Lost and found

was my forward writing momentum, temporarily regained by setting a timer for 12 minutes and writing nonstop. That worked for two days, and then distractions intruded.

Keeping it simple—So now I’m back, aiming for two timed writing sessions a day. After all, what’s 12 minutes (or twice 12-minutes) in the whole scheme of things? But this time, I’m adding a reward. Each time I complete a session, it gets marked in my calendar as a 12, circled in green. 

I’m also experimenting with beginning with a question for each timed write. Yesterday I wrote: “What Melody told Ran.” Not exactly a question, but it shaped my direction. Twelve minutes passed before I reached their encounter, so had to continue a bit longer. Forward, march!

Today’s topics: “Ran’s take on the other teens’ activities” —completed; and “Perk’s report on the Rift” — to be done.

Autumn Vegetables

are a failure. My spinach and chard didn’t come up, probably from insufficient waterings, and lack of attention due to keeping the seed bed covered because of that marauding squirrel. 

So I’ve given up on fall veggies. Instead, I planted pansies on the porch. Our Maximilian daisies (aka sunflowers), begun last year, are looking happy.

Current reading:

Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr, on my tablet.

Enter the Body, by Joy McCullough, from the library. McCullough gives Shakespeare’s most famous tragic women, now ghostly, a chance to tell their own stories—in verse.

And I just finished Patricia Wrede’s brand new fantasy, The Dark Lord’s Daughter. A fun, yet thoughtful read, with sequels to follow, I hope.

Weeding

Weeding—to a librarian—means clearing the shelves of battered, or sometimes unread, books to make space for new materials.

Weeding—to a gardener—means clearing out unwanted plants to make space for wanted ones. I kept eyeing a plot in our front yard, wanting to go out, clear out the “weeds”, amend the soil, and plant something that might thrive. The weather continued hot, and so I waited.

Weeding—to me as writer—means working through all these bits of paper that are cluttering my desk. Er . . . desks. At least three desks are cluttered. No, make that four. Two desks for writing (trying to keep projects separate but sometimes they get mixed), one for checks and finances, one that simply accumulates odd papers.

I’m making headway, but it’s slow going.

Planting

Some spare time sent me to our neighborhood nursery, where I inquired about plants that might suit our plot. I got good advice, reinforced by a neighbor with a thriving yard, concerning how much water even a desert plant needs to get established. Three times a week, dropping to once a week in winter.

And a cool day had me outside weeding and loosening the dirt, followed by a rainy one adding in a bag of compost. All that in the spirit of planting. 

Here is the Texas Sage (Lynn’s Legacy) installed just before our promised 100% chance of rain. It should grow into a sizable bush with summer blossoms. And with a watering routine, there’s hope I can also add flowers here next spring.

Writing Thoughts

Rains (and a tumble while planting yesterday that shook me up) have brought a new mindset. I finished the latest review and tweaking of my Goose Girl verse retelling—Sky’s Daughter. My critique group will read it all for our November meeting.

Meanwhile, I’ve discovered again that it’s not possible for me to work on two tales at the same time. (One tale and a blog, yes.)

So much writing advice tells you to write the whole draft, then go back to revise. I wish I could! 

Instead, as long as I’m wearing my revision cap (and don’t know where to find my writing hat), I’m going back to the beginning of Quantum Quest, to straighten out what’s already occurred, with the hope that I’ll have built up a good head of steam to continue forging ahead down new rails. (Maybe I need a conductor’s hat.)

Oh well, we each have to do the work in our own ways.

Switching Gears to Poetry

One day this past week, I was feeling particularly tired. Instead of pushing against that fatigue, I allowed myself to do whatever appealed.

One thing I did was pick up my battered copy of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.  I’ve read it more than once, usually at bedtime, always silently. I love his flow of words, though when I come to the end, I’m never sure what I’ve read.

In the empty house, I read aloud the first section. Hearing the words made me more aware of sounds and rhythms. Like watching ocean waves, one following the next, you only know their beauty. You don’t worry about the wave’s meaning.

Another day I read through the second quarter. With T. S. Eliot ringing in my ears, I was drawn to look over one of my verse novels. Ouch! What a comparison.

Sophie keeps her brain cells well rested.

