Goodbye 2019, Hello 2020

Dear Reader,

The last year has had a good number of challenges. I am hoping that next year has less challenges, or at least more effective ways of dealing with them. I will continue my critical examination of The Artist's Way from Julia Cameron. It is a book that has helped me but it has some problematic elements. It's not perfect but it can be a very valuable tool for bolstering creativity during hard times. I am also going to be getting back into posting details about the world of the Umbrel Chronicles series. This will include things like folk lore / historical events. I hope to get so far as to be producing maps of locations but my cartography skills are terrible, so I don't think that will be happening immediately.

This year, I will be putting my library card to use and trying to get my hands on new and interesting books to read. As per usual, if you have any suggestions, let me know in the comments. I am putting on hold the serious push in posting until after the break is over and my kids are back at school. I will be using the time between now and then to plan out blog posts and related materials. In my craft of writing weekly posts, I am going to talk about things like bullet journals and book bibles this month. Namely because I will be working to get my writing bullet journal and my Umbrel Chronicle's book bible into good order. There will be pics posted to go along with it all.

I hope that your new year is happy, prosperous, and productive. ♥

Technical difficulties

My laptop has been acting off kilter. This is making things challenging. If I vanish from the blogosphere for a little while, it is because my tech support (aka my husband) and I are trying to fix the damn thing. I may need an old priest and a young priest at the rate things are going.

Dear Hacker.

I honestly am amused and almost flattered that you attempted to hijack my account. Kindly go fuck yourself and may a plague of fleas infest your crotch.

AW: Morning Blog 68

I feel like I am heading into a mixed episode. I'm grumpy, irritable, and unable to sit still. I feel pressured to do all the things. I am both anxious about everything and not anxious at the same time. I hate mixed episodes almost as much as I hate depressive episodes. I have all this energy and zero focus. I am going to try to keep writing through this.

I am feeling angry with the universe. Part of that anger is irrational and generalized. Part of that anger is over the fact that I am disabled. Part of that anger is with the fact that my brain doesn't work as well as it used to. I feel like it is unfair that I got a college degree and started a career in education only to lose it because of the bipolar. I barely manage to hang on with the daily tasks of being a stay at home mom. It was a lot harder when the kids were smaller. Fortunately, we have a pretty good support network in Beloved's side of the family.

I still get filled with anger and spite when some algorithm decides to spit out a bunch of college advertisements at me. I would love to go back to school and get my master's degree. My plan was to get my masters in teaching after I finished off the few credits I was short for the dual English and Physics degree I was working on. I graduated with a liberal arts degree because I was a year short in both programs to graduate undergrad with that dual degree. And I wasn't able to put both down as my concentration in the liberal arts degree, never mind the fact that I was so evenly split either one could have been my concentration. I went with English as my concentration because I knew that my strengths were in using the written word.

I got out of college and after a spell found myself working in education. I fell in love with it. I tell you, there's nothing like watching some one light up as they grasp a concept they had been struggling with. I decided that I was going to somehow go back to school for a master's and my teaching certification. I figured it was something I could do in my free time before I had kids. Then I had kids. I figured that when they got older and were able to fend for themselves a bit, I could go back to work in education and maybe get that certification.

Then came postpartum depression and psychosis. Then came the bipolar diagnosis. Everything was severe enough that I was labeled as completely disabled due to mental illness by my psychiatrist. On one hand, this was a good thing because it allowed me to have my student loans forgiven. On the other hand, this was a bad thing because I truly am in that state. And the worst part is, inside me, I have the person I was fully aware that mental illness is the reason why I plunge into deep depression for months at a time and I am helpless to do anything about it.

My inconsistency blogging is because of my struggle with depression. On my bad days, it is a struggle to get out of bed and take care of things. It is especially hard when it is during a time that the kids are off from school. I forget about things like self-care. It isn't that I can't be bothered, I just forget that I am a priority in the brain fog of trying to stay on top of everything. Blogging and writing, even my therapy focused writing, gets lost in the shuffle. I feel guilty about being sick like this. Beloved tells me that he knows that I'm not doing this for fun. I still feel guilt for not being able to perform my daily tasks and manage my life as I had before the bipolar hit me like a freight train.

AW: Morning Blog 67

It is disgusting the number of plot holes that I have hanging out in my serial stories. Seriously, Swiss cheese has less holes in it. I am kinda frustrated because in the process of cleaning things up, I have misplaced my notes for how I was going to fix those. Which means, I am either going to continue writing these serial stories by the seat of my pants or I have to sit down and make an outline based off of all of the previous posts.

Dacia's War probably has the least number of plot holes. No, that's not entirely accurate. My science fiction short series would. But that thing is being drawn off of a whole long term series of short fiction pieces that I have been writing in bursts over the last twenty years. I'm thinking about taking all of those short pieces and slapping them together into a single book. The problem is I have parts of the story on the computer, in notebooks, and scattered across my journals. Basically, the same problem that I have trying to put together the Umbrel Chronicles book bible.

I started laughing when I discovered that Xenogen is a real company. They incorporated five years after I had started writing my short stories. Their mission statement isn't too far off from what I predicted. I highly doubt that they are a shadow government bent on world domination through genetic manipulation and general bastardy. I kinda wonder if somebody read one of my shorts and decided the company name sounded cool. This was back when Triond was a thing and I was posting up the science fiction serial up there.

I'm still annoyed that I never got my money from Triond before they went under. I was at 49.95, .05 beneath the $50 cut off for getting a check. I'm trying to decide how aggressively I want to blog on Keen when my blogging on Keen doesn't really get me any callers or chat clients. Keen, however, seems to be going the way of Triond in a slow fashion. I'm not sure how to fund my book production efforts. I thought that Triond was going to do it. Then Google's analytics thing called Panda got rolled out and Triond took a dirt nap.  Keen isn't really a place for blogging for money as much as hoping that your blog post drives traffic to your listing as a psychic reader. I haven't produced as much material over there because I am frustrated with how poorly that performs. At least here with Blogger, I can write whatever I want and talk about the other projects I am working on. Keen nukes posts that take you away from Keen's site and posts that try to promote non-Keen projects you have in the works.

AW: Morning Blog 66

I am feeling pretty discouraged. I thought that my NaNoWriMo project was going to wrap up at 30k, then at 50k, and then at 100k. It's the day after the end of NaNoWriMo and I am 101k words into this project with no sign of end in sight. I'm frustrated because I WANTED to write something like a romance story / fairytale. What I've got is a mess of an adventure story with politics and a romance theme in the background.

It is bitterly ironic that when I have been trying to write over the last month, my kids were especially distracting. But right now, they're just wrapped up in blankets hanging out on the couch listening to train sound effects. Why couldn't they just calm down and let me write over the last few weeks? Ugh.

The weather sucks today. We're under a winter storm advisory right now. It was posted last night as starting from 4 am to 3 pm. It is now extended to 7 pm tomorrow. It has just transitioned from rain to snow. I suspect that there is a fine layer of ice over everything right now. Maybe we won't have to worry about losing power.

AW: Morning Blog 65

I feel like these entries are rambling garbage about ninety eight percent of the time. It's been a challenge to make time for them every morning. For some reason, it is easier to sit down with a notebook and write first thing in the morning than it is to type this up. I have a long term Umbrel Chronicles project that I'm working on that is completely stalled. A story 'bible' is this thing I heard of a few years back where you put pretty much everything you have into a single notebook. All of your world building notes, plot outlines, and character sketches all get shoved into there. I thought it was an interesting concept that could help me stay organized with this series that I'm writing.

There is one small problem. I have so much backstory and related information piled up in notebooks and on scraps of paper shoved into a series of folders, it is a major undertaking to put all that into one notebook. My legendarium for this series is prolific. I am struggling to find the time to do this work that would make the actual work of writing the books easier. I have some of this material online and I don't want to go through the work of hand copying everything.

I don't know how the pros do it. How do they stay on top of everything? Do they have a murder wall with sticky notes and string? Do they have a story bible? Is it a pile of notes that they just hope and pray stay organized as they work? All I know is that I'm finding the books are wandering away from the general outline for the series that I set up years ago. Plot is going in weird directions and I am not sure how much of the old material I can use now.

A part of me says light it all on fire and just go with what I have written thus far. I am that frustrated with it. Another part of me says I should save all of the material I have ever written revolving around this stuff because I can use it somewhere and somehow in my novels.

AW: Morning Blog 64

My kids are playing in the other side of the room and they're noisy. It is very distracting and disheartening that I can't muster up the focus to write while they are being like this. I am tired. It is just shy of nine in the morning and I haven't had my first cup of coffee. I feel drained and exhausted from going out to Thanksgiving dinner with Beloved's parents and siblings. I am at a proverbial spoon deficit right now. I need rest and time to recover from going out and socializing. Mood drop from that is craptacular and does absolutely zero for my productivity.

I feel cold and I'm sitting here with a blanket on my lap. It doesn't do a whole lot to warm me up right now. I'm not sure why I feel so cold.

