You think that’s a request? It’s not. Sit down.

Thanks.

You were better than 2010 by a long shot, but that’s not really a compliment, is it. 2010 sucked so hard for me, you were the year of recovery. So, measuring by that benchmark, pretty much anything you did would have been okay. I’m not denigrating your ability to suck less than the previous year, not by a long shot. No way. I’m just saying, that’s not doing you justice.

In the wider world, there were earthquakes and tsunamis and wars and insurrections. There were widespread protests, and they look like they’ll continue. I’d say it’s about damn time, and I only hope the Occupy movement gets bigger and more widespread. So, thanks for that. I guess. But the earthquakes etc.? Not so much. Well, you can’t help that, can you? Nope. You’re just the year, doing your job.

In my own tiny corner of the rock called Terra, well. You sucked way, way less than 2010, and I did a lot of healing. I started the year finally-divorced and ended up actually contemplating going out to coffee with a person or two. I also made my peace with the fact that I’m never going to hear an apology from certain people, and that’s just the way it is. I found out that surviving the years of survival is in some ways the hardest task, and that yes, time does heal broken things. That sort of knowledge is a spiral–you always keep coming back to it, in deeper and deeper layers. Like ogres.

I also found out I can eat lasagna again, under certain circumstances. That I can nod and smile when some of my former abusers say, “I miss you…” Well, of course you do. But you miss the idea of me more than the actual me. Which isn’t really missing me at all…so I can put aside the guilt I feel. It is not my fault you miss what you thought I was instead of what I actually am. Which is a human being with actual rights, thoughts, dignity, and my own reasons for keeping those secrets you’re so terrified I may tell. (Go ahead and be terrified. If it keeps you away from my door, so be it.)

But, 2011, you were all in all not so bad. You taught me how to be reasonably happy again, 2011. You weren’t optimal, but then again, I wasn’t at my best either. We’re about even. You did what you could, and so did I. I think we can call this one a success on both sides, even if neither of us ended up where we wanted to be. Thanks for the time and the opportunity. You were very patient when I was in a hurry, and pulled me along when I really wanted to be still and stagnate. All in all, we did pretty well together, considering. I finished a few books, I had some laughs. I put in another year of raising two of the most beautiful human beings on the planet, and they managed to teach me a lot inside your (completely arbitrary, but that’s another blog post) boundaries. So, thank you for that.

I see you fidgeting and eying the door. You’re tired, and rightly so. You’ve been a hell of a year. Feels like you’re just as eager to be gone as I am to see the new turn of the wheel. Still, we’ve got a few hours here in this corner of the world. Have a drink, and relax for a little bit. I make no demands on you–you can totes hurry out the door and slam it if you want. That’s okay. But it might be so much nicer if we just hang out here, you and I, just a writer and her year, and give each other a weary smile and say, “We made it.”

Yeah. We made it, both of us.

*lifts glass*

Good for us.

Related posts:

1. Got My Fire Back
2. Goodbye, 2009
3. Happy Solstice!

It was at an event in Seattle–the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, I believe. One of Anne’s researchers was a friend, and I pitched in to help that weekend, as well as to attend the ceremony.

The best part was standing next to Anne, in front of a glass case holding the typed manuscript of Dragonflight. I’m not gonna lie: I cried. It was that beautiful. It was something I never in a million years I thought I would have a chance to do. It was magic.

Anne was warm and generous, with an ever-mischievous twinkle in her eye. We emailed a bit. I will never forget how gracious she was to a starting-out author. She told me she liked the Watcher series and the Danny Valentine books. I’d sign copies for her, and her researcher would send them to Ireland. It made me warm and happy inside to think she was reading them–that I could maybe, in some small way, give her a tiny bit of joy in return for the great gift of Pern, the dragons, Restoree, the coelura…such richness she gave us, so unstintingly.

Anne passed away today. The world is sadder, duller, and a little more frayed. The dragons are mourning, and the harps are stilled.

Rest peacefully, ma’am. Thank you for your books, and thank you also for having time to be gracious to a scared newbie writer. You were endlessly kind, and I thank the gods we still have your books.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Sleep well.

No related posts.

“You need chains,” the Selkie told me, and proceeded to equip me with such. They go in the back of the car, along with the two first-aid kits (softcover survival and hardcover medical), the gallon of distilled water (great for washing the floormats after Sir Pewksalot gets excited), some rolled-up towels, bungees (you can never have too many) and granola bars, the roll of toilet tissue and the extra plastic bags knotted up and stuffed into a milk crate. Antibacterial handi-wipes and extra ibuprofen in the center console, a Sharpie, a tiny tub of Carmex (even if it melts, it will be okay, unlike a tube) and a multi-tool that can break a car window and slice a seatbelt…just in case. Ice scraper. Extra dog leash.

