Month: March 2010

Today was a good day.  It’s the kind of good day that makes the badness of last week feel better.

I got safety and emissions done on the car, and it took neither four months nor four hundred dollars to pass.  (That would be the numbers from last year and the year before.  I was nervous.)  Also, the brakes no longer squeak.

I thought camping reservation thoughts.  We’re thinking of doing three weekend trips this year.  I need that kind of a break so, so badly right now–the kind that gets me out of my house and away from my email.  I just had to wait to see if the car ate up all the wiggle room in the budget.  And surprise!  It did not!

While waiting for the car, I discovered that Many Lands (the local hole-in-the-wall imported foods store) carries the Indian food spice packets my mother-in-law has been sending us.  Those are heaven.

The IRS discovered that I made a mistake on our taxes and expressed this to me by sending me a big fat check.  Those are the kinds of mistakes I’m glad to hear about.  This also means they’ve been over my taxes and didn’t find any errors besides the one credit I didn’t know we qualified for.  Maybe I know what I’m doing after all. 

(Also, I now have even MORE wiggle room in the budget.  Perhaps I will use it to get new glasses, finally.  Mine are broken and five years old.)

I also received in the mail metal masters for our next mini project, which means the caster I sent it to can meet a deadline (I cannot, in public, express the kind of joy and relief this brings me) and also does very fine work.  That means this project is moving forward.  I like forward motion.

DVDs that I ordered with Amazon gift certificates arrived.

I really, really needed this kind of a good day.  

The end.

This week I’m writing a short story I started five years ago.  I’ve always liked the ideas in the story, but since I don’t write short stories, I’ve never bothered to finish it.

I think I’ve finally put some method to the short story madness.  I spent the first few months of this year learning new things, strengthening things I’d long been weak at.  I learned new skills, so now is the time for practice.  It’s easiest for me to practice on projects I don’t care about, so I’m knocking down a couple short stories before I go back to the larger revision.  At least the short stories allow for quick practice.  Then it will be back to novels.

This is both a true story and a metaphor for my week.

So I decided to drag myself running today.  When I left my house, the sky was cloudy and the wind was moderate.  But the sky had been cloudy and the wind moderate for days.  

Then on my warm-up walk to the park it started to hail.  This was small sized hail, so it didn’t hurt.  I thought it was quite a nice metaphor for my week.  I kept walking.

When I got to the park the wind picked up so the hail flew sideways.  I laughed and pulled on my hood.

I took half a lap around the park.  Coming back the wind blew into my face.

That’s when it started to snow.  Not a little snow, either.  The kind that comes down in clumps.

I laughed and walked backwards to a picnic pavilion.  I stood there in the semi-shelter, laughed until my side hurt, threw my arms in the air and thanked God for the metaphor.

And that’s when it started to stick.

[And for those who are wondering, the badness of my week has nothing to do with my writing.  That’s actually going very well.]

Today was one of those days I just wished would be over already.  No matter what you do, some days are just BAD.

I am a stress case today.

There are lots of things I could theoretically be doing to distract myself.  

There’s my house, for starters.  There is flour on my carpet.  There is flour on the kitchen table.  There is flour on my kitchen floor.

There are books to be read.  I’m printing one right now.  (Not mine.)  The book is about a crazy person, which is probably a good match for me today.

But I’m not reading it.  Because a book is not distracting enough to contain the crazy.

There are dishes all over my kitchen.  I still have two Christmas presents to finish for two people I love dearly.  (!!!)

There’s a short story I have to finish by Saturday and an entire novel rewrite to do. 

Yeah, that’s not happening today.

Even barring the actually productive stuff, there are things I could be doing.

There is terrain I’ve been meaning to paint, and even more models waiting for me to get around to them.  

And failing all else there are video games to play.

But no.  Even video games are not engaging enough to distract me. 

Because I am a stress case.  I am so ready to be out of limbo-land.

I had been doing so well, too.  Most days I’ve been keeping the faith.

But not today.

Gah.

I’m suffering from project ADD at the moment. 

I don’t have anything that I’m really supposed to be working on at the moment (at last!) so theoretically I’m taking that opportunity (short though it may be) to do a major rewrite of a novel I’d really love to sell sometime, but won’t even think about sending to my agent in it’s current form.   So many problems.  But I’ve learned a few things since then, so the rewrite is going quite nicely.

Or it would be, if I hadn’t developed this bizarre desire to write short stories.

There’s nothing wrong with writing short stories.  But I’ve never been very good at them, and since there’s no money in writing them I’ve never seen the wisdom in forcing myself to learn.

