Half a Year of Crisis Managing and It Sucks

t took me over two weeks to get back into a routine, in the right time zone, where I felt like a human again. Not surprising, since they say getting acclimated to a time zone takes one day for every hour difference, and I was sixteen hours ahead for several weeks.

I’ve mentioned this several times by now, but that Crisis Manager thing that my Chinese horoscope predicted is very annoying. I rewatched the video, and at one point, she says that if I’ve gone half the year without encountering any crises, I should go seek them out, since it’s a good opportunity to network and make money and whatnot.

There has been no need for me to seek out these crises, since they’ve been happening nonstop since the beginning of the year, and I have made neither network nor money nor whatnot from any of them. I’ve known maybe, in total, ten days of peace in 2023 so far. Did I tell you our radon levels were super high and we had to install a mitigation system? Or that our water heater caught fire and nearly killed us? Or that our electrical system was wonky and needed repairs and upgrades? That a second cat was diagnosed with heart problems and we have to drive him 40 minutes away and back for every specialist appointment and he gets car sick? And then, just two weeks ago, our oldest cat (my best friend and familiar) died.

Friends, it’s been a tough year, and it’s only half over. I’m the long-term version of “What a week, huh?” “Lemon, it’s Wednesday.” I will take any support you have to give, whether it’s just listening to me vent, buying me a coffee, cleaning my house so I can spend a few precious hours working on my books, whatever.

All this is to say I’ve basically done nothing regarding my writing. Besides the writing class, making a few edits in Book 1, doing the research in New Zealand, and getting my spouse to finish reading Book 2 for notes. It’s very discouraging. Not sure what the second half of the year will bring, though I felt a terrible foreboding last week, like something even bigger and badder is already on its way. I’ll make plans to get some work done, but if it doesn’t happen, at least you know I tried.

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Don’t Mix Research with Vacation

Well hello. I’m back from New Zealand, got a ton of information for my book series, and didn’t really get a chance to relax because I stuffed each day full of motion and information and learning and logistics. And walking. So much walking.

Basically, I was always on. I was always in “remember” mode. Even at Hobbiton, even at the Weta Workshop tours, even at dinner when I was chilling with a glass of New Zealand chardonnay and a book of local poetry I’d picked up. There was relaxing in the sense that I wasn’t doing dishes or cooking or cleaning litter or answering emails, but I was definitely doing other labor that required other parts of my brain and body.

A vacation and a trip are totally different things. A vacation is where I park my ass somewhere and don’t have to think about anything. Not arranging transportation, not finding food, not planning what to do in a day. Vacation is an all-inclusive resort or a cruise where I’m not getting off in any ports. Or flying in to visit my parents. A trip is any time I leave the house for a length of time but DO have to plan out logistics. And that stuff takes up a lot of brainpower. So to wake up every morning and figure out all my meals and where to get them, what to see or do or who to talk to when and where, how to get all these places, then pay attention once I’m there and remember it all and take notes, then go over all of it that night so I don’t forget anything…for sixteen days in a row…is exhausting. Especially for an anxious neuro atypical me. Pretty sure I’ve been running on an astonishing amount of adrenaline for over two weeks.

I’ve been back almost a week and I was so proud that I woke up at 9am today. Getting back to east coast time, slowly, but it’ll happen.

So I got a goldmine of information for my books. Shoutout to my kiwi friends, who embraced my weirdness and never made me feel dumb for the million questions I asked. And they answered in detail, every time, with things I didn’t know I needed to know. They’re the best people.

In conclusion, my research trip was a very successful research trip. But my vacation in the same time frame came out to maybe like 6 hours. It’ll take me a few more days to get back into a routine at home, but that’s a small price to pay for the enormity of the experience I just returned from. And the best thing is, it’s really going to make my story better. Worth it.

Testing Out a Life I Didn’t Want to Live

Horoscopes are fun. With all the other inexplicable, sometimes supernatural, things that happen to me on a regular basis, finding out my horoscope is right doesn’t even faze me anymore. Right or wrong, it doesn’t affect my belief in anything. Sometimes things align. I can’t explain it.

Last year, my friend sent me a link to a video explaining my Chinese horoscope for 2022. Hugely creative year, just burning forward with speed and passion. Not worrying about worldly details. And, looking back, it was 100% correct. There was a freedom, an unrestrained joy in doing what I wanted and getting it done. It was a good year.