AW: Morning blog 63

While my NaNoWriMo project has been frustrating me, I am getting ideas for how to wrap up book seven of the Umbrel Chronicles. I am also considering editing my NaNoWriMo project to fit into the world of the Umbrel Chronicles. It wouldn't take too much tweaking. It would be a separate story from the major story arc of the series. Still, I think I can get it to fit as a part of the 'history' of the series. I have to talk to a few people before I do so, because I have some concepts in here that are rooted in their gaming system and I want to make sure they are ok if I take the supernatural elements and use them.

AW: Morning blog 62

I haven't been happy with my writing and I have been stuck creatively in this negative feedback loop. It goes like this:

• Get an idea for a project
• Crippling anxiety that the project won't be 'good enough'
• Try to work on project
• Make some progress on project (get roughly to the middle)
• Anxiety slams into me again that no one is going to read this
• Try to work on project
• Plot goes off the rails
• Get depressed that I can't manage to stick with my plot
• Try to work on project again.
• Eventually finish project
• Anxiety nails me that my work isn't good enough
• Shove project into proverbial drawer
• Proceed again from point one.

This doesn't just happen with my writing. I am currently working on knitting a scarf for someone's yule present. I am not even halfway done with it and I'm anxious that I picked yarn with the wrong colorway and a pattern that is all wrong for the yarn.

I fucking hate anxiety. I force myself to keep working but it gets really hard when the depression stage kicks in.

AW: Morning Blog 61

I am at 94k on my NaNoWriMo novel. I am frustrated with it because the story is turning out nothing like what I had intended. I wanted to write a romance novel. What I have is a romance plot buried under a fantasy plot which is beginning to gear up to get more weird going forward. Characters that I thought were going to last for a little bit fall by the wayside as others that were literally just background dressing for the scene are beginning to come to the fore. I have hit the first major plot point that I had planned, but it took me almost 100k words to get there. And the second plot point has been pushed off for an indefinite period while I deal with what was subplot mechanics that have turned into major plot elements.

This is not the story I had planned to write. I feel like it is a bit of garbage and a pile of politics with some actual story buried in it. I went from having two main characters to three. And it looks like the number of supporting characters is going to keep shifting as I write. It is infuriating because I had a distinct idea in my head as to what this was going to look like. It looks absolutely nothing like what I had planned except in the most vague of senses. I feel poorly about this because I wanted to write a love story that had fairy tale elements.

Now I'm writing a fantasy story that has love story elements. I know I can write is more than one genre, but this feels like I am stuck in just one genre right now. 94k and no idea how I am going to wrap this thing up. Just shameful.

AW: Morning Blog no. 60

They say that having children is nature's birth control. They say that kids are easy when they get old enough to reason. These random people who claim these things might be right about the first point, but the second point is a lie. I'm ready to scream and I'm only an hour and one cup of coffee into my day. The kids have been back-talking me and giving me attitude over things like "eat your breakfast" and "pick up your toys". The problem child is not the younger but the elder. He's hitting the leading edge of puberty and this is going to suck.

Friends tell me that it'll be easier because I have boys. There's been enough drama over the last week that I feel like I'm living in a Latin American tele-novella. We lock horns over the dumbest shit. I ask the boys to do their daily chores and there's a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. School tells me how well behaved they are and such. It'd be nice if it wasn't the opposite at home.

They used to just do their own thing and not fight. They'd play together well. They'd be helpful and stuff. Now, they fight and get in each other's faces. They throw fits over who gets to have alone time in their shared bedroom. And good grief, do they get into arguments about how much who knows what about a given topic. All of this chaotic background noise makes it impossible for me to write.

AW: Morning Blog 59

It's really disappointing to re-read The Artist's Way and find how much classism and ableism is in it. I have gone through the process of working through the book now once a year for the last five years, maybe a little longer. At first, I thought that I was just too busy to do it properly because I was working on it with two small children running around the house. Then I thought that I was struggling with the exercises because I was doing too much to keep up with it. Now, I realize that I had a couple of things working against me here.

First among them is the effects of my mental illness and disability. Second was the expectation that I could just sit down and get rid of the effects of these things on my creativity and my writing in specific by working through this book. I have come to realize that a good number of the exercises that Ms. Cameron has in her book puts me face to face with the long term effects of growing up in a traumatic household.

It is exceedingly frustrating to realize that my problem is not a creative block but rather repressed trauma. Why is it so hard for me to make sketches and not feel guilty about it? Because I was regularly punished for "wasting paper."Why do I feel inclined to hoard my art supplies instead of using them? Because I grew up poor and there was no certainty that they would be there if I needed them in the future. Why do I feel so anxious about just doing some coloring in a coloring book? Because if my work isn't "perfect" then I run the risk of "ruining" the whole book.When that happened as kid, the coloring book got taken away and thrown away because "what's the point if you can't even do this right?"

AW: Morning Blog 58

Omnia's album The Naked Harp is absolutely perfect for the scene I'm currently working on in my NaNoWriMo project. The FMC and the MMC have just gotten married and they're at the feast celebrating the wedding. This is a plot point that I have been trying to hit for the last several thousand words. Ok, maybe several thousand is an understatement. I am at 70k words. I started at 20k. So, I have hit the magical 50k mark but this story shows no signs of slowing down. The plot that I started out with was simple. FMC arrives, MMC courts her, and they get married.

The plot I have now is complicated. The love story happens more in the background as these side characters I developed are stomping all over my plot with things ranging from:

• attempted night time raid on the castle foiled 
• boar hunt gone horribly wrong
• boar hunt gone right
• kidnapping of the marquess's falconing party
• ambush of the ducal hunting party
• rescue of the kidnapped falconing party
• SO MUCH POLITICS
• insane amounts of sass between secondary characters and MMC

The rest of the book is beginning to take shape. It looks like there's going to be another big fight between rival powers by proxy. The FMC and the MMC are going to have a weird relationship that's rocky in public to those who don't know them just because of how they relate to each other. They communicate in fluent sarcasm and sass. And the insane amount of politics is going to gradually wrap up as the FMC and the MMC get settled into their new roles.

I am realizing that some characters require names that I have been referring to most of the time by their title (i.e. Duke). I've been using that awesome fantasy name generator website to come up with place names and names that resemble legit old Norse and Irish names. I've been double checking the names and making sure that they're not vulgar words in modern languages as best I can.

The setting is pseudo-medieval England. There's elements of high fantasy that are just supporting details rather than features of the story. I think, however, the war by proxy is going to make that a bigger deal. I just hope that this story doesn't suck when I get it done and polished up.

Craft of Writing: First drafts suck.

Dear Reader,

There's a general rule about writing anything. Your first draft is going to suck. It may not suck entirely. It may just have whirlpools of suckage interspersed through the flow of the story that interrupt it. It may have characters that are useless sacks of meat that should be drop kicked into the nearest black hole. It may have too many "they thought" and "[character] raised their eyebrow" to make it seem like the character is mentally constipated and have an infinitely high forehead.

These points can make you feel a measure of despair that your entire work is garbage. Writing the first draft of a story is shoveling a pile of shit into a pot with a few seeds. The word vomit portion of writing is the pile of shit. The ideas behind the word vomit portion of the writing are your seeds. The whole contraption is going to smell awful. It's going to make you feel a little sick looking at it, depending on just how the word vomit portion of writing went. There may be a brief rush of glory because "behold, I hath birthed a book/poem/etc."

Don't let that rush of glory in the completion of the first draft fool you into rushing to publish immediately. It's still a pile of shit in a pot with a few seeds, not a rosebush yet. Set the manuscript aside, even if it is for only a month. Then bust out that infamous red pen of doom. Sit down with your manuscript and read it critically, as if you are going to be graded on it by your evil high school English teacher who kept the meter stick handy. Don't feel bad if your manuscript comes out looking like it was part of a murder scene. You're doing surgery on your story and surgery gets a bit bloody.

Rewrite your story with your edits. Save that ugly first draft to reference when you are not sure about a character's name on page whatever. Repeat the process of letting it marinate in the dark of a desk drawer, bloodying it with your pen, and rewrite. Do this as many time as you need to until the real story, the ideas you are writing about, shine clearly. The entire process of editing and revision takes that black hole of a manuscript and turns it into a star through alchemy, sweat, and heartache.

Don't give up on that pile of shit in a pot with a few seeds. Love and care means that editing mercilessly and revising the whole business will get you that rosebush you were looking for. And remember, seeds need to have time in the dark to germinate and grow.

AW: Morning Blog 57

I'm not very satisfied with how NaNoWriMo is going right now. I feel like my story just jumps from scene to scene. I know that I can clean up the transitions and what not when I am editing it later. But I am not thrilled with it. I had a wedding scene I was looking forward to writing and the grand banquet that followed has turned into nothing but politics. I am annoyed with this. The focus of the fanfic this started as was the two main characters falling in love despite their differences.

That's sort of happened but I feel like it isn't very clear in the story. Again, this is something that can be fixed in the revision process. I just feel disappointed. I wanted to write something beautiful and heroic. A fairy tale of sorts, if you would. I don't appear to have captured that energy. There's a lot of grand, ripping adventure going on. But the otherworldly qualities of fairy tales just kinda fell out of my plot. Instead, there is a mass of courtly politics and violence.

