jabbering into the void

Rope, Ladder, Net

Just when I think that perhaps I should throw up my hands and leave the merry-go-round completely (headfirst if necessary), the Universe throws in a few things to keep me hanging on. Like finding out a fellow writer is a fan, and that I’ve made their day by agreeing to a small request. Or like someone just finishing a four-book roadtrip I wrote and telling me about their favourite character(s). Or like a very nice letter from someone who found my YA books a lifeline while navigating the jungle known as the school system.

Small things, tiny things, precious things.

I often forget, working in isolation, that the work goes out into the world and finds those who need it. I consider myself an invisible midlister just chugging away, doing the best I can with what I’m given or can wrest from the dustheap, never truckling or bowing, ripping each word out of my guts or chipping from the cortex as occasion demands. Of course I’m an introvert, a bit of a hermit, and while not quite a misanthrope certainly no philanthropist, so I’m happiest being unremarked and left to toodle along my own little train track, building as I go.

But sometimes even I get lonely and discouraged. Sometimes the fight to keep the work whole and protected so it can become a line into the abyss for someone else is messy and draining. (It’s all very much like this Akimbo Comic, which lives in my head rent-free.)

And it’s kind of…funny? Each time I get to the point of kicking over the traces and abandoning the war, some small thing hits my inbox or my DMs, my texts or even out in meatspace. I get a little jolt, a piece of proof that one of my stories helped someone somewhere, even if it was just a momentary smile or a few hours’ worth of escape from capitalist hellscape dystopia on a boiling planet. That it had an effect.

And that gives me the strength to go on a bit longer, especially on days when even spite has failed me. Spit out the blood, blink away yet more hot claret, brace oneself on the broken sword, and rise yet again. Reach down just a little further and find the doorway for one last ultimate defense as the music swells breathlessly. Or simply scan the horizon, pick a point, and say, there’s the next one as your weary band of travelers looks to you for direction.

I have often disliked hope, especially in the past few years as the cycle between daring to feel any and being kicked in the teeth accelerates. But it keeps happening, springing up through the cracks in my heart like golden weeds, binding the pieces together in one more jagged whole. The kintsugi of endurance. Drive some ink into the scars, let them be a roadmap.

I should not have been born, by all odds I should not have survived nearly half a century, and I definitely should not be the one handing out hope to other ragged, haggard survivors. Yet here we are.

And so long as there’s even one person out there to help, so long as there’s even a chance that the ball will land in the lap of someone who needs it, I’ll be pointing my bat at the fence and getting ready for another swing. I’ve done it all day, I can do it all day, and tomorrow I’ll get up and do it all day again.

So if you’re a fellow writer/artist/singer/whatever, keep going. If someone made something that dragged you out of the abyss, try to tell them. And if nobody tells you that your thing is helping, take it from me–it has, and it will. Keep going, please, for the love of the gods, keep going.

Keep making.

Because the abyss is hungry enough to swallow us all, and the ropes we send into it become a ladder, a net. Because you never know when a flailing, questing, drowning hand will light on the rope you twisted and be yanked to the surface for a breath of knife-cold, blessed air. Because one day the net will catch you too. Because it’s our job, it’s our calling, it’s our humanity. Because fuck the greedy abyss-servant bastards who want to reduce us all to ad engagement. Because it’s a day that ends in “y”.

Because, just because. And someday when you’re at the end of your endurance, a little jolt will arrive. They happen along when we need them, more often than not.

And maybe this is one of them. So, let’s get up again, my beloved.

We can do this all day.

Lonely Wall

They paved paradise, and put up a retaining wall…

There used to be a huge bank of blackberry bushes here, home to birds, rabbits, and other small critters–probably the occasional daytime-resting coyote, too. But apparently someone decided the highway needed more room. I’m not against progress, yet this was completely unnecessary.