This year’s Chinese horoscope was…not great. Apparently, the main theme of 2023 is that I’m what they call a “Crisis Manager” and hoo boy is that accurate so far. I’ll be a problem-solver, and good at it because I have access to resources, which is nice, but I don’t want to be a Crisis Manager! I have things I want to do! I’m glad I can handle whatever problems come my way, but I don’t want the problems to come my way in the first place.

The year began with me recovering from surgery, which took six weeks. Then it was time to prepare for a cruise we didn’t want to take but couldn’t get a refund for because we paid for it in 2019 and the deadline for a refund was several years ago. I was too stressed out about the entire thing to enjoy it at all. My birthday was a few weeks later, and my parents came to visit and it was a whirlwind of a week. Then my spouse had surgery in early April and I’ve had to take on all his house duties and responsibilities on top of my own, plus act as his caregiver 24/7, plus deal with the many crises that have arisen in these few short weeks.

All this is to say, I haven’t made any progress on my books. I did at least get to write, since I took a multi-week horror writing class. But as for the books I’m trying to sell: nada. I mean, I got a few rejections, but I’m not putting that in the “progress” column. Obviously, I’ll do what I can the next few weeks, but I also leave for New Zealand next month, and then we’re into June with so few things accomplished.

Maybe survival is the accomplishment.

Who Hates February?

A quick update, since we started work on my sleeve the other day and my wrist and fingers are still sore. Lots of rejections for book 1! Book 2 is off with beta readers. I have notes on both I need to work on, but again, voluntary injury must get better first. Work on book 3 is stalled, though I already have the two main tropes (second-chance romance and road trip) and several scene ideas jotted down. I have to get out of the house for the day, to a cafe or the library or somewhere else that isn’t my house and needy cats, and just sit there and brainstorm that story.

Still stressed about our vacation next month, with the number one stressor being finding people to take care of our cats. The house projects are inching along slower than I’d like, but at least there’s forward movement. Spouse finally got a date for his surgery. We’re broken people.

I also finally, finally made plans to visit New Zealand later this year. I had the money saved but emotionally couldn’t justify spending money in general after our HVAC needed to be entirely replaced last spring. But it’s a new year with new problems, and I knew if I didn’t finalize the plans, I would use up that money that was set aside on little things here and there until it was gone without having visited. And that was unacceptable to me.

I signed up for several classes, seminars, workshops, and I’m most excited about a horror writing workshop that starts next month. I know there’s overlap among genres, and my fanfic dabbles in horror (that’s what happens when Dr Strange gets in the mix), and I think it’ll help me in general as well as horror-wise.

So I’ve got a lot planned for the upcoming months! I don’t know how I’m always so busy, but it suits me.

When a New Year Starts Three Weeks Late

I remember last year, waking up on January 1 with a sense of freedom and purpose I hadn’t felt in years. Maybe ever. I was so motivated. I got so much done in those first few weeks of 2022.

It’s not fair to compare this January to last. For one thing, I finally got surgery that’s been on my to-do list for far too long, and I needed these weeks to rest and recuperate and get back to myself. Much Assassin’s Creed was played, and much Golden Girls watched.

Started sending agent queries on December 31, because I wanted to be able to say I got at least a few queries out there in 2022. Sent a few more since then, but now Saturdays will be focused on that, and the rest of the week on revising book 2.

I’m currently working on 43 notes for book 2, down from 52 the other day. One said “this paragraph is bad” and I ended up being able to replace that entire paragraph with the word “but.” But there are several upcoming notes that say “cut this scene and half then combine it with this brand new scene that you have to write that should be three pages or so,” and that’ll take more time.

The Great Reshifting moves apace. Garage and unfinished part of basement are both clean? and? organized? Unprecedented. Finished part of the basement is just a day or two away from also being clean and organized. Then we’ll have space to have guests stay the night as well as space to host game night on our dedicated gaming table. Neither of those things have been true since pre-March 2020.

Despite not selling my manuscript yet, I’m feeling oddly optimistic about everything. Maybe it’s all the cleaning. Maybe it’s finally getting that surgery. Maybe I’m actually good at these things I attempt? Maybe it’s because I started opening the house windows a bit every day and the circulating air heals me. In that case, a vacation should do wonders.