Freeing up (Poirot)’s little grey cells

So that was a day or three ago. On Sunday driving home from church, I was thinking about (not quitting, because I am determined to have a complete sci fi draft this year), but more along the lines of why push for a speedy publication? Why not turn more focus to those two verse-novels-in-waiting, and bring them closer to completion?

With that thought, what came to mind was a partial—every solution comes in fits and starts and parts—a partial solution to the dilemma at hand—the causation of how to bring all to a satisfying conclusion in Quantum Quest.

One of my many papers posted over my desk tells me to NOT try to control the process of creativity. In this case, I’m taking that to mean EACH barrier my protagonists face is surmountable. They (or I) simply haven’t gone deep enough.

Little grey cells are tricky. Sometimes you have to let them figure things out. They’ll announce when they’ve done their job and let you get on with yours.

Be regular in your habits. Little grey cells don’t work alone. You have to show up. That’s advice I’ve read and heard many, many times. 

So I think my grey cells are telling me to keep all these projects alive, to allow the solutions to mature in their own time. 

Good news—Planet Quest was just announced as a Finalist in the NM/AZ Book Awards.

Progressing

Writing, for me, is trying new things, and learning what works‚ again and again. I’m on my umpteenth iteration of figuring out how to produce new words for this latest effort.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been claiming a quiet hour midday. That worked fine for revising, but when I put on my writing hat instead of my revision cap, I found myself fumbling through notes, having general organizing thoughts, but no new product coming out. 

This week begins a different approach. Sunday night, I set an intention to draft Hallie’s latest journal entry. I set pen and pad by the bed, just in case I woke with an inspiration. I didn’t.

So as soon as I was dressed, I took pen and pad to my quietest work space and scribbled a page (useless words, and I knew it) but it was words. On my dawn walk in the cool, I conceived of a new beginning, and so came home to write a much more satisfying and coherent journal entry.

The Challenge is to be consistent; to not lollygag over newspaper puzzles until Sophie is demanding her walk, and my own walking is delayed, a hot and uninspired experience.

The other challenge (when I’ve already had my walk) is to remember that Sophie needs a walk too! Wayne has had to remind me twice this week, when I’d settled down at my desk to return to work. 

Sophie will tell you that all she needs is food and walks and ear rubs and love. That’s a good start for me, too. It’s just a matter of fitting in a little extra over and above that.

Boredom

I’m never bored. And I like to play

I want to talk about the virtues of boredom—or what to do while waiting at the dentist’s office for my husband’s teeth cleaning. I do keep mentioning that I want to complete the Pawn Quest trilogy—and I’ve set a deadline to finish the first draft by the end of the year. I brought some notes to work on during my wait, but mostly I let my mind play. 

One epiphany struck me—that my timing was off. The event I thought was looming, wasn’t—at least not in the next three chapters. And with that, the shape of two chapters came into view—along with their titles. Whoopee!

Of course, they still have to be written.

How to produce boredom

Leave your normal haunts (and distractions) behind. Dentist offices don’t come every week. Get stuck somewhere. Take a walk. Mop a floor. Lie in bed putting off rising while watching your thoughts flow.

I had the strangest experience this morning. I saw myself arriving in Texas with my first husband (lo, those many years ago). It was a few days after our marriage.I had this internal view of the person I was then: tightly bound nerves, holding in all the uncertainties and fears of a new place. Not an attractive sight.

And then following almost immediately, another picture of me 22 years later, with the man who would become my second husband. We were taking our first out-of-town trip, driving to Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. The radio was off and I was singing, relaxed and with complete faith in the rightness of this new adventure.

Growth. Maturity. There are no short-cuts. I had to live through those intervening years to arrive at the person I was 22 years later. The stages of Life. And no, I can’t call any of those stages boring.

Play

Alan Alda advises playing at what we’re most serious about. I need more practice. My serious intent is constant. I think about the “book” every day. I need to learn to relax my “serious” muscle so my mind can receive new ideas.

Boredom is not my real goal; the goal is to cut out distractions, by which inspiration eludes me.

Any ideas?

On taking a break

Sophie and friend

I’ve been on break for the last two weeks. A staycation. Actually, I broke from one thing only: my struggle with a plot that wouldn’t cooperate.

Since I stopped fighting it, I had nothing to run from. That freed my mind and my eyes. I could see what was around me. Piles of paper to be sorted. And a bookcase I’d been avoiding—for months.

