectively most vulnerable) is the one skating this with the fewest issues. Anyway. Look out for yourselves and your loved ones. I wish this on no one.

Write a Map for Failure

Have you ever counted up all the euphemistic, pseudo-inspirational bullshit this society generates around failure? The only failure is never trying. If you don't fail, you aren't trying. Fall down seven, get up eight. I mean. The list is onerous.

No matter all the empty, pithy sayings, I assert that failure gets a bad rap. I know because I'm in the middle of it. It's been four years since I've published a book. It's been four years since I finished a book. A writer not writing. Does that not define failure? It feels like it does. But just because I'm standing in the middle of this vast creative desert, it doesn't mean I've given up. I won't give up until I'm dead. Granted, some days that feels closer than others. But in the meantime, I clock what matters about failure.

1.Failure is inevitable.
2. Failure teaches.
3. Failure is temporary if you want it to be.

To handle failure, you need to know what it is. Define it. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it say? What does it smell like? Taste like? Is it a bad review? Those are guaranteed. Is it writing and never being traditionally published? In this market, that is a very real risk. What's your back up plan? Also, why are you writing in the first place? If it's to get published, you've put your power and happiness into something you cannot control. 

Recognize that failure of some kind visits us all. If you define that hell before you catch sight of it, you can develop plans to help dodge it before you get stuck in it.

If and when failure comes knocking, look for what that failure has to teach. No one ever learned anything useful and long-lasting from success. Our mistakes are our teachers when we don't get bogged down in emotion about them. Maybe I took on  a story that exceeded my skill, and I failed to stick the landing. The critics hate me, and the book isn't selling. Yet i gained incredible new skills for having dared to try this hard thing. So it's not perfect. The next book will be the better for it, and I now have a set of skills no one can ever take from me.

Failure doesn't have to be a destination. It can be a place you pass through. It feels like you'll die there, trust me. Occasionally, I guarantee you'll wish you could, just so you can stop trying and just rest. The path through failure includes a lot of flailing, a lot of crying for help, and a lot of looking outside yourself for answers to the 'what's wrong with me' question. The hard truth, though, is that the only route out of failure starts inside you. It starts with determination and the refusal to wander off into the sunset never to be heard from again. It means adapting. Developing new ways to work when the old ways either aren't available or no longer work.

I don't mean to imply that help isn't available and shouldn't be sought. I will be the very first advocate for addressing mental health issues immediately.  That is, in fact, a prerequisite. But barring the need for medical diagnosis, you aren't likely to find one class or one guru or one quick trick that's going to rocket you out of failure. Classes can be valuable tools. Writing groups, too. They're good supports to lean upon along the way while you're clawing word by word out of a failure state. But they cannot take the place of the work required of you for you.

No one wants to fail. No one thinks it will happen to them. No one wants to have to sit down with their already over-active imagination and mentally play through worst-case scenarios and then come up with plans A and B to address those worst case scenarios. Trust someone who didn't and ended up mired in failsville for too long. Your stay in failure will be much, much shorter if you come into it with a roadmap for getting back out.

How to Not Write a Jerk

Fiction isn’t reality. Most of us are clear on that. When we look at romance novels or any story with a romantic element, we aren’t dealing with any kind of reality. We’re dealing with fantasy. The kind seen in ancient mythology where the gods descend as golden motes in a ray of light. Romantic fiction engages the older brain wiring, the part that needs to be romanced and adored by someone or something more than human. I suspect that’s part of the appeal of the so-called ‘alpha hero’. No shade. They just aren’t my cup of tea unless they’re either getting taken down a few pegs or shanked by the heroine. The problem, in my mind, is that alpha heroes go too far and cross the line into abuse. The trope, as a whole, hasn’t aged well as social media has peeled back the curtains on women’s experiences with men in real life. Our line for what’s acceptable behavior from potential partners has shifted. Our male protagonists need to shift, too. I have an internal list for how to walk the fine line between a capable, confident leader and a spacious-walk-in ash-hole.