Choosing Major Projects When I Could Just Choose Sleep

As the last days of 2022 approach, my schedule is somehow busier than ever despite having few friends and very few nearby family members, no children, and no day job.

I finished and posted my Christmas-time Strangefrost novella, a sequel to the novel-length work I posted in January earlier this year. It’s a lot of fun, and was exactly the change of pace I needed after all the work I did on book 1 and book 2 of my original stories.

Next is querying agents for book 1, and I’m ready for it. I also wanted to get book 2 into a shape resembling a first draft, so I can send it to my beta readers before the end of the year. We’ll see how that goes. Yesterday, I opened it to make a PDF and ended up reading the first eight chapters unexpectedly, so either I wrote something pretty compelling already or I will procrastinate for anything.

We’ve also decided to do some major reshifting around the house, and it requires selling or otherwise getting rid of a number of large items, going through boxes, donating, trashing, cleaning, and organizing. I made a step-by-step list so there’s no question of what needs to happen next, but I can’t help going off-script to do things like using our extra stone edging to mark off the fairy garden I’m going to plant next year. To be fair, that at least got the leftover downspout, dragon spout, edging, and stone slabs out of the garage, which needs to be cleaned.

Of course, we’re doing this now, between getting a new tattoo (so, limited range of motion for a week or so) and having surgery at the very end of the month (Merry Christmas to me! But no lifting or straining for 6 weeks lmao), so it all feels very rushed. Add in Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s, and I just don’t know when I’ll be able to get back to Assassin’s Creed: Origins again.

So the two goals for the next two weeks: send those query letters and finish the first draft of book 2. Wish me luck, y’all. In the meantime, I wish you a happy yule.

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2022 in Review

My calendar switches over in January, but the fall has always felt like the beginning of a new year to me. Part of this is starting school in September during all my formative years. The other part is something more innate. The people who said Samhain was the last night of the year must have known something.

So! Let’s review! Between last November and now:

I finished, reviewed, edited, and published my first complete novel-length work, which is also my first complete fanfic. I hit writer’s bingo in the first two weeks (made a stranger stay up past their bedtime to finish it, made someone cry, and someone said it’s their new favorite fic) and got enough praise to seriously consider devoting all my time to writing, which led to…

Quitting my day job in December and spending all of work-wise 2022 focused on writing. Also, my cardiologist said I had to quit that job anyway, and to be honest, much of this year was also trying to recover from those conditions and explore what a healthy work life actually looks like for me.

I also jotted down a concept for the first book in a potential contemporary romance trilogy, wrote the book, and got to the point where it’s currently being line edited by an actual professional editor.

I got book 2 in that trilogy from a concept to the rough draft stage, 87K words, which all happened in the last seven months, while I was also working on book 1.

After almost a year of not having any fucking clue what book 3 would be about (besides who the two main characters are), I finally have an amazing idea for it and the outline is almost finished. I’m feeling really good about it now.

And, between waiting to hear back from my editor and doing the next pass on book 2, I’m currently writing a short story sequel to that novel-length fanfic, because my mom asked for it. So did my husband, actually. And so did my brain. Look, I love those characters, and the company that owns their IP will never let them be happy together, so someone’s gotta do it. They deserve it and so do we.

I took a lot of classes and workshops with writers I admire, and they helped more than I care to admit, because that means spending the money and putting in the work and listening to their expertise can actually improve my craft, and I’m lazy.

I started a Ko-Fi page that was supposed to be poems and tarot, that ended up mostly being tarot, because I sort of abandoned poetry for all these novels.

Non-work accomplishments include fracturing my tailbone, hosting my parents on their first visit here in at least three years, our HVAC system blowing up, the water softener kicking the bucket, effing up my foot, and much more!

I tried to get to New Zealand for research for book 1 (and to visit friends), but I counted my money and realized, after paying for the necessary home repairs, I just couldn’t afford it. I know I’m not 20 anymore, but maybe I can channel my inner naïve adventurer and embrace economy class, hostels, and hitchhiking through a foreign country for a few weeks.

And of course, I have to be difficult, and book 2 and 3 also take place where I don’t live, so that’s two more trips I’ll eventually have to make.