I take some comfort in the fact that the planet will survive just fine. Humanity may not–I swing back and forth on whether it will, sometimes hourly–but Gaia, uh, will find a way. (It will probably be crabs, since they’ve evolved how many separate times now?)

Anyway, sometimes Boxnoggin and I pass the work site during walkies, and I’ve taken to saying hello to this dry stick that was once a tree. The dog would desperately like to make its acquaintance despite the sound of traffic, but I restrain him. It’s simply not safe; heaven alone knows what’s lurking in the straw and his paws don’t need to find something awful there.

The first week of the new year is closing out in a holding pattern. I’m a little awry from good news. Perhaps the trend will continue.

See you Monday.

Underworld, Recovery

Fleecy pink clouds for a rain-washed autumn dawn. Boxnoggin pulling a “JE REFUUUUSE” until I fish out his collar and clip it on–the proprieties must be observed, and if he’s not wearing his jingle-jangle how on earth does he know he exists? Boris the coffeemaker burbling. The terrifying vertiginous suspicion that I will never write again, never finish another book, taunting me as I stagger uncaffeinated to the keyboard.

Was reading about certain shamanistic practices last night before turning out the lamp, and it struck me that even a simple bad day can be a journey through the underworld if treated with enough attention and respect. Waking up physically miserable and convinced my career is wreckage (a solvable problem, to some degree) and I’ll never finish another story (a terrifying nightmare, in any degree) is a golden opportunity to put that theory to the test. Of course it’s also part and parcel of the book hangover–finishing a zero draft requires recovery time, and though I do my best said recovery is always two to three times longer than I like.

Pushing myself past exhaustion? Sure, no big deal, that’s expected. Running on broken limbs? Just another day in the motherhood game. But actually taking the time to let body and soul rebuild and replenish? All of a sudden I am a whining baby, unable to understand why the world is inflicting such torture on me. I want to be working, goddammit.

If a friend were having this difficulty, I’d counsel rest and offer snacks, gentle consolation, a few half-laughing threats to make them kinder to themselves. “Don’t you dare talk to my beloved friend in that fashion. You will be good to yourself, because the world can’t afford to be without you. You’re necessary, and that requires caring for yourself.”

Like Alice, I give such very good advice, and am very bad at following it.

Pink dawn has faded. I’m a quarter of the way through coffee and things seem a little brighter. There are objective indicators that I will indeed finish another book, not least the fact that this trough is one I’ve sailed through before. It happens after every zero draft no matter the amount of self care, a lite version of the terrible postpartum depression I endured with both kids. Doing it enough times to see the pattern is some comfort, at least.

So today is about traveling through the underworld. There are allies to speak to, the descent to perform, the dust to endure and the nadir to reach. After that is the ascent back to the living world, like I’ve done again and again. Each time is different, sure, but the pattern itself holds. If this is the narrative that gets me through recovery, then fine, it’s the one I’ll use.

Now the clouds are smooth nacre; it’s the kind of early PNW morning that feels like being inside a giant pearl. The trees are quiet, murmuring, rain-drunk after yesterday’s downpours. People will need me soon and even if it proves unsellable I’m gonna write that portal fantasy. I left the serial in a good place, ready, easily picked back up. The Ragnarok book is quiescent, but I sense activity below its surface. Life is (apparently) not done with me yet.

I might as well finish the coffee and see what the underworld looks like this time around.

Damp, Incomprehensible

The silver lining is the rain. Tipping, tapping, rushing, slithering through the gutters, covering the trees and perking up the ground cover–everything is taking a long deep drink, grateful for the change.

I should’ve gotten the deck dealt with, but we’ll have a dry week at some point in the next month or so for that particular chore. I spent yesterday making cookies, doing house chores, and basically nesting. It was just what I needed, and when I woke up this morning it was to a different world. Summer is well and truly broken, and my soul is peeking out from its cave, daring to maybe uncurl a fraction.

