I Do My Best Writing In The Dark

I'm a sensitive gal. Sensitive to light, that is. I don't do well in "properly lit" rooms for long stretches. Over bright and too white? I'm out of there. Lighting in my home is best described as "soft" or "moody." During the day, the shades are raised to dog-height. At night, it's bright enough to see the dog before I trip over him, but no so bright that one could see the cracks in my plaster ceilings.

All that is to say, I do my best writing in the dark (and often after dark, but that's a different post).

This is my den, where I do most of my writing. Yes, I sit with my back to the wall of windows with the black-out curtains drawn in the center to eliminate glare on my screen. The side windows filter the harsh morning sunlight to a tolerable level. The lamp on my side table has a 25-watt amber bulb for a gentle glow during the night sessions.

Yes, my writing chair is a twenty-year-old futon. When the dog was younger, he used to sit beside me. Now he only does it when it storms. (That's his pillow at the end there.)

What's my view from the futon? Motivations: my bookcases (aspirations), my Master's degree (determination), and a painting from the 1890s done by my great-grandmother (legacy). It's an unchanging view because I'm easily distracted. It's an unchanging view because my goals haven't changed.

Unbridled chaos

I do the vast majority of my writing in my office. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between.

Mostly I write surrounded by a shelf full of skulls, busts of some of my favorite heroes and villains form comic books, copies of my book covers, and stacks of books in my To Be Read list.  That would be the short TBR list. The larger collection is in another room, or I wouldn't be able to move around it.

The thing is, my office is not pretty. It is a chaotic mess. I like it that way. I leave it that way. I have easy access to what I need and I am surrounded by the sorts of distractions that actually inspire me to work harder.

Where I Do My Best Writing

Our topic this week, as the post title implies, is where we do our best writing.

Mine is, as always, at my treadmill desk.

Sometimes I mix it up, especially now that I write full time. If I'm tired of being at home, I'll go to The Teahouse, where they give me amazing tea and let me sit for hours in peace. Sometimes I sit outside.

But, when all is said and done, I write best as I'm walking, in my lovely office with the great view. this is what it looks like when I'm standing at my desk, as I type this.

Those are the Ortiz Mountains at the front, with rounded Sandia Peak to the right and behind, and the sweep of Galisteo Basin between.

In 2015, I walked 1,235 miles on my treadmill and wrote 564,847 words. That's about 458 words/mile, which seems pretty cool to me. I set the goal of 1,500 miles this year and have (as of today) already hit 1,785.

Some answers to Frequently Asked Questions:

Yes, I really can type while I walk. I'm walking at 1.0 mph as I type this.

I walk anywhere from 0.5 mph to 2.2 mph.

I average 6.5 miles/day, figured over the year.

I got my hydraulic desk from Geek Desk and the treadmill from TreadDesk. Both have been great on my very rare service issues. Considering I've had this set up coming on four years, that's pretty great!

Love it! Best investment I ever made.

Who Would I Be? Torene of Pern!

First of all, I have to say that I never want to be someone else, not even fictionally. Sure I'd like to have some attributes of the person - Lessa of Pern's ability to talk to all the dragons or Anna's Omega qualities or Ripley's sheer determination or Jepp's fighting skills - but I want to be ME, maybe in their world on my terms.

I am a character in my own Sectors scifi romance universe, one that's been mentioned but never actually met - yet. It amuses me to 'be there' myself, kind of behind the scenes. Of course the person isn't me...but it's who I'd choose to be if I woke up tomorrow in the Sectors.

Yes, SFF7 Saturday person is rebellious. But okay, after having considered this long and hard, and for this exercise only, I would want to be Torene, in Anne McCaffrey's short story 'The Second Weyr,' in The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall.

Sorka and Sean, the first ever dragonriders, still remembered Earth, and they were a bit constrained by the rules and traditions they'd set up in dealing with the discovery of Thread, and learning to fight it using the dragons. Torene was the first Millennial, to use a current analogy, born on Pern and ready to break out, set up her own Weyr, enhance and enlarge on what Sean had created...and do her own thing, based on what the elders had tried and settled on. She too could hear all the dragons and she was READY to try out her own ideas, plus those of her contemporaries.

I liked her energy, her enthusiasm and the time she lived in - still close to the beginnings of human life on Pern but not hemmed in by a lot of "shoulds" and "must do" based on life and traditions of the Earth her forebears had come from. Which was not Pern...

I think Torene had exciting times. The stress and strain and ennui of the centuries of fighting Thread had yet to set in, and although you could see some things being forgotten already, much was still vividly remembered.

