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.)

Books Update!

Dear Reader,

All glory to the gods of messengers and delivery folk! My proofs for book 4 are finally in the mail. Maybe I'll get them next week. I'm more than a touch irritated that KDP didn't drop them in the mail last week as they were supposedly going to do. Still, I'm glad they are on their way. Maybe when the proofs reach me, I'll be healthy enough that editing them won't eat all of my brain.

Book 7 refuses to cooperate with me. I'm debating ending it on a cliff hanger because it is proving so difficult to wrap up. I on't like to end things on cliff hangers unless I have no choice. Sure, a cliff hanger ending may be a good way to motivate your reader to buy the next book to see what happens. But it is a real shitty trick to pull on your readers who were enjoying the story as you were going along. I only use them if I have no choice. And it is starting to look like I have no choice.

Book 5 is fortunately cooperating with the editing process. I did not see this many damn typos on my last read through. Some gremlin put them in, I'm sure. After all, the word 'up' is not hard at all to spell. If I can get past this damn sinus infection and get it going, maybe I will have it ready for a beta read through by NaNoWriMo and I can start on an entirely different project.

AW: Morning Blog (late) No. 38

This sinus infection is killing my productivity. I have spent most of my morning unconscious and having fever dreams. I wanted to get right to work on my manuscript but I just didn't have the energy. Not because of Seasonal Affective Disorder but because I was literally exhausted just sitting there. I put the kids on the bus after calling and cancelling the youngest boy's dentist appointment. I was so exhausted, I was having a hard time walking around the apartment. It sucked. So, I did the smart thing and cancelled stuff that required me to drive before laying down for a nap.

The alarm I set on my phone went off and I vaguely recall looking at it. Then I dropped back down into sleep before waking up at eleven thirty. I said to myself I have to stay awake now. Even texted that I was awake and trying to get up the energy to do stuff to my dear husband. I think he knew as soon as he read the text that I was likely going to be passing out again later with how many times I said I had to be awake in that text.

Next thing I know, I feel like I am freezing. My first mistake was wrapping myself up in blankets. My second mistake was to sit down on the couch. My last conscious thought was "this feels kinda nice" and then I was asleep for an hour. I ate lunch when I woke up, brewed a pot of coffee, and tried to make sense of the news. I gave up on trying to figure out why Elijah Cummings looked familiar and went to find a sweater. Because my sinus infection includes bleeding out of my nose, I thought about the red sweater dress and then said nope because it wouldn't cover up my arms. So, I am sitting here wearing a sweatshirt with a hoodie over it, contemplating grabbing a shawl.

I am also left wondering why Spotify's theme with commercials right now features seagulls. Of all the birds we see at the lake, it is a toss up between the seagulls and the geese for the most annoying. The geese definitely win for the most vile attitude. Seagulls were probably best described in that movie about a fish (which I can't remember the name of) all going 'Mine?' They have less brains than you would find in a breadbox and are greedy as hell. Geese on the other hand are actually pretty smart for their brain size and just malicious. Forget stay away from their young. Most animals are like that. Geese will chase you and screw you up for looking at them funny. It's funny to watch people with cameras fleeing with an angry goose behind them, flapping its wings and hissing. It's not as funny to be the person running from the angry goose.

Did I mention that chickens are dumb as bricks and evil as geese? They're faster than geese and have spurs on their feet. And their beaks are sharper. So, if we are to rank birds by intelligence, seagulls win next to chickens and then you have geese. If we're to rank birds by their relationship to hell, chickens, followed by geese, and then seagulls as the cannon fodder. Because seagulls are not nice birds either. They're pretty mean, just not as bad as the other two.

Yeah, I'm still feverish. And I've got writing to attempt to do to stay on schedule. Wish me luck.

AW: Morning Blog Post No. 37

I'm not sure what to write this morning. I don't have time to leisurely post this entry. I have about twenty minutes before Beloved is up and we have to head out the door. I have a doctor's appointment about this damned cold. I think it's turned into a sinus infection. I've got bleeding from my nose and a massive headache that centers around one side of my face. I know it's not a migraine because I am not ready to vomit because the evil day star is too loud.

