Category: Essays

longform, reflective, craft, creativity

  • Saturday Summary | Samhain Week Two

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    Work! No, Rest! No, Read! No, Make! Wait…

    It\’s Saturday, Dear Reader, and the end to a week in the life. The full moon was amazing this week; I tried to capture it on my phone\’s camera as it sat on some clouds but the picture didn\’t quite do it justice.

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    I\’m not even sure I actually managed to capture the moon, because she was really big over those clouds and I wonder if she\’s behind the greyish smokey stuff, or if I just pointed the camera in the wrong place.

    Which, when you think about it, might be an apt metaphor for some of this past week, Dear Reader. Ugh.

    On the other hand, there\’s a lot of growth and movement going on, and growing pains are called \”pains\” for a reason. So I\’m going to deliberately focus on the growing part of things, and the good, and the triumph statements, in order to train my brain what to look for.

    And do a lot of meditation. Anyone else tried Yoga Nidra yet? Love that stuff.

    Books, Books, and More Books

    I may be late to the bus, but have you been to your local library lately? Holy cats, they\’re amazing places. The one in Bellevue has a makerspace complete with 3-D printers and sewing machines! And you can check out ebooks. I knew that, but never really played with it much. But for some reason, I\’ve been going nuts at the library. I mean, come on: you\’ve gotta love a place that lets you walk in and walk out with seven or eight books without paying.

    Body – Adventures In Moving

    My husband and I went over to our local wildlands area, Mercer Slough, and had a wander. My gosh, this area is lovely – and it\’s hard to believe it\’s smack in the middle of the second-largest city in the state of Washington! The slough is a wetlands area, home to many species of animals and birds as well as an abundance of plant life. And, as we discovered this past summer, lots and lots of bugs.

    Luckily, bug-season is over so we were able to wander around unmolested this time and took pictures to our hearts\’ content.

    My swimming buddy is off to France for ten days, so I\’m left to my own devices as far as the gym goes. There\’s been a bug going around the office so I didn\’t swim yesterday, but I\’m determined to get outside and wander around today and get my butt to the gym next week. Anyone up for some accountability partnership? I mean, it\’s the week before American Thanksgiving (wait, what???), so I don\’t know about you, but my body sure could use some moving around.

    Mind – What I\’m Reading

    Craftfulness: Mend Yourself by Making Things*, by Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin*

    The subtitle of this is what caught my eye – I have been fascinated by this aspect of maker culture since I first started knitting in Y2K. Julia Cameron, in The Artist\’s Way*, points out that art is therapeutic, not therapy. This book takes the idea further by blending current understanding of brain science and mindfulness with traditional approaches to craft. There\’s something magical that happens when we make things, and this book explores what that \”something\” is and how to encourage it to happen on purpose.

    Fire Cider! 101 Zesty Recipes for Health-Boosting Remedies Made with Apple Cider Vinegar*, by Rosemary Gladstar and Friends

    Did you know that herbalism is a radical act? Well, it turns out this is literally true as regards \”fire cider,\” and after a long court battle to protect the name from being trademarked by greedy corporate interests, this book celebrates the history and modern applications of traditional remedies and recipes. I have been studying herbalism for nearly forty years and this book makes my heart sing. Plus, it\’s got more than one recipe for toasted nuts that sounds amazeballs. (Yes, I\’ll post pics when I make it.) Definitely worth checking this one out.

    Spirit – Mindfulness Practice, or Where Does Writing Come From?

    Those of you who have been with me for a while know I\’m an adult survivor of child abuse. The journey to healing can be a long one and frustrating, but ultimately I can say that it\’s rewarding. I don\’t want to sound like the inside of a greeting card with syrupy prognostications of \”You\’ll get there, Little Birdie,\” but I have to believe that healing is possible because my personal survival depends on that sure and certain knowledge.

    I\’ve talked a lot about The Artist\’s Way and have done workshops with others since 2007, and used it personally since 1995, so it\’s pretty obvious that I think there\’s something to it. It works. So I use it. It\’s as simple as that. But in January of this year, I came across iRest Yoga Nidra with Molly Berkholm and it\’s quite honestly been life-changing. I\’ve meditated my whole life, but the protocols in the iRest method are easy to use and implement. I highly recommend it to everyone but particularly those of us recovering from trauma, of whatever source, and working to heal PTS.

    I\’ve been journaling all year like it\’s going out of style; I\’m averaging between 150 and 200 pages a month now. But Story has been slow to come. I\’m pleased to say that I sat down on Thursday and got some movement on Ambush, which is Book 4 in the Chicagoland Shifters series. I REALLY want to get this book done and out the door, but it\’s been a very slow process. So getting forward movement is so very exciting.