In the garage: the axe handle, the heavy bag, canned supplies and water, extras and just-in-cases on shelves next to the decorations and the boxes of author’s copies. (Maybe I could chuck them at an intruder. That might work.) In the house: bokkan scattered about, the linen closet stocked with first-aid and cold medicine and light bulbs, cleaning supplies, and a weapons check every day. Going through each room and making sure that no matter where I am there is a weapon within easy reach. It doesn’t have to be anything someone else would think of as a weapon, just something I can use for self-defense. Even the souvenir rocks from road-trips can be chucked at a poor soul who won’t know what hit them until too late.

Baby wipes. Sleeping bags. Extra umbrella. Go bags by the front door, both for paranormals (haven’t had a client in years, but still keep it packed and ready) and for emergency/disaster. Important paperwork stashed. Extra pens. Scarves hanging on pegs, gloves in a bucket just in case, flashlights checked and batteries tested. Charcoal, tealights, another survival kit, spare sheets for God knows what, a stack of rag-towels for sopping up spills or ripping into bandages. A stack of old cloth diapers, because they are useful. Cat litter, not just for the cats but also for cleanup of who-knows.

I was told, all during my childhood, that I was flighty. That I’d never make it in the real world, because my head was in the clouds. Instead, I’m the one with a stick of gum, the aspirin in the bottom of the purse, the pocketknife, the GPS or the candle or the cigarette lighter. Motherhood taught me some of that, but my instinct, even while living rough, has been to prepare, as far as possible, for whatever.

I am either going to be in great shape when the zombie apocalypse hits…or on an episode of Hoarders. It’s anyone’s guess which.

The weird thing is, I still think of myself as stupid and flighty. I still have the knee-jerk “oh, I’m a mess, I’m never prepared,” even when I’m the one with the spit and baling wire. I am rarely caught-without in any major way, which is probably helped by the fact that I’ve lived in this house for a good decade now. Which is another thing–even after that long, I’m ready to move at any moment. Ready to pack and torch and flee if necessary. I always have been, but if it hasn’t been necessary for the past ten years, well.

My point (and I do have one) is that readiness is a process, and that I am rarely as helpless as I am afraid I might be. As life lessons go, it’s a good one. I just wish I could get it into my skull so I could relax. Well, at least fractionally. But until that happens, it’s the trenchcoat and a pocket check before I leave the house. It’s checking the go-bags every month and eying the linen closet weekly. It’s packing for just in case and hauling what I might need if disaster, either physical or otherwise, hits. It’s getting ready, being ready, as a state of mind.

What do you do to get ready, kids? I’m interested. I’m always looking for readiness tricks to shamelessly steal borrow. Yeah, borrow. That’s it.

No related posts.

I’m getting a lot of hatemail about the ending to Reckoning. Plenty of people are “disappointed” with “who Dru ended up with.” Really? Seriously? You honestly think that I would write a series where the end-all and be-all of a teenage girl’s life would be who she was dating? I don’t think who a girl is “with” defines her at any point in her life, teenage or otherwise. I have always questioned whether Dru needs to “end up” with anyone. Especially after she had to deal with the zombie that was her father, being hunted across a continent, and several other situations that were far more important, not to mention, oh, life-threatening. Who a girl decides she likes is not the hugely important thing our society would have one believe it is.

And let’s look at her options! There’s Graves, who was living in a mall, has abuse issues, and ends up Broken. Dru is wonderful at fixing things, but a relationship with someone you need to “fix” does not normally end well. There’s Christophe, who knew her mother, and is still a teenager inside (psychological standards for djamphir, he often notes, notwithstanding) and who is also controlling and does not give her the information she needs to make her choices. Is there anyone else? Well, there could be–but there’s the little matter of her running for her life. This isn’t conducive to dating. The wonder is that she had time to think about her options at all.

Other things are mentioned in the hatemail. You think I have left unanswered questions, dear Readers?

I beg to differ.

Why does Christophe smell the way he does? It could be because he’s a glutter. It could be because Dru’s “touch” is telling her (like it warned her of danger before she bloomed) that he is safe. It could be that her “touch” is telling her he’s not safe. It could be he’s a good genetic match for her. It could be that he wears a pie-filling cologne. You are encouraged to believe any combination of the above, or to bring your own answer to the question.

I like giving you options, dear Reader. Questions with only one answer are sometimes boring, and don’t invite you to spend time and thought on their ramifications.

Other questions arise–whose was the blond hair in her room in Betrayals? Was it Dibs? Anna? Some other wulfen or a traitor djamphir who died in the fire afterward? What really happened to Graves when Sergej had him? What is the bonding that happens after three gulps of blood shared between djamphir? Again, the answer to the last is complex. It could result in an inability of either djamphir to attack the other. It could bind a djamphir to a svetocha and turn him obsessive. It could show a svetocha everything about a certain djamphir, and hence expose secrets most of them don’t want out in the open. Any combination of the above is, as I said above, likely and I highly encourage you to decide for yourself.

I have left you breadcrumbs. It is, in the end, all a writer can do.

