Insomnia, Incubation, Illumination

Monday has rolled around again, with a great deal of cold winter rain. Which is quite pleasing, both to me and the thirsty cedars. Summer was dreadful for us all.

I was lying in bed last night, drifting towards slumber–or, more precisely, staying very still and quiet hoping insomnia wouldn’t notice me–when all of a sudden, I was jolted by the solution to a particular plot problem in Hell’s Acre.

More specifically, I had reached a blockage during a dinner (not a dinner party, but it might as well have been) and had to throw up my hands, leaving the entire damn thing for the Muse to work on under the floorboards while I did something, anything else. The fact that I’m beating my head against revisions for The Black God’s Heart doesn’t help.

Said revisions (there are Problems, fortunately I am in the business of Solutions) are threatening to kick my ass, so I had to throw up my hands and call in reinforcements. I am always very chary of such a maneuver; growing up, asking for help was a sure way to get the stuffing kicked out of one. It’s taken a lot for me to begin to quietly, carefully, in certain very circumscribed ways–and always as a last resort–ask for assistance from selected individuals.

Fortunately, I’ve learned that said carefully selected individuals are flat-out thrilled to be asked, and furthermore, it is possible to get said help without paying an extortionate, painful price for it. Growing up has been good for that much, at least.

The sudden bursts or jolts of insight that occur after one has reached an impasse in a particular work are of a different character, though, and they rely on the same incubation-illumination dynamic as the rest of creativity. So there I was, in the dark, minding my own business, when I realized that the point of the whole dinner wasn’t solely what I originally thought but instead a means of additionally bringing in the complication among Avery Black’s Rooks.

It only took weeks of agonizing before the Muse finally dropped that little aside, lighting up the whole back half of the serial’s first season from another angle, so of course I had to make a goddamn note of it, because if one doesn’t write that sort of thing down it might flee into the cracks between sleep and waking, never to return.

I had to run the risk of insomnia finding me if I moved, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, you know. And this morning there was the note, scrawled haphazardly in the dark. Now, of course, it’s safely put in the manuscript margin, inside brackets, and I feel a lot better about things.

So it was a weekend full of (a little) rest and (a lot of) retrenchment, reading giant gulps of Nabokov and getting a truly stunning amount of revisions and housework out of the way. Of course said revisions aren’t even half done and this upcoming week is full of at least twelve-hour working days to catch up from the bloody vapor-lock…

…but that’s the way it goes, and I am lucky to have as much, I know. So here I am, eyeing the next glut of work and the bloody to-do list, and the dogs are lobbying for their walk. They have forgotten entirely the fact that it was pouring when they went out for pre-breakfast bladder-unloading, and will be discomfited all over again when we embark. At least, Boxnoggin will, for he despises the rain. B, of course, is an all-weather pooch, though I’m sure her joints ache a bit nowadays. She is an elderly statesdog, and no mistake.

Welcome to the week, beloveds. Keep your hands and arms inside the carriage, and don’t make eye contact with Tuesday. We have all we can handle right now, and the ride has commenced.

Over and out.

Cactus, Get Me Through

Just get me through December.

Yesterday was a very bad brain day, full of brain-weasels. Which required the big guns–I retreated into Nabokov and spent the day with Lolita; I think one more time through Invitation to a Beheading (my favorite of ol’ Vlad’s) will set me relatively right.

Or so I hope. I’ve simply got to get this revision turned in, it’s been hanging in the “goddammit” category for far too long.

The winter cactus is blooming, and I woke up with Alison Krauss’s Get Me Through December playing inside my head. Last night was chilly, but I had the dogs to cuddle and didn’t want to slither out of bed at all today…yet I have. Canine bladders and my responsibility to the mortgage won’t wait. Some days I’m even grateful for the chainfall of duty dragging me free of whatever hole has swallowed the world’s light.

…it’s taken me a ridiculously long time to write this, since Miss B keeps demanding my attention for pets, a brushing, her morning treat(s), and yet another trip outside though she could have just peed when I let her out the first two times instead of standing on the deck and deciding it’s too cold. (The lady is wearing a fur coat, but she is delicate.) Boxnoggin, of course, has to be in on everything she does, except going outside.

He’s no fool, and it’s chilly out there.

I wish you a calm, pleasant weekend, beloveds, and I hope for one in my corner of the world as well.

Just…let’s get through December. That’s all I’m asking, at this point.

