Out of the Clear Blue Sky

I guess I'm demonstrating how life intrudes upon creative spaces. Because we're going to talk about yet another suicide by a creative icon who, a bunch of people close to her say showed no signs at all that she was in danger. Let's also have a look at the headline that popped up on today's news feed: Suicide rates in the US have increased by 25% since 1999.  That increase is overwhelmingly among people with no known mental illness. Add into this the fact that high creativity types also tend to higher incidences of mood disorders than the population at large, and you have me on my mental well-being soapbox. C'mon up and join me.

Adulting is hard. For some people in these not-so-United States, adulting is getting harder and harder by the day. And if you've never been diagnosed with a mood disorder or mental illness of any kind, knowing you're in danger can be incredibly difficult.

Not wanting to be alive doesn't lend itself to objectivity. It feels as if it came out of the clear blue sky. It can be an awful, shaky, out of control, desperate place to be. Or it can be the ice cold, rational-feeling logic and certainty that this will never end. You will never be normal. That your life, if you keep at it, will be nothing but a long march of sitting by watching everyone else succeed and smile and live while you personify failure and uselessness.

It's a lie. This is broken biology. And it's lying to you. So if you've ever wondered about your mental/emotional well-being, there are a few measures and questions you can track for yourself.

1. Did I feel this way yesterday? If no, when did it start? Did anything happen before it began? Can I trace back to when I started feeling like I might be better off dead? When was that? Did anything happen? (There need not be a reason - but the mental exercise is useful.)
2. How bad is this? Give it a number between 1 and 10. Or use Hyperbole and a Half's scale. But this is important. If you're edging past 7, or if you're sitting at 1 all the time, it's time to call someone. Your MD. One of the Suicide prevention hotlines. The important thing on this one is to do this assessment daily and WRITE IT DOWN. You want to watch your trends. If you're in a bad spell, do an hourly check in - keep a light hand. There's no pressure. Just checking in. Write it down. Walk away. Drink water. Come back an hour later for another check in. Change? Okay. No change? Okay. Walk away. Drink water. Breathe.
3. What success did I have today? Even if it's just 'got out of bed' it's enough.  'Drank water' it's enough.
4. Am I creating? Simple yes/no. This is another trend to track. One of the most telling questions in the mood disorder survey is "Are you no longer participating in activities you once enjoyed?" When someone asks you that question while you aren't convinced you want to be alive, you can't recall ever enjoying anything, so the answer is generally a shrug and "No, that part's okay, I guess." Tracking doesn't lie and it won't let you lie to yourself if you can flip back through your days and see the avalanche of 'no' on this creative question.

The problem with mood disorders and suicidal ideation is that this stuff creeps up on you. A single fire ant stings, but it can't take you down. It's only after the little bastards have crawled up your leg unnoticed and start stinging en mass that you realize you're in serious danger. So it's important to measure. To check in. "Can I survive the fire ants, today? Are they sneaking up on me and getting slowly worse? Or are they steadily bad and I've just gotten numb to them?" Either way. If you're having more bad days than actively good days, it's time to make a call or a text to the number linked above. Or to talk to your doctor as a start.

The world needs you and what you have to create more than ever. And if like me, you're staring at your once beloved project, struggling, wondering why you just can't - check those fire ants, my friend. You're being stung. You don't have to be the one to brush them away on your own. It is safe to ask for help. You'll find it's a great relief to ask for help even before anyone even rises to your aid.

Saving the Mental Energy for the Work

Everyday, my social media feeds are kind of an assault.

Like, the world is a trash fire and there are tweets and links and stories pretty much every hour on the hour (and every minute in between) reminding you that things are horrible and people are garbage.  This is both for the world at large, and in the microcosm of the SFF Community.

(Not everyone, and I do try to make a point of reminding us all of that.)

A lot of times, you pretty much have to make a choice: do you watch the trash fire, or do you do the work?  Which wolf do you feed?

