Quitting and Proud

It's time. It's been coming for at least the last 9 months, but the time is finally here: I'm done. I'm quitting writing. Please understand, this is not said with the slightest trace of bitterness, regret, despair, or anger. A few days ago it might have been, but not now. Now it's said with a sense of freedom, liberation - and excitement.

I'm growing up, you see. Learning that I'm the one in charge of my own life, and if I don't take charge now, I'll wake up forty-five with schoolkids, stuck in a rut I didn't create for myself. I refuse to be a part of that future, and claiming my future means claiming my now. And my now of the last year or so involves far too much angst, over everything - evidenced by the fact that I saw the ear/now/throat surgeon yesterday, and while there are definitely operable structural issues (HOORAH, I WILL BE ABLE TO BREATHE), a large part of the problem is that I grind my teeth - and I grind my teeth because of stress.

It's been a slow and gradual process, a culmination of many, many conversations and blog posts and things read and seen and observed. It's knowing I spend far too much of my evenings on the computer; it's knowing that I'm spending the majority of my time dealing with urgent and not important; it's knowing that I can't physically, mentally or emotionally cope with everything I've set up as 'have to do'.

It's being inspired by declutter blogs, finding the blogs of wonderful women who speak to the issues of my heart, who care about the things I care about, who struggle with the things I struggle with. It's recognising the I want to spend more time being happy and less time being worried; it's erasing 'should' and 'have to' from my vocabulary.

It's learning to be kind to myself, to love myself, to recite love letters to my body every night as I towel off from my shower, to make time to relax, time to sit, time to breathe, time to be. It's finding silence, finding the moment, finding me.

It's finally, finally, finally, being set free from everyone else expectations, real, imagined, whatever. It's learning to see how I measure up to my own expectations, my real, personal, own ones, not the ones that life has forced onto me. It's laughing more, smiling more, running more, even though I get sweaty and bright red and the ungainly bits of me bounce. After all, sweat is the skin's best cleanser, right?

Most of all, it's learning about what makes me me. I'm quitting writing because I need silence, this kind of silence, and at the moment my world is full of words from first-breath to last-breath, and I can't hear who I am through the noise.

It's not a break, because that implies a specific intent to return. But it's not necessarily forever-quitting. I love stories, I live stories, I breathe stories. I may be back. But if I am, it will be because I've remembered how to love writing - and not because I need yet another way to measure my worth in terms of thing done, quantity acheive, how quickly I can master something.

I was scared to quit for so long, because my house is littered with 'Amy projects', things started and incomplete after the first fervour of passion has died away. But it has finally occurred to me that all things in life are not equal. I've never quit things to do with my work, my family, my God. So if I start hobbies and drop them much like college boys change their underwear, SO REALLY WHAT? All it means is that I'm creative, doncha know? O:) :D

So. I'm still going to be blogging, but it won't be here, because I won't be blogging about writing and there's bound to be a whole truckload of TMI. If you're interested in following me to my new home, there's contact tab just up there ^ on the blog. Shoot me something - email, tweet, FB, whatevs - and let me know, and I'll give you the address.

Otherwise, thank you. Thank you for sticking it out with me this long, for watching me mature and grow in my writing - and my life. Thank you, because even though I don't know most of you, it's amazing to know that there are people out there reading what I'm writing, that I'm not talking to a void. So thank you.

I have a few books that I collected to give away on here, so I'll do that before the end of the week. There is also one or two more posts already scheduled, so I'll let those post too. But other than that, this is it: the end of an era. I'm going to wave goodbye, close the door, and leave you all to party. Last one out switch off the lights, m'kay?

~Amy.

Busyness: The Ultimate Curse

Oh look, it's been nearly two weeks since I posted... Actually, I wrote a great long post last week about teaching and curriculum and wotnot, and then blogger ATE IT and because I'd just been essentially free writing, I couldn't remember what I'd said. It was tragic.

Anyway, have been doing lots of internet reading outside my usual hangouts, lately, and this article on busyness seemed ridiculously appropriate, given my excuse for not posting was going to be, "I've been busy" O:) Definitely go read it for yourself, but the best quotes are extracted below.

It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.”

[We] feel anxious and guilty when [we] aren’t either working or doing something to promote [our] work.

It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school — it’s something we collectively force one another to do.

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.

[But] if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. (That's a challenging one)

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets.


Conclusion? Life is too short to be busy.

Over the next month, I'm going to post here (sporadically, as always) about my goal for the rest of the year: decluttering, both my home, my head, and my calendar. Please feel very welcome to join me :o)

To Tip The Scales of Justice and Mercy

The Small Person is in bed, again, at last, and I'm reading, again, but not books, because books can't hold my attention right now when I'm restless, and tired, and vaguely guilty for the fact that my house looks like it's lived-in and there are toys in the corner and folding on the lounge and unfinished paperwork on the table and dishes in the kitchen, though all the non-dishwasher dishes are clean and really I just need to unstack and stack. There's a basket of wet laundry waiting to be hung out on the line like flags, colourful flags that symbolise everything we are and have been, because we wear our clothes every day and they make us, and we make them, the caterpillar suit that belongs to Small Person that is my favourite, the shirt I should have thrown out months ago but that I love, the sheets that my husband and I bought together, lie in together, change together.

All of this is calling to me, but I'm sitting here reading, and my soul is full. I'm reading about courage, and hope, and change; I'm reading about things that outrage me, things that try to excuse themselves saying they 'didn't mean' to be offensive, and so therefore aren't - to which I silently, furiously, blood-boilingly disagree, because when you are the powerful one, you don't get to define what offends those in less powerful positions. And I'm reading about love, and life, and wanting to uproot everything you are and have and just get out, change, do something different because what you're living is so empty, so small, so nothing.

