Pics from the Oregon Writers Network workshops

Photos from the workshops, as well as walks on the beach, can be found here. Enjoy!

Pics from In the Flesh LA

A couple of photos from my reading at In the Flesh LA can be found here, to supplement the ones at the blog.

Enjoy!

Ken's big news!

I know, I teased you all with a mention of this, but truly, I’ve been too busy to do it justice, despite how excited for him and proud of him I am. :-)

As most of you probably know, Ken’s hobby is motorcycle rallies. These are essentially scavenger hunts on the motorcycle, ranging anywhere from 6 hours to 24 hours to multi-day things. The longest he’s done so far was a 7-day rally last year, which he would’ve won had the bike not broken down a few hours from the finish.

The last four rallies he ran, he’s won. This is unprecedented; nobody else has pulled that off before.

The Olympics of the sport, if you will, is called the Iron Butt Rally, or IBR. (Many of these are under the auspices of the Iron Butt Association. Yeah, I know, goofy name. Just work with me here, okay?) The IBR is run every two years, and it’s done by lottery—about 1000 riders sign up for the 100 available slots.

Did I mention it’s essentially 11,000 miles in 11 days? And that more people have gone into space than have run this rally (as of 2007)?

Anyway, Ken didn’t get picked for the 2009 rally. Then, at the end of last month, he won his fourth rally in a row, in Utah, and on his way to Oregon after that, he got a phone call.

He’s been invited to run this year’s IBR.

We waited until he got home from working in Oregon to discuss it fully; to contemplate at finances and schedules and all the other little issues and questions surrounding the decision. Still, I knew how badly he wanted to do it, and that the timing, despite being essentially last-minute, is pretty good: He doesn’t have a full-time job to juggle, and the bike’s pretty much set up in rally mode already. Financially, it’s not the wisest course of action at this moment in time, but you know what? Sometimes that can’t be the overriding factor.

My beloved’s running the IBR! Yay! *\o/*

I’ve got to check the exact dates, but it ends on Labor Day weekend in Spokane, WA, and it lasts 11 days, so that gives you a time frame. One of the checkpoints is in Santa Ana, so I’ll get to see him partway through! :-) And I’m definitely flying up for the awards banquet at the end. (Now we’re just trying to decide if it makes sense for us to finally do my Northwest Motorcycle Adventure birthday trip that was cruelly aborted three years ago when I ended up in the ER on my 40th birthday).

Anyway, he’s spent the time I’ve been away prepping for that, as well as finishing up some house stuff, updating his résumé (since the Oregon work is slowing down), and helping Brian and Morgana move Morgana’s mom into a new apartment, and…

I’ll no doubt be babbling about the IBR over the next month and a half (including updates while he’s on the rally), but if anyone has any questions about it, feel free to ask. Also, please send your congratulations and well wishes to him at ken.meese AT mac.com!

Enough about writing. Let's talk about reading!

Okay, so now that things have calmed down a little and I’m not in total writer brain, I can talk about other things that have happened recently! (“Recently” being an odd term for my head right now, because everything pre-Oregon seems like a loooong time ago.)

My reading at In the Flesh LA at Hustler Hollywood went very well! You can follow that link to a write-up about the evening, complete with pictures. Kim & Tom and Fran & Thom all came to support me, which was great. Thank you, guys! Because I’d practiced beforehand, I was only a little nervous, and although I bobbled a couple of times, everyone said it wasn’t obvious. I got laughs where I was supposed to, and none where I wasn’t supposed to, and that’s about the best that can happen, right?

(On the other hand, because I practiced ahead of time, I realized the story could very easily be the beginning of a novel. Because I need another bloody novel idea right now!)

The other readers read fun stuff, and our friend Tom won a goodie bag by being a good sport and reading some of another reader’s poetry. Yay Tom!

After that, Ken and I went to a hotel near the airport, since I was flying out early-ish the next day. It was nice to have a quiet evening after a day of running around packing and being a wee bit nervous about the reading.

Now, here’s the really fun part: Next month I’m part of a reading tour for three anthologies (of which I have stories in two, two solos as Andrea Dale and one coauthored with Teresa as Sophie Mouette). Guess where it’ll be held? At the regular In the Flesh LA night! I’ll send around a proper notice, but for now, you can mark your calendars for Wednesday, August 12, at 8 p.m.