She had a lot of 'firsts' and adventures ahead of her....(too bad she isn't on the cover :) )

Elementary, My Dear

It always fascinates me when people talk about which fictional characters they'd want to be - I notice no one mentions Game of Thrones much. Not too many people opting for zombie books, either. Usually. I guess I'd always assumed that other readers were like me. I wanted to be the main character in whichever book I was reading at the time. Frankly, I spent most of my angst-ridden, middle-school, junior high years wanting to be someone else. ANYONE else. So the list of characters I would have given you was a mile long.

I mean, Meg from A Wrinkle In Time was super high on the list. Any of Ursula K. Le Guin's heroines are, too. But really. After examining all the evidence, there was only one possible conclusion for someone who desperately wanted to be to step into the shoes of a character far clever than she is herself: Sherlock Holmes.

Yes. Yes. Let's forget the whole 'he's a dude, you're not' BS. This is fiction. We get to be any freaking thing we want, right? And that's the whole point. Gender. No gender. Stripes. Polka dots. Aliens with blue skin and green eyes. No less probable than a secret agent with a license to kill who manages to single handedly save the world, sleep with anything that moves and avoid the clap all at the same time. Why should I not be Sherlock?

Oh, yes. I am aware that character is fraught with baggage. But to be that clever, that sharp. Not to mention intrinsically immortal. For a character conceived and created in the Victorian Era, he's looking awfully well these days. Despite some tragic reboots and reimaginings of his adventures.

Maybe the real answer is that the geeky little girl who curled up reading everything she could get her hands on because real life was pretty lonely also wants to be as popular and well-liked as a cranky gum-shoe in a deerstalker hat. The very best thing about Sherlock Holmes is that he is a misfit who had managed to make his misfittedness work on his behalf and to win him influence and acceptance. And while I'm not crazy about the notion of stepping into the shoes of a cocaine addict . . . I - Yeah, I dunno. I think I'm stuck on the fact that this character can be so beloved and popular, even with (perhaps because of) his foibles. That's mighty attractive.

Would you swap places with him?

Butler's Parables Series: A Fiction We Don't Want To Live In

So the question put in front of me today: what fictional character would you like to be?   There's been that meme of late to define yourself with three fictional characters, and I'm always at a loss with that sort of thing.  I don't know, I just don't think along those lines.  

But-- and forgive me for getting a bit political-- I know one fictional setting that I don't want to live in, and that's Octavia Butler's Parables duology.

If you haven't read Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, a quick summary: it's set in a near future dystopia, where the American government has effectively collapsed to privatization and a fearmongering leadership.  And as opposed to the hip dystopias of Hunger Games or Divergent, this one is disturbingly plausible.  At the time I read it, it felt like a place that we might actually reach, it felt more real from its lack of rules or rigidly defined divisions.  Instead, all the divisions are just the usual Fear of the Other-- someone who isn't one of mine can't be trusted.

It's a frightful vision of the future, and I hope it's not a future that anyone would want to live in.  There is hope in the series, hope spawned from attempts at unity and empathy.  But the point of the series is how fear and selfishness tries to squash hope, unity and empathy.

Choose a bright future.  Choose hope and empathy.  Because that's where I want to live.

And read those two books, because they are excellent.

Be a Character

If I could be anybody else's character who would it be and why...

I've said for years that I was inspired by Jennifer Roberson's character Del in The Sword Dancer series because I wanted to be Del. I still stand by that. Why? Because she's unafraid to set a lofty goal and then she achieves it. It doesn't hurt that she can use a sword as well as the men around her who are taller and stronger and more experienced.

But, if that's the criteria...then a host of other ladies fit the criteria, such as Wonder Woman, Princess Leia, and Hermione Granger.

And hell, I'd be happy to be Han Solo or James Bond or Conan the Barbarian. Just sayin'.

I'm a sucker for the idea of an adventure.

Is It Bad That I'd Want To Be A Brat?

Who would I be if I could be a character from a book...uhm...hmm.

I'll go with Anne Rice's über emo misanthropic brat Lestat. Responsibilities slide off him like oil on Teflon. He's unquestionably bold and daring to the detriment of everyone around him. He has amazing adventures with more amazing people...and gives no shits for how badly he wrecks them. The people and the places, that is. His selfishness lays low immortals and gods (you know that is a special level of It's Always All About Me when you're worse than a god). When he's overcome with self-pity, holed up or buried, wallowing in his bad hair day, one of his Stockholm victims comes to his rescue. Even when his peers attempt to hold him accountable, his charm and insouciant ways somehow lead him to be the hero of the moment or at least of the illusion.

Lestat is so completely who I am not, that it would be a gas to live his life with his utter lack of morals.