I do not rule out returning to Dru’s world. I have certain foggy notions of a Maharaj girl’s story. But Dru has grown up. When she lets someone go, and feels the peculiar adult wrenching of realizing that she cannot fix everything, that she cannot make everything better, that indeed, despite what she thinks, she cannot and is not required to fix everything…that is when adulthood happens, for her. When one is young, one has an absolute lack of proportion. One thinks anything that goes wrong in the world is one’s own fault, because of course the world revolves around you. Growing up shows you that the world doesn’t revolve around you (hopefully) but the added lesson that you don’t have to fix everything is one I think a lot of girls miss out on. Our society, after all, says we are responsible for fixing everything for other people in a hundred-plus overt and covert ways. Or maybe I’m just projecting, because it is a lesson I am struggling to learn even now, thirty*mumble* years into my current tenure on this marvelous, painful, beautiful life.

I understand you may be frustrated, dear Reader. My stories do not often have neat, happy, Disney-esque endings. The fact that you are so incredibly involved, and so unwilling to let go of Dru and her world, humbles and comforts me. I take the demands to write one more Dru book as a sign that I succeeded in a writer’s job of making the reader care. I am sorry for your frustration, and Dru’s frustration too. And I believe with everything in me that I gave Dru the right ending.

I would not have written otherwise.

I owe you, dear Reader, no less than my absolute very best with each story. I owe you the last drop of heart’s blood if I am going to write these stories. I can give no less, and I furthermore owe you what I believe with every fibre of my being is the right ending. Not the happy ending. Not the ending I want, or someone else might want, or the characters might want. The right ending. Even if it hurts.

I ached for everyone involved at the end of Reckoning, for different reasons. I was tempted to end it differently, but that would have been punking out and betraying you, dear Reader. Rage at me all you like, but I will never, ever betray you in that manner. I just can’t do it, and furthermore, I won’t do it. There is my line in the sand.

That is all. Over and out.

No related posts.

“Five AM,” she says. “Let’s go.”

Five AM does have a definite smell. When I’ve been up all night, insomniac and frayed down to bare nerves, it’s like burnt insulation. When I’ve had some sleep and I’m hitting the trail for a multiple-mile run, it’s concentrated bullets of information. Temperature, humidity, someone’s doing laundry and using different dryer sheets, wet grass, a dog, the dry raspy-oily of feral cats, the bloodred wash of new fear from the rabbits, exhaust from the cars I feel like I could outrace if I really wanted to, incipient rain or the edge of cold harvest-breathing wind…

Yeah, you can smell five AM. I like it better while running. Somehow the burnt-insulation smell of insomnia lingers all day, and I don’t like it.

This morning it was utterly clear, the waning moon casting shadows less knife-sharp than the full moon does, Orion (or someone very much like him) riding in a sky the color of black velvet. My favourite mile has changed–it used to be the second one, when I was warmed up but before it became a struggle. Now it’s the third that’s my unqualified favourite. I’m warm, it’s past the park where the footing is sometimes uncertain, I’ve settled into the rhythm, it’s the “break mile”–after I run it, I’m on the downhill side, and I only have two more to go, may as well just get them done, right? That’s also most often when Miss B’s energy level drops a bit. I can feel the almost-thud as she settles back into her skin and all the fidgets have been worked out. All right, she says, glancing up at me with a big doggy smile. We’re into it now, right, Mum? Let’s boogie. And we run, my breathing and the slap of my feet mixing with the jangle of her collar and her happy panting.

Bands of smell like tree-rings–coffee from some houses, a clothes dryer venting from others, the one house where there’s always sausage sizzling in a pan on weekday mornings. The honeysuckle has died back after several mornings where it burst with a last penitent sweetness. Dried leaves crunching, not yet wet, a sharp spice instead of the humus-rotting there will be later when the rains come in.

I’m ready for the rains, I guess. There’s a certain semi-enjoyable component of physical misery in running through rain. The best part is arriving home, getting dry, peeling the socks off my wrinkled feet and shaking wet hair out of my eyes. But I don’t have to worry about that for another little while. For right now it’s the dry part of autumn, and the Halloween decorations going up around the neighborhood watch me with stupefied jack o’lantern eyes, sheaves of corn and hanging scarecrows rustling as I pass.

The rabbits have learned we won’t bother them. Now, sleek with end-of-summer gorging, they’ll wait on the concrete pathway as we run past the school, and Miss B goes mad with wanting. They flick their tails and hop away a little bit, just to be sure, and laugh at her. Phred the Coyote looms like a ghost, especially if the morning is misty. Miss B, having gotten a good snootful of him–and the coyote, I have to say, smells like grated ginger left out overnight, dry oil on fur, a breath of carrion and a sharp stink of wildness–bristles, her fur standing on end as she runs and the jagged copper-ceramic of adrenaline and alertness puffing up from her in waves. She was fine when she thought he was another canine, but one morning the wind veered, she inhaled, and gave one of her “I-mean-BUSINESS” growls. Yeah, that was fun. Of course, Phred just ran alongside us for a while, as is his wont when he’s not rabbit-chasing. “DUUUUDES!” he’ll pant. “YOU’RE, LIKE, WORKIN’ TOO HARD. LOOSEN UP. HEY, DON’T SCARE THE RABBITS, DUDES, RIGHT ON.” Then he’ll yip and lope away, off to do his coyote business before the sun comes up.