I'm horrified by what is going on in the country right now. I am equally horrified by things like how we've left the Kurdish people to be slaughtered. Syria is no ally to the Kurds and Turkey has had it out for them for a while. Let us not forget that the civil war in Syria is still ongoing and we've got Daesh still to worry about. Yes, I'm calling those terrorists attempting to establish a caliphate in the middle east Daesh instead of ISIL or ISIS. Two reasons why I am doing it. Daesh is the full acronym for the proper name of the organization in Islamic and it translates to something mildly vulgar (if I recall correctly). Secondly, I refuse to denigrate the sacred name of a goddess by associating her with their behavior. Isis (Aset) is a benevolent mother goddess and I am not going to be party to a bunch of terroist assholes taking her name and profaning it. Also, ISIL looks like a bad typo. Some acronyms make sense, others just look wrong.

I started writing the Umbrel Chronicles based on my fantasy life as a kid and how I attempted to escape the horrors that I was experiencing. As I have been working on this series, I am beginning to realize that the story is being influenced by the politics of our world. I'm not so sure I like this. Askemb was never supposed to be a cognate for any politician. He was supposed to be an encapsulation of all the people who had hurt me into one single figure that I could eventually slay by proxy. Instead, he's turned into something of a weather cock who turns his ambition towards what others suggest. Only his obsession with a single figure keeps him on something that vaguely resembles a solid course.

It hasn't been apparent in the last few books because I haven't gotten into the political intrigue of the story yet. Everything thus far has been set up for the first major conflict (which I am having trouble writing, hence book seven being stalled). From that first major conflict, we see that Askemb's hold isn't absolute and that the small folk and some of the nobles reject him. We see that the forces of evil are more insidious than a single monstrous figure here or there. But, I'm having a hard time getting to where I can illustrate that. As I am struggling over this in the world of fiction, I watch things unfold in reality that horrify me into stunned silence. And I'm at a loss for how to cope with it.

Serial Stories Update

Dear Reader,

If you've been following my serial stories you may have noticed that my plot has come off the rails a little bit in a few places. I'm currently re-reading the stories in an attempt to fix the plot holes that have developed and pick up threads that have be abandoned. I am debating adding my science fiction serial story to the serial stories page. At the same time, I have a large amount of material to that science fiction story that I have to organize and put together. NaNoWriMo may find me taking the science fiction story and turning it into a novel. I'll keep you updated.

I do have a few stand alone short stories set in the world of the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar. I'll be typing them up next week and posting them as place holders for the serial stories updates. Some of them feature backstory for principle characters in the series and you may find it interesting. Some of the short stories feature more elaborate discussion of locations mentioned in the books. I'm going to attempt to have enough prepped so that every Tuesday, you have something new to read through the remainder of this month and NaNoWriMo.

Considering that I have a pile of notebooks with material in them that literally takes up a square foot of space in my living room, I have a lot to work with. Just keep your eyes on this space as I get to typing things up.

♥ 

AW: Morning Blog Post No. 36

The kids are off to school. The husband is off to work. I'm tempted to lay down and take a nap but if I do that I won't get much done before the end of the day. I know that I need to slow down some because I am sick. I feel the powerful urge to do ALL THE THINGS right now. It happens to me when I get sick. Some of it is guilt that I'm not working on stuff because I am resting. Some of it is subconscious shit from my broken upbringing.

I came to the conclusion that if I'm going to write about my youth then I am just going to be honest and not mince words. Somethings I am going to do because of practicality. I'm going to change names and identifiable traits about the guilty this way they can not harass me as much. My writing is shaped by my history. Much of my history is tragic and results in first hand knowledge of things that  children shouldn't have had at that age. It is awkward when I am telling a story that I think is funny and others look at me in horror. It's why I don't talk about my childhood except in the anonymity of the internet.

This blog is small enough and the readership is low enough, I highly doubt that someone like my parents are going to find it and throw a fit over it. I suppose there is comfort in that. I am tired. I am tired in ways that I can't put into words. There's the obvious physical sense of exhaustion because I am sick right now. But I don't know how to describe the emotional and spiritual exhaustion. I feel like I just don't have the energy to do much of anything right now. Writing this post is difficult because a small bitter voice at the back of my head says that this is all point less. Depression sucks.