I, too, was raised under the unconscious message that bigger is better, that more is more, and I'm not talking about the world, about acts of greed and selfishness and plastered billboards and enchanting lights and beautiful people with beautiful drinks and cars that change your life and computers that sing and dance and long slim legs and long thick hair and sparkling eyes and full breasts in bikinis and clear skin and stuff and things and more-more-more. I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about other things, unselfish things, things that help and heal and minister. Things that change the world, that can only BE big because what can small do against a world of greed, a world of pain and hurt and envy and pride, large gaps getting larger and privilege and wealth and so much poverty that I never, ever see. I'm sheltered, spoiled, I don't even KNOW anyone who qualifies as poor, and we're not rich and we have bills but we also have a car, and a motorbike, and a house and new furniture, a dishwasher for Mothers' Day and fishing rods for Christmas, thousands of dollars of books and a flat-screen TV, and how dare we think that we need stuff in a world where people die so easily at the end of a gun wielded in a bar brawl, in front of their wife, with two small children at home?

And I'm doing nothing, or so it seems, because we're told that the only things that count are BIG, that if you're not serving overseas it doesn't matter, that soup kitchens and street alleys are the only places you can make a difference, that unless you're fighting to stay alive with everything you have your perspective isn't valid, doesn't count.

And I'm thinking all this because of what I'm reading, because the woman whose blog I'm reading has felt all this and I do too, and it's guilt, and it's more guilt, and I am so. sick. of guilt. Guilt is poison, a spider bite in the vegetable garden, a snake curled in the blankets of your bed, a fire-ant sting at a lavish summer picnic, ready to flood your senses without provocation, devouring, destroying, souring the taste of the cherries because cherries are expensive, and out of season, and you shouldn't be eating them because the cost to ship them here from America ought to be prohibitive, and people in the world are dying from lack of sustenance and you're eating things that cost a year's worth of food for these people, and you're enjoying it, and you must be perverse.

Sometimes, even big things aren't enough.

But I'm reading, reading, feeling and still reading, and a sentence makes me pause. In all of this, the quiet reminder that even if we don't feel like they do, the small things count, because we're not in this world to fix it, it's broken, it's crumbled, and one day maybe we will rebuild but for now there are just as many working against as there are working for and really, ultimately, there's nothing we can do. One day it will all be gone and we'll start over with everyone, everyone, who wants to see that, regardless of race colour creed size shape gender age. We will all be there, and then it will be fixed.

But now, here, we're not fixing things, no one can do that, we just can't, we're fighting against powers and principalities not of this world, and here, on Earth, it's a losing battle, though ultimately it's won. But I'm reading, and I know: that doesn't mean that what we do doesn't count. It's like the starfish, which has been retold so often it's cliche, but it matters, it still matters even if you've heard the story a thousand times, just like what we do. We do it so often, all that small stuff, that it becomes cliche, and we're inured to it, and we forget that it still matters, that even though we've never seen a smile of ours make a difference, that doesn't mean it doesn't. That giving a few dollars here and there still helps, even if it's boring, even if it's tiny, even if it's 'done'.

And I'm reading, and I find the thing I didn't realise I was looking for, the sentence that gives me hope. We're not here to fix things, we can't, it's too much. Instead, all we need to do it tip the scales. We're striving for justice, for mercy, at least I am, it's what I burn to do with everything that I am, every time I read something that makes my blood boil it's because I hate, I hate injustice and I hate unfairness and I hate that there are people in this world that think that privilege is okay, that power over others is God-given, that discrimination is alright. I long for justice; I ache for mercy. And in the end, that is what we are to do, all we are to do, everything we are to do: to tip the scales in their favour.

And I read this, and I remember: it only takes a grain of rice to tip the scales in the end. We don't need 'big', or loud, or bright or shiny or dazzley; we just need. Everything tips the balance, one way or the other.

It's Always Too Late (Though That May Be Just Right)

Why it is that just as we get the hang of one season in our life, the next one comes along? I suppose because we have learned what we needed to from the season. But sometimes, boy, it would be nice to learn a lesson from something and then sit back and enjoy.

I'm going back to work on Monday. Not full time - a 0.8 loading (1.0 is full time), which means 4 classes instead of 5 and two days a week where I only have to be a work for a couple of hours. But it is still terrifying. I'm looking forward to it so much - I adore my job, being in the classroom, teaching and learning and letting the kids laugh at me - but really, I want to keep looking forward to it for just another week. And maybe another after that...

Because of course, things have JUST gotten comfortable at home. Small Person is 23 weeks old and has settled into a routine (ish), but more to the point, I've learned how to cope when he doesn't. Right now, I'm standing up using my dresser as a table with the SP strapped in the front pack because he's only had 2 half-hour naps so far today. It's 4pm. He's tired. But he's still, now that the initial tears have passed, gurgling and chirping and smiling behind his dummy (pacifier). And so I am. Time was, I'd be frazzled to death because husband will be home in an hour and half and I've not done much today - but you know what? It's my last day at home with the kid for ten weeks (huzzah that I can say that, huzzah for teaching, huzzah for school holidays). And I've enjoyed being with him extra, even if it means he's grizzly. Because I don't just love him when he's happy, and ultimately, though it's my job to take care of him in every way I can, I can't actually make him be happy.

So today, I'm just enjoying loving him, knowing that he won't be **ALL MINE** again for another three months - and lamenting that, once again, I've learned the lesson just in time for the season to be over.


Also, Motherheard #2: Don't lick the floor, dear.

Productivity Is Now A Swear Word: A Re-evaluation

I've been doing a lot of non-fic reading the last week or so, and have come across some interesting things. These, plus a combination of various life factors, have prompted some thinking about this horrible all-pervasive guilt that is like a storm cloud over my life. I have this natural tendency to believe that OHMYGOSH EVERYTHING IS MY FAULT, and not in a melodramatic, woe is me sort of way, but a genuine crap, why was I not smarter/better/more observant/whatever in order to avoid this happening? And that applied to everything, including completely illogical things that have nothing to do with me whatsoever.

I also have this ridiculous belief that I must be productive every second of every day, which perversely ends up meaning that I am LESS productive, because I procrastinate more, because there is SO MUCH PRESSURE to be productive. Yes yes, I haz Issues, I know. But this means that if I'm not careful, my to-do list can blossom out of control. This is the main thing that has made writing a chore, because once things are on that to-do list, they fall prey to the Productivity Guilt - if I am not doing it, I am feeling guilty for not doing it, which makes me hate doing it, which makes me do it less, which makes me more guilty for not doing it, which makes me hate it more, which... Well, you can see where this is going.