(And that's not even getting into the creative-energy-drain that is other parts of life, family, finances, work, household, etc., etc.)

So how do I keep my head clear so I can work?  Honestly, a lot of willful ignorance.  A lot of deciding NOT to pay attention to the trashfire.  Admittedly, a lot of that comes down to privilege: the worst of the trashfire things are NOT attacks on me or my daily life.  I'm able to ignore it in ways others don't have the luxury to.  And I need to so I can get my work done.

There's enough horrible in the world as it is, people.  Be excellent to each other.

Zero advice from a multitasking failure

I am a crap multitasker. Seriously, I can’t even answer more than one question at a time. When I was in college, I had to make lists and calendars and check them every 5.2 seconds, and set alarms and Sharpie schedules on my skin, and even then I was a human wad of panic for four years, certain I was going to forget something important or let somebody down.

When my kids were little, I breathed in a volcanic-seized anxiety cloud and held it in my body for about ten years, and everything else in the universe went on hold so I could do just that one job right.

I have to be honest here: I have no advice on how to balance time and commitments, how to keep a consistent writing schedule despite the maelstrom of life. I have never done it successfully.

When you have a day job, you go and do the job, then you come home and—unless you are crazy and bring work home, like I used to do—you have a whole evening to be parent or partner or fan or hobbyist or, basically, yourself. Geography manages the priority of tasks: if you’re at the office, you do the work. If you’re at home, you do the other work.

But writing isn’t like that. I don’t have an office. I don’t even have a chair that other people feel uncomfortable invading when it suits them. I can’t say, hey, here’s the cubicle so I must work. Instead I’m driving down the MoPac Expressway and character dialogue pops into my mind, and I have to pull over and scribble notes and then deal with being late to music class or the dentist. Or I get the most brilliant workaround for a plot snaggle, but it’s 3pm and I have to go fetch the children from school and by the time I get to a place where I can write down that brilliant thought, it’s gone. Lost.

Or I have a deadline, so I put the kids to bed then lock myself in the guest room and write until I literally fall asleep on the smooth, warm keyboard. Only to have my alarm go off an hour later and, as Deadpool would say, it’s time to make the chimichangas.

So yeah, I’ll write this morning… but only after I’m done typing out this blog post.

And putting the laundry into the dryer.

And setting up needed appointments with orthodontists, scanning and emailing forms to day camp coordinators, replying to emails that probably arrived yesterday.

Answering phone calls from family members who are extroverts and need to talk things out, and I love them so it’s OKAY.

Feeding the pets. Taking a shower. Deliberately ignoring the news because I just can't with that.

And quite possibly, by the time I've completed all the musts, it won’t be morning any longer.

I’m sorry I don’t have good advice on carving out write-space in your life, but the thing is, every writer deals with the stuff I deal with, and you make it work. You make the time. You keep all these balls in the air with grace and a grin like precision Cirque jugglers.

And I admire the hell out of y'all.

KAK's 5 Ways To Be a Hardass Creative in a Needy World

The mind is a palace filled with many rooms where you store things of importance...

...and forget where you put them.

/jk 

Sort of. 

But seriously, this week's topic is how to preserve the mental space for creativity while the real world insists on invading.

Here are my 5 Ways To Be a Hardass Creative in a Needy World:

1. Adopt the lifestyle of a recluse; failing that, claim a "me space" that is off limits to others
2. Live by a fairly strict schedule that incorporates time for dealing with practical affairs
3. Build wiggle room into your creative schedule, always
4. Deal with unexpected issues swiftly, don't avoid and hope they'll self-resolve 
5. Respect your self-worth, don't allow others to bypass your boundaries--those boundaries include physical, emotional, financial, artistic, and time.

Separating the writing from the rest

So the basic premise for this week's topic is how do you separate the writing from the rest of your world. How much time goes to the writing versus everything else?

What do I mean?

I mean, if you're in a relationship, when do you stop writing and take care of the relationship? When you've got other things to do, when do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the muse?