Enter a serious look at my files of my outlined but as-yet unwritten novels.  Most of what I write falls into one of two categories: contemporary YA novels, or YA dark fantasy/science fiction.  So this high fantasy novel I’ve been toying with?  If I published it my publisher would want another one.  And I just don’t want to write a bunch of high fantasy anymore.  So it’s just never going to happen.  I have several ideas like that–ideas that burn at the edges of my brain. 

So last week I had this (ridiculous) idea–maybe I could write these ideas as short stories.  This process would be shorter than writing a novel (I just can’t devote two months of my life toward writing a novel I know I’ll never sell) and would exorcise the ideas from my brain.

And so the stress I’ve been under lately manifested itself in an all-new kind of strange behavior.  Last week I wrote most of a short story.  This is ridiculous for the above reasons.  I’m not even really a fan of the form.  But I’m trying it.  Probably to give my brain something to do that is entirely separate from the novel writing that I am trying so hard to get out of my brain at the moment.

And here’s what I’m discovering–writing a short story is all the hard parts of writing a novel, with none of the easy bits.  For me, the hardest parts of the novel are the first chapter (where I have to establish everything) and the last chapter (where I have to wrap it all up.)  So, a short story is pretty much a first chapter and a last chapter with no stretchy middle where I can sit my characters down and have them talk to each other.  By the time I get everything established, it’s time to wrap it up already.

It’s not that I thought writing short stories would be easy.  I just never thought about it…at all.  No wonder I’ve never enjoyed this.

And yet, the exercise is being good for me.  It turns out, I’ve gotten a lot better at establishing things than I was the last time I wrote a first draft.  (I don’t want to think about how long that’s been.  Crap.  I’ve counted it already.  Can I be done revising yet?  No?  Because I’ll just be adding to my pile of revision?  Good point.  Fine.  New novel drafts, you’re back to waiting.)

At the end of the day, the short story is probably going to languish in my files of old writing, because I’ve never written one of these before.  What are the odds that it’ll come out good?  (Zero, I’m figuring.)

But whatever.  I’m writing.  I’m counting that as a success.

Yesterday Drew and I took the day off to recover from last week’s insanity. We hung out at home. We played Space Hulk. (That game is so much fun.)

Today I returned to productivity. I wrote 1200 words on a short story that probably doesn’t need to exist.  I posted new photos to the Garden Ninja gallery, then got carried away and went through all the photos from the last two years to make sure they were all in the appropriate galleries.  (They weren’t.) 

Not the most fascinating week ever, but I’m feeling pretty good anyway.

I promise to get out and take some photos this week. Until then, we have what’s on my desk.

A while ago I was talking to some friends about disappointments. One friend had been overlooked by a group she cared about, and felt it meant she wasn’t important. We talked about how we all feel that way sometimes. Whenever someone puts us down (intentionally or accidentally; directly or subtly), that slight feeds the voices in our heads* that tell us that we aren’t good enough. And once those voices are fed, they get louder, and harder to ignore.

I used to have some pretty severe depression. For me, that meant that every couple of months, the voices that tell me I’m not good enough got so loud I couldn’t ignore them anymore. That kind of negative mental noise was debilitating, sometimes overwhelming. (I don’t get that bad anymore, but that’s a different story.)

My mental noise is loud today. It’s hard to ignore. I’m managing it, which means I am not getting depressed. But some days, that managing is more difficult. Today is one of those days.

Being put down is not the only trigger that feeds the voices. Anything that reminds me of times when the voices were fed can bring that experience back with a vengeance. Those reminders ripple through my life–little echoes of times when I felt stupid or disappointed or worthless. I know some people have flashbacks, and I’ve never experienced those, but I do experience a kind of emotional flashback. A moment when all the negative emotion comes flooding back, giving those voices a royal feast.

And the trouble with these triggers is that they breed. One condition in my life reminds me of a particularly strong negative emotion. The emotion feeds those voices–the ones that tell me I’m not good enough. And while I’m trying to ignore them, the voices remind me of every mistake I’ve ever made in my life, laying out the evidence for their case.

I’ve gotten very good at quieting the voices, but that doesn’t make it a pleasant experience.

I know I’m not alone in this.** It’s human. Lots of people go through it. And I’ve managed to get the fallout pretty well under control, so I don’t spiral into depression anymore. (Someday I’ll write that post. I’m still trying to figure out how to say it right.)

But I wish I could just quell all the triggers that feed the voices, so they would be starved and weak and never bother me again.

*Please note none of us are schizophrenic. We used the term “voices” to mean our inner self-talk, not hallucinations. I don’t know why I feel the need to make that distinction, but there it is.
**I want to draw this to some conclusion here. I want to express some grand observation. But I think all I have to say about it is that it happens. Maybe it’s something that other people need to hear. Maybe it’s just something I need to say.