My characters are all more adventurous than I am, so I forced myself out of my cozy shell and went and did things like axe throwing (amazing), golfing (never had so much fun being terrible at something), and doing an escape room (the most white-people of entertainment, but I ended up not being anxious, which is huge). Up next is a rope bridge course and boxing, so, wish me luck!

Also, I made, like, new friends? In real life? So weird. And I started regularly going to the nail salon with my mother-in-law, which has been a nice way to spend time together.

I’d say, overall, this has been a great year. Despite getting injured and despite spending a fortune on things that broke and despite not being able to travel where I needed to, I’ve come a long way and learned a lot and accomplished more than I thought I could. Hopefully this next year is just as fulfilling.

Finally, My Perfect Weather Arrives

It might be the first time in my life that I remember the weather suddenly coinciding with the way we measure the seasons. First day of fall, and I’m putting on my fleece-lined lounge pants and making my own pumpkin spice latte. Anything hotter than 70 degrees and I’m basically incapacitated, so after drowning in the humid bowl of the Miami Valley for five months, I cry with real physical relief when I wake up to 41 degrees. I really do belong in Northern Europe.

Book 1 is off to the editor, and I’m just a few thousand words away from finishing the base draft of Book 2. Book 3 is a nebulous thing I can’t think about yet unless I want to damage my tender brain for good. I think I discovered that my writing process is to immerse myself in the writing in such a way that I must completely abandon absolutely everything else in my life for several weeks, followed by mental recovery and playing catch-up on my many non-writing tasks.

I’m not saying it works. I’m just saying that’s what happens.

So, when I finish this base draft in a few days, I’ll put it aside for a week while I tackle a huge list of house things that need to be done and books I need to read before sending them to my mom. And then maybe I’ll go to an escape room. I’ve never been interested in escape rooms, but my characters are, and I should probably get some details right. I just don’t understand how my concern about handing over my phone to a stranger and letting them lock me in a room is considered irrational. It’s like voluntarily walking into the beginning of a horror movie. It is the height of white people nonsense.

Other than that, things are going along as usual. Had to cancel my trip overseas because our HVAC emergency earlier this year ate into my travel savings and I wasn’t able to recover any of it. So if anyone wants to be a dear and pay for me to travel, to them or elsewhere, know that that’s basically my dream and I’m not above groveling. I have permission to find a sugar daddy if need be.

From the Depths of This Chair (Copy)

A little bit of book news, a little bit of other news, and a quick share of what I’ve read and loved recently.

So my first novel-length original work (Book 1, we’ll say, since it’s first in a loosely connected trilogy) is finally in a condition where I’m happy sending it off to a professional editor. This is huge for me! I feel like quitting my day job last December has finally produced some fruitful work. In the meantime, I’m focusing on Book 2, where I’ve gotten 37K words down. I’m hoping to get to 50K by the end of July, and finish the base draft by the end of August.

The novella-length fanfic sequel to my novel-length fanfic is…on pause until I finish the base draft of Book 2. People are harassing me about when it will be available (my loved ones, to be clear, strangers aren’t harassing me), but it’s a Christmas story so finishing that one closer to the holidays would be more appropriate, DON’T YOU THINK SO, MOTHER?

Speaking of my fanfic, it will reach 2,000 hits this weekend, which is unfathomable to me. Also, I did a little digging into my statistics on that website and found out that 9 people subscribe to me??? Little ol’ me??? So perhaps getting the sequel finished and posted is more of a priority than I thought. You win, mom.

I haven’t been reading as much this month, but I did find some gems since June. The guy who runs my local comic book store is an absolute sweetheart, and he tracked down all three volumes of Crowded for me. Gig work professional and disaster bisexual Charlie finds herself the target of a crowdfunded hit that’s been backed by over 2,000 people for over $1mil and growing, and the only bodyguard willing to work for her is the worst-rated defender and grumpiest lesbian on the planet, Vita. Love, love, love it. I can’t recommend it enough. I also read all of Jordan L. Hawk’s SPECTR: Series 1, a collection of the first six books in the series. John is an exorcist for the federal government, and Caleb is an artist who’s accidentally possessed by a drakul named Gray. They’re my favorite throuple. I described it to my husband as “if Venom were a demon and Constantine showed up to exorcize Eddie Brock but instead, they fell in love, and now the three of them go on adventures together where they solve paranormal crimes and love each other.” There are two more sets of books in the series, and I will read every last one of them.