For me thats easy. I've been at this for over twenty-five years, and at the end of the day, with very few exceptions, I write every day. I may wait until I'm done with the day job (often) I may have to do a few things on the Honey-Do list (also often) and I might want to take a break and see a movie or hang out with my friends (also often) but at the end of the day, I have to get my writing done, It's my career. It's not a hobby that occasionally pays bills, though it has been that very thing, it's not a part time job to covered my insurance ( that's the day job as Starbucks), it's my career. that means I pay my dues same as anyone going to their day job does. Want a roof over your head? Better get writing. Want dinner every day of the week? Sit your butt down and hit the keyboard.

Sometimes, if I need to make my deadlines and I want to see friends, etc, I sacrifice sleep. not the first time, and I promise it won't be the last. If something has to give, I can promise it won't be my writing.

Some writers, a lot of writers, manage most of the actual act of writing in maybe 2 hours a day. the rest of their writing time is spent handling business. there are calls to make, networking to do, agents and editors to chat with. There's another manuscript to edit/ there's that outline for the novel you already write but never actually did a proper proposal for. There're a dozen different aspects tot he writing gig that HAVE to be handled, regardless of whether or not they get in the way of the actual writing process. They don't wait.


Currently I am between contracted novels.  What does that mean? It mens I just secured the cover for my next reprint coming out from Haverhill House Publications in July. It means I've got a short story to write by the 15th, a novella to finish wring with my coauthor Charles Rutledge (he's waiting on me), I have a a novel proposal and sample chapters I'm working on. I have three seperate novels that I would like to finish in the next month or two. All three are MOSTLY finished  but that isn't completely finished no matter how hard I might wish. They were all stopped at different points for different reasons but I want to finish them soon. I'm still reading through the seven hundred stories received for the Twisted Book of Shadows Anthology. There's another anthology that I need to get to work on soon.  Convention season is coming up, and I have to prepare for that. There are more novels I need to plan and at least two novellas I need to finish, preferably before October, and any day now I'll be getting back the editor's notes on the last book in the TIDES OF WAR series.  every week I stop what I'm doing and try to knock out an article for SFF7 and oh, yeah, whenever possible I do a Three Guys With Beards Podcast with Jonathan Maberry and Christopher Golden.

And, of course, I have a lovely girlfriend I like to spend time with every day, because I'm sort of addicted to her.

Life is always going to get in the way. The job is the job and my career is my career. I want to make a living. I want to have a few luxuries like a roof over my head, food in my belly, gas for the car. Now and then I have to say no to a movie, or getting together for dinner with the gang. It's not even a question.

This is my career. This, right here, the writing. If my friends don't want to hear it, well, I don't always like when they go to their 9-5 jobs either but fecal matter happens. There are a few people I used to be closer with. They decided my writing was a nuisance. I decided they could feel anyway they wanted to as long as they didn't get in the way of my writing.

If I was standing between them and their house payment, or feeding their families or tending to the necessities of their chosen careers, I would expect the same treatment in return.

Does that sound mercenary?

Well, here's another one for you: I do what I love for a living. I do what I have to to pay my bills. Unless someone is coming along and offering to cover my expenses for me, that will never change. I love what I do and if I have to I'll fight to protect it.

There ya go. That's my answer.

Protecting the Writing: a Quick How-To

I'm hard at work writing THE ORCHID THRONE, the first in my new trilogy for St. Martins Press. So, naturally, I had to impulse-buy this gorgeous orchid from Trader Joe's. It's my new desk ornament, following the USB-plug in Christmas tree, cherry blossom tree, and foaming cauldron. This one notably does NOT require electricity, which seems appropriate for the world I'm writing. However, it does require attention to be kept alive. So far my record with orchids is pretty abysmal. (Don't tell this gal!) We shall see. Any tips for keeping orchids alive in a desert climate?