    Space – or, They\’re Replacing Our Roof

    Ugh. I don\’t like strangers in my space. A couple months ago, they painted the exterior of our complex. While I like having fresh paint, it was a pain in the neck. We thought the fuss and bother was over but nope! Fresh joy awaits. We\’re now into week three of roof replacement, because they\’re doing three of the buildings, ours included. Last night, my husband and I went out for date night to a local drive-in eatery (if you\’re in the area, check it out, it\’s super fun and really yummy; Burgermaster). We came home to find that the ceiling had leaks in the bedroom (three last night plus a fourth that happened during the night) and one in the living room over the couch. Thankfully they didn\’t happen over the piano, any of the electronic equipment (computers and such) or art collections (like, say, my journals that are stored in one of the closets) or, gods forbid, the bed! (Blarg.) So all in all, the damage is relatively minor, but holy cats I\’m cranky. It\’s amazing how de-centering having things go wrong with one\’s home can be.

    The Week To Come

    This is the last full week before American Thanksgiving, and the last round of chelation therapy for my husband, (who has heavy metal poisoning with mercury, barium, and lead). Then comes Thanksgiving week which we had hoped to spend in Philadelphia, but due to price gouging by the airline industry tickets are over $750 USD – PER PERSON – for the holiday week, and that\’s not even the whole week. We\’d leave like Monday and come back Saturday, not the whole Saturday to following Sunday thing I\’d wanted to do.

    So, enter Plan B: we will go out to visit family in February/March, weather depending, when tickets are more reasonable – and it\’s my husband\’s birthday in February anyway, so there\’s that. We will still take the week off, as originally planned, only spend it doing an actual staycation – since we haven\’t had a vacation in three years, we\’ll spend it being tourists in Seattle. We\’re taking a friend from out of town to Bainbridge Island to explore the shops and have lunch – and ride the ferry, of course! – and then an underground tour of Seattle. We\’re planning a whale-watching ride and some other things as yet to be determined. But I plan to be a tourist the whole week – complete with camera and travelogue. I\’m so excited.

    What about you, Dear Reader? What\’s going on in your world?

    *Affiliate links.

  • Saturday Summary | Samhain Week One

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    NaNoWriMo* is in full swing and it\’s a chilly, rainy day in the Seattle area. I\’d say peaceful, but they\’re replacing the roof on my building and the roofers started at 08:30. That\’s in the ay-em. On a fucking Saturday.

    And I didn\’t kill \’em. Not even once.

    Happy Celtic New Year! I\’m so grateful that it\’s a new year and new beginnings, because it was past time to put the old year in the ground. Man, what a couple years it\’s been, huh? We live in a brave, new reality that bears very little resemblance to the one we were living in a few years ago. The world is waking, and it\’s a good thing, but chaotic, nu?

    As I\’m doing over on my Knoontime Knitting blog, I thought I\’d check in on the week and share a progress report. For one thing, I realized I REALLY miss blogging. I happened to look back at some posts that I wrote for a group blog \”back in the day,\” and realized there\’s some good stuff there! (Which, for those of you wondering, I will post here as throwback posts just as soon as I can get my fingers to type up the post links and things. Never fear, Dear Reader, I\’ve gotchoo.)

    But fallow periods are necessary. As Dr. Mia Rose points out, nothing blooms all the time. And so for us, we need to remember, and by \”we\” I mean \”I,\” that sometimes rest periods, fallow periods, dry spells happen. I am also learning that I need to celebrate the small steps I take in the direction of my goals/dreams/inspirations/squirrels. And as for squirrels, sometimes I just need to chase them because doing so brings me deep and abiding joy.

    Take this post, for instance. It\’s a bit of a squirrel. How I got there was, I met with my accountability partner this morning, had a fantastic meeting with her. Then I met with my web designer and technology advisor, and WE had a great discussion. As part of that discussion, I was trying to find a post written by a colleague on a group blog and poof – I found some posts I\’d written, one of which is still relevant today as it was five years ago. And poof, I said to my designer, I miss blogging, and she, very reasonably, pointed out, \”Well, you can blog now.\”

    Hmph. Way to puncture a really good pity party there, chica.

    Ergo, I\’m blogging. But about what?

    Ah. THAT, Dear Reader, is my inner critic, come out to play with me and interfere with me getting in a sentence edgewise. So I decided, I did, to come here and do a blog post for Saturday, a check-in of sorts, and voila. I\’m blogging again. Just like that.

    And sometimes, it really is just that meta.

    What about you, Dear Reader? What was your week like this week? What are you planning for the week to come?

    *NaNoWriMo – What Izzit?

    National Novel Writing Month is every year in the month of November, and participants endeavor to write the draft of a novel, which is defined as 50,000 or more words written entirely during the month. I volunteered for several years to help out with the Chicago Region, which includes the third largest city in the country and over 5,000 participants every year. This is my first year not volunteering in a while and I confess to being a little bereft. The Seattle region is quite large but, though a logistical brain fart, I neglected to get tickets to today\’s train write in and by the time I realized I should do so, they were sold out. So THAT is a cautionary tale if I ever heard one – strike while the iron is hot, Dear Reader, and don\’t be left behind.