In personal news, my mortgage reached a milestone, and while it’s still a long way from being paid off, this milestone makes me happy. I also took an autism test online for the dozenth time and was told, for the dozenth time, that I should definitely make an appointment to get screened for it, to which I say, “Why?” Besides the hours I spent researching, calling, and otherwise looking into specialists in a 100-mile radius who do autism screenings, are taking new patients, and accept my insurance (surprise: there are zero), what would I really get out of an official diagnosis? Would I become a card-carrying member of the club? The way my brain works isn’t something that needs to be fixed, and I’ve spent my entire life figuring out how to navigate it. Maybe getting diagnosed and given tools and a guide when I was a child or teen would have helped, but at this point, I find more helpful advice online for free. But it was pretty wild seeing my high score on the test and thinking, “how on earth did anyone ever think I was normal?”

Do you think a half-sheet cake will fit “Congrats on the progress of Book 1, the 37K words of Book 2, the 2,000 hits on your fanfic, your 9 subscribers, that exciting number of your mortgage, and your autism,” or do you think I need a full-sheet cake for that?

From the Depths of This Chair

Popping in quickly for a little update: I’m deep into edits on book 1, planning travel to book 1’s location since it’s been over a decade since I was last there, still jotting down notes for book 2, have a good idea what book 3 will be about, and playing with a new fanfiction. In addition to taking my cats to the vet, my spouse to the doctor, and my self to the tattoo studio. It all continues apace.

A Little Treat

Just a quick update, today, while I try to get shit done.

First, I’m starting the next round of edits on the first book in my series. My beta readers have come through brilliantly and I’ve been working on the notes we made to the manuscript. I’m still excited about it, and I still love it and all my characters, so I’m feeling really good about it.

This past week’s word count goal for book two was 10,000, and I reached that yesterday, bringing the total word count for it up to over 20,000. I wasn’t expecting to get this far this quickly, but I gave book one a little more time to marinate than I had planned. I celebrated with a little treat, which was sitting down and finally reading the 500-page sci-fi book I’ve been trying to read for a month. Physical books are always harder for me to finish because I have to find the time to sit down and be still and hold it. I usually read on my e-reader, which I can take on the elliptical, so I finish books faster that way.

My next little treat will be writing a short story follow-up to the fanfic I posted on AO3 back in January. One day, almost two weeks ago, I wrote about 200 words in book two before my brain blasted me with a fully formed idea for a short Christmas story to accompany my fanfic, and I wrote an 1800-word outline for it. So technically, I hit my 2000-word daily goal. I’m counting it as a win.

I’m also using that short fanfic as an incentive for my husband to finish reading book one, since he’s not big into romance, but enjoys my fanfic. Finish reading my romance novel, darling, and I’ll give you more Strangefrost.

In other news, I’m looking into traveling to New Zealand, since they’re letting heathens like me visit again. Since book one takes place there, I figure I should probably get a refresher on the lay of the land, the climate, the smells, the lingo, you know. Also an opportunity to visit some friends. It’s been a hard two years, not traveling, but I think I’m ready to wander the world again.

Other than that, the only other major thing happening is the fact that our entire HVAC system basically blew up and needed to be replaced and cost…so much money. Like. So. Much. Money. So if you’d like to help out with that, because I entertain you, or because you love me, or, honestly for whatever reason, there’s a link to my Ko-Fi at the bottom of this page, and any help is deeply appreciated.

Okay. Back to writing.

Dreams in Early May

I usually write down my dreams (or mumble what I can remember into a voice recorder as soon as I wake up so I don’t forget anything, which eventually ends up written down). Honestly, they’re all pretty interesting and weird, and I dream every night, so there’s no scarcity of ideas. But I rarely share them with other people unless I dream something that eventually happens and I get to pull out the record I made of it to prove it.

I thought I might talk about two of them today, since one is a cosmic mystery and the other is such a metaphor that even dream-me was rolling her eyes as it happened.

The first was only five seconds long. I stood in front of a massive round door, deep in a mountain or cavern, I’m talking easily 80, maybe 100ft tall. It was made of brown and gray stone and carved into five or six rings, like a bullseye or a cinnamon roll. Within each ring were symbols, over and over again, all the same: a shut eye. As I approached, I felt like it was more of a seal, something not meant to open, something not meant to be known at all, until a big enough problem or certain conditions awoke it.