And the sun is coming up later and later. Now there’s only a faint smudge of gray on the horizon when I come home, dripping and victorious, Miss B ready for her real breakfast (she doesn’t like running on a full stomach and neither do I) and Zen-calm now that she’s done her job and shepherded me through the five miles. I open the door, and home enfolds me. The cats, sleek and full of kibble, disdainful of our heavy breathing and activity so early, the burst of steam from a Princess’s morning shower, a faint ghost of warmth still lingering on my toss-turned sheets and blankets, lights on and the clatter of silverware as the Prince gets his cereal. The oily richness of peanut butter and yeast and wheat of bread as I make their lunches, coffee that smells best because it’s my own, the dishwasher purring and giving out breaths of steam and lemon soap, paper and dust from the books stacked everywhere, and finally, the jasmine of shampoo as the salt veils from the morning’s sweat run down the shower drain and I stand, for a moment, breathing in warmth and safety. The smell of five AM becomes the aromas of seven, seven-thirty, and the rush of getting everyone ready for school.

On the map of my day, the two blend seamlessly into each other. Yet I can close my eyes and evoke each moment, smiling. Every morning is a tiny bit different, the sensory map changing over time as seasons and morning habits evolve.

So, dear Reader, what does your morning smell like?

No related posts.

The season is turning. You can smell it–the mornings are crisper, without the asphalt-and-dust scent of high summer. It’s not harvest season yet, but everything’s preparing, and the nights are turning cooler. The sky is not the endless blue of summer. It is paling, still infinite, but it has the washed-and-dried-outside quality of late summer, after the worst heat but before the rains sweep in. Things are ripening, yawning, enjoying the slow afternoons.

I come home to a Little Prince who has grounded himself from the Wii for two days because his legs hurt–when he plays, he jumps up and down from sheer excitement, and he’s sore this morning. “I better take a break,” he informs me solemnly over his cereal, and I try not to smile as I nod and seriously agree, and compliment him for being so mature and responsible. And the Princess, buried under her covers until late, comes blinking out into the morning light and informs me a scene in the fanfic she’s working on has broken loose; as soon as she has breakfast she’s going to dive into it. Their days are long and timeless in summer. When school starts at the end of the month I’m going to miss them–they’ll miss me too, but they’re excited to go back to their friends.

The house is quiet. Miss B is tranquil–the first three miles are to calm her down, the last two are to wear her out. The sneezing cat doesn’t protest when I dose her with antibiotics, though it must taste nasty. She takes the eyedropper gracefully, and there are pets and praise for everyone afterward.

I open the fridge to get the cream for my morning coffee. Stuck, fluttering, on the fridge are cards someone sent me during the dark difficult time not so long ago. You’ll feel better soon, one says, and the other, Keep going. The world needs your light. For a moment, I am arrested by the thought that little by little, things did get better. I put my head down and just went one step at a time, and now I can look back and see the hole I climbed out of. The edges are raw, but not bleeding. I am on the other side. I never have to endure that particular hell again. (I like to make an entirely new set of fuckups each time, thank you very much.)

It’s a funny thing, to realize you don’t have to stare at your feet anymore. That the weight dragging all over you has lessened, that you can take a deep breath and look forward. That you have endured, and now you can begin to glance ahead. Shyly at first, carefully, in case there is a sudden tilt back toward the hole. Later, more confidently, settling the straps of your pack, your steps becoming long swinging strides instead of a spiritless trudge. There is light now, stray gleams strengthening through breaking clouds, the storm has spent itself. A little older, a little wiser around the eyes, scars to tell stories about instead of wounds to triage.

I begin to roll my eyes and see the funny parts now. I get my coffee, and I go back to work. There’s just one thing left, and that is to say…

…Thank you. Thank you very much.

Over and out.

No related posts.

As you might suspect, this makes for some exotic thoughts when I’m not actively revising. Like the peculiar, highly-colored, anxiety-ridden dreams I’ve come to expect during revisions. They rarely involve the story; instead, they’re some version or another of the old “here I am in class, naked and missing my homework” dreams. Last night’s featured Martians.

Seriously, you don’t want to know. In any case, here’s a selection of Things I Think While Revising, different than the normal oddness inside my head only in that the anxiety makes them much more vivid than usual ho-hum “how would I do a shootout in this stairwell” thoughts.