Over and out.

Constants and Striving

Today’s the last day my folk-horror novel Harmony is $3.99 across ebook platforms! Next month there will be another sale (at least, so I hope) of a self-published Lili book; but for today, you can get Val’s story for a song. (And if you’ve read the book, that particular turn of phrase might give you a small shiver.)

It’s a lovely grey, cloudy morning, and I’ve a vast amount of work to attempt today. At least an hour on Hell’s Acre–I need to reread a bit to pick up the thread(s), since the book is telling me it might want to be one long season instead of the two planned–and then some more revisions on The Black God’s Heart. I am in full-fledged writerly revolt on one or two points, and bracing myself to do a bit of battle.

But that’s usual in this part of the process, on both counts. Misbehaving zero drafts and well-meaning editorial interference are constants, yea until the end of time they shall be with us, amen.

Some last-minute proofreader queries for The Bloody Throne arrived today, too. I thought I was done with this book, but it just doesn’t want to let go.

Lying on my office floor kicking and screaming like a two-year-old won’t get the work done, though it’s immensely satisfying to contemplate. Dogs need walking, coffee needs swilling, my corpse needs a good run–after taking last week off my speed has increased a bit, but the rest of me is distinctly unhappy even with short jogs.

The body will adapt, and even be grateful for the rest and the renewed exercise. The endorphins yesterday almost took the top of my head off, and it was a welcome relief from the sense of spiders crawling under my skin.

I got a moderate amount of work done yesterday, and am not supposed to push since I’m still technically in recovery. It will be difficult not to scream “DO ALL THE THINGS!” and then wake up tomorrow with a did-all-the-things hangover. The crushing realization that Doing All the Things just means there are New Things To Do Tomorrow has not managed to fully sink into the consciousness of my inner child; I still, on some level, think there’s an end to striving.

I mean, technically there is–I will rest in my grave-urn, unless something extraordinary interferes–but I’m not resigned to it yet…

yet, of course, being the operative word. Maybe just a few minutes of lying on my office floor kicking and screaming like a toddler are in order, just to get it out of the way. I’m sure the dogs will love that.

Well, the coffee’s gone and I have the new baseball bat to hand. Perhaps I should formally embark upon Tuesday.

See you around.

Hoping For Temporary

The third and final!

I…might have to rethink November’s schedule.

In a normal year, I would be able to do NaNoWriMo and get other projects done on the side, no problem. Piece of cake, because it’s just a normal workload, after all.

But after two years of pandemic plus a fascist coup1 and a few personal-life events, I think I’m beginning to crack.

In other words, I can write this damn novel or I can get the revisions for Black God’s Heart done. I can’t gear-shift between the two in a single day, as I normally would. And this is driving me, in technical terms, utterly batshit.

I’m used to writing at least four new books at any given time2, juggling between them as they reach different stages of the process. Revisions can generally take up two of those daily working slots, while CEs and proofs are short-term intense efforts requiring a few days of complete effort, all my engines turned to the task at hand. This is the way I’ve worked since the beginning.

But now, it appears I can either work on a new book3, or I can do the revisions. I can’t do both. I’m unsure how long the damn revisions will take (another new thing, thanks, I hate it) and that might push the goal I’ve set myself–finishing Ghost Squad #2 during NaNo–into the realm of utter impossibility.

This infuriates me to a degree I am slightly baffled by. There have been only two times in my life the words have flat-out refused to come4 and I am somewhat frightened the current state of affairs presages a third. For someone used to juggling chainsaws with some facility, if not ease, it’s…disconcerting.

Really disconcerting.

I’m hoping this is temporary. I’m hoping a good hard run or two and a couple days’ worth of internal pep talks will remove whatever this damn blockage is. I’m used to being able to will–or simply flat-out endure–my way out of problems; this time, throwing myself against the wall is producing a little less of a dent than usual.

At least the weather is nice and grey. And at least NaNo is only a personal goal, not a hard-and-fast one. Still…the thought that I might be cracking under the strain and becoming unable to work at even half my usual pace is terrifying, and I would really prefer not to have that hanging around while I’m trying to concentrate.

So…if you, my beloveds, are having similar issues, you’re not alone. We’ve been holding on for so long, and the frustration–we could have been done with this and focusing on rebuilding by now, if not for some selfish, racist asshats–is intense, at least for me. If you’re having trouble concentrating, if you’re only working at half speed or less, this is entirely reasonable. I mean, just look at what we’re facing. It’s a wonder any of us bother to get out of bed at this rate, even when forced by the exigencies of survival under late-stage capitalism.