BUT! All the readings, and a conversation with the Boyo, and a few other things mean I am now officially Changing My Attitude (and abusing capitals): Productivity is now a swear word. I will have TIME OFF, confound it all, and let the brain breathe. Oddly enough, sticking to this a few nights last week (i.e. shutting the laptop down at 8pm, regardless of how much I hadn't acheived, instead of futzing away on it, achieving maybe three sentences between then and bedtime) meant I slept longer and better than when I didn't. When you give your brain a break, you sleep better and function more effectively?! WHO KNEW?!?!

But anyway, I'm trying to get to a point here. All of this made me think about chores, and all those things that I HAVE to do. I had a conversation with the Boyo the other day in which he essentially said that he knew I wasn't a cleaner when I married him, that he never expected me to change, and that he doesn't actually expect a spotless house and dinner on the table every night (HELLO, HE IS MINE, YOU CANNOT HAZ).

Here was the very thing I’d been longing for, surely: the permission to NOT DO MY CHORES. He didn’t care if I did them or not (well, loosely speaking), and as I was the only other adult in the house… Why do them?!

Only, of course, I still had to do them. But there was that word again: ‘had’. I didn’t ‘have’ to do them. And so the epiphanic realisation: I wanted to do them.

LE GASP. I wanted to do the chores?? What kind of insane reality was this? And yet, there it was: friends were coming for dinner, or family for the weekend, or something, and I wanted a clean house to show for it. I wanted a clean house.

Behold, my intrinsic motivation.

So now, when I catch myself moaning about doing the dishes, or vacuuming, or hanging the washing, or whatever, I force myself to rephrase. Instead of, ‘Blah, I have to do the dishes’, it’s, ‘Hmm, I’d really like to have clean dishes to eat from tonight.’ It sounds so stupidly insignificant, but the shift in thinking that it represents is HUGE.

And with that, I can kiss goodbye to just a little bit of that guilt – because if I’m doing the dishes, it’s because I want to, and if I’m not, it’s because I don’t want to – not because I’m shirking things I HAVE to do.


The things I has been readings:
Good Job and Other Things You Shouldn't Say (Unless You Want To Ruin Your Child's Life)
The Case Against Grades
Five Reasons To Stop Saying 'Good Job!'
Bad Writing Habits
Rachel Held Evans: A Year of Interviews
Imagine: How Creativity Works

--You are not allowed to comment on the fact that this post was obviously composed in two pieces, and that one is decidedly more refined and coherent than the other. I edited for six hours today. Leave my brain alone. *poke*--

In Which I Say Stuff!!

Somehow, over the last few months I have acquired a couple of new followers. I've NO IDEA how this has happened, since apparently I am incapable of blogging and pretty much am only on twitter during school hols, but anyway, however you found your way here - hi! And thanks :o) And sorry. :D

Anyway, below is most of a post I started like two weeks ago, and then didn't finish. This is Me And Blogging at the moment - it's not that I don't think of things to say, it's just I never get around to saying them (although for a long time it WAS because I had nothing to say, mostly because I wasn't writing). So, without further ado, post:


So, it's been a long time since I actually had stuff to say on here. [no kidding; delaying this post by like 3 weeks made that even longer, woman!] I blame term 2 (I loathe term 2 with a passion; it's the busiest and most dismal term of all, not helped by ever-encroaching winter-lack of daylight) and the fact that my body has been preoccupied with other stuff. This, for example:



Rah. Crazy how much that thing messes with your brain.

But anyway, it's FINALLY holidays, and my brain is FINALLY kinda-sorta working again, and I Have Stuff To Say! Rawr.

First up, I just want to note that I've gone through and tidied all the meta pages; TBR Pile of Doom, Books Read, WIPs and Published Works are all now uptodate. Hurrahs! I just started Like Clockwork today, [being like 3 weeks ago] and I am LOVING it SO much. I honestly haven't been this enthused about writing since I wrote the first book in the series over a year ago. It's a really nice feeling. [but apparently not nice enough to get me past chapter one :P]

The fact that I have evil brain-washing clockwork fairies, plus friendship and learning to trust and broken promises and betrayals and assumptions-that-turn-people-evil, to look forward to helps. A lot.

[It does. Very much. But what DOESN'T help is realising that a few things need to be sorted out in the first book first. So drafting is on hold and I've just yesterday (like really yesterday) drawn myself up a revision timetable for Sanctuary, which has me finishing right on December, which is rather full of happiness. But more on that in another post.

For now, suffice to say that I am going to endeavour to post about once a week, now that I no longer feel like the living dead (just the living exhausted ;)), and if I don't, you're free and welcome to come after me with pitchforks, knives, and other uncomfortably pointy objects.

Thus concludeth perhaps the most pointless and rambly post I believe I've ever written. Oi.]

Habitually, Really

Can I just whinge for a moment about how hard it is to get back into a habit? I can? Oh. Great. Thanks. O:)

There’s this piece of folk wisdom I remember learning sometime in highschool about habits. It takes three months to make one, and only three days to break one, so the wisdom goes. Personally, I don’t know about that. Sometimes it only takes a day or two to break a habit – and some habits take far longer than three months to form.

Eating, for example. The diet I have to be on right now is complex and extremely limited, but can be broken down essentially to two things: 1) no added sugar in any form and nothing with more than about 10% natural sugars, and 2) no moulds of any kind, which includes fungi like mushrooms, ‘safe’ moulds found on cheeses and bruised fruit, anything brewed/fermented like vinegar or soy products, and anything with yeast. Like I said; pretty limiting.

I can’t really remember what I expected when I first started on it, how long I thought it might take until I got used to it, but now, six months in, I can tell you it still isn’t a habit. My first instinct is still to reach for the chocolate-coated sultanas on the bench leftover from Christmas for a snack, or to ponder a quick sandwich for lunch. I can feed myself now without stressing too much about what to eat, but it’s certainly not a habit.

Checking my email? That’s a habit. My first instinct when I switch on the computer is to open firefox and click on my gmail shortcut. Literally. I have to stop and think about it if I want to do something else. (Email addict? Me? Never...)