The cookies were nothing special–the dough base from a Ghirardelli recipe since my daughter and I both like it, but with no chips, just the leftover nuts and nut toppings we accumulated over the summer from various experiments like no-churn ice cream and the like. I judged the amount remaining in three-four bags to be just enough for a single recipe of base dough, and was proved entirely correct. The kids have come around to nuts in cookies as long as they’re warned, and I made no secret of my ambition to use the damn things up the next time I went near the oven.

Next comes bread. It’s a joy to have baking on the cards again.

It also helps that the coffee’s sinking in. I have grown philosophical; I suppose there had to be a point like this sooner or later. A fighting retreat is held to be the most difficult of maneuvers and I am deeply engaged upon one at the moment. It may be arrogance, but I want to at least make a good showing so I’m concentrating on paring down to essentials, letting the pursuers have what is unimportant and protecting what I can. It’s a shame–I had high hopes–but such is the creative life.

There are new shoelaces for my brogans, library books on hold waiting for me, the last of the respiratory illness crud to wash out of my system so I can record another Great Chapters bit (for my sins, I want to read a bit of The Great Gatsby aloud), and the opening to the Ragnarok book to find. It’s that last one I’ll be most concerned with today, especially while running. I know precisely where it starts, I can see it in my head, but I need to find the right opening line before my hand twitches for the hilt.

I mean, I do already have an opening line, but I don’t think it’s the right one. It was a placeholder set down when I finished the book before, to prime the pump as it were. It’s close, but my instincts are warning me no cigar. I suppose this series is teaching me to trust said instincts even when the entire world seems dead set against. One would think, given the proclivities of many of my protagonists, that would be easy for me.

It’s not.

Boxnoggin is beginning to stir. He is displeased with this ‘rain’ nonsense and wishes I would not do such damp, incomprehensible things. It completely escapes him that there are some matters I am not directly in charge of and arranging to suit my whims; I wish I had even a fraction of the power he attributes to his humans. At least he’s correct in assuming I’m the dispenser of toast scraps and other goodies, which I should get on as soon as possible. His collar just jangled, and next comes him padding down the hall to remind me he’s got a bloody schedule, Mother, and even if the rains have moved in nothing must be allowed to stand in its way.

Seats and table trays in the upright position, folks. Monday is about to begin.

We Were Goddamn Right

Afterwar

I had occasion to mention Afterwar yesterday. Now, after years and indictments, “serious” pundits are finally forced into admitting that just maybe, just perhaps that orange blivet didn’t merely commit a lightly treasonous, entirely forgivable oopsie but set out and worked hard to install himself as a fascist dictator. All those folks who told me I was being “alarmist”, who mocked me (and others) for screaming about the danger, have finally been given evidence even they can’t ignore. Of course, many are ignoring it, and even more are both-sidesing everything like the good little bootlickers they are.

I have rarely felt more like a Cassandra, and that’s saying something. I would have loved to be wrong, but I wasn’t. Relentlessly gaslit and mocked, belittled when not outright ignored, sure, but I was not wrong. I even wrote a whole-ass book about the danger the demagogue and his little helpers represent, and…nobody listened.

Everything that could go wrong did during the publication of that book, too; maybe that’s why it was so ignored. It got to the point that I was expecting the shipments of actual physical copies to burst into flame on an oceangoing transport, sinking the whole thing to the bottom. I absolutely would not have been surprised. Still, when Afterwar finally managed to stagger out into the world and then made not a dent, I suppose I can be forgiven a little bit of ill temper now.

Because I was fucking right. So were all the other people who warned about That Fucking Orange Guy and All His Enablers. We were mocked, degraded, threatened, ignored. But we were goddamn right, and had been for years upon years.

Cold comfort.

To be absolutely fair, I have gotten a few letters about the book over the years, mostly from those who were similarly harassed or ignored. I often say that if a story helps even one person it’s worth all the agony, and of course the universe has decided to test me upon that assumption in the most blatant way possible.