* “I have a tumor. I’m going to die.” This morning while running I had an amazing bolt of pain lance through my head. Wednesdays are my easy days, only three miles and no double in the afternoon. So there I was, trucking along at about two miles, and I had to stop and screw my eyes shut. The dog was confused, and as soon as the bolt passed I wondered if I had a brain tumor and I was going to be felled by it in a matter of weeks. Then I realized I was being ridiculous, and started running again.

* “Pancakes and watermelon are an acceptable dinner, right?” The kids agreed enthusiastically. However, I don’t really like watermelon, so it was grapes, pita chips, and Brie for me. That was when I realized I had grabbed “light” Brie. Let me tell you, such a thing is an abomination unto the gods, and shall ever be, world without end, amen.

* “A hansom only needs one clockhorse, thanks.” Said to the nice lady checking my groceries at the supermarket. She knows me–I’ve been shopping there for a decade now–so she just said, “Another book, huh? I’m gonna give you this coupon, honey. Go home and get some rest.”

* “Armored squirrels. With red eyes. Can I fit them into this draft?” Sadly, I could not. Altered rats, sure. But not squirrels. I’m sure there were squirrels in Victorian London, but I don’t want to dig them up. Let them rest in peace, for Chrissake.

* “I can climb tha–THUD.” It’s not that I overestimate my abilities. It’s that I throw myself at the wall and see what sticks, and while I’m in revision I’m tempted to do the craziest things because they sound good at the time.

* “Oh, God, if I just had a submachine gun right now…” Pretty standard, right? But when in revision hell, the ensuing mental dwelling upon the likely consequences are Technicolor vivid. I…won’t say more.

* “Could I teach the dog to bring me a glass of wine?” I actually spent a good ten minutes contemplating this. Then I ran up against the fact that Miss B doesn’t have thumbs. And decided it was time to go to bed, for I was getting silly.

* “What if it was an alien driving that car…?” One of the things about revision is that new stories start crowding the brain, the what-if muscle working overtime, begging to be used. I have not decided if this is a method of procrastination or a natural result of the creative faculties chewing on the bone and gristle of a zero draft, looking for something a little more tender. Who knows? In any case, I lose myself in little what-ifs like this an awful lot during revision. Even more than I normally do, which is saying something.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Here, have a trailer for a movie about the invention of the vibrator. Hat tip to the Selkie for that one. See, there’s a taste of the random that happens when it’s revision time.

Speaking of which, I’ve got to go back. I’m trying to find chapter names that don’t sound like coffee brands. *headdesk*

Over and out.

No related posts.

Jesus. Stop laughing. I’m serious.

I was trained, while very young, to not just listen to what an authority figure said but how they said it. Even today, I am incredibly sensitive to tone and body language. You tell me the sky is blue, I’m not just taking into account the information you’ve offered about the shade of the heavens, but also how you said it, what you looked like when you said it, what preceded this observation both physically and emotionally. Growing up, “the sky is blue” could mean anything from “go mow the lawn” to “tell me I’m pretty” to “I am about to hit you.” I became incredibly hypersensitive. While this was great practice for learning how to do characterization, it’s not so good for carrying on reasonably healthy relationships with relatively well-adjusted people. Most relatively healthy/sane adults get freaked out when one starts dissecting their most casual comments with the sort of intensity usually reserved for neurosurgeons with their fingers in someone’s brainpan. Plus, it’s exhausting to pay that sort of attention all the time. I couldn’t afford to relax as a child. I’m over thirty blessed years old and just learning how to unclench a little bit.

I’m on the far end of the continuum. But when it comes to writing, I’m a lot closer to the norm than you’d think.

Writing as a career can turn even the most well-adjusted person into a quivering, hyperattentive wreck. There’s the rejection, for one thing. Then there’s the revision letters, where a simple sentence like “I’m not sure of this character’s motivation here.” can turn into a huge steaming pile of “I HATE YOU AND THIS BOOK IS CRAP” in seconds flat. If that doesn’t make you goddamn crazy, let me just tell you about Amazon reviews.

No, wait, don’t let me. On that path lies madness.

The work of a writer lies in not only riding the swells of criticism and revision and rejection, but also the act of setting your compass.

You, as a writer, do not have power over whether or not an editor likes your work. You can hone your craft and maximize your chances by not being a jerk, true. But in the end, you do not have control. Nor do you have much control over what the revision letter contains or the cover eventually looks like. You have zero control over what other people think of your book, and what they write on Amazon or on their blogs or what-have-you.

The control you have is small but critical. You have control over writing the best damn book you can, and you have control over how you react.

I don’t let any draft out of my hands until it’s as good as I can make it. Each time, I strain myself to the utmost. Everyone in the goddamn world might hate the goddamn book, but I will have the (admittedly small) satisfaction of knowing I worked as hard as I could and did my best. Do I go back and look at some of the storytelling choices I made and cringe? You betcha. The thing that keeps me from going stark-raving (admittedly a very short distance from where I stand now) is that I know, deep down, that I did my best. I could not have worked any harder, and I could not have done any less. A reviewer or an editor can judge me until the cows come home, but I am much harsher on myself than they could ever be. I have to satisfy myself first about the quality of what I let out of my hands. If I err, well, at least I know it’s honest.