I'm frustrated because of late, I sit down with an idea and the end result is completely different from what I started with. I have reached the point that minor throw away characters have turned into lynch pins for plot devices. I can't seem to force the story back onto track. I don't know if this is a good thing or not. I am just irritated that characters are moving out of their appointed spaces and changing plot. Granted, I did not have a firm plot in mind, but I did not plan a royal hunting scene to turn into an ambush followed by a raid on the bandits who did so.

It is like if I get stuck on something the solution is to throw violence into the story and see what happens. I don't know if that is going to make this a good story or just garbage. Hence my feeling dissatisfied and a little nervous about this story. I'm at 70k. I started at 20 because I decided that NaNoWriMo was going to be about finishing stuff I had started on random files in the laptop and that was the biggest filed I had. This thing is no where near finished and I have no idea when it will be done. I could just drop it and pick up another project. But I want to finish something this year.

AW: Reading Notes - Week One

Once you get past the syrupy positive thinking pablum of this chapter, Ms. Cameron presents a few concepts that are interesting. Unfortunately, she doesn't comeback to revisit them very much in her later chapters. The first concept is that the creative block that one experiences is a result of some form of emotional trauma with respect to their creativity and work. She delves pretty deeply in this chapter into exposing the trauma and the effects of it. Her 'time traveling' exercises are effective. They are, however, not to be undertaken lightly.

In some cases, the time traveling exercises will open one to deep trauma that is unrelated (at the surface) to the creative block. As one may have noticed as I work on my morning blog posts, at times I talk about traumas that I have experienced that are not "This person told me that my work was bad when I was vulnerable." Ms. Cameron has a somewhat cavalier approach to working with trauma and seems to operate under the assumption that creative blocks only stem from when an artist is criticized harshly in their formative years. It is a dangerous approach for people who have suffered deeper traumas such as sexual assault or severe bullying and harassment. One can not recover from these deep traumas with mere positivity and proverbial letters to the editor rebutting negative feedback.

The next concept that Ms. Cameron presents discusses 'blurts' and negative habits of thinking getting in a creative person's way of expression. She explains 'blurts' as one's reflexive denial positive arguments and affirmations regarding their work. She encourages the person working through this chapter to list their 'blurts' and then rephrase them as positive statements. If it is not possible to rephrase the 'blurt' as a positive statement, one is instructed to replace it with the appropriate positive rebuttal to this reflexive argument against their creative work's value. This is a practice used a great deal in cognitive behavioral therapy and is highly effective. 

She fails, however, to introduce the third part of this process which is called 'thought stopping'. When one becomes aware of an unhealthy thought process, in this case what Ms. Cameron describes as a 'blurt', they are actively encouraged to envision something like a stop sign and shift focus. The failure to include thought stopping in the process of dealing with negative or unhealthy thought processes can lead to persons who have cascades of these sorts of thoughts feeling like a failure for their inability to rapidly switch gears. There needs to be the pause where the unhelpful/unhealthly/negative thought is recognized for what it is. This is what thought stopping is for. It is a check-in with oneself to determine what their mental and emotional state is before proceeding. This allows them to uncover the correct replacement for the undesirable thought by correctly identifying the source and nature of the undesirable thought.

Ms. Cameron's work on positive affirmations is dated. It is also vaguely Christo-centric which makes it a bit off putting for people who are not interested in the conventional overculture approach towards that deity being the assumed source of all things. It is still a good template to work from for one to develop positive affirmations that works for them. She also does a reasonably good job of presenting how the regular repetition of positive affirmations can help train one's mind to be more positive and self-affirming.

The exercises at the end of this chapter are not the best. Again, there is the question of if a person has the time to complete them and the means to do so. It is clear that Ms. Cameron is writing for creative persons who fall within the middle-class part of the socio-economic spectrum. Some of the things she suggests, like the imaginary lives exercise, can be completely out of reach for some people to accomplish. The example that she provides of being a 'cowhand' and encouraging the reader to get horseback riding lessons is a fine demonstration that she failed to consider that there are struggling creatives who barely have enough money to put food on the table. Equally tone deaf to this part of her audience is the suggestion that the struggling creative person decorate their creative work space and acquire nicknacks and toys. There is a significant population of struggling creatives who simply do not have the space, time, or money to engage in this practice (which she encourages through out the book).

AW: Morning Blog 56

I literally have 71k words in my NaNoWriMo manuscript and no idea what the hell I am doing. But I finally hit one of my plot points. I still feel like I am in the middle of this thing and I don't know if I'm going to be at that point when I hit 80k or higher. Some writing projects, being in the middle isn't that bad. I just plug away and keep working through my plot and outline. The characters don't go off the rails too much. It is a relatively easy thing to get the big word counts for the day and still feel motivated to keep working.

I haven't been doing much writing by hand this month. I haven't even updated my planner because I have been so focused on NaNoWriMo. Today is not going to be a big wordcount day because today I am going to be fixing my planner. It is this cross between a bullet journal and diary. I keep a diary as well, but the planner gets more frequent updates. My mood is still being garbage because of Seasonal Affective Disorder despite the fact that I now have a light therapy lamp. I'm still working on figuring out how to use the thing most effectively. As such, I think that I am not getting optimal results because I don't have it positioned correctly.

It has been a melencholic couple of weeks. I have found myself thinking about friends that I have lost over the years and the good times that we had before that won't come again. I know part of this line of thinking is my depression. It is also because I still have mutual friends with those people that are still living. So, I still hear talk of them and see evidence of their presence in those mutual friends' lives. It's painful but once bridges burn, you can't go back.

NaNoWriMo Update

I started with 22k and the hope I could finish the stupid fanfiction piece in 50k. IT IS NOT HAPPENING! *cries*

The above meme in its majestic glory is my characters. To hell with my plot.

AW: Morning Blog 55

I struggle with feeling like my work is legitimate enough. My self-confidence is a bit hindered by the truckloads of trauma that I have been dealing with. Seasonal affective disorder on top of that just makes me feel even more certain that my work is awful and I am engaged in pure vanity. Scumbag brain is a real ass at times.

I've taken to writing poetry again. I feel like it is awful but I am still doing it. My hope is to eventually put together another book of poetry and maybe sell it. I don't think I'll make much selling my poetry, but it would be nice to have a few more pennies in the bank. I feel like I am not smart enough to figure out how to make marketing work. I start reading and researching it. I get overwhelmed and then I have a minor panic attack. After that, I start at square one and the cycle repeats itself.

It is improving as I am getting a better handle on my anxiety. I don't know how much of the problem is my anxiety pissing all over the place like a terrified chihuahua and how much of the problem is trauma informed programming. When I was young, I was told repeatedly that I wasn't going to go anywhere in the writing industry with out my domineering mother as my marketing agent. For some reason, she thought that I was going to do as she dictated in my writing and then she was going to sell it and profit off of my work. Because you know that marketing agents get a 60-40 split on the revenue. Or at least that's what I was told over and over again when my parents realized that I actually had some talent.

I'm not talking to my parents now because things are just ugly between us. And I am realizing that I just don't have the spoons to go through the emotional gauntlet of games that my parents play for the sake of feeling like they have power over me. It's hard this time of year to continue the practice of no contact. I know that they're getting up there in years and I doubt that my brothers are going to step up and take care of them. My brothers are not the most reliable of people at times. When my second book came out, my parents came around complaining about their financial woes and the pains of aging. I knew they were sniffing for money.

I guess they assumed that I had a book contract or something. I stonewalled those efforts and felt awful for about a month after. I'm sure that they're sitting there, pissed off that they couldn't retire at 60 and just rest on their laurels. Nobody told them that children are not a retirement plan, I think. Anyways, they poisoned that well with the head games they played with us until we were out of the house. They still play head games. For a while, I was trying to make things work with them. No one told me when get togethers were happening. I was expected to just show up and spend time at the farm whenever I wasn't working or something. I don't know. All I know is that I became the bad guy for not showing up for family gatherings that I was never informed of.

I recently read something about the artist Enya. Apparently she is estranged from her family. There is some resentment from her relatives and they said in an interview something to the effect that she was 'off living like a queen in her castle.' That struck a chord when I read that. I realized if I had gotten a big book contract and I didn't share any of it with them, my parents would make that argument. They'd say that I was being selfish and ignoring how much they sacrificed for me. But, here's the thing, I didn't ask them to sacrifice anything. Even after I got disabled, I didn't have them sacrifice a thing. I had my student loans forgiven due to my disability. When money got hard, I didn't go to them with my hat in hand asking for help. Because I know that any help from them comes with strings and obligations attached.

I'll make this work on my own. I'll find allies in the writing community. I'll find help from other places. I'll be damned if I go back to them for anything. All they'll want to do is tear me down and try to break my will.

AW: Morning blog no. 54

The empty page is intimidating. The page that is half written is more intimidating, to be honest. Because I sit there going 'how the hell am I going to finish this?' as I stare at the screen. I'm listening to rain noise not because it is raining outside but because I put that nature sounds thing on loop to drown out the noise of both of the kids digging through the legos. I'm still working on my NaNoWriMo project. I was foolish. I thought that I was going to get it done in 50k. I started out with 22k and figured I could finish it within a week. I'm at 53k and the plot shows no signs of wrapping up. I honestly have no idea what is going on with this story.

Editing it is going to be a nightmare, I just know it. Editing is the part of writing that I dislike. Not because I mind killing my darlings. It is because it takes twice as long than the act of writing. Once I finish one project, I am ready to move on to the next project and get it done. I can't stand pouring over the finished draft a billion and one times to get it ready to print.

