Still Here...Tending My Garden

I haven't blogged this week, and there's a perfectly good reason why.

I had nothing to say.

Sometimes that's the only reason, and it's a good one. Why take up bandwidth just to hear yourself chatter on, after all?

You see, there's three cycles to writing, kind of like gardening.

There's the gathering cycle, where I read widely and gather tools and ideas.

There's the planting cycle, where you put the idea into the earth - maybe two or more ideas together - and then you watch what grows from it.

Then there's the harvesting cycle, where you pluck and share, if there's anything worth sharing

Some ideas die.

Some ideas grow into something that's cute and entertaining, like the story I did that's about to be published here in October.

Some ideas grow into a Jack-in-the-beanstock vine that take you, the house, and the entire neighborhood with it, like this one.

And there there's others that are somewhere in-between...still waiting for their turn for the light.

***

Right now, I'm in a sort of gathering phase, where I've turned my house inside-out, and now I'm facing a stuffed closet with so many papers in it that used to mean something, but they've sat in that closet so long that I can't actually remember what they meant, and they're falling on me.

Not to mention emails back from 2007 with missing stories captured within, and two large duffel bags and several smaller bags that nearly broke my whole family's backs getting them from my mother's house in Maryland to mine in Texas, with stories from lives connected to mine swirling inside, waiting to get out and get converted into some kind of digital format I can actually work with...

So you see...nothing really to say.

Gathering...

From Writing to Speaking

This week I'm supposed to do a spoken version of my story that was accepted to the Antipodean SF website, which is going to come out in their October issue.

This thing (reading aloud) is not my forte.

It's not like I've never done this before. Heaven knows I've read enough bedtime stories to kids, and I actually did do a reading of another short story on YouTube years ago, just to try it out. I just don't feel like I'm terribly good at it. So there's a little mental block there for me.

I decided to listen to the podcast they do, to see how other authors read their stories.

And I found out they do a sort of radio show, that's really on the radio. They paint a lovely little romantic word picture of it on their website:

"The AntipodeanSF Radio Show is broadcast in the Nambucca Valley, on the Mid North Coast of NSW every Saturday evening at 8:30pm EAST, on community radio, 2NVR, 105.9FM."

So I had to take a quick Google Maps trip.

It's a small spot in Australia, on the beach facing out towards New Zealand. I clicked along Pacific Highway, and stopped for a moment to dangle my legs off the pier in Pelican Park and pulled in for a moment at the Nambucca Motel, with its painted brick and its signature cactus with a sombrero on it.

I tried to imagine the entire population of the Nambucca Valley (all 6,222 of them, or even if only 3% show up, that's still a good 186 people!), seated around their radios on a Saturday night at 8:30 in October...

Listening to me, reading out my story.

I'm in awe.

Neil Gaiman gave some advice to another author once, when she asked about reading aloud - "Pretend you're someone who can do it, and then just do what they would do."

Works for me. Tomorrow I'm going to pretend I know what I'm doing, and do it...I hope...

Stepping Back in Time Via Email

My father's passing (and the cleaning of my father's house) left a lasting impression on me as to the importance of getting a handle on stuff.

Thank goodness, my parents had (ironically) stuffed away in their bookcase Marie Kondo's book 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up." This book has not left my side for the past week.

 

 

 

So far, my clothes and my books are well in hand. Today I've cleaned up my desktop and my computer files, and I'm starting on my email.

 

Now, you think you've got physical clutter? Ever looked at the 'sent' folder of your email?

 

Don't.

 

Not unless you want a monster project on your hands. Or you like time travel.

 

I have emails back to the beginning of email time (approximately the year 2006 for this emailbox).

 

And they're telling me a very intriguing, nearly forgotten story.

 

Lots of people and ideas (and even articles and stories) in there.

 

Between that and the regular emailbox, I think I've got about sixteen days of work to do here.

 

 

In the meantime, while I purge, I'm going to keep my brain alive with Doestoyevsky's "The Double", which I found sitting lonely on my desktop, waiting to be read. It's a longer story about madness, so I'll just take my time over it on my lunchbreaks. To balance out the madness of my own life at the moment.

Back in AliveWorld with New Stories...

My father's funeral was this week - a rough business that required my full-on emotional participation.

So no new fiction stories came this week.

But man, did I ever get lots of family stories, which are just as good. Probably a little bit better, from where I'm standing. I took notes to remember what I'd heard, and I'll post them for my family later. Might post a few here as well - lots of colorful characters swimming in my DNA gene pool.