Even more fun: Teresa will probably the phone-in reader!

I’m still trying to figure out which story of mine to read. The longer one has a great voice and would be more fun, but it’s too long, and I’m not sure if reading part of it will work. I need to try it out, see how it sounds. Hm, and maybe I should find out which of the three anthologies the other authors are reading from…

Here are the anthos I’m in:

Lesbian Cowboys: Erotic Adventures, “Queens Up” (as Andrea Dale)

Where the Girls Are, “Come to My Window” (as Andrea Dale) and “On Display" (as ½ of Sophie Mouette)

Over and begun

The workshops are over. (I’ll pause a minute to let that sink in…for me, at least.) I’m at our friends Lev & Gayle’s, heading to the airport in about an hour. They were kind enough to let me crash here last night. It worked out rather well, in fact; I arrived around suppertime, just after they’d arrived home from a weekend away, and since the friends Leslie was going to stay with weren’t going to arrive home ‘til late, she was able to join us for dinner.

(Of course, I’ll probably be posting this at the airport, because PDX has free wireless, but anyway.)

The second workshop was about Contracts and Copyright, and I got a headache hunched over the contracts we studied. It was unbelievably helpful, and yet we really only scratched the surface. I realized that contracts stress me out in part because I’m used to being able to read something and for the most part understand it—but I can read a contract clause and my eyes will have glazed over by the end and I’ll have no idea what it said. I won’t even have remembered the words. Of course, they stress everyone out, even attorneys who aren’t versed in intellectual property contracts.

I also learned that I’ve been misreading some contract language, which is illuminating as well. I’m looking forward to re-reading my previous contracts with a fresh eye.

Overall, it was an amazing time. I’m still exhausted, but somehow also refreshed, recharged, re-energized. I have new tools in my toolbox, ones that are going to change the way I work.

Leslie and I walked on the beach 7 out of the 10 days we were there, getting the loop down from about 50 to 40 minutes. Most days were cloudy, but yesterday was sunny and perfect. The water sparkled. The sand sparkled.

I already miss Leslie, miss the Oregon coast weather, miss Dean and Kris (whom I barely got to talk to) and all the other fabulous writers I’m privileged to call friends as well as colleagues.

All that said, I’m really, really glad to be going home. I miss Ken, I miss the cats, I miss my house and my bed and my DVR with fun stuff like Leverage and Torchwood waiting for me. Meg is coming to visit for a couple of days, and I have a much-needed massage and chiro appt in my very near future.

And I’m looking forward to the work I have on my plate. I’ve been reminded, though, that it’s not work. It’s fun. I can’t wait to see what happens!

~ ~ ~

At the airport now. I asked if they could switch me from an aisle to a window seat, and I scored an exit row! ::does happy dance::

Now to do a little work before boarding. See you on the flip side!

---

Currently Reading: Valley of Silence, Nora Roberts
Lately Listened To: The surf and the gulls and Dean talking and Leslie laughing
Recently Watched: Flight of the Conchords, episode 1, with Lev & Gayle & Gayle’s nephew. Too funny!

We merry few, we band of writers

Our small group/one-on-one Structure workshop with Dean is mostly over, except for lunch tomorrow. We had no assignment tonight, so Leslie and I crashed, snagging the DVD A Night at the Museum from the main building. It’s one of her favorite movies, and I greatly enjoyed it. We laughed and laughed… Ah, it felt good.

Leslie and I have been getting along smashingly, negotiating a small cabin (her bedroom’s basically the living room; mine has a groovy beaded curtain for a door) with aplomb and great humor. I’m sooooo glad that when Phae bailed last minute, I thought to ask Leslie if she’d be willing to share the cabin (I couldn’t have afforded this otherwise, and she was thrilled for the price break as well).

Truth be told, we weren’t incredibly stressed this week. Dean swiftly figured out that none of the six of us had problems with story structure¬—we had other things blocking us. Teaching us some tricks of structure—things to internalize, send back to the subconscious to work as we’re writing, oblivious to them—was intended to get us past those blocks.