But, because I am broke, I am the editor in chief. I suck at copy lay out. I struggle to get things to look good on the page. I can crank out material like its no big deal. It is when you get into things like making sure that there's a good balance between text and white space that I struggle. I realize, however, a straight up wall of text is a bad thing. So, I try to make sure I put in paragraph brakes and make my paragraphs varied in length. But when I am seized with an idea, I write until the idea is spent. That can make for some very long paragraphs.

I'm trying to stay on top of blogging but my brain is sucked up in trying to finish this goddamn fanfic-based fantasy novel. It's not set in the world of Evandar. It's not set in my goddamn science fiction universe. So it doesn't fit with what I have going on here except that it is fantasy. Sword and sorcery fantasy with more emphasis on the sword than the sorcery right now. Set during the era where Christianity is beginning to influence pagan England (even though I don't call it England). I've got this weird mix going on where the Duke is a pagan and his brother the Abbot (who literally lives just down the road) is obviously Christian. They have this agree to disagree pact between them. The Abbot prays for the Duke's soul, the Duke guards his brother's welfare because he is his brother. Stuff like that going on in the plot. I do have a few bible-thumping characters who got put on notice by the Duke to save that for when they're in their own fiefdoms.

Lots of potential for conflict and plot twists and such. And I find myself writing boring politics. It is tiring. I just want to finish this damn story and move on to something else.

AW: Morning Blog No. 53

I am writing some kind of medieval fantasy novel based on fanfiction I have written. I have no idea what I am doing and this annoys me. Minor characters are making pains out of themselves and taking up more space than I feel they should. I don't feel like I'm handling the pre-Christian versus Christian elements of the story very well. It is a rambling mess. I'm tempted to just drop it because I did hit 50k. The duke's a man who doesn't care what gods you believe in as long as you follow his law and do your job. In his household, there is peace between the Christians and the Heathens. Not because they are naturally in harmony but because the duke wouldn't tolerate anything less.

I think I am beginning to come down with another cold. My blood sugar has been running high in the morning and I've made no dramatic changes to my diet. Also, my sinuses have been bothering me. I really hope this doesn't turn into another sinus infection. That sucked up half of last month in my attempt to recover from it.

AW: Morning Blog no. 52

Today is my birthday. Yay, go me! I'm officially 41 years old. Old enough to give zero fucks about anything, right?

It's trying to snow outside right now. The weather is just gross and wet. I think that the winter weather is going to move in early this year. My real concern is that the roads tonight are going to be icy and I worry that Beloved is going to have a difficult drive home from work.

I'm still cheating on NaNoWriMo. I hit 50k yesterday. My story is a hot mess and I have no idea where it is going. I'm trying to follow grammar rules and keep things real. But this fanfiction turned fantasy novel project is frustrating me. I just want to finish it but new plot devices pop up as I am writing and I can't just end it. Well, I could just end it but then it would bother me that I haven't finished the story. I have notebooks full of incomplete stories that I just don't know how to bring them to the finish line.

It's like bad sex. You work at it, start to get some enjoyment, and then everything fades and you're left wanting. Or, in the case of some writing projects that are not complete, it's like horrifically bad sex. You work at it, start to get some enjoyment, and then a psychological landmine goes off and you're thrown into a complete panic attack. Trauma writing sucks some times. Especially when your c-ptsd is just on high alert because it's that time of year for you to have multiple trauma anniversaries waiting for you.

Have I mentioned how much I hate having c-ptsd? I really do hate it. If I could throw it into a volcano and sacrifice it to the old gods, I would. But I can't so I don't consider it an option. Still, I really hate having a sick brain.

AW: Morning blog no. 51

I've taken to listening to music in languages that I don't understand. Then I look up the translations. It slows down my writing process but it helps me to fit the music to what I'm writing. I am tired right now. I slept poorly. I kept having nightmares that my family was injured somehow and I had to help them. Nothing quite as disturbing as the dream sight of your beloved spouse bleeding out and you're helpless to stop it.

I don't know what my subconscious mind is telling me. I'm half tempted to throw some tarot cards to help interpret that dream. At the same time, I suspect that I will get a fist full of major arcana and court cards. Which is almost always a pain in the ass to interpret. I've fallen behind in my journaling and my logging of things like what I eat and my blood sugar levels. My planner is an absolute mess and doesn't even have pages in it for this month.

I'm sick and tired of being sick. I am tired of having to count carbs for every meal. I am tired of having to write down everything I eat or drink. It makes me feel even more limited in my dietary options. And I am so tired of finger sticks and blood testing every day. If I let myself, I'll find more excuses not to do these things. I was sick for about the entire month of October. I'm well now, I really need to get back to these things.

Aside from the challenge of NaNoWriMo, I have my blogging to get back to doing on the daily themes. I have to get my rear in gear focusing on Yule presents. I have nothing finished for anyone. I feel a bit guilty about this and worry some that I am not going to have time to finish everything for everyone. I am tired. I am stressed out. And I am dealing with seasonal affective disorder. Throw on top of it some hormonal misery because my body is hitting perimenopause and all out of wack, and I'm not having a great time. But, I am going to finish my NaNoWriMo project and get all of this other stuff sorted out. Because if I don't, I'm going to feel worse.

AW: Morning Blog No. 50

I discovered that yet more of my writing music has vanished off of my computer. I'm highly annoyed with this development. I have the cds and I can rip them on to the computer. I just don't like the fact that somewhere, somehow some AI decided that my music library should be edited with out my permission.The whole thing makes me want to go out and get a cheap cd player just to use for my writing.

I'm in a grumpy mood. An appointment I had turned out with negative results. Nothing disastrous, but it was highly irritating. I have a migraine right now. But I can't rest because the wind is blowing like there's one hell of a storm getting ready to blow in. The windstorm last week blew down some branches onto the back deck. I haven't gone out there to pick them up. I was thinking about doing it today but not if the winds keep up like this.

I am not sure what more to write. I'm irritated with everything right now because my head hurts. Perhaps this is not a good day to be on the internet.

Flora & Fauna: Dragons revisited.

Dear Reader,

In my previous post regarding dragons, I spoke predominantly about the lesser wyrms. I didn't cover much about greater wyrms except for a few by notes on how they have exerted influence over humanity and the elder races, shaping the course of history. The greater wyrms are beings of pure magic. This lends them towards what a certain gaming system would call a true-neutral alignment. They are generally indifferent towards humanity which these ancient creatures consider to be a young and developing race.

Some have taken an interest in guiding the development of the human race but most are more concerned with preparation for the coming of the next great Age of history. Dragons are perhaps the oldest of creatures. The greater wyrms are the direct children of the god Kaileth. The lesser wyrms are the accidental result of their incarnation having an 'echo' effect. That is, when the greater wyrms took on bodies in their true form, the magic radiated around the area and stones beneath them were transformed into eggs. From these first eggs that were not the result of greater wyrm reproduction, came the hatchlings that grew into the lesser wyrms.

For a period of time, the greater wyrms and the lesser wyrms had a symbiotic relationship. The greater wyrms provided protection for the  more vulnerable lesser wyrms as the lesser wyrms foraged and brought back food for the first clutches. Then the lesser wyrms began to grow aggressive. The greater wyrms, concerned for their own broods, moved away from the lesser wyrms to protect their hatchlings from the predatory behavior of the lesser wyrms against hatchlings of other broods.

In the time before humanity and the elder races, the greater wyrms had a society of sorts. They had their own written languages. Because they had always been creatures of magic, they possessed the ability to read any language or understand any spoken word because they were the keepers of the primordial language of creation. With this primordial language of creation, they could manipulate the fabric of reality. Thus, a greater wyrm could warp physical space to fit their enormous form or shift time's flow within a given location.

AW: Morning blog no. 49

I'm not sure what to write this morning. It is cold and I find it painful to be out in it. I'm glad that the kids have school today. I didn't enjoy waiting for the bus with my youngest because it was too chilly for me to be knitting as I paced the front walk for twenty minutes. He was gleefully riding his bike around and around the yard. I would have had him put on gloves but I forgot about it. He was, however, wearing a hat and a heavy jacket. So, not a complete mom fail.

My NaNoWriMo project just broke 30 k last night. I started the whole thing at 22 k. So that's a bit shy of 10 k over the last three days. Provided that over the last three days I had a lot of distractions, that was a good amount of work. I'm going to push to get higher daily numbers this week despite things like appointments. I'd be carrying around a notebook except for the fact that what I write in the notebook would need to be typed up and I'd basically be doing the work twice over.

I am flying by the seat of my pants on this project. I honestly have no idea what I am doing. I am just following the story and trying to hit word count for the day. It would have been nice if the NaNoWriMo site had programmed their 'words needed for today' to have that 1.7 k stay up there even when you are way past the wordcount that would be needed to stay on track to hit 50 k by the end of the month.

I think I'm writing a romance novel, but I am honestly not sure. It started out as fanfiction and then took a sharp turn to the left. When I get it done, I'm going to talk to P. about it and get his thoughts as to if I should consider publishing it or not. While the characters are original, the setting is pretty heavily based in what he developed for his game system. I admit, it would be pretty cool to be writing some companion books to go with what he is working on and help flesh out characters and such. I really like the idea of collaborative writing. I just haven't had the opportunity to do so in about twenty years. It's kinda sad to be honest because I miss it.