    But now, it\’s brunch time. Do tell me, though, in the comments what your week is like; I\’d love to know!

  • Buh-Bye May, Hallo June!

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    So, May sort of came, beat up everybody, and left. It feels like it should still be April 17th.

    But it\’s not. It\’s the first of June.

    In 2019.

    How\’d that happen?

    I didn\’t get as much done this year as I\’d hoped by now, certainly not bookwise – I know, I know, the books still aren\’t up. Good gravy, that\’s been a learning process. The two biggest things I learned are: stress interferes with our creative processes, and social media steals time.

    So rather than wax eloquent about writing, I figured I\’d write an update post to you, Dear Reader, and see where we go from here.

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    Our dog, Coyote, died on the Tuesday after Memorial Day. Man, that\’s been hard. We had to take her to the vet to be put to sleep, because she was sick all weekend. I don\’t really want to talk about it, but I figured it\’s important news so I should share.

    My coauthor and partner Rachel came in for a visit earlier in May, but Murphy\’s Law prevailed and pretty much everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. That was the Vacation That Wasn\’t, and again, I don\’t really want to talk about it.

    But as it turns out, stress has an effect on creativity. In preparing some pictures for today, I noticed that I never finished the A to Z Challenge in April, and I still have pictures that I took for it. I\’m not sure if I have any wisdom to share about not posting them, other than to say, sometimes, life gets in the way of our creative plans and we need to honor that. The only way I\’ve found to get back on the page is to, well, get back on the page. Hence today\’s post.

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    Another thing I\’ve observed and talked about in the past is using other creative outlets when one is blocked in a particular one. For me, that\’s typically been knitting. Over the last few months of job upheaval, and particularly at the end of last year when I was in the thick of it, I wasn\’t able to even knit. I just didn\’t have the heart for it. In January and February, I was able to play with my pin loom and learn some pin loom weaving, but it wasn\’t \”real\” creative work. It was solely creative play. I finally got back to the semi-circular shawl I\’d started designing in January, and am now about half done.

    I think that\’s a critical distinction, this difference between creative work and creative play. I don\’t know that I have any answers yet, but I\’m learning there is definitely a difference for me. Creative work is goal oriented: \”get Burning Bright up on Draft2Digital and upload it to retailers and my website,\” which requires me to learn Draft2Digital, Amazon ebook and Amazon paper book uploads, Draft2Digital interface for the other retailers (non-Amazon), and learn MyBookTable, which is a WordPress widget that lets me build a bookstore on the website (I use WordPress to run this and my other sites). Creative play is also critical, to me being happy and contented as an artist. And in order to feel like working on any kind of play, I\’ve found I need to feel grounded, which is why the work-related bullshit was so disruptive to my life.

    On the other hand, my husband and I have had some true breakthroughs this last two or three months. We finally opened a local bank account (which is something on our task list since we moved here last year) at a local credit union, got our taxes sorted out (which is huge since we owe an arm and a leg to Uncle Sam from financing the move with premature retirement distributions). We\’ve been culling our stuff, still, which is honestly a little surprising because I thought we\’d done all that when we moved. Nope. We culled about 15 or 20 paper grocery bags of books, a portable heater, two bookcases, and a copper fire pit last weekend. We completely reconfigured our home office, which really opened up the space. It\’s startling how much of a difference that makes.

    My new employer allows me the privilege of working from home two days a week, and that\’s been a real adjustment. It took a while for me to settle into that new routine, but I\’m finding I really like it. I\’m an extrovert, and I thought I\’d hate it to pieces because it\’s just me and the animals at home. But in fact, I\’m really liking the peace and quiet, and it really lets me hear myself think in relation to my work and that\’s allowed me to be more strategic and intentional. And that\’s surprisingly fun.

    So like I said, May was a pretty intense month. I\’m looking forward to June. The weather is brightening up and we have some hiking planned and a weekend vacation to the Oregon coast later in the month. And yes, I promise, I\’m working on uploading the books. And finishing the knitting. And doing the weaving.

    In short, I\’m practicing being in the moment and following my bliss. And that is surprisingly easy and hard, all at the same time.

    I hope you have a lovely weekend, Dear Reader. And if you\’d like, I\’d love to hear about your Spring in the comments, and what excites you about Summer – or, if you\’re in the Southern Hemisphere, your Autumn and Winter.

    Big love,

    Noony

  • Fallow Periods and Thawing

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    So it\’s like this: one day in April, 2017, I was abducted by aliens and then…

    No. That\’s not it.