So, after not really writing for several months now, how do I go about getting back in the habit? I used to have a process that told my brain it was time to write, a way or a place I’d sit in, things I’d have open on the computer, a mindset. All of that is gone, faded into distant memory with disuse. And when I sit at the computer, I’m more likely to spend an hour or so thinking, “I should write”, than actually writing anything. (Besides, there are EMAILS to read! O:))

I googled ‘characteristics of a habit’, wondering if anything would useful would appear to solve my problem for me (which is either terribly lazy, or terribly postmodern – or perhaps both) and the only article that wasn’t about smoking or chemicals was this one. It suggests that there are three characteristics of a habit: 1) You feel weird not doing it. 2) It’s second nature. 3) Other people notice you doing it.

Well, 1) I already feel weird for not writing, and 2) I doubt I can magically make it second nature without just doing it already. Not much help there. But 3) might have something: other people notice.

Okay, so I’m not necessarily going to hang a big sign over my head to say “I’m writing!!1!!”, but what if I approach it the other way? What if I enlist someone to watch for me writing, so they can tell me when they notice I’m not doing it?

Really, all I’m talking about it accountability. Once upon a time, I used livejournal for that. And since finding one person committed enough to bug me every single day about whether I’ve written or not is a bit of an ask for that person, maybe the blog’s the way to do it.

So I’m going to revive the livejournal again. Feel free to cheer me on or just laugh at my pathetic attempts (either works), and if you’d like to join me in reforming a habit – or even just forming a new one – let us all know in the comments here, or you can comment along with me every day on the livejournal blog :)

Any other handy tips for forming habits?

Yeah, About That...

Life had jumped up and smacked me in the chin. Oh, no, wait. That was the dog. Never mind. O:)

I have a few more places to go up for Project Native (keep sending 'em in, people! Chocolate's still on offer!), I have some posts on the editing process I'm undergoing that I really want to get up, I have book reviews to do and comments to reply to.

I also have a full time job that's really hectic right now as we commence the final term for our school year (looots of marking, looots of extra curricular), dog showing that will take up at least half of every weekend between now and Dec 11, an interstate trip, a volunteer position for the week-long camp coming up in a couple of months for which meetings are gearing up, major renovation-type-stuff going on at home, and creatures who rely on me to deliver meals.

September was my third worst month in terms of wordcount since I've started keeping stats (Feb '07, in case you were wondering). I did manage to keep up with the editing, but honestly, the novel draft is not a priority right now.

I wish it was; I miss it. But I have to do the things I get paid to do first. And the food, since family members dying on me from starvation could earn me some questioning looks :P

All of which to say, I'll be back to regular blogging as soon as I can. Hopefully next week, maybe next month. I'll do my best, and hope you'll all miss me terribly and spend the interim pining O:) Bwa ha ha.

And if you don't, I'll hunt you down and give you something to pine about >:) *envisages invading people's homes with pine trees* *blinks* Yeeeah, I'll think of something sensible, never you mind.

Ha!

5 Ways Writing Is Good For You

So, I was thinking the other day about all the reasons why writing is simply awesome. And I realised something: writing is awesome because it's good for you! Isn't that great news? Here are 5 reasons I discovered why writing is good for you.

1) Writing is good for your brain. You get to perform weird mental contortions while you figure out how your character is going to get out of this dead-end alley way when she has nothing but the dress she's wearing, uncomfortably high-heeled sandals, a razor blade and two really Big monsters closing in on her. Sideways thinking, wheehee!

After all, you never know when you might be in a simliar situation O:)

2) Receiving critiques. Nothing builds a thick skin and resistance to criticism so well as having people point out all the many and varied ways in which your writing sucks. Why is this good for you? Case in point: I finished my first semester of teaching a senior highschool course (aka year 11 aka junior year aka the second last year of school) a couple of months ago, and asked for feedback from the students.

The feedback was brutal. Well, in places. Mostly it was good, or to do with things that weren't anything to do with me. But one person went so far as to say I shouldn't be allowed to teach senior courses o.O Did it hurt? Sure. But because I'm used to critiques from writing, I did what I'd had so much practice doing: looked for the validity underlying their irritation, figured out what I could fix for next time, and threw the paper in the bin.

3) Writing is good for your sanity. Because if you didn't write, you totally know that the voices would just keep talking. And then you might actually think you were insane. At least this way you get to name them all and people think you're clever O:)

4) Critiquing. Other's people's work, that is. Because not only does it help you learn to spot the same weaknesses in your own work, and not only does it do spiffy things like improve your vocabulary and grammar and storytelling skills, it also teaches you to think critically.

Did they really mean what they said, or did they mean what you think they meant? Does that true or false question that asks if the council has the right to enter your property to seize your dogs at any time mean 'at any time, randomly, at all', or 'at any time of the day or night or hour when they have a valid reason'? How many points will they deduct from your breeder's exam if instead of answering you point out this ambiguity?*

See? Critical thinking. It's good for you.

5) Writing is good for your sense of fun. Because hey - it just is :)

Anyone else have any reasons why writing is good for you?

* Answer: not so many you fail, but enough that you don't get 100% on the test :P

Busy Day

No writerly post today. I've been busy with this:

Hope you all had a smiley start to your weeks :)

Reading Challenge Update

So, the 25th of January has come and gone, and you might have noticed the lack of bookish posts lately. Or you might not have. But either way, there haven't been any for a while, and yes, sadly, this is testimony to my failure to reach my GTTBRPU200 goal.

That's 'Get The To Be Read Pile Under 200', for those of you who missed it.

If we discount the books that were added to my collection over the holidays (ten of them, almost exclusively books for school), then I only missed my goal by a tiny three books. That, I think, is award-worthy, even if it isn't quite what I was aiming for. I read 25 books between Dec 1 and Jan 25, and given my average for the previous two years is 33 for the entire YEAR, that is Pretty Jolly Good.

Sadly, however, it isn't Good Enough. I still have 214 books in the TBR pile of books I own. No, wait, a package arrived this week. So that's 219. Oops O:)

So. New goal. I thought that aiming for a book a week was kind of insane - but I ended up managing 49 books last year, and a book a week is only three more! Plus, even with the burdens of the new and sadly fulltime job, I have actually been managing a book a week so far, with extras. So. Happy times.