I am probably going to pick up a second project as soon as I finish the first one. My goal is to write every day this month on some novel project. Beloved tells me that I am always working on novels but he doesn't realize how much of my writing is just disorganized verbage that I haven't put into any sense of coherence. I don't want to tell him that, because I am concerned he'll be disappointed with me. He's so proud of my writing and I don't want to let him down.

I have a Filianic text sitting on hold right now. It is approximately 3/4 of the way complete. I might finish that after I finish what ever this thing is that I am working on right now. I haven't completed my transcription of the Filianic scriptures yet either. I want to get copies of the other alternate versions of the texts. I have a project that I am planning. I am going to sit down and take these different versions of the texts to examine them. Then I am going to put together a version that cross-references all of them. It doesn't sound like an overly ambitious project because the core texts are approximately 30 pages. There are, however, at least four versions floating around. I work best from paper when I'm doing this sort of stuff. Some of these copies are close to $60 used.

It makes me wish I had a working printer so that I could just print off the PDF versions that I have found. Research, however, will still happen.

Craft of Writing: The secret to good writing.

There's one or two secrets to good writing. The first one is the most grueling. What is it? Show up and write. Having a bad day and not feeling motivated to write? Still make at least fifteen minutes for it. Sick as a dog and barely awake enough to write? Still make at least fifteen minutes for it. Locked in a cage and your laptop is across the room? Ok, maybe that's a bit too complicated to make fifteen minutes for writing when you're trying to escape the cage.

But, the first secret to good writing boils down to make time to write. And try to make sure that you are writing more than a shopping list on a regular basis. It may be bullet notes of a story outline you want to write some day. It may be a daily journal entry that is full of your laments about the stress of your job. It may be sneaking in a thousand words on a cherished secret manuscript. Making writing a priority leads to good writing.

The second secret to good writing is just ugly. It can be gut wrenching and heart breaking. The second secret to good writing is editing and revision. Editing is tedious and painfully boring. It takes many rounds of editing to take a really rough manuscript and clean it up. Revision is the process of rewriting and including all of those edits. It can take so much energy and effort that it feels fruitless. It can lead to the elimination of cherished scenes and characters. (Just remember when you remove those things, they can be recycled into another work. Nothing is lost if you keep notes.)

AW: Morning Blog post no. 48

I have a playlist that is exactly fifteen minutes long. I use it to filter out the noise of the household as I am attempting to write. I also use it like a timer to measure how long I have been writing for. I am not giving up on NaNoWriMo. I'm just being a complete NaNo rebel. I am working on a manuscript that I started last month and had 22k on it to begin with. It's made my numbers look real good for daily word count but I am not going to worry about that. I am just going to focus on getting the novel done by the end of the month.

I don't even know what kind of novel this thing is going to turn into. It is based on fanfiction I had been writing. I started it as a speculative bit of backstory for the two characters. Now I have 27k worth of writing in on it and no clear idea what direction it is going in. I'm just going to follow the story and see where it leads. This version of the characters from the fanfiction I was writing is entirely different from the fanfiction version of the characters. There is just vague mention of the strange gifts and magic that is in this world wielded by the knights and nobles.

I think that is going to be coming up more as the story progresses. I also think that this is going to be longer than 50 k words. I feel a little foolish using something I started as fanfiction for this. But, I have the feeling that I can turn it into a reasonably good story. It will take some editing when I get it done, but it will be a fairytale of sorts that I think will be a bit lighter fare than what I usually write. Which would be good because I'm kinda tired of writing super dark stuff and writing about traumatic experiences.

Speaking of traumatic experiences, my son has taken an interest in the events of September 11, 2001. (I refuse to call it 9/11.) I tried to read the book he signed out from the school library to make sure there was facts and not propaganda in it. It opens with the accounting of what happened on the planes and at air traffic control. I got about four pages in and I had to close the book. I was almost ready to start sobbing. Every time it comes up, and it has been coming up a lot since September, I feel this overwhelming urge to weep. It doesn't help that I had many friends who lost family in the events of that day. Some were in New York city and some were at the Pentagon. It doesn't help that I watched the towers collapse on live television and heard the city's scream of anguished horror. It is a scream that was echoed in the dorm sitting room where we were watching it happen. It is a scream that haunts my nightmares.

It doesn't help that I met one of the hijackers of the plane that was flown into the Pentagon just a week before and thought he was just another college student who had shown up for a dance being held at the college I attended. I remember him telling me that I was going to make someone a good wife someday. He said it with such a tone of regret. I thought it was because I had turned down his request for a date. Looking back, a part of me wonders if I had taken him up on that offer for dinner if he wouldn't have been so quick to have carried out that 'mission'.

AW: Morning blog no. 47

I want to cry right now. I want to do NaNoWriMo but I have no ideas. I just have this mishmash of trauma memories and this ache in the bottom of my heart because Liz D. isn't here to chat with anymore about this stuff. NaNoWriMo was a thing she and I kinda did together. It was an escape from the stress of life and a chance to work on my epic series with out feeling guilty.

For the last two years, NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo have been word vomit of trauma from my youth. I can't see a good way to finish book seven and I need to complete book seven before I start work on book eight. I am so upset right now that I have tears streaming down my face for no apparent reason. I'm afraid that my thirty book series is done at six and three quarters because all I can manage to write right now is about how awful my childhood was.

It shows up just about everywhere. So, the simple logic is write about it until it stops haunting me. Kinda like I would with any other plot-bunny. The more I write, the more comes up to the surface. This is a bad time of year for me because I have flashbacks to trauma and seasonal affective disorder. I haven't slept well in about a week.

I just feel like I am broken and that there is no hope for me. I know this is my depression talking. I know this is my pain talking. It doesn't change the feeling that there is no point to attempting something that I was looking forward to all year.

AW: Reading Notes. Spiritual Electricity & The Basic Tools

This is from my initial run at going through this book in 2019. I mainly did the morning pages and failed to do the analysis of the chapters because I was severely distracted.

On its surface the book is unapologetic about its approach and encourages one to consider themselves as a conduit for divine influence into the world through their art. The language is not explicitly Christo-centric but it is clear that the concepts are based in the idea that there is a singular deity, though Ms. Cameron is careful to avoid gendering deity(for the most part). This rankled me as I was working through this book because I'm a polytheist and have more gods than fingers on both hands. It gave me moments of pure exasperation to sit there and mentally run through the catalog of deities that I am involved with to figure out who I should be invoking to help me. If I were an atheist, I'd probably be ready to throw the book at a wall because of how often deity is mentioned.

The first two major sections of the book (which are not the introductions) talk about two things. The first is this concept that all creativity flows from the divine and that we are clearing out blockages to open ourselves up to this higher source. It's a romantic notion that annoys me. It disregards the blood, sweat, and tears that we put into our work. It says that our work is not fully ours. Perhaps this means that I am holding on too much of my ego in Ms. Cameron's opinion, but I can't sit here and argue that being in a state of flow equates to being a direct conduit of the divine's plan for your creative work.

As a person who practices a spirituality that includes things like possession and being godridden, I find it somewhat dangerous for Ms. Cameron to assume that any spiritual being that takes an interest in your work and chooses to help you is benevolent. (The timing of my posting this on the eve of Samhain/Tamala/Halloween and one of the traditionally recognized days where the veil between the worlds is thinnest and spirits interact easier with us amuses me.) As one of my teachers in witchcraft taught me, "Not all spirits are helpful or kind. And they're usually dead for a reason. Take what they share with a grain of salt."

Ms. Cameron encourages opening oneself up to a indiscriminate number of spiritual beings as they work. This is a dangerous practice because it can lead to chaos in a greater degree in one's creative life (and life at large) if they have the misfortune of having something malevolent decide to masquerade as something pleasant. This is a persistent theme through these two chapters and through the book at large because the book doesn't tell you to focus your invitation on someone who will help you and have your best interests at heart. It just tells you to open up and the sense of flow will come and your block will magically go away.

Take this argument away and remove the spiritual exercises from the book, I suspect that it would shorten by at least two chapters if not three on the basis of verbage alone. Ms. Cameron does combine the spiritual elements of this process with a number of legitimate psycho-therapeutic practices and basic artistic exercises. Daily free writing in the form of the Morning Pages (or in my case now morning blogs) is a time honored exercise to help authors and other creatives to warm up and get distractions out of their way as they sit down to work.

The writing exercises confronting negative assumptions and biases are also well proven within the psychiatric community to help people through the healing process of doing so. Ms. Cameron focuses a good deal on confronting negative bias and helping the person working through her book to suss out what the source of these negative biases are and gives them tools to begin to effect a change in them. She is a bit cavalier in how she handles psychological trauma and reduces it down to almost a mockery in her examples. I would advise blocked creatives who are working with psychological trauma to handle her 'time traveling' exercises with care and be prepared to engage in self care after they unearth new trauma memories through these exercises.