    Let\’s see. Once upon a time, there was a summer, and that summer morphed into a tree, and the tree…

    Yeah, that\’s not it either.

    Well, if you follow me over on Noon and Wilder, you\’ll know the last year and a half have been full of upheaval, chaos, and change.

    But I have good news, Dear Reader. Yesterday, while swimming, I got a new story idea. It wasn\’t a big story idea, and it wasn\’t related to anything we\’ve already written, but it was a little snippet of a possibility.

    And that, Dear Reader, hasn\’t happened in a long, long time.

    Stress does that to a person.

    And that brings me to my post today. I am in the process of learning how to do several new things, including book uploads (which isn\’t entirely new to me, but I\’m learning to be more efficient with it) and website design. The publishing landscape decided to skitter off under the furniture when I wasn\’t looking and, frankly, it wouldn\’t have made a difference if I was – change is inevitable.

    I\’m most grateful for learning to incorporate meditation in my daily round. I\’ve meditated all my life, but I found an app that has really helped me on a regular basis, called Calm.

    And I wish that I could give you some pearls of wisdom, something like \”how to keep going in the face of really triggery events and massive national trauma playing out daily on the news.\” But I don\’t have any. All I can say is this: remember to unplug and spend time breathing real air. Move your body and get enough sleep. Eat clean and journal daily. And even with all of that, stress happens and it\’s real.

    Fallow times happen, Dear Reader, they happen to all of us. And me, I feel like I\’m digging up out of a really deep, fertile field and all I have in my hands is rich loam and some really fat worms.

    But swimming, man. I got an idea for a story. And I\’m listening. With all my ears, I\’m listening, Universe.

    Stay tuned.

  • Hate Outlines? Timeline!

    Keeping the plot of a novel-length manuscript can be a challenge for the most organized of writers. If you, like me, aren’t naturally left-brained sequential, then it can be more of a headache because your mind doesn’t organize information in a stepwise fashion. Have you ever looked at your story and realize that everything is happening in one day? or two different things are going on in the same night?

    Reading a manuscript that is disorganized is no fun, for obvious reasons; but what do you do when you don’t like or can’t write to an outline?

    One tool is a timeline that simply tracks each chapter and includes a simple sentence or two as to the action that takes place. I find that I have a bad habit of putting all my action on one or two days, and using a timeline helps me straighten all that out and figure out the flow of the action.

    Here’s an example from Rachel and I, the timeline from our book, Burning Bright:

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    I don’t start using a timeline until I’m about 10,000 or 30,000 words into a project.  Once I have enough material to have a clear picture of the story, then I’m able to write down what I have and see where I am trying to go.

    Another tool is to build a literal calendar:

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    This is from an earlier draft of the book, when we first worked on sorting out when things happened.  It’s important for the flow of the story that the action ebb and flow, rather than clot and spurt.  The calendar can help you sort out who does what to whom when.

    I hope whatever you use works for you.  Every writer is different.  But if you need some ideas for how to play with and reorganize your plots, I hope this generates some solutions for you.

    Write on!

    This post originally appeared on the now defunct Samhain Publishing blog, 01/28/2012.

  • Sunday Box Talk – New Year, New… What?

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    The year that just ended may well come to be referred to as the Year That Shall Not Be Named.  Aside from personal drama, (a close friend in the hospital since March and counting, my co-author\’s sister\’s lung function is 37%), there was publishing drama.  First, Samhain Publishing announced they were closing, then chose not to and tried to gaslight the writing community by asking in a hurt tone, why did you think we were closing?  Maybe because they announced they were.  Words have power, sunshine.  Then Torquere Press melted down in spectacular fashion, leaving those of us that believed the stories from the owner feeling lied to and cheated.  One of their top authors is owed $39,000 USD, editors haven\’t been paid (one is owed $3,500 USD and another over $2,000 USD).  Then, if that wasn\’t enough, All Romance eBooks announced it was closing and gave authors and indie publishers four days notice.  Furthermore, there is mounting evidence that the owner, an author in her own right, took salaries from book earnings and may actually have committed some serious financial fraud.  Then in November, the stunning upset in the U.S. election shocked many, myself included, ushering in a storm of disgusting white supremacy, homophobia, and misogynistic sentiment.  I\’m ashamed to say I don\’t recognize my country right now.

    It\’s enough to scare an author back into her hole, and I\’ll admit, it did.

    But that was 2016.  It\’s 2017.  It\’s time to rally.

    So rally we shall.  It\’s important for creative people to create, in times of great darkness and times of light.  I was planning on working on a memoir, In the Shadow of the Mountain: Growing Up with a Mentally Ill Parent.  It\’s been a rough project to work on, for what are probably obvious reasons, but now it\’s more important than ever to me to tell my story.  Invisibility leads to oppression; we need to be out and proud.  Our stories matter.