Dust

I hate dusting more than any other task around the house. One particular bookcase in my bedroom has been gathering dust for a long time. Why? Because it was going to be a major project. 

BEFORE
AFTER

Having no more excuses, I began emptying it. Admittedly, the dust was thick. But the main issue has always been: These were books I intended to read. Some had been there a long time. Several had to go.

I emptied the shelves and washed them down with Murphy’s oil soap, and polished it with lemon oil. Then I sorted its contents.

With everything back in place, I did the same with the remainder of the bedroom furniture. By then I was more than ready to relax with a good book!

Reading

Sorting out that bookshelf provided me with two of the three books I’m currently reading.

I thought I’d already read Alan Alda’s Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, but a glance in the middle triggered no memories. I kept reading, before going back to the beginning. 

Alda offers me some excellent advice. He says “Be playful about the most serious things in your life; you’ll enjoy them more and have them longer.” Another passage recommends trusting in the darkness; answers will come. 

I finally opened the patiently waiting middle grade novel by Caroline Starr Rose, Miraculous, a beautifully written book set in the era of medicine shows.

And book number three is an ebook biography from the public library. The Woman They Could Not Silence, by Kate Moore, has more plot ups and downs than a lot of fiction. The very sane Elizabeth Packard’s husband condemned her to an insane asylum during the Civil War, depriving her of her six children and home. I can hardly put it down.

My break provided needed time for refocus. I’m ready to bring playfulness and a trust in the creative dark to my writing.

Plus, our heat wave has finally subsided. We’ve had rain, clouds, and cooling winds.

I hope you’re happy with your weather, and your lives, wherever you are, dear readers.

Take a break—

This past Monday morning, while hanging out the wash (and waiting for the dryer repair-man), I had an epiphany. It’s time I took a vacation. 

Lucky Sophie’s only commitments are to meals and walks.

We’ve just dropped into the 90s after many days of 100 degree heat. June always used to be the month when we hit 100. July was cooler but more humid. Not this year.

We have no plans to travel this summer, but many appointments—doctors, tree trimmers, dentists, meetings, and other commitments. 

For a vacation, why don’t I take a break at home?

With all that, a break from what?

Writing gives meaning to my life, but lately I’ve been placing—without recognizing it—too much emphasis on that meaning. When writing looms as a burden, it’s a sign my ego has entangled itself in the process.

I am not giving up on my goal to have a completed draft of Quantum Quest by year’s end. But it won’t happen unless I can return to the pleasures and thrills of discovery in my writing. 

For too long, my ego has been acting as  the boss of me, wanting to know why it’s not finished already? An ego is absolutely the last part of anyone to be in charge of writing. 

So it makes perfect sense to take a break. This gives me time to clean house—literally, mentally, and emotionally.

Making this decision, I felt such a lightness! Freed from being the center of a battleground between the boss-ego telling me to do some work, and my creative side obstinately refusing to be bossed around.

First?

Monday, after the dryer was finally, finally (since March!) working again, I embarked on an adventure. One room has been bugging me for months to be rearranged. I got out some graph paper, measured the space and the furniture, and figured out an improved configuration. 

On Tuesday, I unloaded shelves and began shifting furniture. What fun. What freedom. What a pleasure to cut off that boss-ego voice. 

I confess, I have ignored that voice over and over, by escaping into DVDs and reading fiction old and new—consequently failing to write, but not making it okay to not write. Never once did I actually say NO, be quiet, leave me alone. 

This is going to be a staycation adventure.

Lost—

Sophie likes to lie on the patio and let her aging bones soak up heat. A couple evenings ago, we were eating in the kitchen. Sophie was outside. She barked—a polite “I’m ready to come in” bark.

Wayne went to check on her. At some point after our meal, he said, “I can’t find Sophie anywhere.”

“Did you let her in?”

He couldn’t remember.

I looked through the house. No dog. We searched every cranny of the backyard. No dog. With no way to escape the backyard, this was turning into a locked-door mystery. (You know the kind: someone’s murdered but the door is locked from the inside.)

Giving and Receiving

This week has been an interesting one, watching my emotions, especially the uncomfortable ones. They felt very familiar, but I hadn’t experienced them in a long time. 

A yoga teacher once mentioned the very large number (maybe a dozen dozen?) of times we have to repeat something before it’s learned.