My dad turned into a bit of a pack rat during his final years. He wouldn't let my mom throw away anything, and he kept every scrap of paper that came into his hands, it seems. If they couldn't find something they were looking for, they just went out and bought another one, so they had 10-15 of everything when he passed away.

One single townhouse simply couldn't hold it all, so we cleaned and cleaned (or is it 'excavated'?) until there were at least pathways into every room. And we found pictures and journals and letters - so much family history. Surprisingly clear photographs of family members I'd never gotten a good look at before. I came away with over 150 pounds of history that I miraculously got home, and now have to sort through and save.

But my fiction stories are still coming as well. Got to thinking about my son teaching me to use Audacity to record for the published story I recently did, and thought...why not put them all on audio? It would be good practice, for sure. So that project's happening soon as well.

It was a fantastic week, even without writing, even if it was a funeral that got us back together. I learned to treasure these awesome people right here, and not the stuff so much. A good lesson to learn.

Dear Dr. Journal - Thoughts on Therapeutic Writing

Truthfully, with the events of this week, not a lot of reading or fiction writing is happening. But that doesn't mean no writing is happening.

I've been writing my father's obituary instead.

Man, if that isn't a job that drags you to the edge of mortality to stare out into the abyss! Containing a human being's entire life in 1-2 pages of text.

Especially the human being who came right before you did.

I work with obituaries for a living, and I've seen a lot of people who didn't know anyone who wrote, and got literally nothing. A name and a blank picture window on the funeral website, and that's it. I wanted better than that for the man who raised me.

So he got the world-class treatment, because his daughter is a writer. The kind of obituary you have to pay hundreds of dollars to get from a professional. And I was glad to do it. If I ever get the nerve together, I'll have to write my own and make sure it's good as well.

***

At the same time, I couldn't be completely objective, writing about my father. There's a little bit of a discrepancy between my experience with my father and some of the other kids' and in-law's experiences in the family.

Some of them got Dad, Version 2.0 and 3.0, when he was kind and accepting and mellow and all good things. Being an older child, I got Dad, Version 1.0, the one with all the bugs, at a time when I really wanted (no, needed) a later version instead.

I started to tell my kids about Dad, Version 1.0, thinking that might help me, but then I thought better of it. He didn't die in that version, and I wanted them to hear the good stuff too. But I had to somehow honor my inner child somehow, who was pretty dang angry at the treatment she got, having broken him in for the rest of the world.

A good friend of mine, who'd lost a daughter many years ago, had suggested keeping a journal as a way of talking out what I was feeling to the deceased, as if they could hear, and peeling the emotional onion as I needed to do. So I took this to heart. I wrote a letter to my father.

It was not a love letter, to say the least. It was angry, and vengeful, and as nasty as Version 1.0 deserved, with no filter.

Once that was gone, I felt safe to acknowledge that he'd made upgrades since Version 1.0, and I just hadn't been there to see it. I knew there was love somewhere under all that anger and regret. Just have to keep digging as I need to.

I went to bed, and woke up the next morning completely rested and clear. It was like magic.

It's not just published writings that have value - something I've definitely learned over the years. Journals have saved my mental and emotional life. Writing is a great service to render, to others and to myself, and I thank God I can do it.

On Death and Publication - All the Wrong Feels

My father passed away this weekend.

I couldn't say it was a surprise - it wasn't. He'd been sick for a long time, and they'd been preparing for this. Mentally, I felt ready.

I wasn't.

First response to the cascade of worried texts (he's in the hospital...no heartbeat...not breathing) felt like a sucker punch to the stomach. I just paced while looking at my phone. Then my sister set off the first wave of crying with the official word '....died...'.

We hadn't been that close, he and I, in recent years. Our relationship was thorny and complicated, to say the least. I wasn't sure why I was crying. Maybe it was because I wished that we were closer, but I had tried and failed to get closer. So that was it.

That moment passed, and then the first night of trying to sleep. Took us two hours. My siblings reported similar issues. Normal.

How is this supposed to be normal?

Today was details day - getting the rental car, planning the trip, writing the obituary (a service I was glad to be able to render for him), giving notice at work.

When I went into work, I saw another email.

It was from the magazine I'd submitted my last story to.

Mentally, I felt ready.

I wasn't.

The Australian editor that looked like Gandalf told me he'd read it, and he liked it...

He liked it?

Could I look at the edits he made and approve them so we could move forward...

He was publishing it???

My father died yesterday, and I've very happy.

This feels all wrong somehow. But, at the same time, it feels very right.