    Which brings me to stories – Rachel and I have recommitted to ours and are hard at work/play on the next two books in the Persis Chronicles.  That\’s right, the next two books.  Here\’s what happened:  we drafted Book 3, Sapphire Dream, and then realized we had a problem.  We had over 80,000 words, but half of it is not going to end up in this book.  It needs to be told from another character\’s point of view.  Add to that the fact that half the story is a journey that doesn\’t need to happen, and we\’re into major rewrites.  But I\’m pleased to say that Ruby Sands, the resultant second half of Sapphire Dream and now Book 4 of the Persis Chronicles, is nearly half done and fully plotted out.  I don\’t have a release date yet, because we just got our rights back for Emerald Fire and Emerald Keep and are going to release all four books together, but it will be in the first half of this year (and in the first quarter, if I can possibly make that happen).

    I\’ve also started workshops again.  My passion is Story, both writing it and helping others to get onto the page.  Accordingly, I\’ve started the Prompt Circles with Writer Zen Garden up again and our first one is Saturday, January 21st.  There\’s more information on our Meetup page, here.  We\’ll be doing some other classes online in February and March on writing, and another Artist\’s Way track starting on January 22nd.  Details are on the Meetup, and also the main Writer Zen Garden page, here.

    Beyond that, I\’m knitting up a storm and taking classes at Craftsy in knitting, weaving, and sewing (and some other subjects).  I\’ve made playdates with friends to sew and knit, both in person and online through Google Hangouts.  If you are interested in playing too, please let me know in the comments.

    If you, like me, are feeling small and helpless in the face of a changed tide, please know you are not alone.  Journal.  Your thoughts matter, and having a relationship with yourself is just as important as having one with your loved ones.  Communicate.  Whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, reach out to your friends and family for support.  There are groups online and in person that can give you much-needed community.  And most of all, make stuff.  If you cook, make food.  If you knit, sew, draw, color in coloring books, whatever it is: do it.  Make time, right now, this week, and do it.  Get off the internet.  Mindless surfing is hazardous to your health.  Creating is therapeutic.  Make.  Write.  Create.  The world needs your creations.

    Write on.

  • Walking In This World – Literally

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    My \”Walking in the World\” feature is meant to be metaphorical, in terms of a \”flora and fauna\” report, as author Julia Cameron terms it, and not literally as a report about walking.

    Not today, Dear Reader.  Not today.

    In the late 80\’s, I injured my knee catastrophically while downhill skiing.  I was a racer, but on that sunny Saturday, I sat down to wait for a friend to join me on the main face of the mountain.  When she skied up, I stood up.  My knee dislocated for the twelfth and, though I didn\’t know it then, final time.

    My parents, unhappy with the idea of a jock daughter, failed to have it properly looked at.  I was given an immobility brace for three weeks and no x-rays, and that was it.  By the time I saw a surgeon fifteen years later, the damage was done.  He seemed stunned when he walked in the room with my radiographs.  I had a small bone broken off and floating under the patella, a meniscal tear, and my patella itself was off by 16 degrees.  I had no cartilage left on either sides of the knee:  advanced osteoarthritis.

    I was thirty-three.

    The surgery was a success, by all accounts, and they were able to go in arthroscopically and not have to cut the knee open.  (Uh, good…?)  I had six months of physical therapy and thought that was it.  I was done.  The PT place didn\’t give me any exercises to continue and I was released back to my normal workout routine.

    About three years later, my husband and I decided to go on an Outward Bound Dogsledding trip for nine days in the Boundary Waters, that zone between the U.S. and Canada at the top of Minnesota and the middle of nowhere.

    My doctor stared at the sheet of paper that I needed her to sign:  \”Medical Release Form.\”  All students of Outward Bound over the age of twenty-five are required to get one signed by a doctor.

    \”So, tell me about this knee of yours.\”

    Shit.

    In the end, she did sign the form, but under protest.  She insisted the only way she would do it is if I went to Rehabilitation Institute in Chicago to see an orthopedic specialist there.  If you\’re not familiar with pro sports, this is one of the places in the country they send, for example, injured NFL players in an effort to prevent them being taken completely out of the sport, or car accident victims who might never walk again.

    And, apparently, me.

    Six months it took me.  My physical therapist was a specialist too, with a PhD.  She and my doctor consulted, and they consulted with my primary physician.  I didn\’t need further surgery, they said.  I asked if I could jog, ever again.

    \”Maybe,\” the orthopod hedged.

    \”Maybe depending on what, maybe?\”

    \”If you do everything I tell you to do.\”  He shrugged and pulled up his pant leg, revealing a surgery scar by his knee that was bigger than my three small dots.  Small, but not invisible.  \”I jog.\”  He let his pants down.  \”But it took me a lot of work.\”

    Okey dokey.