I find myself wishing that I had a brief stint of mania so that I could power through all of the things that are piled up that I am behind on in one burst of energy. Fortunately, the vraylar has kept my mood stable and this depression I am dealing with is a combination of c-ptsd and seasonal affective disorder. My eyes are watering. I'm so tired I am having a hard time seeing straight. It's 9:17 in the morning. I got a full night's sleep last night. Why must I be so damn tired?

Flora & Fauna: More Sketches!

Dear Reader,

I'm waaay behind on Inktober but I'm throwing my proverbial hat into the ring to try to get some more artwork done. Here's what I managed yesterday despite my fever.

It is called Silverthorn. The thorns are pale grey, almost white. Immature branches are lighter in color than mature ones, which have a reddish hue. The leaves (which I forgot to draw) have a cooling property like what one may find in mint or other sources of menthol. The bark is anti-inflammatory, like aspirin. The berries come in groups of three and have all the qualities of cherries. This does mean that the pits of the berries are a source of arsenic. The flower (again, I forgot to draw it) is has three petals and looks like a clover with a white stamen and pistol where the three petals meet. The flowers are pale green and blend in with the leaves. The flowers are scentless.

I would have had a second and third sketch for you today but I went to bed early last night because of this damned cold. Kinda makes me wish I had these magical plants to make my symptoms go away so I could get stuff done.

AW: (late) Morning blog post No. 35

I am struggling to find time to write today. The kids are on break from school for Columbus day. I am not a fan of Columbus day. I don't like the idea of celebrating genocide. We spent part of the day listening to music from the native american peoples in the southwest. I couldn't find anything that was from the people in our region. The kids were ok with it, until they got bored.

I'm sick right now. My head cold has definitely turned into something and I'm going to the doctor on Wednesday to get it dealt with. I'd have gone in earlier if it weren't for the fact that they didn't have any time earlier open and I didn't have the car today. My nose has been bleeding since about midday yesterday. It's a slow, steady bleed. My sinuses on the right side hurt and my right eye keeps tearing up at random times. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be put on antibiotics. Hopefully it won't interact with the laundry list of medications that I am on.

I've been trying to write devotional poetry but not getting much done because the kids are such a distraction. I have a devotional book that I'm working on for the Filianic community. It's a seasonal book of devotions. That's a different format than what I have out right now. I'm writing it by hand. I expect that typing it up is going to be relatively short work. It's a few prayers per page and those are relatively short. In an A5 notebook, it's not a huge deal. My goal is to have the rough draft done by the end of the month.

I tell myself that this is my preparing for NaNoWriMo. Honestly, I feel like everything I'm writing is garbage, but I'm going to keep working anyways until it is done. After all The Red Chair felt like a steaming heap of garbage and I had a friend tell me it was amazing and I should publish it.

Craft of Writing: Keep more than one iron in the fire

Dear Reader,

It's hard to work when you are depressed and anxious. The main project becomes a source of minor panic every time I sit down to work on it. Book seven is that source of anxiety. Editing book five is tedium but not a source of panic. Still, I have more than one creative writing project going on at the time. This way if I can't even bear to look at things relating to the Umbrel Chronicles, I have something else to fall back on to and still get some work done on.

I am behind on my poetry project because I misplaced the notebook and because I started to get extremely anxious about my poetry. (Thanks professor X for your words of 'encouragement'. Fuck you again.) Sometimes you can't just push through the psychological blocks that come up. You have to make an end-run around them. So, I have more than one project going on at a time at various stages. This way I can still work despite how I am feeling.

I like writing by hand. I have a long history of writing by hand. Some of my work is done by hand. It's waiting to be transferred to digital media. I have several files that are incomplete that are stories that I started and the abandoned. It's not because I lost the thread of the story as much as it became too much in the moment to work on.

As an author who is struggling with an anxiety disorder and depressive episodes, it gives me the flexibility to continue working despite these problems.

AW: Morning blog post no: 34

I'm not sure what to write about today. I have a massive headache. The sinus drainage is slowly improving. I'm pretty sure the headache will go away in good time as well. I'm writing while my eldest child is reading books and my youngest is playing with legos. If I could just ignore the noise of him pawing through the legos, I'd be writing with out my headphones on. I can't, however, ignore that noise because it is like fingernails on a chalkboard.