Fact is, every writer hits the same block at about the same place. Some writers have figured out how to get through it, so they don’t notice it as much. Neil Gaiman hits it. Charles de Lint hits it. Dean hits it. Man oh man, do I hit it! But now I’m feeling like I know what to do when I hit it, rather than flailing around in the dark like a drunken monkey.

The worst thing for a writer is for someone else to get into the middle of their project. You should be alone in your office: shut the door on critics, naysayers, editors (during the initial creation, this is), market news, etc. So, for the purposes of this week, Dean forced us all to start novels we didn’t plan on. Novels we didn’t, in some cases, even want to work on. For me, it was to take an exercise we’d done last weekend, which involved writing up a shopping list, and start expanding it into a novel.

I knew I should’ve made my shopping list for a sex toy boutique instead of a grocery store…

So now I have this here begun novel. It’s at about 6000 words. It’s funny, potentially sexy, and hoo boy, the problems I’m throwing at my characters.

It’s also, unfortunately, about cooking (among other things), so I see a bunch of eps of Top Chef in my future… Did I mention it’s called Seasoned With Danger?

The proposal is written, even, so after I clean up a few small details, I can actually get it circulating. (I’ll finish blanketing the world with the Waking the Witch proposals first.)

This weekend is the Contracts and Copyright workshop, and I sorely need it. I know there isn’t enough time to get nearly as deep as we’d all like, but we’ll come out of it with a far better grounding. I brought a couple of really bad contracts I’d been offered and refused (after the publisher declined to negotiate), and Dean nearly fell out of his chair when he read them….

Anyway. I’ll post this tomorrow (which is already today). Right now I’m very sleepy, and we’re having breakfast with Chris York tomorrow at the Inn at Spanish Head—yum!

Workshop Time

Workshop Time is an entity unto itself. Sometimes it feels as though I’ve been here for a week; other times, I want to refer to my reading as “last night.” The days blur, stretch, compress, expand. How many times have we walked on the beach? Which night did I toss and turn? How can I still have so many sandwich fixings but no milk?

I’m also trying to consider, each day, what motivates me here. What positive influences I can take home that drive me to the computer day after day. (Don’t get me wrong: I love writing. I can’t not write. But sometimes I avoid it, and I need to figure out why so I can stop doing it. The fear moves constantly. Bastard.)

Today Leslie and I woke about the same time, so we chatted during breakfast (about epic fantasy and religion and Kris’s books and, briefly, boobs), then we made tea (I brought my electric kettle). Now we’ve both retreated to our corners to sip tea and work, after which we’ll shower (not together, you pervs) and continue on. We’ll meet with Dean at The Hilltop for a session at 2 p.m., at which point we need to have our assignments done.

What would I be doing at home? Sipping tea and reading blogs, most likely. I’m not getting a strong enough wireless signal here in the cabin, although I did pop e-mail on my phone this morning. (Got some preliminary good news about a positive review, and my writing alias e-mail spammed my home e-mail address. Go figure.)

Now, to my assignment, one that made me giggle out loud more than once while I was working last night….

Sproing!

I’m in Oregon, having completed the first of two weekend workshops, which will bookend five days of a writing retreat. We studied story structure, which I thought I mostly knew, but apparently my definition of “story structure” was much, much more limited than I realized… Not nearly the level of epiphany as the Marketing Workshop last year, but hoo boy, did I have some light bulbs go off! Definitely some new tools for my writer’s toolbox, as they say. And at least one new short story idea I’m quite chuffed about.

I flew up on Thursday and met up with Leslie, Cindie, and Dave. Traffic was horrid, so we stopped for a late lunch/early dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place before really getting on the road. Still more traffic (a huge thanks to Leslie for driving through that with great skill and calmness!), but finally it thinned out, and finally we were in Lincoln City.

That night we hung out with a few other folks who’d come in early, as well as Dean, Steve, and Chris, before Leslie, Chris, and I repaired to our room to polish off a couple bottles of wine. (Dean stopped by to drop something off for Leslie and stayed for ages to chat, and also showed off his bartending skills by pouring us wine. Hee.)