When I got close, I felt a humming through my boots, and thought suddenly that I had made something aware that should have stayed ignorant. Every eye on the seal opened, slowly, a sickly blue light shining beyond it. I stood still. Surely it had seen me. Surely, my small, humble, mortal presence shouldn’t have been enough to bother it. And yet.

After a few seconds, the eyes shut again, slowly, and nothing had changed.

Of course, I woke up thinking, “Something saw me that I shouldn’t want seeing me, and it was big.” But whatever it was must have seen me as nonthreatening and not-food, like a cat woken from a nap by a noise and taking a moment with its ears perked before deciding it wasn’t food, play, or danger, and snuggling back to sleep.

The second dream was weirder. I felt something on my scalp, at the top of my head, and worried that it was a scab or cancer. When I looked in the mirror, it was a flat, round, black plastic disc. About the size of a quarter. Stuck to my head somehow. So I, in my infinite wisdom, started picking at it, and I popped it off, and it turned out to be the top of a small milk bottle…which entirely fit inside my skull. I pulled it out and thought, “Oh right, I put that there as storage so I would have it close by if I needed it.”

Once it was out, I could see that I had put even more things in my skull. I started pulling out all kinds of snacks, little bags of chips, dried fruit, and like ten beverages in glass bottles. As I took them out, I could feel myself getting lighter, less weighed down, and clearer-headed. I emptied the space entirely, and felt so relieved. Like a burden had been lifted from me.

Metaphor. Obviously. I had stored these things thinking I might need them, but I kept them there for years and never did. Carrying them around was a burden that I had learned to live with because I had forgotten I had made the choice to carry them to solve a specific problem that never ended up happening.

It applies to food, yes. Buying more of something than I need “just in case.” But then the pantry fills up and fills me with dread. But it was taking up space in my skull, so I think the lesson here is temperance, and letting go of the things that aren’t serving me.

Not sure why my mind chose these visuals to tell me, but it worked. And that’s a little glimpse into the stuff my brain does while I’m trying to sleep.

That First and Terrible Draft

Everyone has their own way of describing the different stages of writing a manuscript. I really like Elizabeth May’s idea of a “trash draft,” and that phrase helped me get over my ridiculous belief that my very first draft had to be presentable.

Now that I’ve written more, I think I’ve found a better (for me, obviously) way to describe my different drafts.

First is the concept/outline. This is the document where I dump all my ideas about what the story could be. Characters, their traits, goals, flaws; a timeline; maybe a hint of an outline. It morphs as I go, things added, rearranged, but from the start, it’s always a separate document from the actual story.

Next is what I call the “base draft.” Once I have a concept, I start writing scenes in a new document. As I think of other scenes to write, I make some asterisks roughly where they should go in the manuscript, and add a little description of what should happen. If I have a really good piece of dialogue or a sentence, I’ll put it in the description. But I tend to write in order, unless a scene demands to be written immediately, in which case I’ll add it in its entirety.

Lots of asterisks in the base draft. If I can’t think of a specific word, or if I have to come up with something clever that the character does but my brain won’t cooperate: asterisks, write a note about it, and move on. Want to make sure all the “OK”s are changed to “okay”s? Jump to the final page, which is the notes page, make the asterisks, make the note for it.

Base draft is complete when I type the words THE END. It is messy and has lots of notes to myself and nobody is allowed to read it, but it’s done. Since I tend to edit a bit as I go, for the most part, it looks a lot like what the final draft will be. But we’re not there yet.

Once base draft is done, I go through the notes on the last page and incorporate them into the manuscript. Then I use the “Find” tool to look for the asterisks I left in the story, and fix all of those. When all the notes have been fixed, that’s the first draft.

First draft gets sent to beta readers and set aside for about a week while my mind does other things. When I return to it, I read it the whole way through and make notes. When the beta readers are done and send their notes, I incorporate all of our comments into a new draft.

This new draft has no name. I know there will be many between first and final, and using numbers will discourage me, so I name them by date until the final one.

On Saturday, I finished the base draft of my current manuscript. Over 103,000 words. Lots to work with. I’ll be working on the first draft for the next few days, then email it to my people and try to forget about it for a week while I catch up on things I haven’t had time to do, like painting the bedroom and making doctors appointments. Hopefully by this time next week, I’ll be working on the next draft.