    That weekend, I went to the zoo with my family.  We walked all over.  I wore some cute new shoes I\’d gotten at a discount chain store in my neighborhood, the kind that regularly holds \”BOGO\” specials (\”Buy One, Get One).

    The poor quality of the shoe didn\’t even occur to me, until the next day when my knee swelled up to the size of a Chicago softball.

    When I went to RIC that week for my appointment, my physical therapist was horrified.  \”What did you do?\”

    \”I went to the zoo,\” I said, and burst into tears.

    When I got home, I threw out every single pair of shoes that I owned, except for the pair of athletic New Balance that the specialized shoe store gave me on doctor\’s orders, (the doc even gave me a special piece of paper to take with me so they\’d know what kind of shoes to give me), the one pair of office-quality shoes, and a pair of loafer-like black flats – also from the same store.

    Okay, I kept the two pairs of four-inch heels, one a gorgeous, unusual emerald green leather, and the other ruby like the Ruby Slippers.

    I couldn\’t bear to throw them out for another ten months, even though I didn\’t wear them ever again.

    Okay, that\’s not true.  I tried wearing them at work one day.  One day.  And I had to take them off by 11:30.

    Today, I can walk.  A lot.  I can do three miles in an hour, and if I\’m gentle, I can do all day at the zoo.  I can actually jog to catch a bus, as long as it\’s not more than a half-block or so.  I can do squats, and just yesterday with my new physical trainer, I sat down with my weight on only one leg, while holding the other leg in the air.  I didn\’t think I could do it, and I had to \”spot\” my injured leg, but it worked, God damn it.  Three sets of five.

    Walking in this world isn\’t just metaphor.  We\’re physical beings.  It\’s easy to forget that, when we\’re on the computer and sucked into the echo chamber.  But if you\’re not going to the gym on a regular basis, give it a shot.  Even if all you do is walk, it\’s enough.

  • Sunday Box Talk – On Artistic Blocks, Fear, and Forward Movement

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    As many of know, I\’m an author.  Last July, my coauthor Rachel Wilder and I decided to go independent with our Chicagoland Shifters series.  That\’s when the trouble started.  It was as though I was a creative car engine, and I ran out of oil.  I had plenty of gas, but no lubricant and the engine locked up.  Boom.  Nothing.

    Artistic blocks are frustrating because there\’s nothing visibly wrong  But it\’s like we\’re bleeding to death with no blood coming out.  And it\’s incredibly difficult to talk about, because, after all, there\’s nothing tangible that\’s wrong.  If we say something to the wrong person, we risk further blockage, requiring us to practice vigilant self-care in selecting our friends.  I remember I told someone I was having a block, and she guffawed a loud bark.  \”A blocked Noony isn\’t the same as anyone else blocked.\”  Only, it is, and I was, and damn it, it\’s hard to get support.

    Apropos of which, if you are feeling tuck, or clotted, or a vague yearning to make or write something, honor that and get help.  The Artist\’s Way is a great resource, as is a good therapist.  So is taking a class or meeting with a friend to make or write something, no matter how small.

    But my point in writing this is to say, there\’s been forward movement.  In December, we did \”Six Geese Laid – A Holiday Fable,\” set in the world of the Chicagoland Shifters  In March, I was accepted to the Romance Divas Mentor Boot Camp and get to work with bestselling author Violet Vaughn.

    In working with Violet, I\’ve gotten Cat\’s Cradle up on Apple and Barnes and Noble.  I\’m working on Kobo and ARe (All Romance eBooks).  CreateSpace is nearly ready; I just have to fix the footers.

    I know in business, speed to market is critical to success and sometimes a key differentiator between success and failure.  I feel like I did everything wrong with our indie launch, but it\’s taught me some important lessons:

    1. Just show up.  You can\’t get the job done if you don\’t get to work.
    2. \”Right\” is none of my business.  Just do the next task.
    3. Blockage is real.  I am not lazy, I\’m blocked.
    4. I can get unblocked.
    5. Blocks are a normal part of the artist\’s life.
    6. Asking for help is a sign of strength, especially when it doesn\’t feel like it.
    7. It\’s hard to work a full time job, have a functioning family, be a writer, and an indie author.  That\’s a lot of balls to keep in the air.
    8. I like challenges.  The December gym challenge got me to the gym 25 days in a row, and the April A to Z Blog Challenge got me blogging daily on three blogs, plus two team blogs and guest posts.
    9. Sometimes, you need to just fucking do it.  I started a Facebook group for Writer Zen Garden – I kept waiting for the right time and realized if I kept doing that, I\’d wait forever.
    10. PTSD and anorexia suck.  In case you were wondering.