Leslie and I are rooming together, and that’s proving to be a blast. We’ve known each other through a number of workshops, and while I had a pretty good sense that we’d get along well, I’m delighted just how comfortably we room together. Especially since her bed is in the living room of the cabin, and my bedroom doesn’t have a door, just a beaded curtain. (Groovy, man.)

We’ve managed to walk on the beach several times, which is always a highlight. The round trip takes 45-60 minutes and includes a nice uphill on the way back; we plan to have glutes of steel by the time we leave…

Originally I was going to just have a writing retreat for the five days between the two workshops, but after experiencing the Story Structure workshop and talking to Dean, I’ve decided to do a one-on-one session with him to work on some advanced structure issues. I’m not yet sure what my precise issue is, but I trust we’ll find it and he’ll beat it out of me with a club (or at least some hardcore assignments).

Now, however, I must dash: I have to finish a scene on PUM and get it off to Teresa before I meet with Dean to get tonight’s assignment, and I’d also like to maybe work on a short story if I have time. I still have a bunch of stuff to bring ya’ll up to speed on, though, like how my reading went, and some very very very exciting news about Ken!

Boggled

Long-time readers will remember that I grew up in a relatively small town in upstate New York where we didn’t get MTV for the first few years of the channel’s existence. I even remember asking Sarah (in one of our exchange 40-page-leters-every-two-weeks) what the hell this MTV she was babbling about was?!

In very great hindsight, I find myself wondering whether this ended up being blessing or a curse. If we’d had MTV, would I have tuned in to MuchMusic on one of the Canadian stations we were able to receive? Because if I hadn’t, I never would have seen the glory that was the “A Criminal Mind” video (complete with shots of Gowan, as he was then known, in a cage—my 17-year-old hormones didn’t have a clue what to do with that, but now we understand, oh, do we understand!). And goodness knows that was instrumental in leading me down the road that leads right smack dab to here. (When Styx announced Lawrence as their new keyboardist, I believe my response was “My Lawrence Gowan?!”)

But I digress. I’m not really here to talk about Styx (at least, not tonight). I’m here to talk about seeing Yes, with Special Guest, Asia, at the Anaheim House of Blues Sunday night.

I admit it, what I really wanted to see was Asia. I was listening to them while I was writing, I believe it was Thursday night, and some part of my brain blipped to the forefront and said, “Didn’t we hear something about them touring?” Honestly, I hadn’t followed the band’s career, didn’t know much more than the first couple of albums. But I had the power of the Internet at my fingertips, and lo! they were opening for Yes, and as the House of Blues is GA, that was the show to hit this week in the area.

I don’t have time to review the whole show here; I just want to say this: The highlight of the night—the highlight of a good chunk of my life—was when John Wetton said that these were the first hands ever seen on MTV, and Geoff Downes started playing a song from another band he’d been in.

The Buggles.

That’s right, Asia played “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

I didn’t get to see it launch MTV, but I got to see and hear it live.

(FWIW, because I’m also a band geek, my runner-up highlight was “Fanfare for a Common Man.” I am a total sucker for rock bands who do a stellar job of reinterpreting/reimaging classical music.)

In the Flesh reading

I'm going to be a featured author at July’s In the Flesh: LA in Hollywood!

Here’s the info:

When: Wednesday, July 8, 8 p.m.

Where: Hustler Hollywood, 8920 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069, 310-860-9009

What: In the Flesh: LA is the West Coast version of the acclaimed In The Flesh reading series founded by Rachel Kramer Bussel, and “features the city's best journalists, authors, scriptwriters and more offering their torrid tales for your entertainment and titillation.”

I’ve never done a reading before so I have to confess I’m getting kind of nervous… Oddly, I think I’ll be less nervous if I look out and see people I know, rather than complete strangers. I realize that it’s in the middle of the week and (for those of you in outlying areas*) it can be quite a trek to Hollywood, but if you can possibly make it, I would be eternally grateful and would love to see you.

Plus, there’s free underground parking on-site, complimentary snacks and desserts, and the chance to win a goodie bag of prizes! I have to admit, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Hustler Hollywood when I went to last month’s reading, so I’m delighted to say it’s a clean, bright, inviting store with a café, lots of books and t-shirts, and a fantastic, fun, positive atmosphere.