Thus, my new reading goal: 52 books in 2010. And yes, I'm totally counting all the books I read in January that counted towards the GTTBRPU200 >:) Bwa ha.

Bookish reviews will start reappearing.

And hopefully soon, so too shall puppies >:) 'Zah!*

In the meantime, forgive my lack of braininess; new job is... emotionally wracking. I'm barely managing writing at the moment, let alone blogging. If you have any suggestions for topics you like me to mangle - er, discuss O:) I'd be wholeheartedly appreciative :)

Otherwise, be good, or at least happy it's the weekend. Yay!

* My dog is pregnant. Puppies due Sunday. Whee!

Life or Something Else?

Insert a deep sigh of relief here.

The week is over. I survived. 10 points to me. The wedding was amazingly fantastic (anyone interested in photos??), and the new job is great. Admittedly, the kids haven't arrived yet, so I reserve the right to alter my judgement after Tuesday O:)

Last Monday I posted about giving yourself permission to have time off, and about knowing your own limits. This past week I've had a perfect opportunity to put that into practice :D

I didn't write Monday, because it was the wedding. I didn't write Tuesday, even though it was a public holiday, because we spent all day looking at/editing photos from the wedding, talking to all the relatives, and then collapsing into a heapy heap to recover afterwards.

Then Wednesday I started my new full time job.

For a while, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to write again for weeks; my brain just seemed to full of everything else, and whenever I opened the document to write, it just wouldn't work.

But then on Thursday I had a revelation. I was in the bathroom, getting ready for bed, and was vaguely pondering Sanctuary. I knew I needed another scene with the MC at school to set things up properly. I'd gotten the MC into the classroom, and into her seat... And then nothing. Not. A. Thing.

I had kind of just assumed that it was because I was tired/busy/stressed/preoccupied, so my creative brain wasn't working.

But on Thursday night, it hit me: I'd been trying to take the story in the wrong direction. I'd had a loose idea of what needed to happen in the scene - but it was all wrong! My MC was being too passive! Will all that anger and irritation and frustration building up inside, I still had her sitting around in class being passive!

Bah!

So I stopped for literally about ten seconds, closed my eyes, and said to my MC, "Fine. You tell me what's happening in the scene."

And guess what? She did. And on Friday after work, I wrote it all out straight in about ten or fifteen minutes, and squiggled in glee. It's a fun scene with no less than three occurrences that have given me the basis for main plot points, and the MC attacks a boy in the class, and things are just generally FUN.

My round-about-way point is this:

Next time you think it's life getting in the way, take ten seconds out to make sure it isn't you getting in the way. I'm really good at telling my characters what to do. I need to remember to let them talk too ;)

PS Vote for my cupcakes! Liana & my blog is Heart of the Home ;)

December in Review

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a happy and safe holiday time, and managed to get some rest in amongst all the family and food and parties. I had a lovely time up north in the warm (although some nights were too warm!), and Thursday night we took the boat out on the lake and parked in a convenient location - to be rewarded at midnight with fireworks virtually right overhead, and no crowds :) We did this last year, and it's fantastic.

Also, I conveniently had to buy some books that I'll be teaching when I start my new job at the end of the month. I was totally tragified by the price compared to all the books I bought when I was over in the States, but still - new shinies!!

...Which is all well and good, but now I have another 6 books I'll have to read to get the TBR pile under 200 (GTTBRPU200) by the end of the month :S I am halfway through the two month time period, and over halfway through the book-count though (21 read, 14 to go), so I may make it after all :)

Right. December. What did I do therein? Not much :P I had grand plans to finish off HNOT and HH, and to get HH edited up to lesson 3 of How To Revise Your Novel (HTRYN), which would have meant a total word count of around 35,000. What did I actually achieve?

12,877 words. Less than half :P

HNOT got the flick pretty early on; I wrote 3,998 words on it in the first 3 days of December and then it just... died. Now that it's January, I've picked it up again, but it seems that I usually need December to work on non-braining projects after NaNo and during the Christmas rush season. That's okay; 13k is still a decent month, so it's not like NaNo kills my productivity :)

6,398 of the remaining words were on HH, which I did, in fact finish. Huzzah!! The editing is progressing well, though at a slower speed than anticipated due to week's break right before Christmas. I'm up to lesson 3, though, so only one behind where I wanted to be at the end of the month, and lesson 1 was the big long long lesson :)

The final remaining words were - believe it or not - hand written, which is unheard of for me. However, having the break from the computer really did me good. These 2,481 words were on a combination of a short that I've been flirting with off and on for the last few months, and on Fever and Earth, the next novelette in my planned 'series'.

Aside: The series isn't really a series, since none of the stories will be connected, but just for fun I'm doing at least three and hopefully more (if they get a good response!) anthrofiction novelettes - Hunter Hunted was the first, with tigers; Fever and Earth is the second, with horse spirits. After that comes wolves, and then I think the orcas... :D

So, overall it's been a refreshing and relaxing month brain-wise, which is, really, exactly what I needed.

How was your December? Did you manage any productivity, or did the Black Hole of Holidays totally suck you in? :)

Look Ma, I Aten't Ded!

A thought has struck me - as thoughts are wont to do.

Motivated by said thought, I re-examined my writing stats spreadsheet; and the thought was affirmed.

It's a curious one, somewhat paradoxical. Un-intuitive. And it might not work for everyone.

But wow! It works for me, and I'm glad: it's made things much less stressful, now the pressure's off.

So what's the thought, I hear you wonder.

It's something that I was, for a long time, afraid of. You see, although I called myself a writer - I wasn't really sure. I didn't know that I could do it, not in my heart of hearts. And I wasn't sure it was what I wanted; and I couldn't be certain about why I did it.

And so, for a long, long time, I laboured under the fallacy that if I admitted that it didn't actually matter when I got published, the motivation to write would vanish - zip! - like that.

But here's the thought:

It doesn't actually matter when I get published. No one else in the world cares if I get published or not. And not being published isn't going to kill me, or make me a Bad Person, or worse, a Failure.