My children are autistic. They're not so severely autistic that they can not function outside of the home but they still struggle. I worry about them going through the challenges of young adulthood. I have no brilliant ideas of how to help them navigate high school. I have no brilliant ideas for how to help them deal with the emotional upheaval that comes with puberty. I worry that they may develop my bipolar disorder at some point in the midst of puberty because that was when my problem with depressive episodes began. I know what to watch for in depression, because gods know I have enough familiarity with it. I still fear that I'm going to miss something important or pass it off as a symptom of their quirks  and be in a situation that a friend of mine was in and find one of them attempting suicide.

Suicide is a terrible world. It is a terrible concept. It is horrifying for so many reasons. Perhaps the most horrifying is the struggles that I have had with it over the years. I know how indisdious it is. I live with suicidal ideation on a regular basis. Intrusive thoughts of 'yeah, this coffee is great but I should be dead right now' come to me just about every day when I am depressed. I've learned to ignore them unless they're really bad. I struggle to keep myself presenting as normal and neurotypical despite the fact that there is a deeply wounded part of my brain that says I haven't earned the right to breath air or take up space. I come off as quiet and shy. It's not because I am excessively demure. It is because I am afraid of people and afraid that if I say the wrong thing the 'bad thoughts' will get louder.

High school was hell because of all the bullying that I had to put up with. It was hell because of the abusive relationship that I was in for half of it and the resulting fallout from breaking up with him. It was hell because of the harassment and regular interrogation that I got at home as to if I was "on drugs" when my problem was that I was depressed and trying to hide how badly I was getting treated by my peers. I wasn't a very good student. I started out pretty well. Then my grades dropped and I went from above average to average because of all the bullying. In junior high, I got harassed by teachers as well. It was awful. I worry that this is going to be the experience of my children.

I developed an eating disorder in junior high if not earlier because I was picked on about food. I sat down with a normal sized cafeteria meal and I got to listen to comments about how I was disgusting for eating. I got to listen to people predict that I was going to go throw it all up as soon as lunch was done. So, I isolated myself at the lunch table and I ate less. It was humiliating. How cruel kids can be to each other is vastly underestimated. It took me years to get into a healthier eating habit because I was severely underweight. Perversely, my mother took pride in this and tried to dress me in what she considered fashionable clothes. I went along with it for two years, because she pressured me about what to wear as I was dating N-. I came out looking like a cheap harlot. So, my peers harassment about that as much as they did about the fact I was so skinny.

I tried to throw myself into the subjects that I loved, like English and Science. When I broke up with N- my clothing choices changed dramatically. I stopped trying to look any form of fashionable and went with jeans and a t-shirt most of the time. By then, the damage was already done. I had people talking about me outside of school declaring me to be a whore. It got to the point that I had random strangers from the college walk up to me asking what the cost of a blow job was. I'm pretty sure that the rumors are part of the reason why a good number of my husband's extended family doesn't like me and didn't particularly like me when they met me in the beginning of our relationship. We don't talk to them very much. Because, if you're going to believe a lie rather than the evidence before your face, I don't have time for you. And things are complicated between my husband and them, partly because of me.

AW: Morning (somewhere) Blog Post No. 33

It's actually 7pm here when I am typing this. It's been a long day. I have that head cold still kicking my butt. I spent most of it doing chores. Real life getting in the way of writing time again. I could have done some writing while I was resting, but, honestly, it's hard to type when you are unconscious.

My kids are trying to talk to me about things like summoning spirits and adopting random stray cats. I'm tired but not exhausted. I just have that over full and ready to take a nap feeling. I think I ate too many carbs at dinner. I regret little because it was quite tasty. Roast chicken with mashed cauliflower was a good dinner. My cold seems to be improving because I was actually able to taste my food.

Beloved and I have been talking about things like long term care concerns for his parents. It's a topic that pulls my heart in multiple directions. I feel like we should definitely be there for their care. I feel like we should do everything in our power to help them just as they have done everything in their power to help us when we had fallen on hard times. At the same time, I feel like I am failing in my filial duty to my parents and my side of the family because we're not making any single plan to do anything of the sort for them.