1.       Biology – Recognize that the biological concept of an ‘alpha’ is deeply flawed. The initial notion came from a wildlife biologist observing the behavior of wolves in captivity – not in the wild. The concept of alpha came from disordered behaviors brought on by unimaginable, unremitting stress. We could call it toxic, even. It’s also at odds with how wolves behave in their natural habitat. Recognize also, that it isn’t a gendered behavior. Any gender can act as an alpha, whether the disordered version or the soft, gentle, collaborative version.

a.       Opportunities: You can leverage this dichotomy in a protagonist, turning them into alphaholes in a moment of extreme stress. BUT if you don’t want a complete jerk in your book, that shift into ‘I’m the boss of you’ behavior must make the stress/danger worse. Assuming it’s our hero slipping into toxic masculinity in an ‘oh shit’ moment, any self-respecting heroine must push back and call him out. Or simply walk away.

b.       Position: Alpha can be useful. It can be worthwhile using disordered alpha behaviors to show up a protagonist’s flaws and to give the other protagonist a chance to draw a line in a relationship. Lots to explore. It’s okay to be an alphahole *for a little while* and so long as that alphahole gets schooled and subsequently changes.

2.       Psychology – understand that in humans, hard shell alpha behavior from any gender (and no gender) is a mask. It might sound trite, but that mask is a cover for trauma. Disordered alpha behavior stems from an attempt to control one’s environment to the point of needing to control others which stems from soul deep distress. Again, it sounds trite, but if you pry beneath the dominating behaviors, you’ll find terrible wounds. The person with these wounds is rarely consciously aware of them. The alpha mask is a coping mechanism meant to armor the person both against the wound and against anyone else perceiving the wound. Because this mask was likely put on early in life, it feels integral to the person’s being, but it’s a desperate attempt at protecting oneself that, when taken to extremes, does untold damage to self and to others.

a.       Opportunities: If your hero is a dominating alpha, you can let your heroine and your antagonist glimpse the wounds beneath the mask. The antagonist will use the wound against your hero to destroy him. The heroine can work on bringing the wound to light so it can scab over. It might not entirely heal, right? Wounds leave scars, but better a scar than a wound seeping poison everywhere (and that a bad guy can leverage to manipulate you.) Look for ways to turn the trope – I love showing up alphaholes as either the cowards they are underneath, or the deeply wounded, flawed people they are underneath.              

b.       Position: nobody gets to be a jerk for long on my watch. I don’t mind using the convention for a little while, but no hero is going to get to be a jerk in a heroine’s presence without having his metaphoric ass handed to him by her. I do love the process of a heroine unmasking a hero and holding out a hand in offering to help heal him. His first step is swallowing the massive stone of ego to get up and meet her halfway.

3.       Character arc: No alphaholes without change. No jerk goes unchallenged. Or unalived. Characters must change. If they refuse to change, they do not survive. It’s the tale of our species. Adapt or die. Somewhere wrapped up in the genome are memories of watching the inflexible die in the far distant past. Stories play on that unspoken, unexamined racial memory. The road to change starts somewhere, though. And I’m willing to bet that our distant ancestors adapted because of love – love of children, love of partner, community, life, learning, curiosity – whatever it was. The drive to survive and adapt comes from having a why.

a.       Opportunities: Soft spots. Weaknesses. Alpha heroes need a soft spot or a weakness for something or someone. They need a line they will not cross (and then, of course, you make them cross it in one minor-ish transgression that brings them up full stop wondering who and what they’ve become.) A current hero I’m working on has a massive, do-anything-including-die-for-her soft spot for a woman who isn’t his heroine. It provides the heroine a chance to get in under his armor and find out he isn’t what he pretends to be.

b.       Position: This is me again, questioning the alpha premise by turning ‘alpha-ness’ into something the heroine wields against the hero and exposes the alpha mask as a weakness. Her promise to him is that by unmasking and integrating his wounds, he’ll be stronger, happier, and freer. And just to subvert the trope even more – you can reverse the whole thing. Heroines can be alphaholes, too, those most readers just say ‘wow, she’s a bitch.’

Whew this got loooong. Sorry. Didn’t realize I had this whole big thing in my head about character power dynamics and personalities.

Writing Resources and Tools

 

The photo is from a park in Fremont, WA. They'[re tucked into a place you could all too easily miss them and that's what delights me about them - that they're there patiently waiting to be noticed.