It sucks that I can’t lie to myself about that part of it. Lying to yourself is a losing game, no matter how successfully or for how long you keep it up. There’s always a worm in the bottom of your soul that knows.

I also have control over how I take rejection and the various slings and arrows of revision and reviews. I can play what I call the “Maybe It’s Just” Game. (Which I stole, shamelessly and with great abandon, from The Work of Byron Katie. Mad props to her; it’s incredible stuff.)

Here’s the thing about being raised with one finger on the pulse and the other on the trigger: You get to where you think it’s your job to find the right thing to do to make everyone happy, to fix the world. It sends you off on a spiral of grief and trying-harder, scrabbling in the dirt of fear and shame. It also fucks up your sense of proportion bigtime. The only way I’ve found to halt it is by asking a couple of questions and playing the Maybe Game.

It’s hard to think that an editor doesn’t like my stuff because I personally am the worst human being in the cosmos. It’s hard to think a reviewer doesn’t like my stuff because I’m personally the worst human being in the cosmos. It’s hard to think that a revision letter is a personal judgment on me because…you get the idea. But maybe, must maybe…

Maybe my work isn’t all there is to me.

Maybe the editor had indigestion that day.

Maybe the editor knows something I don’t about the state of the market and how not-hot steampunk werellama romances are right now.

Maybe the reviewer just isn’t ever going to like anything I write.

Maybe the reviewer was upset.

Maybe the revision letter is more about the book than me.

Maybe I could stand to work on the few things the editor underlined.

Maybe this rejection is the last one.

Maybe I got this rejection so I can make the book a little better.

Maybe I got this rejection so I could focus on writing this new book/short story/poem/manifesto.

Maybe the reviewer just isn’t a fan of the genre.

Maybe there are nine billion people in the world and I’m not going to please every single one of them.

Maybe there’s something I haven’t considered here.

Maybe it’s not so bad.

When I start playing the Maybe Game, a funny thing happens. Possibilities open up, perspective is restored (well, as restored as it ever gets–have you seen my TBR pile?) and all of a sudden the world thunks back into its normal dimensions as a weird but ultimately manageable assortment of sensory stimuli instead of a gigantic animal out to crush me.

The Maybe Game works for other things too. Maybe I can climb that huge gnarly rock. Maybe I don’t have to jump when someone I used to love applies the pressure. Maybe I don’t have to feel ugly and unloved all the time. Maybe I can figure things out. Maybe I can trust some people.Maybe I am not as terrible a writer/person as I think I am. Maybe I can’t see some things clearly and they look like gigantic mountains when they are, in face, molehills. Maybe.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Maybe there’s hope.

It’s better than hypervigilance, that’s for damn sure. It’s a shame it took me thirty-odd years to learn this game. Still…I intend to keep playing.

Over and out.

Related posts:

1. Self-Publishing Takeaway Game!
2. From Hopeful Kindle-Killer to I Game To Not Think
3. If I’d Listened…

I’ve been AWOL, dear Readers, because I’m six scenes or so away from finishing The Bandit King. Yesterday I dumped 4K out of my aching head and made structure-notes for the last few scenes. Hopefully I can get this all done before Saturday. (A vain hope, yes, and Saturday is an arbitrary metric. Still…I can dream, right?)

This morning my neighbor said, “Hey…you can use my ladder if you want to get those Frisbees down from your roof.”

“Actually,” I said a little ruefully, “I kind of leave them up there sometimes. Because as soon as I get them down, the kids throw them back up.”

“Well, I thought you wouldn’t have any trouble getting up to get ‘em–I saw your rock climbing videos.”

I laughed, we talked about how we were both uncaffeinated (it was pretty early this morning) and we both trundled back to our respective domiciles to get some java. It made me think.

I’m afraid of heights. Getting up on the wall is a victory over my own fear each time. There’s an arete at my regular climbing wall that freaks me out, and whenever I do corner-climbing it’s claustrophobia and acrophobia all at once. Good times.

I don’t like to run away from things that scare me. If you run, the thing you’re scared of is now behind you where you can’t watch it, and you’re only exhausting yourself. So every time I clip in, it’s a victory. Every time I touch the wall it’s another. And every time I make it even halfway, it’s yet another.

I had vague thoughts of rock climbing making it easier for me to get on ladders. I was wrong. I fear and loathe being on my own roof. (Cleaning the gutters multiple times in fall/winter is always incredibly FUN.) It is not any easier now that I’m climbing multiple times a week–just like slogging through the Slough of Despond part of writing a novel never gets easier. At least, it hasn’t for me–or if it has, the easing has been in recognizing the Slough as part of the process, an obstacle instead of a barrier. I could start viewing the shaking nervousness on ladders as just part of the process. It’s hard to do when your body’s high on chemical fear.