And here's the stunning part: I've admitted this, at long last, and I'm not actually dead. And neither is my writing. And neither is my motivation to write.

Wow.

Even more than this, I have statistics to support the conclusion that when the pressure's off - the pressure to polish, to get the novel ready to submit, to work to a deadline, to force myself to write when I don't feel like it because that's what writers do - my productivity actually goes up (an expected 30% this month over the previous two Septembers).

Who knew? :P

I've been having a tremendous amount of fun with writing lately, not forcing myself to commit to any one project, but letting the Muse wander spontaneously. I've got more ideas brewing than ever, I've worked through some major plot problems in a few stories, and I've written no less than three flash fictions in a week - when I'd written a total of one in my life before. I have - for me - a record number of things out on submission, and I'm not feeling stressed about my writing. It's fun.

I'm not feeling blocked - or when I am, there's no pressure on me to break the block and solve the problem now; I just hop over and work on something else, and every time thus far a solution has arrived of its own volition within a week. I'm not stressing, I'm not panicking, and I'm not beating myself up because I haven't met my word count goals for the day.

And, contrary to my expectations, all of this hasn't made me less determined to write: in fact, just the opposite. I'm more determined than ever that I will one day publish novels, in the plural. But I'm also more willing to wait for that time to come.

So I can't work from home next year. Big deal? I will, believe it or not, live. Things will work out; they always do. And in the meantime, so long as I keep doing something, I'll win out in the end: sometimes quantity trumps quality after all.

It's long been known that fear is a barrier both to creativity and success.

So join me in being radical: what do you fear? Why does it matter? How can you change your approach - your attitude, your practices, whatever - so relieve some of that pressure that we as writers inevitably put on ourselves?

Go on. Change something. Be daring.

You just never know what the results will be :)

Balance

Wow. This post has been sitting in 'drafts' for... well, a Really Long Time Now. I glance at it every now and then, just to remember that it's actually there, but I don't really think about it.

Today, I realised it's exactly what I've been looking for.

You see, I've been blogging a bit sporadically lately. I'm in the midst of prac, and while I'm busting to the brim with new ideas, none of them are really relevant to this blog.

And of course, I'm a perfectionist. A blog post has to be meaty; I have to feel like I've actually said something in it.

Hence, sporadic posting.

I've been writing a lot - I'm up to a bit over 7k for the month already - but I honestly believed that I had nothing to say about writing; I had nothing to blog about.

I was wrong.

So today: Balance.

Authors are always at risk of losing balance. We really buy into the idea that if we read enough blogs, or belong to enough crit groups, or talk to enough other authors we will somehow find that magic key and get published.

It's a nice thought. But nice don't buy rice... (Randomly, anyone know where that saying comes from?)

There IS no secret key to getting published. Rather, it's a mix of time, effort, and a chunk of luck.

I'm being reminded of this a lot this week, because I'm working on short stories again. I haven't done shorts for quite a while now, and I was missing the feedback that submitting gives - even if it is just rejections.

But that's exactly the point, it's where luck and timing comes in: I, like every other writer who submits I'm QUITE sure, have plenty of stories that have received multiple rejections before they were accepted. The most I have for any one story is only 5 right now - and that's chicken feed. And the stories that have placed certainly haven't been my favourite stories that I've written - I just happened to hit the right market at the right time with a story that resonated with them.

I want to relate this back to balance. How? Because as writers, we have obsessive, perfectionist tendencies. I certainly do. We go through phases of hating our story, our writing in general, and sometimes even ourselves because we haven't yet stumbled on the magical bit of timing that we need.

We rail against ourselves when we can't 'get it together' and perform miracles; when we can't somehow be the Magic Household Fairy, the Dedicated Working Wo/Man, the Bestselling Author AND Sane (!) all at the same time.

We're impatient.

We're impatient, we're scared, and sometimes we're lazy too.

Writing is hard work. It's terrifying work, because we expose so much of ourselves in the process.

And it takes time.

We're not superhumans with special powers; we're just humans with imaginations. We can't run the clock.

But we shouldn't let the clock run us, either.

So today, right now, let's make a committment together: tell me one thing that you're going to commit to enjoying, sometime this week, just for yourself. And tell me one thing that you're going to make a conscious effort to stop ragging at yourself about.

Me, I'm going to slow down and enjoy some yoga, and I'm going to stop telling myself that my worth as a human being is defined by how many dirty dishes there are in the sink.

How about you?

Some New Shinies

So, prac is over, huzzah. I enjoyed it immensely, but I'm glad it's over. It was exhausting. Intense.

And now I head into what is going to be the busiest week of the year for me, in which I have six uni assignments due that I've bared started due to being on prac, and am returning to working 1.5 days per week and attending classes. Oh fun.

In compensation O:) I was very Bad and bought myself some books on Friday: The Awake, by Glenda Larke, Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher, and Don't Judge A Girl By Her Cover, by Ally Carter. Much excitementness :)

And then I was extra naughty and spent far too long today reading the Glenda Larke one - which, I must say, was actually really good. It's a random one I picked up after seeing it in the stores a few weeks ago. Larke is an Australian author, which often means nothing but sometimes means the work will be somewhat parochial, and I hadn't read her before - but I was pleasantly surprised. I picked up the book more to test out the voice of the novel (written in first person) than anything; I wanted a quick happy read, and what I was really craving was the new Lisa Shearin book, but that's not available in Aus. So Larke was my fall-back, to see if it would be any good - and I'm pleased to say it was. It's not as immediately action-packed, and it didn't hook me right away - I mean, it was good, but not unputdownable - but the further I went the better it got, which is always great :o) And it ended with a bang, and in a most satisfying manner, leaving me rather desperate for the other two books in the series :D So I must say Larke's done well :)

The Jim Butcher I expect will be fabulous, and I'm trying desperately to resist the temptation to pick it up and devour it; in fact, ditto the Ally Carter, which is the new one out in her Gallagher Girls series which both I and the mini sis love :)

So yes. Some exciting reading happening - or not happening, in fact, as I poke listlessly at homework instead *wrinkles nose*

Anyway. Better get back to it, I suppose. :)

Sincerest Apologies

Summing up the querying process is taking a lot longer than I'd anticipated, especially what with having been away all weekend at a dog show (we did okay, though not brilliantly ;)), and with having spent the last two days working with my uni partner on our presentation that will be worth 50% of our grade.