Writing tools haven't changed for me for years now. I've found a cluster of reliable solutions that work for me. And maybe, after all this time of trying to find the one Right thing that would suddenly make writing easy for me, I've learned that no tool on this earth is going to change how or whether I write. That's on me entirely. As a result, I've stopped looking for the next great thing. AI turned out to be a fun little toy for about three weeks, then it, too, went by the wayside. Thus, I've come to say that I don't think tools matter much. How you get words on paper isn't nearly as important as the fact that you do. Sure, a computer, a word processor of some kind, and an internet connection make a writer's life a lot easier, but strictly speaking a paper and pencil is all that's necessary. (Side note: Do you know why you should always write in pencil and not pen for long works? Ink runs. Spill the slightest moisture on your handwritten pages and you lose your content if it's written in ink. Graphite won't fade or run in water. Courtesy of a bit of time as a yeoman for a Sea Scout ship.)

The only item I have to recommend is the only thing I've added to my writing toolbox this year: mentorship. Not entirely because I need training, though there's always something to learn, I need a bit of bolstering these days. Day job, complicated and drama-filled family situation, and general feelings of overwhelm have utterly sapped my ability to produce. I'd lost some of my why. So I approached Jeffe about joining her Patreon group for company and accountability. Already, the group has been a morale boost. It's helpful, too, to know there are others out there writing at the same time I am and getting to offer one another support.

It's okay to not be okay. It's better to remember to ask for help and then accept it and act on it. These things don't sound like tools because our society does a terrible job of setting us up with healthy coping skills. Asking for just enough help so you can do what matters to you is absolutely a tool. Whether you can hold it in your hand or not.

The Way Out of the Wasteland

 

This handsome dude is looking for his forever human and home. And this totally has something to do with our topic this week. You see. I write my blog posts on Thursday evening for publication on Friday morning. But this man. He had his neuter surgery Thursday. When I picked him up and got him in the car to come home, he went into respiratory distress. Our regular vet was closing down and they'd already sent techs home. So off we hied to the local urgent care veterinary place. An insane amount of money later, we discover that Ramases has pneumonia. Initially, they diagnosed it as aspiration pneumonia, which is dreadful, awful stuff. The urgent care vet wanted the cat hospitalized, so they transferred us to an emergency hospital nearby. We go there. That vet disagrees with the treatment plan and long story short, we get out of there at half past midnight with sick cat in tow. I'm operating on three hours of sleep. 

Drama over the 4th of July holiday has upended my current living arrangement. The ripples on that are slowly building to a tidal wave that I suspect will mean everyone packs up and moves. But in the meantime, HERE have an overdose of uncertainty! 

Whether it's my brain or whether it's rational to feel this way, I'd like to say everything's on fire.

I used to think these were things that needed to be recovered from - as if writing were something that needed to be held in reserve for when conditions were just right. I still suffer from this because I know a little about how my brain works best. But I am starting to realize that 'best' is an unobtainable ideal. All of these events in my life that make me feel like I'm going to explode, pack the cats into a car, change my name, drive into the middle of nowhere, and buy a house for under $200k to live in peaceful obscurity aren't one off events. They're life. My life. There is no calmer. There is no 'when stuff settles down'. This is it. It takes an act of radical acceptance to digest that realization. Then all that remains is to ask whether writing in the midst of all that life makes everything better or worse.

For me, the answer is better. I made writing my retreat - the little hit of dessert you sneak when you think no one is watching. It gives me energy and helps keep me sane. Because it keeps me saner than I would otherwise be, most of my family are invested in leaving me alone while I write. Sometimes. But this reframe isn't necessarily enough to refill an empty well. Silence, technology fasts, sensory walks (where you walk slowly and rotate through observation - what do I hear, what do I smell, what do I taste, what do I feel on my skin, what do I feel internally, what do I see) and any thing else that generates energy for you will help. Maybe you cook the world's hottest chili. Or you build model ghost ships inside bottles. If they make you feel better for having done them, they fill the well. Rescuing gives me energy when I finally match a cat like Ramases to his forever person. So hey. Anyone in FL or neighboring states what a handsome, sweet, spotted tabby who drools when he's happy (and he's happiest when you're petting him and giving chin rubs). I'll even deliver. 

I think the important bit is to know what's important to you. Writing takes a toll. Rest and breaks are necessary. We tear up a lot of cognitive and emotional ground while writing - but it's *different* mental and emotional ground than our life dramas. Leverage that while recognizing that eventually, all those synapses need rest and that rest will not be rushed.