I picture our lives playing out in spirals, always swinging back around to repeat a lesson in a different form.

One particular discomfort this week revolves around a total stranger helping us, without asking to be paid. Are thanks enough? How do we honor this kindness?

I do need to work on my own giving, but I have done things for people without wanting thanks, or even acknowledgment. Families are like that, be it genetic family, or church family, or neighborhood family . . . 

I think it’s harder to receive than to give. Maybe I can learn how to receive with grace by treating it like a family affair. Which means enlarging my concept of family. After all, we are all members of the human race.

Pets make the perfect example of givers and receivers, and they offer us opportunities to play both roles in turn.

—and Found

Since we couldn’t find Sophie anywhere inside or in the backyard, I opened the front door to look out. Of course she wouldn’t be there, either. But Sophie suddenly appeared to see if something was happening outside—

I suspect she had gone under the dining table looking for crumbs, and then got comfy, inside the barricade of chair legs where we didn’t notice her. With a wooden roof overhead, and carpet beneath, what better den could there be?

Writing paradoxes

Time keeps flying past. The days dissolve into weeks, into months, and my deadline gets closer and closer.

The more I worry about not producing prose, the less I produce. This past weekend, I got little done on Saturday and none on Sunday. I went to bed very discouraged. 

Looking back at my Sunday, I had done many necessary tasks, on top of a walk, a brief (very brief!) bit of meditation, and some time at the gym. 

But the remaining spare time was lost in re-reading Lois McMaster Bujold’s novel, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance. Before, I had only skimmed through it. This second time, I was much more entrenched in the characters, and envious of Bujold’s skill as a world-builder.

Sunday night I felt every bit of my lack of forward momentum, blaming my frequent escapes into other readings and DVDs, and fearing that I would never live up to the climax of the trilogy that’s lodged in my head.

Monday came as a big surprise. My waking mind teemed with ideas. I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to scribble notes to amend some sections already written, ideas for minor characters, and more future challenges and solutions for the teens . . .

All very exciting and encouraging.

Tuesday morning, I’m back to square one again: i.e., I need to sit down and develop those ideas. If I don’t, no more will come. My day looms with errands and a dentist appointment, and a to-do list, not to mention this blog to complete.

One good writing reminder popped up on my screen from someone else’s blog: 

Write like no one is reading.

We none of us produce a polished novel on a first draft. My first job is to write the story (which is my goal by year’s end). Editing comes later (and for me is the most fun). In her classes, Betsy James always stresses wearing the right hat for the job. I need to put on my writing cap this morning, not my editor’s hat.

Do the work, is the order of the day.

It’s hot here. We usually get our 100+ degree days in June, followed by cooler, but more humid, July and August. Not this year. 

With all these heat domes, is anybody not believing in Global Warming? 

Y’all stay cool and hydrated. 

Playing catch-up

Sophie is well. She did stop eating grass and—aside from being unwilling to take evening walks in this heat—is doing okay. She’s none the worse for the spider (or whatever) bite she suffered, and eager for her morning walks in the coolest part of the day.

The ground squirrel strikes again. My hopeful Armenian cucumber vines have been stripped of leaves. Currently, my only crop are some very thirsty cherry tomatoes, suffering from the heat and lack of consistent watering. Squirrels don’t eat tomato leaves, nor any other night shades that I’m aware of.

Vegetables are heart-breakers. Maybe next year, I’ll only grow flowers. Though I’m sure flowers demand as much water as any vegetables. 

And, news flash: the petunias the squirrel ignored on its first pass, got consumed on its second. 

Note to self: Discover what flowers squirrels won’t eat. I wonder about marigolds? Cosmos? Anybody have any ideas?

On the writing front

I’ve mentioned several times my intention to have a complete first draft of the last book in my science fiction trilogy by the end of the year. Here’s what I’m doing to re-immerse myself in that neglected world:

In the evening, I identify a problem such as Where do we go from here? Or What are the adult concerns while the teens follow their own tangents? 

I’m looking at next steps, not the big solutions. When (not if) I wake in the night, I steer my thoughts into my characters’ heads. This is my way of worming back into this neglected world.

In the morning, I scribble down whatever comes to mind. There’s always some forward momentum. Consistency will win out in the end. Right? 

Stay cool, folks!