Last week I traveled to Phoenix to give a presentation to the Desert Rose Romance Writers. This one was "A Taoist’s Guide to Staying Sane in the Writing Business." I talked a whole lot about how the relentless push to get rich can make us crazy, and how to find a peaceful place of sane creativity in the midst of that. But, during the great discussion at the end, one gal asked if I had advice about family who don't believe in your career, who actively interfere or dis what you're doing, or who won't approved of your eventual story.

This is, of course, not an easy question to answer, though several gals in the room had advice for her, too. It's also our topic at the SFF Seven this week: How much space do you give non-writing emotional labor - or how do you save mental space for the work with a head full of mortgage and other people's expectations? I'd call this a coincidence, but I'm a Taoist I know it's not.

Everybody struggles with this. It's an issue that affects everyone, not just writers, and not just creatives. Unless we're hermits, life is a balancing act of what we do to please ourselves and what we do to please others. At one end of the extreme, we have the sociopath (or hermit) who cares nothing for other people's needs or is completely isolated from them. At the other end is the doormat, that abject individual who lives as a metaphorical slave to the needs of others, to the point that they have nothing of their own.

The answer - as with all things of the Tao, since I'm already coming at it from that angle - is finding the middle way.

This is easier said than done. Like so many aspects of finding the middle way, it takes constant re-evaluation and adjustment - and honest self-examination. What we can depend on is that things will always change. Sometimes people in our lives honestly need us more than other times. There are illnesses and emergencies - emotional and physical - and times of crisis.

The trick is to differentiate the real crises from the over-dramatized kind. Because we all know those people, right? The ones who have daily crises, if not more often, and for whom EVERYTHING is a MAJOR HUGE DEAL SO YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION TO ME RIGHT NOW.

And I'm not just talking about cats!

So, how do we deal with this? By drawing boundaries and sticking to them. Make your writing sacred and build a fence around it. And a big stone wall. Maybe add a lava moat, too. Post the rules for entry clearly. If someone fakes their way in, then they get stiffer rules and penalties going forward until they prove they can be trusted again. Treat it like a game if you have to, but erect that fortress and defend it vigorously!

This goes for your own worries, too. Give those distracting thoughts names and identities and make them obey the rules, too. They don't get to come into the fortress. Everything and everyone gets their time and place.

Under heaven some things lead, some follow, 
some blow hot, some cold, 
some are strong, some weak, some are fulfilled, some fail.

So the wise soul keeps away
from the extremes, excess, extravagance.

Chapter 29, Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu, translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

That's how you do it: draw the boundaries and know that you'll have to defend them. And also know to keep from the extremes. Find the middle way.

Ideas Are Butterflies

For me, ideas are like butterflies – everywhere and of the moment, so if one flutters by that I like, I write myself a note with enough detail to jog my memory later. I can’t tell you how many ideas have escaped me because they were so cool I was sure I’d remember them…and then I didn’t. Only the fact that there’d been an idea…which is beyond frustrating. So write them DOWN is my advice!

Now some story ideas are HUGE and I won’t forget them, like writing a scifi novel based on the Titanic sinking, but set in the far future. That one I mulled for a long time before I actually wrote Wreck of the Nebula Dream and I had no trouble keeping it in the forefront of my mind. Titanic was a fascination of mine since I was a little girl (family lore, which I now actually doubt, was that we had a distant relative in Second Class who survived) and so it was no great surprise that I eventually wrote my own version of the shipwreck story.

But most of the little sparks or seeds that could turn into a story, or an interesting wrinkle in a story come to me while I’m reading magazines, either online or in real life, or looking at fashion magazines (some photo shoots are really edgy) or just going about the duties of daily life. I have a huge file of notes and articles torn out (or printed out) but you know what I’ve found? I almost never actually go back in and look at that file. When an idea inspires me, it’s usually a new idea and it’s so shiny or so enticing I just have to get right on it and develop a story around it. If an idea stays in my backlog for too long, it gets eclipsed by the newer stuff.