I don’t even have a ding-dang suggestion for overcoming or whatnot. “I suppose we just have to hold on,” isn’t a suggestion. It’s more like a desperate prayer.

Regardless, there’s coffee to finish and the dogs to get out for a walk. Yesterday I spent with the NaNo novel, today I’ll spend with the damn revisions. If something’s got to give, it’s going to have to be Klemp and Beck at the moment. I know they’ll wait, and yet…

Tuesday beckons. I keep giving the baseball bat longing looks.

Time to get started.

NaNo Weather

Samhain came, and went. It was a very quiet day; we all needed as much. There’s still bowls of candy on the dining table, but that’s a problem which will fix itself in due time.

We didn’t even hear the shouts of excited children up and down the street. We’re so close to kids getting the vaccine, I think a lot of parents felt like this is the last gate to make it through. There will be other Halloweens, after all. Especially if one cares for one’s child enough to get them a lifesaving poke.

I also spent a great deal of the time watching the Bob Ross marathon on YouTube. I’d had no idea about the Kowalskis and their theft of Ross’s legacy from his family, so I won’t be buying any Ross merchandise again until that’s all cleared up. But the YouTube and Twitch marathons don’t appear to benefit the Kowalskis, so they’re probably safe to consume. (The YouTube marathon is going on until Nov 6, 2021; the Twitch channel is here.)

NaNoWriMo is also upon us; I’m doing Klemp’s book (Ghost Squad #2) for it, and have revisions on The Black God’s Heart diptych to get done as well as working ahead on Hell’s Acre. So November will be even busier than usual. Alas, I won’t have a great deal of time to argue with strangers on the internet.

It will probably do me nothing but good. I’m sick of being patient with murderous trolls. The pandemic has severely depleted my ability to care about the deliberately, viciously obtuse. At this point, if you call yourself “conservative” or wear a red baseball cap, you know exactly the message you’re sending, and I shall respond accordingly. I suppose at the very least it’s easy to see who’s a murderous bigot, since they’re self-marking with such lockstep discipline these days.

Silver linings, and all that.

There’s dogs to walk and work to do today, so I’d best get to it. I’m sure the “holiday” season will be anything but calm, between the supply chain issues and the habit of publishing to offload all the work onto freelancers right before holidays as all the salaried people are clearing their desks. (If you imagined me rolling my eyes and sighing as I typed that sentence you’d be spot-on, my ducklings.)

It’s not going to slow down until mid-February. Might as well get off the mark now.

At least the weather is wonderful–misty and cool, with masses of color hanging on deciduous trees and rain coming in waves. The evergreens, helped by a stiff wind, have shed most of the heat damage, though the rhododendrons are still looking a bit draggled. Summer seemed endless; I’m so glad we’re not suffering it at the moment.

Onward and upward, then. One last swallow of coffee before we get out the door. Caffeine is a gat-damn miracle, but you already knew that.

See you around.

Weather Exfoliation

Welcome to Monday, please keep your limbs (and your skull, don’t forget that) inside the carriage. No, really, it’s for your own good.

The wind is up, the cedars are dancing, and plenty of heat damage is being exfoliated. Literally, that is–dried and dead bits have been swept briskly from branches, twigs, and trunks, landing with thumps and bumps. An edge or two of lashing rain passed through yesterday as well, while the kids and I were all home, cosy and buttoned-up.

It was nice to light a log of compressed sawdust in the upstairs fireplace and settle on the couch. Watch the rain, watch the wind, watch the fire, yawn, maybe take a sip of something spicy-warm, and go back to reading a book. I’m halfway through Shirer on Nazi Germany once more, having read it last a decade ago, and swinging wildly between “the situation is different from the 30s” and “well, nothing much changes in this benighted world, does it.”

I suspect a good run this morning will put me right. It’s nearing the end of the witch’s year, after all, and of course I feel a little under the (blustery) weather. Most of it is the persistent sense that I’ve lost two years due to the pandemic. Time has become weird and elastic, and both my children have missed what we think of as major life markers because of it.

Or, more precisely, not due to pandemic but to the persistent fumbling non-response of a crumbling empire in the face of plague. I hadn’t expected, reading Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, to see it repeated in my own lifetime.