Equally in need of caution is how persons with traumatic histories handle the confrontation with the parts of oneself that are hypercritical of one's artistic efforts. While, yes, there is going to be a portion of this that is self generated, there is going to be a large amount of it that is trauma response. Ms. Cameron fails to address the fact that there are people who have trauma response to their artistic work because of how they were traumatized for creating it. A blocked author, for example, who struggled to write in any deep detail because they were beaten for "writing lies" in their journal as a child is dealing with an entirely different monster than the blocked author who is struggling to write with any deep detail because an instructor told them their creative work was a hack job.

AW: Morning Blog No. 46

I spent my night last night staring up at the ceiling worrying about a number of things. When I wasn't worrying, I was trying to decide if I was going to continue with the Artist's Way despite its problematic nature. I think that I am, but I am going to spend some time on my reading notes trying to pull out the material that is accessible to people who are not as privileged as Ms. Cameron's target audience. I think I am also going to make a solid effort to keep my sense of privilege in check as I work on that.

Because the Artist's Way can be a really helpful tool for artists who are struggling with a block or other circumstances where they've gotten themselves into a creative corner with no apparent way out. To that extent, I am probably going to include some do-it-yourself solutions to the problems that I see in the texts. For example, a recipe for homemade play-clay for someone who can't afford to go buy regular clay to engage in their desire to experiment with pottery.

I don't think that my efforts are going to make a big difference in how useful this book is. I am on the eve of NaNoWriMo, as well, and I know that it will make my posting material on any of my blogs a challenge. I am not going to drop the morning free writing. It is just going to be limited to fifteen minutes of posting time. Some how, I don't anticipate a big drop in word count. But, I have books to finish and books to write.

NaNoWriMo is usually for new projects for me. I am feeling the pull to write another ritual book. I don't know how well it will sell. The last ritual book I wrote didn't do so good. I started writing it by hand. I wanted a hand written copy for me to keep on my shelf but the notebook began falling apart. Whimsy says I should do another handwritten copy of a ritual book but I anticipate the problem being another instance of the notebook not surviving my work. This is the danger of buying cheap notebooks because they're a fancy color that you like.

Flora & Fauna: Ramblings.

Dear Reader,

Did you know that potatoes and tomatoes are related to deadly nightshade? Did you know that the upper part of the potato plant is poisonous, as are green potatoes? There is a plant that is indirectly related to peas that looks almost identical to them but is really toxic. Or that there is a plant that looks like a giant Queen Anne's Lace plant that is so horrifically toxic that to get rid of it you have to rip it out and pour toxins into the ground to kill off the roots. And when you burn it, you have to stay upwind and out of the smoke or you'll have the problems that come with coming into contact with the plant, including stuff like anaphylaxis and blindness. (That one's called Hog Weed and is an invasive plant in my region.)

There's a garden in London that is full of poisonous plants. They don't allow visitors in unless they're wearing safety gear because just touching some of these plants can do horrible things to you. I don't need to invent monstrous plants if the biome of Evandar and the world at large is similar to that of Earth. I can just drop some horrific plants from our world in there along with the benign ones and let my characters deal with it. It makes for less work in world building.

Being able to pick and choose what familiar or less than familiar plants from Earth pop up in the fantasy environment is a luxury. Adding in these plants that have a basis in the real world does two things. It assists in the suspension of disbelief because an oak tree is an oak tree (except for when you're dealing with poison oak, which looks similar to a sapling but isn't the same). The exotic plants can pop up for a bit of flavor and spice in the story if it makes sense to include them, like fireweed as kindling and a medicinal product.

Inventing a whole body of plants for the world and only using a few of them is a tiring exercise. If creating a legendarium is your goal, that helps towards it. It is, however, going to take time away from writing the story. You have to balance your world building desires with your story goals. Perhaps working on your legendarium is how you generate ideas for moving your plot forward. If that's the case, more power to you and good luck with the process. Hopefully, your legendarium is more organized than mine.

AW: Morning Blog No.45

Re-reading The Artist's Way, I find myself getting cranky with the level of privilege the author presumes that the reader has. Not everyone has the means to go out and drop a few extra dollars on doodads and gegaws to make their work space fun. Not everyone has the time to get up early in the day and write out three pages long hand. It makes me grumble because some of the exercises suggested are difficult to do if you are in a position where finances are not going to let you pick up things like canvas or paints for the aspiring painter or access to a library where you can read any book you want (if you have the time).

I guess I didn't really see these points before because I was just focusing on progressing through the steps in a desperate attempt to make an end run around my disability. It's now three if not four years now that I have gone through the Artist's Way. Some of the principles of the book are really sound. Confronting trauma and gently exploring how it might be overcome is a standard practice in psychotherapy. Using art and writing to explore oneself and get a better idea where one's strengths lie is another time honored therapy practice.

I kept getting frustrated with the Artist's Way because there were elements that just didn't connect quite right with me. On this reading through the book, I am coming to realize that there is a lot of unintentional abelism in this book. It makes me sad but now that I see it, I feel that I can address my own disability issues with out feeling guilty that I can't do the exercises exactly as Ms. Cameron proposes them.

I may be one of the luckier people facing this problem. I have a support network. I have access to a wide range of creative tools and time to engage in the work. The person working two jobs full time to put food on the table doesn't have much time to write every day. They're exhausted and burning the candle at both ends. To propose that they just get up earlier in the day is dramatic insensitivity to what these people are living. It's like telling them when they're working as hard as they can to just "try harder."

I don't know what to do. I want to continue to work through the book but I keep hitting these problematic portions and I find myself wanting to throw the book across the room. It makes me angry and sad. I don't know if it is a reasonable response. I don't know how to approach this book with its flaws because those flaws just glare out at and overshadow the pablum that is in between which is supposed to be inspirational.

I am really angry with the argument that trauma can be overcome in just a few weeks of writing, taking time to skip through the forest, daydream, listen to music, and buy ephemera to decorate your work space. That's applying a band aid to a gaping wound. It's like treating depression with mild yoga and tea. Ms. Cameron downplays the severity of what one can find in the 'time traveling' exercises and assumes it can be handled within a week. I can tell you one thing I know for sure, most of the blocked artists I know are not blocked because one or two people said something scathing. It's because of real emotional and psychological trauma that gets triggered when they go to engage in their chosen artistic practice.

This book doesn't equip one well to handle that. It focuses more on compartmentalization and suppression of the trauma. Most of us survivors of trauma are experts at that. It's not going to magically cure the effects of trauma. In honestly, it makes the trauma harder to deal with because the longer it lingers unaddressed, the more it will effect you. The Artist's Way isn't a good book for people with serious trauma to address. It can start you in the direction of working on it, but then it falls flat as it moves into the phase of 'let's produce some work now!' as the artist is trying to come to grips with what horrific things have happened that made them believe that art was forbidden. You can't just start running when you've realized that you have a broken leg that needs to be reset. Hell, you can't even walk on that leg.

Craft of Writing: Stolen Moments.

Dear Reader,

There's a reason why I do a lot of writing by hand. A notebook is easier for me to carry around than my laptop. They're also hardier if you drop them. Notebooks are great when I have to jot down an idea and I don't have access to my computer. Much of my writing is done in stolen moments. That bit of free time that I may have as the kids are doing homework, I am sitting down with a notebook and working on a project.

I write when I find that I have a little time in the morning that I have between the time to put one kid on the bus and get the other ready for school. I write when they're eating after I have finished my food. I write while I'm waiting for food to cook. I write while I am between chores. If I could, I'd be writing while I sat waiting at a stop light.

I take the same approach to my writing that I do with my handcrafting. Slower by the minute, faster by the mile. If I am going to try to write a ton of work in one sitting, my life doesn't tend to cooperate with that. That's what makes NaNoWriMo such a challenge. If I am working on projects in bits and pieces, I actually get them completed. I don't think I am going to be able to write to deadlines like others do it. It makes me kinda sad and feel like I am not a 'real' author because I can't meet the deadlines that I set for myself. Case in point, book seven was supposed to be done three years ago at the end of NaNoWriMo but life happened.

I tell myself that I may not be the author that whips off a best selling book every few weeks but I am a productive author who gets work done. It just takes more time and planning than some others do. And that is ok because I am not in a race with anyone. I just have to do my best and accept that it is good enough. Because any manuscript can be a good one with sufficient editing and revision.

AW: LOLOLOL NOT Morning Blog No. 44

It has been an interesting couple of days. It looks like either the car needs an expensive repair or it needs to be replaced. It's a few months over 12 years old, so I have a feeling we're going to be replacing it. I have been listening to my children discuss how we need a ouija board to summon the following:

• Jesus (yes, that Jesus)
• Bloody Mary
• Veronica

Reportedly, the summoning must happen at 3 am and a pair of scissors should be used in place of the planchette. I've told them that at twelve and ten, they're not old enough to be learning necromancy. There has been some pouting. As well as insistence that they can do it by just chanting the names in the mirror.

I have to admit, it would be kinda hilarious if they summoned Jesus, specifically the in the form of the Eucharist. It would be equally funny if they summoned the drink instead of the fabled specter Bloody Mary. I have told them that they're not allowed to perform necromancy with out supervision. I'm just amused by this fascination. I remember being a pre-teen and becoming fascinated with the occult much to my parents' dismay. Unfortunately for the boys, the school library seems to be lacking occult texts that my school library had. 