There are things to run away from in life. (Gunfire, abusive relationships, and restaurants that epic-fail their health inspections spring to mind.) Sometimes avoidance is a valid solution. Just be very clear on what you’re avoiding/running from. And that is my deep thought and possibly-useless advice for the day.

Maybe I should get the Frisbees off the roof today. *sigh*

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Long shot here to get a response from you but still worth it for me to try. I am going to attempt to start running. I am a 34 year old mother of two who tends to delve into my enormous TBR pile of books to escape the reality of life more times than is most likely healthy. *shrug* The way you have talked about your running routine has brought an already (although very dormant) existing interest in doing the same for myself to light. If you have insight into how I can get started (and keep going) I would love to hear your thoughts. (from email)

I got this email and thought, but why would you ask me? I’m not a professional or anything. Then I sat down and looked at my running journals. They’re year-long sort-of-diaries (I like this kind) where I can note mileage, my route, speed (if applicable) and notes about how a particular run felt. I’ve been running for almost three years now, keeping a log for about a year and a half. So, maybe I do have something to say, even though I’m not a professional.

I don’t run for speed. I don’t run to race. I do not do team sports–for one thing, I am too much of a control freak, and for another, I do not play nicely with others, and for a third, I have a giant problem with authority and coaches yelling at me. I started running because it was something I could do on my own, and because I had a little extra to invest in a treadmill. That meant I could work out but still be in the house if the kids needed me. As a single mum, that was incredibly important. Plus, to be totally honest, it saved me from having to go out in public and sweat and puff. I had fifty extra pounds of misery hanging on me, and running in public sounded like the kind of gruesome torture you read about in a Stephen King novel. (Remember Ben Hanscomb from IT? Like that.) So, running on a treadmill in my sunroom satisfied a lot of my requirements–something I could do alone, something I could be on call for the kids during while I did it, something I could work into my daily schedule that didn’t require much of a commute.

The book that probably helped me the most was No Need For Speed. From that, and from the Couch to 5K plan, I got the idea that I didn’t have to run fast, or even very far, to start out with. The permission to not be very good at it at first was a godsend.

So, right now I’m clocking in five miles a day, four or five days a week. I run about an eleven-minute mile, more or less. Which isn’t very fast according to some, but considering I’ve been sedentary most of my life, I find it pretty goddamn impressive. However, it took me over two and a half years to get here. I repeat: Nearly. Three. Stinking. Years.

I started out with six minutes of walking at two miles an hour on the treadmill, then one of “jogging” at 2.5mph. For a half hour. For a month. Then it was five minutes walking and one “running.” I was stuck there for a while. Four and one. Three and two. Then, two minutes walking and three running. Then I increased the speed slightly, so I was walking at 2.5mph and running at 3. Then, one minute of walking and four of running, repeated for a half hour. Then, eleven minutes running and one minute walking.

Then, one day, I did my first 20-minute run.

It was the first time in my LIFE that I had ever run for 20 minutes solid. I finished shuddering, shaking, heaving, sweating.

I was hooked.

Since then I’ve pretty much stuck to the ten percent rule, with a speed-or-effort rule added on. That ten percent increase can be either in speed or mileage, but it cannot be both. Which means I have to keep track of things pretty carefully, so I finally broke down and got a training diary. That’s been the #1 tool to keep me motivated–looking back over it, or (what I’ve taken to doing) writing down goals for the week’s workouts and then marking them off as I hit them.

So, here’s my advice for starting to run, and for (hopefully) keeping up with it:

1. Get or make a running journal. Even if you’re starting out with the walk/run, keep a record. This will help with motivation and with getting into the habit of organizing things later when you have actual mileage to keep track of. If you can do it on a spreadsheet and make graphs, go for it.

2. Start small. Remember what I keep saying? It is not important what you write, it is important that you write. The same goes for running. This is an investment in you. Be conservative. Weekend warriors burn out. The smaller you start, the more gradually you add, the longer you’re going to keep doing this. It’s like weight loss–the small, steady, incremental loss sticks around the longest.

3. You are not in a race with anyone, even yourself. I had a lot of trouble in ballet until Madame told us all, “You think everyone here is looking at you. They are not. They are watching their own silly self in mirrors, girls. Nobody cares about your bottom. They are too busy with their own.” (And with how hard she worked us, damn. She was right.) This was one of the Two Most Useful Pieces Of Advice I Ever Received.^[1] When you’re exercising, you feel like the world is staring at you. Just try to keep reminding themselves that they’re not–if you’re on a treadmill at the gym, the other people around you are thinking you’re looking at them, which makes them too busy to critique you.

4. Be kind to yourself. Look, I know myself. I know that if I get sick or injured, I will push it. I will ignore the signals my body is giving me, because I’m terrified of being lazy. I have this weird mental thing that tells me “If you skip even one day you’ll skip another, and then you’ll wake up in six months without having worked out and you’ll have eaten a store’s worth of Cheetos and choco donettes and YOU WILL BE FAT AND FUCKING MISERABLE!”