(*Yes, I know a lot of you aren’t even in southern California and that this post is really aimed at my friends who are local. However, I’m imagining all the rest of you will be there in spirit! Don’t let me down!)

If you have any questions about the reading, feel free to e-mail me at cyvarwydd@mac.com. Wish me luck!

and on and on

So much to update, so little time…

Two weekends ago was Carreg Wen Anniversary, and it has been far too long since we’ve visited that fair Shire. On the way we picked up our friend Lareej. We’ve known her forever, but she took a hiatus from the SCA and in the past year or so has been getting active again.

We’d forgotten what Lompoc was like—essentially fogged in—so we pretty much froze our patooties off, but we had a great time. The event was small, so we just hung out with friends and laughed a lot. And Ken won the rapier tournament so he’s Carreg Wen’s Rapier Champion! My Renaissance man: three motorcycle rally wins in a row and now a rapier championship. (And more on that later…)

Then Lareej came home with us and we were up drinking and carousing until 5 a.m. Yeah, I’ll sleep when I’m dead…

Ken spent last week finishing up stuff around the house, including building some new bookshelves for our joint office. (We’ll be moving the magazines to those, then shifting everything over so he has more space behind his desk for stuff.)

Then he headed off to Oregon for another rally, and I headed off to CP Prize Tourney, because I haven’t been to a Kingdom event in ages and ages and I’ve missed everybody. I carpooled with Ismay and Alia and Lareej (who crashed here the night before, and I swear we stayed up only until 1 a.m. this time, given that Ismay was due to show up at 7 a.m.), and you now how it’s like when you put four women in a car together… I had a massively fun day, reconnecting with folks I hadn’t seen in ages and winning a gorgeous bracelet in the raffle (it was the only thing that really sparked for me; I stuffed the rest of my tickets in for things that Lareej wanted, since much of her SCA stuff has disappeared over the past few years). All in all, a hugely enjoyable day, despite how hideously hot it got in the afternoon. We four grabbed dinner in Fillmore before heading home, and then lo, there was much sleeping (at least on my part).

Sunday I headed off to CB&TL to meet with another writer, and while I was there, I got the text from Ken: he’d won his fourth rally in a row! It’s an unprecedented win—as far as anybody knows, nobody has done accomplished this before. Wooh! *\o/*

In between all of that, I’ve been working working working. I was relieved to discover one of the anthologies I’m writing a story for has extended its deadline for a month; that was the one I didn’t have an idea for yet anyway. As for the rest of them, so far, so good…

Okay, it’s well into Tuesday and I have a writing-and-lunch date with Christine tomorrow morning, so I need to fall over in a wibbling heap of sleepy.

---

Currently Reading: Dance of the Gods, Nora Roberts; RT Bookclub; Faerie Magazine
Lately Listened To: Then and Now, Asia
Recently Watched: Doctor Who: The Next Doctor; NCIS rerun

This is what happens...

...when I let my Fabulous Gay Hairdresser free reign with a blowdryer and hair-straigtening thingie.

The cute receptionist at my gynecologist's loved it, so I guess it can't be all bad.

But I laughed in FGH's face when he suggested I, oh, buy a hair-straightening thingie. Really, who has the time?

When it rains, it pours...of course!

Right now, I have only one official deadline. By “official” I mean a deadline imposed by an editor. Everything else I’m working on has deadlines I’m imposing on myself. Not everyone thrives in that kind of atmosphere, but I do.

So (gulp) here’s what I’ve got on my plate right now:

By July 1, I have 4 (four!) anthologies I want to submit stories to. Two are erotica, and those are pretty short. I’m tempted to say “easy” as well, but no story is ever truly easy. With one, at least, I want to push a little bit, delve into the emotions a little deeper than I normally do.

The other two anthologies are science fiction. I write more fantasy than SF, and with one of the stories (which I’ve already started), I’m dealing with a difficult subject matter. Right now I haven’t a clue what I’m writing for the other story.

So, for the record, that’s four stories due in 12 days. Which is pretty darn easy when you look at it like that, given that I’ve written any number of overnight stories at workshops. I have ideas for three of the four stories, and one is already started.