I walked away because things were too toxic between them and I to do me any manner of good and I feared it would only bring harm to my children. It makes things like the questions my kids have about the family bitter in my mouth. I try to live as though they live too far away to influence our lives. I try to live as though they are just incapable of coming to my door. It's not that way, however. They just don't come around. For all the talk that was made of a desire to be in contact, they didn't reach out. They just expected me to chase them around and dance at their whims. I can't do that. I am forty with two kids and a husband. I am disabled. I run a household and attempt to run a business with my writing. I can't be like I was in my teens and early twenties, chasing after them for crumbs of attention. And it was made clear that they didn't want me there, only what I could do for them.

Now, my boys are trying to learn about the family in a larger sense. It's hard because I don't have pictures of my parents and siblings out. In fact, they're all packed away. The only picture from my wedding that is out is the one taken of Beloved and I. As far as the casual observer knows, we haven't any family beyond our children. A small shrine on the corner of a book case holds prayer cards and names of the deceased family members we were close to and of dead friends. It is small enough you'd miss it if you swept the room with a glance.

It's just easier not to have that emotional knife in the chest to look at pictures of people that we're going to have nothing more to do with going forward. It's easier to have them remain in the past or somewhere off elsewhere in the present where we don't have to deal with emotional manipulation, lies, and backstabbing. My children are starting to notice that this absence is a thing compared to their peers' experiences. They're asking questions and it is painful. I answer them factually. My parents are alive as are my siblings. They just don't come around and we don't visit them. After all, you don't want your children put into the clutches of people who gaslighted you into thinking that you were the worst human being on earth because your birth expenses were more than their monthly income and that their poverty was your fault.

AW: Exercises Week No. 1

I'm not going to copy down the questions and such. If you have a copy of the book, you'll know what pages they're on and stuff. If you don't have a copy, this may inspire you to get one. I don't know. I just don't have the spoons to copy questions and answer them.

1. Morning pages were done every day this week, except for Tuesday. I switched to blogging them because my notebook is full and I don't have another in the same size.

2. My artist's date happened on Tuesday. I stopped at the local dollar store to look for a book of stickers or something interesting. There wasn't anything there that caught my eye. It wasn't a good day for such things anyways because of family drama happening that day.

3. Enemy No. 1: K- who wanted to take over my life and make me stop producing art or writing for fun. K- insisted that creativity was only acceptable if it was useful. Enemy No. 2: the collective body of my grade in school bullied me mercilessly. My self-expression was the target of harassment and physical punishment for being different. One kid vs 97 is really bad odds. It started in kindergarten and lasted through senior year of high school. Fuck those people. I haven't been to a class reunion and likely will never go. Enemy No. 3: Professor X who told me that I was a hack. He said that my poetry was a bad imitation of E.A. Poe and that my prose was abhorrent and childish. I still have a hard time writing poetry.

4. Completed some of this in the section above. I'm still pissed about Professor X.

5. To whom it may concern, Professor X is a terrible instructor. His autocratic bullshit attitude fails to inspire confidence in his students. My homage to E.A. Poe was relatively well written considering that it was my first attempt and unedited. Professor X should have given me instruction for how to improve my work rather than shooting me down.

6. Champion No. 1: My grandparents who were always at my back supporting and encouraging me in my work. Champion No. 2: Professor Y who told me while I was in their class during high school that I had the potential to be a great author. And the guidance that they gave me for how to write my academic papers has stuck with me through the years and given me a deep respect for E.B. White. Champion No. 3: My husband. He has always encouraged me to follow my dreams and been my consolation when things get hard. I love you, babe.

7. Dear Debby, don't let the bastards grind you down. You will make it despite the harassment and bullying. Life gets better after high school and the general bastardy of N-. You'll go to college and meet some wonderful people. You'll find your voice. And you will start to heal from the hurts given to you. Don't give up.

8. Imaginary lives: painter, teacher, actress, psychic, singer, musician

9. Blurt No. 1: I am past my prime. I can't do this anymore because I am disabled.
Blurt No. 2: I'm too broken to write anything worth reading.
Blurt No. 3: I'm not smart enough to make this into a career.
Blurt No. 4: If I'm not perfect, there will be horrific consequences.