My father was the reason I'm writing science fiction in the first place. Instead of raising me on sports, he showed me all those Depression-era cliffhangers and science fiction movies I so wanted to make fun of, and he wouldn't let me. He took me to see each and every Star Wars movie; just him and me, episodes 4-6. I thought of all those passionate arguments we had about how ST:TNG was in no way comparable to the original series, all those years ago. He taught me about computers and science and how to love them both.

So now I'm writing these same stories he grew up on, and actually got one published. Pretty sure if he had lived to see it, he would have loved it.

So this one's for you, Dad. Despite everything, I'm forever your kid.

Stories From the Cabin in the Woods

You know those writer retreats, where you sit in a comfortable cabin with nothing but a laptop and some Wifi, and crank out your work-in-progress in utter solitude, looking out over a beautiful backwoods landscape, with no spouse, no kids, no responsibilities other than to dream and write it down?

This is writer porn.

Not in the sense of it being an immoral act, but in the sense that people don't really write most stories that way.

It's a beautiful, seductive dream. "Someday, when the time is right, I'll turn out something really special..."

If I thought this way, I'd still be waiting to start writing. And probably have gone insane while waiting.

My stories won't wait for the beautiful seduction of the cabin in the woods. They want out now. They knock on my head and nag me - What are you waiting for? Those kids are big enough to feed themselves. Exercise is pointless - you're going to die anyway.

Now, I don't take counsel from nagging stories, obviously - my kids haven't starved to death, and I do exercise now and then. But I also write, and I write in very small bursts every day. Between tasks. Lunch break. In the bathroom. While the family's eating dinner. During my commute.

After one or two days, I get nervous and irritable if I don't write at all. I have to write every day now, and in a lot of ways it helps me cope when the world goes crazy.

And one novel, one memoir, one published children's story, 18 short stories, and hundreds upon hundreds of blog posts, letters, poems, and journal entries later, I love having written, even if the writing was never pulled from a relaxed, peaceful setting with long leisurely hours of time to do nothing else.

Don't get me wrong - if I ever do get the chance to play eccentric-hermit-in-the-woods, you bet I'm jumping at it. My little introvert heart couldn't resist such a chance.

Just not waiting until then...got a cabin already in my mind, wherever I am. :-)

Having a Life to Write About

“In order to write about life first you must live it.”- Ernest Hemingway

I love going to school. L-O-V-E it.

My oldest daughter is graduating in ten days from one of those super-speedy high-school-and-associates-degree programs, where homework consumes every waking moment of your life - both hers and to a large degree, mine as well.

So it's such a relief to finally get beyond that, and look to my own education again.

I was clicking through the online list of majors at the school I work at, wondering what in the world to take, and suddenly it clicked.

But I can't tell you the specific major. Not yet.

Whenever I write a story, I never talk about what I'm writing about until it exists on paper, or in some computer file somewhere. If I do, it releases all my creative power, and then the story never gets written.

I'm afraid the same thing will happen here with school. So I won't say what my major is, not yet.

But it's good! I'm excited! Been trying to figure this one out for a long time, and I think I've finally nailed the perfect one.


Yes, it is science-related, which is also going to feed my stories. Super excited about that as well.

It's also very heavy on the math side, so back to Khan Academy I go. If I can finish those math classes before the end of the summer, I'll be in a really good spot to get started.

Another day, another page...

Patience and the Modern Writer

Finished working out my next story against the template I created - and it's yielding some interesting things.

How much more template do I have to go?

Nine pages more.

So, let's see...nine pages of story to go, at one page per day plus work plus helping daughter graduate plus sleep plus home and hubby maintenance plus dinners plus...nope, I guess TV's out...

I'm going to need longer than a week to finish my story.

(sigh)

I'm not the fastest writer in the world. I wish I did, but I don't.

Don't know if it's my Internet-fueled brain, or whether it's running after my family that I love and I would never, ever give up for art's sake, but I don't have Stephen King's prolific turnout, or Isaac Asimov, or R.L. Stine.

But I think that's okay. Patience is a superpower I'm still developing. Writing is a race I have to run against myself. Did I write even a paragraph? Even just another heartbeat of the the story helps. I have a goal for volume, but I'm not dead yet. Aiming for some semblance of quality as well, and want to make sure, above all, that I finish things...

So I'm pushing my deadline forward. Instead of one week, I'm planning on having a completed story for submission in two weeks - by Saturday, May 13th.

Haven't heard back from the first place I submitted to yet, but it's early still.

So it's back to work. With fake patience, if nothing else...