So yeah. Not a lot of time to deal with my thoughts on the queries.

HOWEVER. The post is in progress, and I can solemnly swear that I'll have it up for you sometime tomorrow :) It's actually a lot of fun, dissecting these letters, and I'm learning a lot. I think. I hope. o.O

In other news, I have an unoffical release date for my ebook, the 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Dogs! And it's close! Hoorah! To celebrate, later in the week I'll be sharing the introduction to the book with you via podcast (You all get to hear me speak! Quick, run while you still can!), and next week I'll be unveiling an awesome competition where you could be in the running to win not one, not two, but THREE FREE BOOKS! :) Very shiny indeed.

So, have a good evening/morning/day/night (depending on where you are, of course), and I'll be back tomorrow with lots of bleeding, dissected queries ;) Fun fun!

Across the Genre Fences

Gah! My post for Friday didn't post! I'm terribly sorry about that. I'll post the movie I had lined up later this week instead.

Well, my week away was extremely, extremely busy - but it was fun. Good times with friends, some successful productions, and much happiness all round.

However, I am still exhausted from it all, so I beg your forgiveness... I'm not going to ramble like I usually do. (Ha, stop cheering. It isn't nice, you know :P).

What I'm going to do is respond to Liana's post from the 16th about genres.

I'm the first to admit that I used to be a genre snob. There were certain areas in the bookshop that I just didn't frequent - and I'd never even heard the term 'genre fiction', let alone read any of it. Until, that is, a dear friend, to whom I have a lifelong debt, introduced me to the wonderful world of fantasy via Terry Pratchett - Moving Pictures, to be precise.

And now I am as unsnobby as it is possible to be when it comes to reading. I am, in fact, a genre whore %-) I'll read everything, anything, something, so long as it has words on it - and yes, sadly, this extends to things like food cartons where no other reading material can be found O:)

So now it irks me when people say, "I don't read sci fi," or, "I don't read fantasy." I dislike the implication that a book's value is predicated on which shelf it sits on in the bookstore. To me, that's too much like predicating a human's worth on what country they come from. There will be people of every race and nationality that you don't like, of course - but there will also be people you do like. It's not enough to write a whole genre off because you've read one or two bad eggs - or worst, because you're scared of the idea of it, and haven't read anything in that genre.

So, in a celebration of diversity, here are my favourite books in as many genres as I can think of (restricted to books currently in print):

Literary: The Shadow Lines, by Amitav Ghosh.
Epic Fantasy: The Wheel of Time series, by Robert Jordan.
Urban Fantasy: Magic Lost, Trouble Found, by Lisa Shearin.
Science Fiction: Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card.
Space Opera: The Rings of the Master, by Jack Chalker.
Romance: Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen.
Comedy and Satire: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams and Lords and Ladies (or anything else) by Terry Pratchett.
Middle Grade: the first three Artmis Fowl books, by Eoin Colfer, or the Harry Potter books that count as MG.
Young Adult: Gallagher Girls series, by Ally Carter, and Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling.
Mainstream: Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransom (also classed as YA), and the Anne of Green Gables series, by L.M. Montgomery.
Fable/Mythic: The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

I suspect I've forgotten a few genres. If that's the case, let me know in the comments, and I shall amend the list :D

Meanwhile - what are your favourite books that fall in genres you DON'T write in, and why?

A Bit Of A Ramble To Kick Off The New Year...

So, it is Wednesday. Yes, uh huh, it is. And I was supposed to post on Monday.

...

I did, didn't I? Can't you all see that lovely book review down there, saying it was posted on Monday? O:)

Well, it's the 7th already: an entire week into the New Year. How exciting. How tremulous. How... odd. I've been thinking about 2009 for so long now that it's strange to think I'm now actually here. This year will be a very different year for me: I've got a new job, and am supervising people (scary but good), I'm starting a new uni course at a new uni (hoorah, I'm nearly done!), my mum and baby sister are moving away (sniff, tears) - and I plan to query.

Yes, that's right. It's 2009, the year in which I intend to make my query debut. Hoorah! Ideally I would like to start doing this mid-year. It will depend on how busy the new uni course ends up being, and consequently how much time I will have to write - a lot more now I have the new job!

Writing for the last month has been nearly non-existent. I mean, I did write a 10,000+ word play, and add about 3k to the 33dogs book, but nothing on any novel. I'm absolutely itching to get back to Jesscapades - but alack, that shall have to wait until February. This month the 33dogs book is due, the play is being performed (in a week and a half, argh-argh!), I'm going away for 8 days without internet access (during which I'll be directing the play and helping run a banquet). I have to create about 40 characters with profile and motives and goals for a murder mystery night, keep the house in a saleable condition (hoorah, open day on Saturday!), help my Mum move, and create Dad's birthday present which is now only 1.5 months late :S

Argh. This month is going to be insane.

I'll do my best to keep up with blogging, but consider this forewarning: you might be getting a disproportionately large number of book review posts O:)

On Friday I'll recap what I achieved officially last year, and ponder on what goals I'll be setting for the coming year.

Thanks to all of you who regularly read Inkfever - it's truly heartwarming to watch my little visitor counter at the bottom of the page slowly ticking its way towards 2,000 :) The blog is now officially one year and one month old, and I know a couple of you have been following it right from the beginning.

To readers old and new, to readers writerly or not - thank you for sharing in my life, my dreams, my goals and my opinions. May 2009 be good for you (yes, good for you, not kind to you - sadly, two very different things ;)), and may you blossom through all adversity.

Here's to making our way through another year, and celebrating once again at the end :)

~Inky

My Journey Through the World of Writing

First off, sorry for the missed post on Friday. I do my best to post regularly, but sometimes uni just leaps up to bite, and I miss one :( Hope you all still love me ;) Still feeling the after-effects of the uni-bite, today's post is slightly rambly - but somewhere, if you look hard enough, there is a point. I promise :o)

My brain regularly takes random sidetrips in terms of its thinking process, and this weekend has been no different. It's something the Muse has always done - but the difference is now I find myself couching these sidetrips in the language of blog posts. I think I'm addicted* O:)

Somewhat happily for you, this week's random sidetrip was actually relevant to this blog, and also to something I've stumbled across in a couple of places recently.