Then there’s the new Custom Erotica Source assignment that landed in my In Box yesterday. It’s another fun one, and at 3K shouldn’t take me too long. It’s due July 6, but I’d certainly like to get it in sooner than that.

On top of that, however, the client wants a 500-word synopsis of what I’m going to write. I don’t really plot ahead of time (although I’m certainly capable of writing novel proposals before I’ve written a word of the novel), so it’s a bit of a challenge, and I’m nearly finished with it. (Goal: Send it to the editor tonight.) [Edited to add: I wrote this entry Friday night, and got the synopsis out then as well.]

But what about Possessed, Undressed, and in a Mess, you ask? Teresa and I are about halfway through the book right now, and the deadline in my head for that is July 9, the day I leave for Oregon.

My reasoning is this: I’m going to Lincoln City for two workshops, each over a weekend, and the five or so days between them are a writing retreat for me. During that time, I want to work on a single project, and PUM wouldn’t be a good candidate for that, because Teresa and I are tossing chapters back and forth, plotting as we go, and we frequently have to wait for one or the other to write something in order to know how the next scene should flow. If she were coming with me (and how fabby would that be? but alas, no) then we could easily finish the manuscript and maybe even hammer out a couple of stories… But she can’t be there, so whatever project I work on needs to be something I can focus on myself. And I’d rather have the draft of PUM out of my brain before then.

(I haven’t yet decided what my project there will be. In the running are two novels-in-progress—I’d shoot to finish one of them—or writing 5+ short stories—I have lots of ideas that get pushed aside in favor of an anthology theme, not to mention there are any number of upcoming anthologies I could work ahead for.)

So, to recap: Five short stories and one novel ms in about three weeks. To which I say, Whee! Let the roller coaster begin!

[Edited again: CES client liked my synopsis so much that he’s asked for the story to be doubled in size! Is it possible to say “Yay!” and “Eek!” in the same noise? ::gg:: ]

All I've got. You?

I have an entry written for today—well, for Friday, which has technically passed—but it’s downstairs on Afalwen and I have to get up at 7 a.m. to go to an SCA event, which I might’ve tried to bow out of had we not been bringing someone with us.

So this is it. This is all I’ve got.

What are you doing this weekend?

A meme I can actually get behind

If there is one person or more on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the Internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

Best Lesbian Romance 2010 for the win!

Sale! I opened up my e-mail this morning to find a contract from Best Lesbian Romance 2010 for “Queen’s Up”! The story will first appear in Lesbian Cowboys: Erotic Adventures from Cleis Press in August.

Plus there was an e-mail from another editor saying she should have final approval on the table of contents for another anthology by mid-July. What often happens is that an editor will select the stories, and sometimes even send the contract, but the publisher has the final say on the selections. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, because this is a very exciting potential publication!

(The same caveat applies to Best Lesbian Romance 2010, but I’m being positive because it’s also being published by Cleis, and they’ve never nixed one of my stories as far as I can remember.)

Today is starting out quite nicely!

We <3 Alison Tyler

Editor and author Alison Tyler is being coy as usual. She’ll admit that June is her birthday month, and that she likes to celebrate all month, but she won’t admit which day is her actual birthday.

She ducks her head, hiding behind a fall of dark hair. She says she’s shy while she reveals intimate details of her life. She won’t let us see her face, but she’ll show us her shoes, her little skirts, her panties (okay, maybe not always in pictures, but she paints pictures with words, and how can we help but fill in the rest with our imaginations?).

She writes, she edits, she drinks coffee in the morning and tequila at night (or is it the other way around), and all the while she reminds us how much you can confess while at the same time divulging just enough to tease.

Because you know what teases get? A spanking. Spankings: They’re not just for birthdays anymore.

We’ve declared today to be her birthday, whether or not it actually is, because, well, we wanted to throw her a party. Any excuse to party, right? If you follow the link above, you'll get links to everyone else who's staggering around with glasses of champagne and party horns, wrapped in streamers and smeared with frosting.

So, Happy Birthday Alison! I’ll be thinking of you tomorrow at the Erotic LA expo, imagining you’re there with me, saying, “Oh, I have this toy, and this one, and this one, and ooh, this one’s great, too, and…!”