I am proud to report I still believe it to be true, despite the bruises upon my soul.

At least one person wrote to take me to task about the Burning of the South in the first third of the book, so I should go on record with pointing out that I don’t think that’s what should happen. I do think that if matters escalate to a second American civil war (a declared one, instead of the semi-fig-leafed insurgency the Republicans and their Christofascist allies have been waging since the Reagan administration), an updated version of Sherman’s march is an overwhelming possibility. Just because I can extrapolate the likelihood doesn’t mean I advocate for it.

I wish more people were capable of making that distinction, or at least of refraining from disingenuously conflating me with fictional characters. But just as it’s difficult to get someone to understand a concept if their salary depends on them not understanding it, it is near-impossible to induce emotional or intellectual honesty in someone who achieves psychological relief by abusing and harassing artists.

Maybe I should just be thankful that the wheels of justice appear to be grinding at any speed at all. But I will not be satisfied until actual consequences are applied to those violent, hateful malefactors, from their spray-tanned demagogue through his legislative and lawyer-flavored enablers, all the way down to their foot soldiers. Which will probably never happen, because America believes in coddling racist white men, especially if they’re rich–or useful to the rich.

Still, a girl can dream. An artist can articulate realities others believe impossible or cannot even consider, and that’s the first step towards progress.

I suppose it will have to be enough.

Manhandling a Plot

Roadtrip Z
Still free, until April 9, 2023…

Welp, Amazon just killed Book Depository, as we all knew they would. The metastasis continues; it’d be nice if the signs of timeline healing I’ve been trying to focus on lately could also include some good new for publishing instead of ho-hum business as usual and fuck the writers, but apparently that’s entirely too much to ask for.

Plus ça change, and all that. Although there’s an arraignment today. Too late, not enough, and the criminal will be handled with kid gloves as he has been all his life, but still. Gotta take the small bits of hope where one can, even if one suspects one will be kicked in the teeth later. I can’t afford to spend time celebrating, and indeed this is such a lukewarm, dilatory response to high crimes and treason there’s not a whole lot to wave pom-poms over.

Anyway. Today is for a push to at least get near the end of a zero draft, even if I don’t knock it off completely. This heroine needs to find out a few things and there’s a fire in a certain district of New Rome to set; the “hero” (he’s not a nice guy, but then again, that’s part of his considerable charm) is going to have his hands full. Everything needs to be arranged just so, and the big thing I’m worried about right now is getting a traitor into a hired hack. I already know how the heroine’s going to respond, but I need this bullyboy to get his priorities straight and get in the goddamn mech. (He’s no Shinji, but it’s still funny.)

It’s raining steadily with very little chance of letup. Boxnoggin will be morose during walkies, but I’m looking forward to having sidewalks to myself for the run afterward. The trap-n-bass soundtrack does good things while I’m hauling my weary corpse along, especially if I need a slight break from manhandling a certain plot around. I’m in a peculiar state of hangover, both from copyedits and finishing the first zero draft of the year; my brain needs a rest from chewing itself.

I won’t get one; once I finish this particular zero too there’s no shortage of work looming to get other projects out the door. No rest for the weary or the wicked in this part of the world, my friends.

So. Today the heroine’s patroness gives her a few missing pieces to a puzzle, and if all goes well I’ll start a few (fictional) fires. That will set up the heroine vs. the traitor, and once the “hero” gets things sorted amid five-alarm flames and his wounded subordinate returns bearing news it’ll be time for the endgame, which may have to happen at a lunatic asylum since the villain’s house will be used for another scene.

…I’m going to have to think about that, though. It would be a shame to not use the asylum, since I got it set up earlier in the story. The Muse knows better than I do, I have to trust the story, yadda yadda bing-bong and all that. I should think our heroine won’t mind a chance to even the scales not just for herself but for everyone being held in that bloody awful place–but before solving that problem I have to write my way through a few others.