Actually Business Week has been a good source of ideas for me. For example, my Star Cruise: Songbird story was inspired by an article I read in BW about rock stars doing theme cruises for their fans. And the fact that one of my characters who appears in several scifi romance novels is connected to the Sectors spice merchant guild through her family connections started with a BW article on the real-life exotic spice trade.

To give another example, Mission to Mahjundar was inspired by a perfume ad and a calendar photo. I don’t own the rights to either photo so I can’t share them here (although I still have my somewhat tattered copies) but the backstory is as follows: One day I saw a photo of a windswept, abandoned temple, standing alone on a plateau, somewhere in the Middle East. The image remained with me and I pondered – as one does – what adventure would bring people to this remote location and what would happen to them there. What would they be seeking? Would they find whatever they needed? This became the inspiration for the temple of the Mahjundan Ten Gods, where Shalira must go on her wedding journey, to seek a key to her mother’s long-closed tomb. It also established in my mind that the planet Mahjundar was going to be loosely based on Middle Eastern themes. I’m not sure how much the completed novel carries that intent out since after all, the planet is not-Earth, but there was influence as I pictured the daily life Shalira might lead.

But the key thing that put all the other elements together in my mind and set off the plot came when I happened across a perfume ad in a magazine. The illustration was very dark in tone, with a woman in a purple-and-gold hooded cloak holding a beautiful crystal bottle that glowed golden. The light from the bottle illuminated her face. And I thought, that’s it! That’s Shalira inside the tomb. Then I needed to know who  would be there with her…and of course my Sectors Special Forces soldier, Mike Varone, told me he would be!

Ideas for the details of the book itself may also come from the same sources but once I have the big concept locked in, I'm more likely to be sitting at my dining room table, brainstorming with myself and saying, well if there's going to be an epidemic on an interstellar cruise liner, what kind of disease can it be? And off I go to research ebola and norovirus and a few other exotic things I can't mention or else I'll give part of the Star Cruise: Outbreak plot away.

So there you have it but this is only a partial discussion of where my ideas come from, because they literally come from everywhere, all the time. Only a few make it to the stage where I’m actively working to incorporate them into a novel. So many ideas in that flock of butterflies and so little time!

Story Ideas Versus Contest Entries

Tis the season for conferences and their contests again. Thus it is also the season for volunteering to judge for a few of those contests. This plugs neatly into this week's topic.

I will observe, as Marshall did - ideas are not the problem. At least not often. There IS a contest entry this year that is deeply, deeply problematic but none of the judges are sure whether it's an idea problem or an execution problem. The take away is that if this entry is meant as satire, the writer didn't have the chops to pull it off. But outside of that, none of us has yet run across an entry over years of this contest that has resembled any other entry we'd ever read. It doesn't matter how simple an idea is. What matters is the idea twisted through an author's unique perspective. That makes the story.

Where contest entries seem to run into problems is exactly where KAK pointed. Execution. You'd think you could come up with an idea for a book and then faithfully follow it from beginning to end. You'd think. Take a poll among authors. Find out how many of us end up losing sight of the ball and wandering in the weeds trying to recall what it was we were supposed to be looking for in the first place. The critique for most contest entries tends to be about lack of narrative drive - the author losing the through line and/or not giving the protagonist enough drive. The protagonist has to want something and want it badly enough to sustain 75-100k words. It's easy to say, tough to do.

I suspect this is why writing courses will never go out of business. It's easy to be convinced you need narrative drive. It's totally another to figure out how to execute that, assimilate the information, and then turn it into execution so effortless that it becomes a natural part of your voice. I get to say this because it's still a -- let's say -- development opportunity for me.

My as yet imperfect strategy for narrative drive is to ask character questions:
1. What does the protag want?
2. What does the protag need? (This may not be known to the protag - it often isn't at the beginning of a book.)

If I can answer those questions, I figure I might be on the right track. To somewhere.