It was weird, for the super WASP nature of the community I grew up in, that school library had a shocking amount of occult and related texts. I don't know if the school still has the encyclopedia of the occult. If the got rid of it, I'm going to be a bit disappointed. I did a lot of research for my own magical education through that and the reference material I could find at the college library based off of the leads that I got from those books. (I'm a practicing witch and necromancer. This is part of the reason why the children taking an interest in necromancy is funny because I haven't done any rituals in front of them.

But the boys insisting that chanting a name at a mirror three times at 3 am is how to summon the dead is funny. I remember trying it many times. There were dead people I wanted to talk to. It didn't work. The techniques that do work, they're not ready for. I mean, they don't know how to form a summoning circle or the basics of energy work. They have to have at least that basis before they can attempt something like necromancy or summoning an egregore like Bloody Mary.

AW: morning (not) blog no. 43

I just spent an hour of my life updating a page on the blog. It looked pretty good. I had a few tweaks left to make it perfect. I hit the save button and it didn't save. So all of that work got shot to hell. I'm more than a little bit mad right now. I would like to have a cup of tea and sulk but I have stuff I need to get done. I think I will be working on that page listing out all the books in the series and their synopsises (I forget how the hell you pluralize synopsis. Just tells me that I should have taken a dead language or two this what I knew how to do that but I didn't get the chance at college.)

So, I am a very frustrated person right now. I'm not going to sit here and rant about how life has been strategically managing to piss me off in a wide range of directions right now. No, I'm going to tell you a story.

Once, I was a little kid and I got picked on a lot by a significant number of people. One of the things that they harassed me over was the fact that I loved art and I loved writing. I was regularly told to get my head out of the clouds and stop 'drifting through life at the fringes of society'. It sucked. I found my refuge in my art and my writing. As I got older, the tolerance for my artwork shrank to microscopic levels but my writing wasn't ignored. Instead, I had people take an interest in it because they thought that writing was an easy profession and that they could turn me into a meal ticket. I didn't like the motives but I took that interest and pushed it as far as I could manage. When I didn't get a book contract immediately out of high school, they thought maybe it would happen after college. They thought that the writing industry was lousy with people desperate to publish anything. I was pressured at the same time to try to find a 'good' job with my college degree.

The fact that neither of those panned out resulted in my getting kicked out of my parents house for a year while I was severely ill. In many ways, things returned to square one about how my writing and art was worthless. I was pressured to find work in a job market where there was none to be found. I was pressured to stop hanging out with my friends (which only happened on a monthly basis) and 'focus on my future'. During this time, I worked a part time job and lived off of a combination of the generosity of my paternal grandparents, the support of the guy who is now my husband, and public assistance. I never stopped writing. That year that I got kicked out of my parents house let me have some breathing room even as it was very hard. That was the year that I decided I wasn't going to let anyone control my art or my writing.

When my parents came to move me back 'home' in preparation for my wedding, my mom threw away another painting of mine that I had hanging up prominently in my home. She looked at it and said "what is this?" before tossing it into a garbage bag giving me zero opportunity to say that it was something I wanted to keep. I still make art but I have it hanging up in the back hallway if I have it up at all. It's something I do to protect it. In the main living area of my home, most of my kids' artwork is on display. I have one painting that I did up too. It's funny. I made that painting as an anniversary gift for my parents. It sat in a dusty corner and when I moved out of their house, they gave it back to me saying it belonged to me, not them. It's a damn fine watercolor painting of the farm I grew up on. Probably one of my best. I'm surprised they didn't throw it away like they did the rest of the artwork I kept attempting to give them.

Book 4 is GO!

Dear Reader,

Shades of Twilight is the fourth installment of the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar. In it you get to see the ugly side of life in Dragonwood Castle under Askemb the Usurper. You get to see the journey of redemption of Douglas the traitor. And you get to see just what desperate plan Sideria has cooked up to spy inside the castle to find Askemb's weakness. Unexpected things go wrong.

Paperback at Amazon. Kindle edition also at Amazon.

It's coming together nicely.

Dear Reader,

I'm almost ready to release Book 4 of the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar into the world. Tomorrow is the big day. Edits are moving along well for Book 5. And by moving along well, I'm finding ALL of the typos and correcting them. It's hard to believe that this is really happening. I know that I don't have a lot of readers buying my books right now. But I sincerely believe it will come in time. I just have to keep working and learning more about things like how to market books.

I'm a bit stuck on book 7 because the concluding chapter is refusing to coalesce into something that works. As tempted as I am to throw it at a proverbial wall and give up, I'm not. I'm just attacking in a different direction and refocusing on my blogs as I mull the situation over. One would think with my hobby of reading about medieval warfare that I would have come up with a way for this particular battle to play out. As Beloved said to me when he was trying to help me figure this out, I have a talent for writing myself into corners.

One of the ways that I am 'attacking in the opposite direction' for a while is writing stuff on my erotica blog again. I'm not really pleased with what I have right now, but I know that, again, with practice and research, I will get better at that genre. I don't think I'll have the readership that Chuck Tingle does but he's proven himself to be pretty goddamn brilliant with his niche market. I'm really impressed with the quantity he manages to produce and his social media presence. I'm trying to figure out how to mimic some of what he is doing to hit a level of success that could be comparable, albeit in a smaller scale.

AW: Morning (technically) blog no. 42

I've been running in circles today. Partly because my stomach has been upset and partly because I'm just disorganized right now. It's a little before 11:50 and I know that I'm going to cross the time meridian in the process of typing this post up. I'm listening to Enya and it's relaxing, I suppose. I am hungry but I can't eat yet. I am debating writing a story about that. I'm just not sure if it will come off as pro-anorexia, which is really not what I want to do. I am tired. I think my blood sugar is a bit high. It was better this morning than it was all day yesterday. Being sick with diabetes sucks. I have a few more days before I am done with the antibiotic. My sinuses have mostly stopped draining. I'm just tired and cranky. But I also haven't had any coffee yet today.

[...]

Well, I just ate a quick lunch. We'll see what it does to my blood sugar. I'm kinda dreading it. I'm having my cup of coffee (which I know can make your blood sugar run a little high) but not really getting any pleasure from it. Perhaps it is because it is cold. Perhaps it is because I am preoccupied. I'm having a hard time figuring out how one would run an operation to draw out a smaller force to meet a larger force when the smaller force is in a fortified position. Enough time has passed that the smaller force has become complacent in their hold on the location. The civilians have suffered heavy casualties because of the smaller force's efforts to maintain hold on the location by way of fear.

People have been executed for imaginary crimes and insults. Within the fortified town, the townspeople are afraid and struggling. Trade has dwindled because the people who hold the town by force have a reputation of unreasoning violence for violence's sake and as such, traders are avoiding the town. Town supplies are not low yet. But they are strained by how the occupying force is just squandering things. The fields are planted but not yet mature enough to harvest. The flock of sheep and the flock of goats are diminished by the occupying forces using them for fodder. There is no cattle. The terrain around the town is relatively flat with the town sitting on a slight rise.

The treeline has been pushed back from the effort of the occupying force to build a fortification around the town. This included the orchards. The town well is at the center of the town and has sweet water. It is considered sacrosanct and not even the occupying force will mess with it because it is the only source of good water for a good distance with out going into the wilds of the forest. Beyond the treeline, an army is in wait that is easily double the number of the occupying force of the town. This is an army made up of the wild people of the forest, known as the foresters. Their methods of combat are not the rank and file sort of the nobles and their vassals. They are more guerrilla warfare and strike quickly before disappearing into the wild forest.

The foresters were once disorganized and tended to operate as separate bands. They had acquired a well deserved reputation for being something of a menace for people traveling through the forest because they would capture travelers and demand 'tribute' of their goods for their release. When the Forest-Father who had loosely organized some of the bands was over thrown in a duel with Cormac, this brought about a new age for the foresters. Cormac and the enigmatic Sideria brought the different bands into order. They fostered communication between the bands and discouraged preying upon travelers. Instead, the foresters began to act as guides and protectors of travelers from the unallied bands still located in the woods.

Due to the ties between Cormac and king Erian, the foresters became the people that Erian called on for difficult missions or secret communication with allies. During the war with the Cordid, the foresters were the ones who carried out night time raids and laid ambushes against the invaders with great success despite the fact that they were not in familiar terrain. From these missions, they acquired a reputation of being dishonorable in combat with the nobles, though some privately were impressed with their effectiveness.

Bah, backstory for the foresters does not help me figure out how to draw out the enemy encamped in Greenwood.

AW: morning (LOL) blog no. 41

It's morning on the other side of the planet. The sun just set here. It's been a crappy day. I'm still sick. My blood sugar kept running high and I slept through most of the day because of it. When I've been awake, I've been minding children and working my through the proofs. They're looking pretty good. If I don't find anything glaring in the rest of my read through, they're going live Friday.

I was talking with Beloved about the scene that I am stuck with on the final portion of book seven. He said that I did a good job of writing myself into a corner. I think, however, all of my sleep today gave me an idea for how to handle it. Now, for the remainder of this post, I'm going to try writing to some music I'm listening to.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The battle line was fifty men strong and twenty men deep. The noise of them beating on their shields was prodigious. It was enough to make the facing army nervous. Then they began their war chant. As they advanced forward, as one body they screamed the invocation of their god of war and victory. A man emerged from the shield-wall. He raised a spear decorated with cords of some kind and threw it across the battlefield with a scream.