On staying positive

One of my writing mentors, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, has been doing a series of articles in her blog about how to be a freelancer. She’d originally conceived of doing writing a book, but realized that in these difficult times, people needed the information now.

The series is, well, outstanding. Kris has been a freelancer for most of her adult life, and she’s overcome her share of adversity more than once to be a successful, prolific award-winning writer and editor. She’s also not afraid to be honest, candid, and blunt.

So far she’s covered everything from how to set up your office to the various insurance issues you need to consider, but the article that so far has been the most useful to me is about Staying Positive.

You wouldn’t think that would be a hard thing at some stage of the game. Maybe at first, when the rejections pour in, but hey, I’ve sold two novels and 85 or so short stories. Certainly I must dance to the computer every day and the words flow while rainbow-colored sparks shoot out of my fingertips as I type, right?

Yeah. Snort.

Oddly, hearing someone I have respected for a very, very long time (I was a fan of Kris’s work well before I took the Master Class in March 2002, and I still sometimes have awestruck fangirl moments around her—note that above, I called her one of my writing mentors rather than one of my colleagues. I’m working on that. ::gg::) admit to having moments of self-doubt is somehow encouraging to me. I know that sounds weird. It sounds weird to me. But I know I put people I admire and respect up on pedestals, and I’m working on that, too.

One of the things Kris said she does to stay positive really resonated with me: She keeps a desk calendar at hand, and every day writes down the good things that have happened, writing-wise: fan mail, awards, payments, covers, and the like.

I had the perfect blank journal for this already waiting for me. It’s one that Phae bought for me in Lincoln City during one of our workshops there, at a coffee house with wireless Internet that we frequented (before the workshops moved to a hotel with wireless access). On the front it says, “This is the way you slip through into your innermost home: Close your eyes, and…surrender.” Inside are some other similar quotes. On the back it says, “Unfold your own myths.”

How fucking perfect is that?

So with a purple pen I’ve started logging things. Not every day (yet), but as they come in. The glowing thank you from the client calling my first CES story “PERFECT” (yes, in all caps). The nice things Shanna said about me in her blog (and which I at first downplayed in my own head, rather than embracing—I am prolific, dammit, and I have to believe that for it to be true). The recent e-mail I got from an editor about a novel query: She didn’t think it was for her, but rather than just rejecting it, she saw enough merit in it that she “checked with a few of [her] colleagues” and gave me the direct e-mail of another editor who’d like to see it.

I’m even tracking the good writing days, the ones where I hit my goals. No dancing or rainbows, but close enough for me. It’s good to be reminded that some days, the writing does flow. You just have to get out of your own way and let it happen.

My fantasy has turned to madness

After a frustrating couple of days—problems with my shoulder killed my productivity and sapped my energy and enthusiasm—today was quite lovely and productive.

• We threw the fixings for white bean/chicken chili into the crockpot. Nom.
  
• We watered the cat (i.e., gave Grimoire subcutaneous fluids).
  
• I did some dishes. (There are now more, and I think they’re my chore again. Dammit.)
  
• I sent an e-birthday card to a friend.
  
• I wrote on Possessed, Undressed, and in a Mess and submitted two recently returned stories. (Sadly, did not get to short story or critiquing.)
  
• I compiled some info for a nonfiction article and did some other related research.
  
• We worked out at the gym.
  
• We detoured on the way to the grocery store to watch the sunset from the beach (the beach is about half a mile farther away than the store, so…).
  
• We watched several episodes of season three of Alias while trying to figure out if this is the season where the show jumps the shark.
  

Tomorrow, more of the same. Ken’s going to go to fighter practice, and I may wander by with a handwork project or the laptop and watch him poke at people with long metal objects. Or, if she’s up to it, Morgana and I may go for a walk. Either way, there will be writing and critiquing and nonfiction article brainstorming and querying.

Now, very soon, there will be bed. And that’s always good.

---

Currently Reading: Getting Over Jack Wagner, Elise Juska
Lately Listened To: RWA workshops on the iPod while working out
Recently Watched: Alias

Hittin' goals

	745
22
lab.drwicked.com