Approaching the Middle

All in all, 87,000 words in three months isn’t bad. For me. I think this draft will hit 100,000, which will be fine, because I know for sure I need to make some big edits. I’m talking highlighting and deleting entire paragraphs. Even after all these words, I still like it. It’s still a story I want to read.

I took an accidental week off for my birthday, between the actual days off when my family was visiting and the three days beforehand when I had to deep clean and tidy my entire house to make it presentable for guests for the first time in over two years. Then I had to deep clean and tidy my self to make it presentable. It was a whole thing.

Then there was the almost-week when I couldn’t sit thanks to an injured tailbone and my standing desk hadn’t arrived yet.

First quarter of 2022 has been a real grab bag, let me tell you.

I keep thinking of projects I want to get done, and I keep adding them to my list of “things to get done in the week after finishing this draft while it’s set aside so I can approach it with fresh eyes after not seeing it for a while.” Surely I can paint the entire bedroom, touchup all the trim, do all the annual spring chores, fix the half dozen smaller household tasks, and do a bunch of not-writing-but-writing-related work in the span of a week, right? Right?

And so I say I’m approaching the middle. The book may be almost done, but that’s only half the journey. Once I finish it, the new adventures begins.

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Broken Just In Time

Two weeks ago, I fell. Which is pretty normal for me. Even though I’m short, my center of gravity low, I somehow always end up on the floor. I think it’s a combination of clumsy feet, cats, and a general not paying attention. Like how most accidents occur within two miles of home. I get familiar with my surroundings and just go on autopilot.

This fell happened on the third step up, when I completely missed the next step as I descended, and I ended up descending faster than I planned. It was back, not forward, and I’ve got a nice little cushion, but it apparently wasn’t enough, because I bruised my tailbone.

Do you know what you can still do with a bruised tailbone?

Nothing.

Do you know what the treatment is for a bruised tailbone?

Painkillers and time.

And special pillows, and specific exercises, none of which have helped me.

This is kind of a long way of saying my standing desk arrived today and I already love it. It’s one of those electric ones, so I can switch to sitting when I tire, and I can set it to exactly where I need it to be (short, remember?). What can I say, I’m easily impressed these days.

I added another several thousand words to my manuscript, but they were all for additional scene outlines and not actual scenes, which makes me think this thing will be closer to 100,000 words by the time I’m done with this very first terrible draft. “Rough” is too kind a word for it. Oh, I still love it. But I’m at the point where I can’t wait to edit it back down to a reasonable length. Start slashing entire paragraphs. It’ll be great.

In fact, now that my desk is all set up, I’ll start now.

Into February

I forgot that January exists past New Year’s Day, and February always feels more like one day instead of an entire month. The weather dares me to go out walking, but I’ve been cold before, and I do not care for it. It feels like actual hibernation to me: nothing much gets done, nothing much can get done.

So I’m especially proud of myself for the over 60,000 words I’ve collected in my manuscript, and the nearly-1000 hits my fanfiction has on AO3. I opened tarot commissions through Ko-Fi (link in the bottom left-hand corner of this page!), did a bunch of research, wrote some poems, had a bunch of dreams. It’s only been a few days, but I’ve also played a lot of Horizon Forbidden West, which—like its predecessor—got its teeth in me like a snapmaw.

I think this draft of the manuscript will come out around 90,000 words. I already marked sections that need editing. But, as they say, you can’t edit an empty page, and so I just keep dumping words onto page after page. I have an outline, which evolves as I go, and I flesh it out as I know more about what I want to say. I write whatever scenes I really want to write first, then go back and fill in the blanks after. It’s like dumping puzzle pieces onto a table and trying to fit them together, except the picture is blank, and I need to draw on the pieces as I go.

Which is to say, distracting myself with video games is a totally appropriate response to writing.

Week Three: So Many Words

Six poems (including one sonnet), daily tarot readings, a ten-card tarot reading, this blog, several dreams, and 11,500 words in my novel. I have more words in me, but I’d rather use them in my book than here. You understand.

Week Two: The Upkeep

This second week of working for myself may have been less productive overall, but I can now check off two boxes on my Writer’s Bingo card, and I’m waiting impatiently to be able to check off a third.