    The moral of this story, or the \”key takeaway\” in corpspeak, is that the only failure is not getting back up.  In July, I got Cat\’s Cradle up on Amazon. I still haven\’t figured out what stopped me putting it on the other vendor sites, but something did.  Self-sabotage, most likely.  Rather than sit and reflect on that, I can work with Violet and other writer friends and move forward, however slowly, to get it out on the other sites.  I\’m still not finished, but each experience teaches me something.  For example, next time, I may hire someone to do the uploads.  It is probably worth the money to pay them to do it quickly and efficiently, rather than this eight month lag-time and shame-fest that I\’ve been drowning in.

    If you\’re reading this and seeing any echoes of your own experience, know this:  just start now.  Start where you are, today.  Make something.  Write some words.  And most of all, forgive yourself for yesterday.  We can only control where we are now, int eh present day.  So own it, own your dream, and own your progress.

    We can do this.

    Write on.

  • Sunday Box Talk – Creating a Reading List

    Sunday Box Talk – Creating a Reading List

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    What do you want to study?  Maybe you just want to read the Great Books, or the history of Ireland, or about the conflict going on in the Middle East.  Other than asking the internet and getting some pithy sound bytes, but no real information, how do you go about learning about these subjects?

    Creating a bibliography is a skill.  Knowing what to include, and what not to include, takes practice.  Doing so can teach you a lot about a subject even before you\’ve read all the books available to you.

    How to Create a Reading List

    1. Start with what\’s available.  Go to the internet and look up the syllabi for courses that cover the subject you\’re studying.  Use them as a starting point, because the professor includes the books that they think are the best ones for the subject.
    2. Ask your reference librarian to help you put together a good list.  They\’ll love you for it – it\’s way more interesting than telling people how to get to the bathroom.  Trust me.
    3. When you find a good book, see what they include in their list of references.  Go check those out and see what you think.
    4. Write notes on what you\’re reading.  Talk to yourself.  The best way to learn from books is to engage with them.  Respect your own opinions.
    5. Talk to others who are interested in the same subject.  See what books and resources they like.

    What about you, Dear Reader?  What subjects make you curious?

  • Sunday Box Talk – Be a Lifelong Student

    Sunday Box Talk – Be a Lifelong Student

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    So let\’s say you\’ve decided to become a student again.  You want to learn new things, develop new skills, maybe have some fun.  Now what?

    Well, first thing is to learn to be a novice again.  Let yourself be bad at something, in order to get better.  Studying is a challenge, too.  Spend time with the material.  Take notes.  Let yourself have the luxury of working at it.

    Once you have all that down, what next?  Where do you find classes for adults?

    Some Ways To Be a (Good) Student

    • VTC – Virtual Training Company (software training)
      • Have you wanted to learn to develop websites?  Make better photographs?  Do video production?  Check out their course offerings.  They have affordable monthly payment options or you\’d save by signing up for a full year.  Those of you looking for a job in I.T., they have training for certification programs like A+.
    • Craftsy
      • Wanna knit?  Weave? Sew? Cook?  The list goes on.  They have a number of free classes, so you can get an idea of how the platform works.  Watch out; this maybe prove to be as addictive as Netflix.
    • Meetup
      • Prefer meeting with people in person?  There are meetups for almost every interest, from writing to science, gaming to coffee, travel to local exploration.  Attendance at many meetups are free.
    • Museums
      • Pro-tip: search Google for \”museums\” and see what pops up near you.  Many museums offer free days for locals, or you can get a pass at your local library.  Try asking your local librarian for suggestions.  You never know what you might find.
    • Community or City College
      • In California, they\’re called community college.  Here in Chicago, it\’s City Colleges of Chicago.  Whatever you call them, these institutions bridge the gap from high school to a four year university.  They also have courses that train students for disciplines like nursing or supply chain management.  You can also learn stuff you didn\’t learn in high school or university.  Miss an opportunity to study calculus?  Want to try literature?  Learn a new language?
    • Park Districts and Adult Centers
      • Check out your local park center and adult community centers.  You can learn all sorts of things from woodworking to jewelry.  These classes tend to be very reasonably priced, too.

    What about you, Dear Reader?  What are your favorite educational tips?

  • Sunday Box Talk – How To Take a Sabbatical

    Sunday Box Talk – How To Take a Sabbatical

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    I\’ve taken sabbaticals a couple times in my life.  While it\’s scary to buck the accepted norm, doing so can teach you a lot about yourself and why you\’re on this planet.

    The first time, I was twenty-five.  I decided to make a solo climb on Mount Lassen, in Northern California.  I got nearly to the peak and sat down to take a break.  Looking south over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, I realized something:  if I followed what my parents wanted me to do, I\’d end up where they were – and I didn\’t want that.  I didn\’t want a predictable, safe, corporate life.

    I wanted to be a writer.