Novels. How did you get into writing them? What have you learned from each attempt? When did you start thinking seriously about writing? How have you grown since then?

It's a pretty all-encompassing topic that my Muse stumbled upon, but it got me thinking (odd, that - a thought process got me thinking, my, my...).

My first 'serious' attempt at writing was back in year ten. A friend of mine was also interested in writing, and together we began planning a fantasy story. This was in the days before I'd heard of urban fantasy, so when I finally drafted some actual writing for this story (rather than the months and months of playing and planning), the beginning included not one but two prologues. Oh my.

It was a lot of fun, though. It hooked me for the first time on worldbuilding and character development, and there are three characters in particular from that first attempt that I'm not giving up on: they'll get their own story one day, by hook or by crook.

But high school ended, the friend and I went our separate ways, and aside from a creative writing class in college (years 11 and 12 for the foreigners among you) nothing much happened on the writing front.

I started uni (university, since it's come to my attention that US of Aians have no clue what 'uni' means ;)), and life went on.

Until said friend returned from a year overseas, and began classes at the same uni. All of a sudden we had an excuse to be in the same place at the same time, and the topic of conversation turned naturally to writing.

It turned out that both of us had kept our first story in the back of our minds all those years, and had somehow and subtley added to it, growing it, until we ended up with two very different versions. In talking, however, we realised that the two could be enmeshed and make a very pretty trilogy (yes, this was still pre-urban fantasy days O:)). And thus began my second serious attempt.

This time, we actually got around to thinking about some plot. There were no prologues, although there was a Prophecy and a Chosen One, and not-one-but-several invented languages that all used shiny (and random) punctuation marks to Make Them Look Pretty.

We even wrote a couple of scenes for it.

I took another writing class, this time at uni... And I was hammered. Sure, I could string words together into pretty sentences, but I had absolutely no concept of structure, of plot or pacing - or, to the teacher's chagrin, how to write a short story.

But I was learning - and as people often find when they're doing collaborative work, my friend and I were learning at different rates. She had other priorities, other distractions... And it got to the point where, awful though it feels to write this (friend-who-happens-to-read-this-blog, forgive, forgive!), I outgrew our work together.

That is what I like to think of as my 'Act 1': the setting up of my interest in writing, where the conflict and character are introduced, and where we end by raising the stakes: if I was to continue writing seriously, it would now have to be alone.

Luckily for me, it was about that time (now the beginning of 2007) that I stumbled upon Holly Lisle's site, and devoured everything she had to say about the writing life. Not long after I found Critique Circle, and fell into a lovely group of friends, though not the friendship group I've ultimately formed. And on top of this, my Dad, whom I regard as conservative and sensible above all else, told me that I ought to "take it from a disillusioned forty-something year old": life is too short to waste doing something we only like. If I wanted to write, then by frollygop, I ought to get out there and write.

And so began Act 2: I started a novel of my own. It suffered from a host of diseases, most pertinent of which was the habit of skipping from one point of action to the next without down time, or explanation, or worldbuilding. I'd been duly warned about the infamous info-dump, and avoided it well - only to swing too far in the opposite direction.

But it was encouraging to know that I could write chapters, in the plural; previously my highest word count for anything, academia included, was about 3,000. And the crits were encouraging, if firm.

I took a second creative writing course at uni. This enforced a break from the novel, as I found I couldn't work on it and stories for class as well, but this was probably for the best: there were too many problems I needed to sort out before I continued with the novel draft.

I acquired some vague notions of structure from the class, though ended up with the same final grade as last time.

And then the Big Thing happened. It was November; it was NaNoWriMo.

It was a week before, in fact, and I was lamenting on Critique Circle both my lack of an outline, and my lack of time to outline - and, I suspect, my lack of ability to outline.
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And my hero stepped in. At that time, dear Merc, you were one of the 'big names', of Critique Circle in my eyes, and to have you not only encourage me to do NaNoWriMo, but also offer to write and in fact write an entire synopsis for me... Words fail me. Absolutely.

And so, armed with a plot and mountains of encouragement cookies, I attempted NaNo. I discovered the horrors of first drafts - but I also discovered that I was writing something that people liked. People enjoyed my story, and wanted more. And so I kept writing. I fell majorly behind, but somehow, someway, in a manner that is still a mystery to me, at the end of the month I pasted in my story, and up came the magic words: Congratulations! You've won NaNoWriMo!

The novel wasn't finished, and it took two more months to push through the final third of the book, but I did it: I finished a novel. Me. Little old me, with one novel down and under the belt. It had a mess of holes and needed serious revising, but as I read over it I realised - I can fix this. And I set about to do so.

I started a new novel at the same time, excited to be starting it with an outline, and I got to 10 chapters - and I stopped. I hit a wall, and realised that my first ten chapters were fluff, and that the story actually started at chapter 11. Man, was that depressing.

It was around this time, lamenting my inability to write story stories (they always turned novel on me), another dear friend took me under her wing. I was going to write a short story - one per week, in fact, no less, barring death, illness, or an overdose of Life. And lo, behold, I did - and I learned Structure. I could write a short story.

One of them turned novel on me... And I ended up with my second project: The Project. It became an exercise in plot, learning how to race from one cliffhanger to the next... And it worked. People read it; people liked it.

And I realised that I could do it.

And this is where I am now: still in Act 2, but happy to be here. I'm editing The Project, and I'm remembering how much I love editing right now. I'm preparing for NaNo, rather terrified once again to have no plot - but I know I can do it. I can do it because I have awesome friends to cheer me on; but I could do it alone, if I had to.

I'm growing, I'm learning - and today, for the first time in two weeks, I'm writing.


* Evidenced by the fact that two weeks ago, a particularly stressful time at uni, saw my lying awake all night one night worrying about blog posts. Argh! Why?!