My major accomplishment this week was joining AO3 and publishing my novel-length fanfiction I’ve been working on since last July. The first comment on it arrived seven hours later, the reader saying they stayed up past their bedtime to finish it. That’s one for Writer’s Bingo. A few more nice comments came through, and a few days later, someone said that it’s now their “favorite fic,” so, that’s another one for Writer’s Bingo.

The idea that total strangers can read what I wrote and love it as much as I do is…a little overwhelming. Like, maybe I’m actually good at this?

The third compliment that I’m waiting for is what I wanted my beta readers to do, and they didn’t, because they’re terrible. I appreciate their attention and energy but they aren’t as emotional as I am, so while I cried at several points while writing it and again every time I read it, I did not achieve the triumph of writing something that made someone else cry. I am waiting for this like a villain, lurking in the shadows of my work’s comments section, fingers steepled, crooning and cajoling like that’s going to bring the criers to me.

Strangers liking my story may have been the most exciting and emotional writing-related thing this week, but I also restructured my current WIP in a way that I’ve been dreading all week because I knew it would be a lot of work. It is infinitely better that I clean it up now, though, while I’m only 20K words into it, because it’s one of those things that will get harder to do the longer I wait to address it. I still have some clean-up to do, but I wouldn’t have been able to make any progress with this thing hanging over my head.

It took a few days to realize that’s what I needed to do, too. I was disappointed in myself that I’d only written a couple thousand words in it, but once I realized it was because I didn’t want to face the restructuring, I had to get it taken care of. Hey, I’m learning!

And I’m sure this upcoming week will also teach me things I didn’t know I needed to learn.

Week One of Self-Employment

I was going to title this “Week One of Unemployment,” but that would be unfair to all the work I did the past seven and a half days.

Besides writing several thousand words in my next novel, and slightly more than a poem a day, I let the problem I was having with my next poetry collection roll around in my head, playing in the dirt and doing whatever it wanted, until a very fun and elegant solution showed itself. I researched publishers that might be interested in my book series and followed some agents and editors on social media. I came up with the title of the second book in this series, and I love it. And a few days later, I figured out what’ll be happening at the chaotic climax of this novel. Now all I need is a series title. Judging by my jump-started imagination this past week, I’m foolishly confident that it’ll come to me by next blog post.

Then I set up a ko-fi page for myself, here:

https://ko-fi.com/poemsandprophecy

You can also find a link to it in the bottom left of this page RIGHT NOW. If the widget is still working.

I was going to set it up with membership tiers like on Patreon, but, uh, I’m lazy. And this way, people can decide if they want to leave a one-time tip or set up a monthly subscription amount of their own choosing. I’ve urged my spouse to sign up for a monthly donation so I can call it an allowance. It would be funny if it weren’t sad.

I’m probably going to open up tarot commissions at the end of the month, to give myself a few more weeks of focus on my writing projects while I get acclimated to what my days look like now. Those commissions will be available through my ko-fi page as well.

So, this week was an overall win! Oh, and my cat’s oncologist said we don’t need to bring her in for another six months. Very good news.

How Many Tarot Cards Mean Transformation?

So I quit my day job.

There were…many, many reasons why it was the best and only decision I could have made. Do I have another job lined up? No. Do I have enough money saved to justify it? Also no. But am I confident things will work out just fine? No. Listen.

I wrote a whole-ass novel last year. An entire novel! And I still think it’s really good! And I’m in the middle of another one, which will be the first in a trilogy, which is also really good!

But my brain needs chunks of time to work on things, to dig deep. So in addition to the many reasons I felt I could no longer work at my day job, the addition of “setting my own writing schedule without being interrupted to do work that kills my soul” was kind of a bonus.

In the meantime, if you like what I write, please do buy my books. If you have my books but would like to leave me a tip or a financial gesture to show your appreciation, I’ll be setting up a couple different ways to do that, with links in the next blog post.

I’d also be interested in freelance writing or editing work, and, unrelatedly, I’m also a fair hand at tarot readings.

Of course, when I did a spread to focus on what would bring me fulfillment in 2022, the answer to “what is the next step to reach that fulfillment” was the Five of Coins, so, here I go diving headfirst into poverty. I trust my own readings that much. Your move, fate.