My issues, let me show you them.

Now, rationally, I know this is a cognitive distortion. I know that I am capable of going back to running even after I miss a few days/weeks because of travel, illness, injury. But each time I have to throttle back, even if it’s something as simple as just realizing I’m coming down with a cold and maybe I shouldn’t go at my usual pace, or as overwhelming as the Great Bouldering Ankle Sprain Ridiculousness (MONTHS. Months of training I lost out on, and my ankle is still a little tender after a hard run on pavement. Dammit.) each bloody time I have to struggle with that perfectionist, workaholic part of me. The judgmental, critical, nasty voice inside that pushes me in an unhealthy way. The gentler I am with myself, the more I ignore that nasty voice, the more I end up running in the long run. (Ha ha.) There’s another thing:

5. Remind yourself about the long-term. Publishing and parenting are great practice for this. I’m used to things taking an aeon, to small sustained efforts that build up to a finished product. The trouble is, with exercise, you don’t get a finished product unless it’s greater quality of life sometime down the road. Running is a process, not a destination. I am not logging miles to stop once I hit some number. My goal is simple: to just keep going, no matter how fast or how slow. Long-term, I am going to be glad I did this when I’m eighty. (My knees may not be so glad, but the rest of me probably will be.) Plus, I feel better when I run. The endorphins and burning off of stress hormones evens me out, makes me less anxious. In the long term, that makes me a more effective writer, parent, and human being. I have no trouble being the tortoise here.

6. Make It A Habit. Nevertheless, there are days when I just don’t fucking want to run. I’m tired. I’m upset. I’m achy. I have cramps. I got a bad review or two, or a revision letter. Or some other goddamn thing. This is when the habit kicks in. I’m a great believer in training your habits. My morning runs actually start the night before when I put the pile of exercise clothes on the chair next to my bed. I get up and immediately put a Sports Bra of DOOOM on. After that, well, I can’t just take it off, so I have to put on my running pants and shirt. Then it’s time to let the dog out, get breakfast, and get laced up because I’m already in my running clothes and I’d feel ridiculous taking them off at that point. See? The habit literally forces me to run. So does the “Feel Better After” Rule.

7. The “Feel Better After” Rule. When even habit isn’t cutting it, I make myself a bargain: if I do not feel better after a run, I’ll quit for good. The thought of never having to run again holds a certain attraction on those days, and I start out determined to have the worst run ever. After about fifteen to twenty minutes of sustained effort, what do you know? I start feeling better. I lose the bargain every stinking time. Plus, if I’m having a low-down day, often a run will pep me up and give me the energy to get through it. It’s kind of counterintuitive that effort will actually give you more energy, but I swear it’s true.

8. The Five-Minute Trick. I love the Five-Minute Trick. Cliffs Notes version: do not think about the total run. Just think about the next five minutes. (Or if it’s that bad, the next three minutes.) This is easy to do on a treadmill, you can often program them to keep track of the total time for you so you don’t have to. When I run outside (which I’ve only recently started doing) my version of this is the touch-it trick–I have frequent little posts that I tap or I give myself a little nod when I pass. That way, I’m not thinking about a five-mile run. I’m thinking about making it to the driveway of the middle school, to the walkway to the elementary school, to the park, past the house with the yappy dog, past the chihuahuas, past the sharp turn at the end of the Green Track. See? Little tiny bites to make it manageable. Plus, every little one is a reward. It’s the same frequent intrinsic rewards principle videogames are built on. By treating each five-minute chunk as a task and marking it in my head as I pass, I get a shot of happy dopamine telling me I’m a good girl. It works wonders.

9. I will if you will. My climbing partner’s husband tells me this is the longest she’s ever stuck with a sport. “It’s because she has a partner,” he told me, nodding sagely. This goes both ways. On days when I don’t want to push myself to climb, I go anyway because she’s depending on me. I end up climbing, having a good time, and feeling better. Running is a solitary sport for me–I can’t stand running with a partner unless it’s Miss B. I know a lot of people find partners to run with. That might work for you. On the other hand, you might be a solo creature like me.

We live in different parts of the country, but I’ll make you a bargain, Kassandra. If it helps you to think of it this way, I’ll keep going if you will. How does that sound? If you want to start, know that I’ll be over here cheering, and that I’ll keep going with you.

And now that I’ve rambled on like I know something about something, it’s time for me to brave the grocery store for some watermelon. Yes, I know it’s going to be a roller derby in there, it being a holiday and all. (Happy Fourth, by the way. Tonight’s going to be loud.) I’m prepared. I ran this morning and I have sharp elbows.

Bring it.

^[1] The other came from my grandfather: “People may or may not be smart. Mobs are always stupid. You remember that, you’ll do just fine.”

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