Suppose I’d best get started. Here’s hoping today will clear the (very low) expectations I’ve got in place.

Breaching in Absurdity

Humpback Whale in Body of Water
© | Dreamstime Stock Photos

There was a band of bright pink and gold at the eastern horizon when I took Boxnoggin out for his first loo break of the day, and a waning moon tangled in the lilacs’s bare branches as well. I prefer to be going to bed as the sun is rolling out, but decades of kid- and dog-schedules means it hasn’t been an option.

Maybe someday soon. In the meantime, there are bits of beauty to be found even while my body grumbles.

My health almost broke completely last week, but things are a tiny bit better now and I’m trying to be as gentle as I can. Plus there’s all sorts of purging and spring cleaning in the works. I can’t recall the last time I did a good old-fashioned Kondo-ing–I have to wait for better weather to put a “free” pile at the end of the driveway, but that just gives me time. I’m breaking tasks into tiny chunks, arranging them like mosaic around the large stones of two projects on the grill.

At least those are going well. I’m within striking distance of finishing two zero drafts at once. Maybe when that’s done I can arrange the surroundings for my usual productivity, because if I’m not juggling three-plus projects at a time I don’t know who I am. I need that third slot in my working schedule open, dammit.

The biggest thing is trying to be kind to myself, a skill I have very little practice with. I tend to hurt myself before anyone else can get around to it, a purely protective mechanism. Trying to be friendly with the person in the mirror is difficult at best; on the other hand, difficulty is what practice is for. The purging of physical space will also help me let go of habits which aren’t serving me. At least, that’s the theory. We all know how vast–and instructive–a gulf looms between planning and execution.

One of the quandaries I’ve been struggling with lately is the paradox of being completely free to decide who to be, and it generally ending up with being who one actually is. I could not wrap my brain around it, no matter how accustomed I’ve become to putting a few contradictory ideas in the old skull-case and just…letting them sit there. There was something in the tension I just wasn’t seeing, and I kept picking at it with every invisible finger I could spare. (Like a scab…)

A couple days ago Boxnoggin was busily sniffing a thorny bush he always tries to get his harness hooked on while voiding his bladder into its tangle. I was occupied with keeping just enough tension on the leash to make sure he didn’t get gouged like a prince attempting to hack his way to a sleeping castle, and it hit me. Right between the eyes, in fact, and I gasped with relief like a breaching whale.

I’d overlooked preferences. Choosing what one wants to be can be boiled down to a preference. For example, I prefer to be kind, it’s literally the easiest state for me and has the benefit of feeling good as well. And what are preferences but part of who one is? The paradox is not neatly resolved–it never is–but the signpost goes up and that’s all I need.

Just point me at it, and I’ll start moving.

Of course, some of my wants and preferences are a little less than ideal–frex, I would prefer to be in bed right now, and to stay there while the books write themselves. Alas, such is not the world we are given. But even those non-ideal wants make me who I am, and I get to decide which of them to indulge and which to gently chivvy myself out of. I suppose that’s the “absolute freedom” part of the bloody paradox.

Life has mostly been about what I can endure rather than what I like. Philosophically it’s been great training; emotionally it’s been a rough patch. Now I have a little breathing room to do something else. Sorting through a midlife tangle (because I’m sure that’s what some of this is, just a function of getting older) is proving most enlightening. A few parts are even fun, but mostly they’re deeply satisfying, plenty amusing, and occasionally painful enough to provoke tears.

I never used to cry, either. Nowadays it’s safe enough to let a few feelings show. A great and lovely change.

Anyway, the coffee is almost done, and there’s feathery bright clouds over a layer of darker grey as the sun rises. The daily balance has been tipped past dawn into actual morning, and soon the dog will need his ramble. I might even have another meditative untangling while he’s busy sticking his nose in something foul; they tend to happen when life is simply so absurd a deeper meaning can slip through the cracks. And we all know dogs are great at absurdity.

See you around.