    I\’ve wanted to be a writer since I was very young.  Unfortunately, writing isn\’t one of those career choices that overjoy parents, particularly when their priority is to have the kind of offspring that they can brag about.  My mother died ashamed of my career choices, convinced that the life choices I made were going to send me down the path to failure.  Fortunately for me, by the time she told me that, I knew in my bones that being a writer was the right choice for me.

    But to get there, I had to walk through fire.  At twenty-five, I ran my own department at a large corporation in Silicon Valley.  When I gave notice to quit, the Vice President – General Manager of one of the three main business units called me into his office.  He offered me the assignment I\’d busted my ass to earn:  Market Research Analyst in a team that had offices worldwide – including Russia, which directly related to my bachelors\’ degree in Russian.

    I turned him down.

    Instead, I moved north to the town of Mount Shasta.  We lived on fifty acres of forested land, seven miles out of the tiny town named after the mountain.  I worked in a local bookstore for a dragon of a boss, one of the first abusive bosses I had.  The torture was worth it:  I spent all my time writing or hiking.  In the year that I was there, I produced over fifteen hundred pages and learned a very important lesson:

    Publishers don\’t knock your door down with contracts to publish your book.

    I realized that my next step was to get a good day job that would support my writing passion.  I moved to Las Vegas for two years, which was an awful idea.  Las Vegas is not the town for me.  I found Chicago.  I\’ve been here ever since.  After working in the finance industry for almost ten years, I realized that I wanted to downshift, and took another sabbatical.

    And now, I realized I have some ideas on how to make sabbaticals work.  I figured I\’d share with you.

    Five tips for a successful sabbatical.

    1. Be brave.  Be willing to face the possibility of failure.
    2. Lower your financial expectations.  You\’ll be surprised what you can live without if you try.
    3. Learn to save.  Even if you can\’t take a year off today, you can start saving money so you can do that when you want to.
    4. Shorten your timeframe.  I know a year-long sabbatical sounds romantic, but sometimes we just can\’t swing it due to financial realities and family commitments.  If that\’s the case, try swinging a weekend or two weeks\’ vacation.  Get a hotel or even a youth hostel and work on your writing.
    5. Decide what your priorities are.  Do you want to be successful at your corporate job, working for someone else\’s dream?  Or do you want to be a writer and follow your own pied piper?
  • Sunday Box Talk – The Purpose of Education

    Sunday Box Talk – The Purpose of Education

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    What’s the purpose of education? Nowadays, increasingly, it’s to get a job. It’s more about technical training than it is about educating the mind. And yet, with the proliferation of smartphones, always-on internet connectivity, and ever expanding inflow of information sources, we need the benefits that a good education bring more than ever before.

    In classical terms, to be educated meant that one knew how to think. The discipline of thinking wasn’t just something one did; it required work, application, and skill. We’ve forgotten this skill, and that’s a bad thing. It used to be that an educated person would read certain pieces, in common with other educated people, and then engage in discussion about the ideas on those pieces. While the “canon” has been attacked as being male, white, and patriarchal, the ideas contained in it are as valuable now as they were fifty or a hundred years ago. There’s nothing wrong with studying the classical canon, and then adding to it all the rich heritage of minority and women’s voices.

    One thing lacking in today’s environment is the ability to hold a competing idea in one’s head long enough to understand the other person’s point of view. We’ve lost the art of discourse. It used to be that one could listen to another person’s thoughts, digest them, and then either disagree or agree once one was certain one understood them. In fact, Mortimer J. Adler argues that one cannot truly agree nor disagree until and unless one has fully comprehended what the other has had to say.

    Something else I’ve noticed is that we don’t have gatekeepers for incoming information anymore. It comes at us with the velocity of a fire hose, all the time. If we’re away from our computer, it comes to our smartphone. If it doesn’t come there, it’s on the television at the gas pump, (how offensive is that?). When my grandfather was alive, you would get a large newspaper on Sundays and the day was spent relaxing and reading – long – articles.  Now, news is delivered in soundbytes, and the average length of articles is 300 to 500 words – a blip when compared to articles from even just fifteen years ago.

    So What Do We Do To Educate Ourselves?

    There are many tools available to us.  Some of them are modern, and related to the internet.  Some of them are old-school, and related to how we control incoming information.

    1. Read.  A lot.  Whether it\’s ebooks, traditional books, or Bartleby.
    2. Turn off the inflow.  Try it for one day a week – don\’t go on the internet, social media, or your smartphone.  See what the real world has to offer you.
    3. Write.  Journal and get in touch with your own thoughts.
    4. Read about other smart people.  A couple awesome biographies are by Benjamin Franklin and Montaigne\’s essays.
    5. Throw a party and talk about smart stuff.  Why not revive the Victorian tradition of the salon?  Have cocktails, snacks, and talk about the great ideas.

    What about you, Dear Reader?  What do you want to learn?