Then the organized battle line rushed forward with wild screams of individual war cries. Among them, the man who had thrown the first spear continued to chant the names of their war god. In the chaos of combat, his voice was lost but to the gods, it continued to ring out clearly. A raven looked on the battlefield. Moving from branch to branch, it followed the chanting man as he carved his way into the ranks of their foes.

Battle-madness descended upon him. Pure butchery was his actions through the battlefield. His companions were careful to stay at his back for he cut down any man who came before him. Suddenly a spear stabbed into his stomach. The berserker pulled himself forward on the spear that impaled him so that he could reach the man holding the haft with his axe.

They're HERE!

Dear Reader,

I'm so excited. My proofs finally arrived. There's nothing quite like that new book smell! I've been reviewing it and so far everything looks good. The print size is a little smaller than I expected but it means that the book has more story for fewer pages which equals a less expensive book for you to purchase.

If it is ready, this goes live Friday. Here's hoping that this stupid sinus infection doesn't slow me down on reviewing this.

Trying not to give up.

Dear Reader,

I am not doing so great. This sinus infection is taking forever to go away. It's making it hard for me to concentrate on my writing. I've written myself into a corner with the final scenes of book seven. I have an army laying in wait about a badly fortified town with the enemy within. They're supposed to draw out the enemy and liberate the town. With a little magical combat in the process. Mainly, it is supposed to be draw the enemy out and butcher them. I'm stuck on figuring out how to get the smaller force to walk into the trap.

It'd be easier if the civilians weren't of concern. They could burn them out or besiege the town. But, these are the 'good' guys who want to have as few civilian casualties as possible. For some reason, the only fiction that is easy to write is fan fiction for a LARP I played in years ago. I keep writing scenes for that and I don't know what to do about them.

I am sad about this. I can't play in the LARP anymore because of life circumstances happening. I can't play in the other LARP anymore because of social circumstances and the life circumstances that keep me from participating in the other one. My creative expression has gotten limited again and my social outlet has shrunk because my night vision keeps me from going out to visit friends who live a few hours away in the evening. Thus, I don't get to have the improv acting experience that comes with LARP where I get to pretend to be somebody else for a few hours. And I don't get to socialize with my friends because I live too far away.

Writing was easier when I had more of a social life. Writing was easier when I had more creative outlets. Writing was a lot easier before I became disabled. I see my goals floating just beyond my reach. I say to myself if I just try harder, I can do it. If I find an end run around depression, I can go get it. I'm going to be getting a light box soon. I don't know how much it is going to help. I hope it will do me some good. Right now, I feel rather flattened by life and it's a struggle to get back up because I'm still getting kicked. Too bad I can't just rip the leg off of my invisible bully and beat the with it. Instead, I just have to keep trying to get up until the depression passes and I can work again at a greater pace.

AW: Morning Blog 40

*throws confetti*

Yay, I have reached thirty posts. In how long...

I'm confident that my daily blog post will go up as I work on this (and avoid things like another sinus infection). I would have posted something yesterday but I've been struggling with an erotic story that I can't quite manage go get working right. Beloved suggested it might not be my genre. I retorted that if I tried hard enough and I work on practicing long enough, I could manage to begin writing in it. I half expected him to argue with me over that point but he didn't. He said that a good place for me to start on that would be reading more erotica.

I just seem to be hitting roadblocks in my writing in just about all area. I am getting frustrated with the fact that I am unable to go from idea to completed draft in a few steps. I get about halfway through the idea and then it fizzles out. I have tried drawing up outlines. That doesn't work as well as it did before. I have tried just 'pantsing' the process and I get to about the halfway point and it goes flat.

Some one suggested that I might be afraid of something in completing a work. I don't know what about that could scare me. But, honestly, I am afraid. I'm afraid that I'm not good enough to be writing erotica. I'm afraid that my fantasy series is just escapeism and that it's not really worth reading. I'm afraid that all of those nasty things that were said about my writing are true. I know that right now I'm dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder. I know that right now, I am struggling with anxiety issues.

Perhaps my performance anxiety comes out of those things. I don't know.

AW: Morning Blog No. 39

I feel awful. This sinus infection is beginning to improve, I think, because blood has finally stopped coming out of my nose. At the same time, I am still just tired and miserable. I'm trying to psych myself up by making myself look "presentable for work". I am wearing some of my favorite jewelry and did my best to make my outfit look more on the casual side of business casual but if I were still working at a school it would be acceptable.

I feel like I'm doing these morning pages wrong. They read like a daily diary. I don't start with a topic, just what randomly comes to mind and then I word vomit. Most of my word vomit is about my day, my worries, or whatever trauma I am currently processing. I thought this was supposed to be more artistic. Bloody noses are not exactly artistic, neither is complaining about a constant headache. (All hail the inventors of Aleve because I can think and see straight due to that stuff right now. Nothing else touches this headache. Of course, I'm allergic to ibuprofen which might have worked, but hey, got Aleve, right?)

The mail truck has arrived. As tempted as I am to run out into the raw weather and see if she has my proofs, I am not going to do it. They shipped Wednesday. I don't think they're going to be here until the beginning of next week. I'm pretty irritated about that. When Lulu says they're going to get your proofs to you between a certain set of dates, they're just about always there on the first day. I'd go back to doing everything through Lulu except for the fact that Amazon has the e-book market cornered and their cover creator is better. Still, if Amazon keeps their shenanigans up, I'm going to go back to Lulu for everything except for e-books.

An author I admire, Gabino Inglesias is out there seriously hustling. He's working two jobs and writing. And going out to do stuff like readings and book tours. He's always got a positive attitude, even when he gets kicked in the teeth by life and something gets rejected. The fact that he is always supportive and encouraging of the indie writing community is just another reason why I admire the guy. He is also one hell of a writer. I haven't read Zero Saints yet but I read Coyote Songs and it was a wild read.

I look at myself and say to myself what is stopping me from getting to that place where he is. I ask how can I get over my social phobia enough to talk to the local stores about carrying one of my books and how many I should bring them to put in their stock. I ask myself how can I make an end run around my depression issues so that I can finish some more books and put them out there. I want to be productive. Being disabled, it makes that really hard.

I find myself wondering if I should take a brief break from writing fiction to write some stuff about being disabled. Then I get anxious that someone is going to get offended and I'll be pilloried for what I wrote. Same thoughts go through my head about doing the morning blogs too, to be honest. The only thing that keeps me working on them is the fact that my readership is less than fifty people and that none of them include my family. Things are bad between them and I. Part of the reason why I am disable comes back to the reason why things are bad between them and I. It's also a big part of the reason why I struggle to write.

When you are gaslighted into thinking that you have to have your career going full tilt as soon as you are out of college and the fact that you didn't means it will never happen, it's hard to be motivated to work. When you are consistently told that your degree is worthless and your college education is a waste because you didn't get a big name career immediately out of college, regardless of the fact that work experience is a thing and a shitty job market is a thing, it makes you doubt yourself on the bad days. My parents have always looked for a quick way to make it rich. Somewhere along the line, I think it was when I sat down and wrote my very first novel at 17, they decided that I was their meal ticket and that they had to tell me how to do it or it wasn't going to work out how they wanted it to.

I did everything I could to keep them out of the loop when it came to college. I started taking college classes at seventeen instead of taking the AP English classes because I knew that the AP English 'college credits' weren't going to transfer out of state if I went to college somewhere outside of New York. During that time, my parents tried to take over how I was writing my essays and completing my assignments. I got a couple Cs and an F when they did that (really early on in the course). That was when I started doing my writing assignments in secret (read in study hall at the high school with the rest of my homework). So the only writing that my parents saw me doing was my novel, which they laughed at and basically said I was never going to finish it.

I'm still pissed off that three hundred pages of work (12 pt font, single space, no idea what the word count was) got destroyed. That was after I had sent the enormous rambling thing off to the first publishing contest my parents found and decided I should enter it into. There was not editing, though I knew it needed it. They just basically grabbed a copy, made me sign my name on the entry forms, and mailed it off. I didn't win. The company was trying to keep my manuscript when it was theoretically going to be returned to me (I sent in a SASE as per contest rules to get it back.). So I had to threaten them with legal pressure. What I got back was half of my manuscript. That then got destroyed because my parents said it didn't matter because I got it wrong and I was clearly writing in the wrong genre.

I was gutted. I vowed to rewrite the novel and make it even better. I had my notes. I kept working on those notes. Then, the next year when I went off to college in Maryland, I worked on my novel in every free moment I had between classes and doing homework. Work study found me in idle moments with a notebook working on scenes if I wasn't working on homework. By the end of the first semester, I had a reasonable working draft of book one of the series. Because I realized that this wasn't going to be a single book. Fortunately, when I showed it to my advisers, they were encouraging and told me to keep working on it. (Thank you Sr. Margaret Ellen for tolerating my insanity in changing majors three times and your forbearance with how scattered I was on the academic front. And thank you Dr. D. for your tolerance and bemusement with how I wanted to know EVERYTHING.)