Don’t get me wrong, I knew it was going to happen ever since the post-9/11 march to war. I just…thought it would take a little longer. Rome’s autocracy-fueled crumbling was a matter of centuries, America’s seems to be a matter of decades.

Of course we could be looking at a shakeup before a renewal and a great advancement in civilization and human enlightenment. That’s always possible. I just don’t want to get my hopes up, because every time I do, it’s a big ol’ kick in the teeth right afterward.

The end of a cycle always provokes such thoughts. I don’t think I’m alone in them, either.

There’s bread to bake and children (my own and others’) to care for. There are books to write, dogs to walk, kindnesses to practice on a daily basis. There’s laundry to do and movies to watch (Irma Vep is next on the list) and, as always, books to write, even if I’m taking it easy before November arrives with NaNo and a looming revision to a certain magical-realism diptych.

I suppose a load of candy and the burning of joss-paper wishes in one of the iron cauldrons will do a great deal to renew my mood. As it stands, it’s a matter of one small day at a time, struggling against the larger currents. Not borne ceaselessly into the past, Gatsby old sport, it’s more “being swept slo-mo towards deeper disaster.”

Or maybe it’s just the wind making me tetchy. As soon as the caffeine sinks in I’ll be able to tell. Between the gusts and the fact of Monday, no wonder I’m in a Mood.

Ah well. I’m strapped into the ride, after all, and can’t do much about where the tracks are heading. All that’s possible is caring for the other people in the gondola, to the best of one’s ability. The dogs, of course, have absolutely no use for my philosophizing. They want walkies now, and aren’t shy about expressing as much.

Happy Monday, my beloveds. We’re all in this together, wherever it’s wending, and that will have to be enough.

Music and Meatsack

Yesterday was a bit of a wild ride. A very dear friend put me on a dedications page1, another dear friend liked the short story I made for her2, I formally left the house for the first time in ages, and remember those proofs I turned around in 48hrs so a book could come out in November? Well, turns out there’s no room in the November schedule so it’ll be January after all.

Which isn’t bad, mind you! It just means that Future (December) Me will be extremely grateful to Past (October) Me for getting things squared away. It’ll be a little gift to December Me, and also to my editors’ and publishers’ December selves. Frankly, by that point in the holiday season, I’m sure we’ll need all the help we can get.

Today looks to be a little less of a rollercoaster. Oh, sure, the weather people say there’s going to be a “Rain Event” around dinnertime, and the dogs are attempting to make sure I don’t leave the house again today–they had both kids to supervise while I did yesterday, but apparently that wasn’t good enough–and I really have got to get a newsletter out.

In short, all my internal spaces are echoing and it might be time to dust off Beck’s Sea Change album, just to soothe my nerves. I can’t do Pink Floyd since it’s past the equinox, so I’m forced to other measures.

As for the day’s work–once I get the newsletter out of the way–the first third of Hell’s Acre needs a top to bottom reshuffle. Sometimes one has to go down a road a bit to see where it leads, and sometimes even if one knows a book’s general outline…well, things happen. Stories are organic things, and grow in their own way. You can have the skeleton, but the flesh gets distributed differently.3

Anyway, once I get the throughlines in Hell’s Acre arranged, I can move the costume ball (and the interrupted assassination) earlier in the book, which can trigger the prison heist, which will lead to the culmination of Season One. Everything is going along swimmingly, and with that taking one half of my working days I can shift to revising The Black God’s Heart in the other half. And once that’s done, the Tolkien Viking Werewolves can get a second book, and so on, so forth.

I absolutely have all the work I can handle, and it’s a glorious feeling. I also have Klemp’s book (Ghost Squad #2) to get off the ground. It’s been marinating in the back of my head, so I might even do it as my NaNoWriMo this year. We’ll see.

Before that, though, the dogs want their walkies. Yesterday disturbed their usual rhythm, and they’re eager to get back to it. I also have new running shoes to break in, which is a joy and should get rid of that nagging pain in my hip.

Meatsacks, man. Always something aching, always something bruised, always some weird discharge or something. Of course the benefit of piloting one are immense as well, and yet…well, no silver lining without a cloud, and vice versa.

And with that butchering of a proverb, I’m off to start Thursday’s merry-go-round. I’m hoping for more of a slow carousel than Wednesday’s death-defying rollercoaster.

We’ll see how it turns out.