Affirmation 1: My disability does not change my abilities to write. It just requires me to rest and take better care of myself in the process of doing so.
Affirmation 2: I am not broken. I am injured and in the process of healing. This does not make my work less valuable or worthy.
Affirmation 3: I have a college degree from a prestigious university that tells me that I am smart enough to do anything I put my mind to. Dual concentrations in English and Physics tells me that I am not dumb. My problem is not being dumb, it is organization and time management. This can be solved.
Affirmation 4: The goal is not perfection but progress. Mistakes are growth and can be part of the 'perfection' of the final work. In knitting a mistake can be an advanced design element if you repeat it intentionally in the pattern and make it yours. There are entire patterns based around dropped stitches, I can make mistakes work for me and make my work stronger with them.

10. Too sick to take a walk today. Sat and did some crochet instead. Hate the colorway but the pattern is ok on the project.

AW: Morning blog No. 32

I hate this stupid cold. My sinuses hurt, I feel cold all the time, and I can't stop coughing. Stupid diabetes keeps me from being able to take over the counter cold medicine and my laundry list of medications for my psychiatric stuff keeps me from taking a laundry list of other things that would relieve my symptoms. I'm sitting here waiting for my coffee to be ready. The kids have off from school today because it is a superintendent's conference day. They're running around outside and having a good time.

It looks like they may be watching the train down at the crossing by the lumberyard up the street. Or the may be watching them unload a truck at the lumberyard. Either way, the boys like to see it. [...] I was distracted for a bit by trying to get the right playlist to load on Spotify. I like Spotify a lot because it has a really wide range of music I can play.

I'm tired. I didn't sleep well last night. The cold kept waking me up with coughing fits. Hubby's been sleeping on the couch. Fortunately, this means I don't wake him up with that. He's got this bug too, which was why he decided to sleep on the couch. Fortunately, coffee is ready and I can have some to perk me up. I drink a lot of coffee to get through the day it seems. All of my medications make me tired and the S.A.D. doesn't help things much either.

I'm half tempted to take a nap. That, however, would be when the kids come in looking for something or needing something from me. It happens that way every time. I brought all of my plants in. Now the kids are hiding toys among them. It's exasperating. We haven't had a hard, killing frost yet. I expect it to happen soon. There's a lot of corn left standing in the fields this year. People are watching the prices for veggies go up in the store while the corn is being left out in the fields to rot. Something not right about that.

It wasn't a very good year for corn to begin with. The weather has been wonky and it's made the growing season off kilter. I think that a bunch of the farmers are just giving up on getting it to market because of the fact that it's hard to get a good price for corn, beans, or other agricultural products for a small family farm compared to what the big industrial ones can manage. The big industrial ones sell on a bulk rate that drives the cost down. Throw in whatever shenanigans done by the government and farmers get screwed. As my late grandfather said, farming is the biggest gamble you can take. You're wagering your livelihood against the weather, a fickle market, and if you got a good batch of seed that year.

I'm not sure what more to write. I still have a few more minutes of time to go. I miss my paternal grandparents. They were my biggest supporters of my writing and my efforts to improve myself. By the time I self-published my first book, my grandfather had died from cancer and my grandmother was addled by some form of dementia- it wasn't Alzheimer's, but no one told me what the tests showed because they don't talk to me - that she didn't recognize the book she was holding was one I had written.

I feel cut off from my roots. I don't know how to handle that. So much of my sense of self for most of my life was rooted in my family and family history. Then I had to walk away from my parents. And when I did that, I discovered that I had to walk away from most of the family. Because aside from my grandparents, they didn't reach out to me or anything. It made it pretty clear where I was expected to fall. I was expected to show up and pay court to their whims. There was no reciprocity in communication. I was supposed to reach out to them and check on how they were doing, where as they felt no need to do the same for me.

It hurts. I feel as though I am an orphan in many ways. It is, however, unsurprising. It was made pretty clear that they didn't want me around except as a prop to say 'look at how big and wonderful our family it.' I don't go where I am not wanted. I don't have time for the social political games and the backbiting comments. In college, a friend of mine joked that if we sat down with the DSM-IV we could probably list out disorders for each person because of how dysfunctional the family was.

I guess that's why tragedies happen to families in my books. Because I'm struggling to process what the problems were in my family. And just why they happened.

AW: Drop kick and reboot.

I have decided to post all of the work I'm doing via The Artist's Way up here under the 'AW' tag. I've done the proverbial drop kick with my notebook because it's just too hard to juggle so many notebooks right now. I have therapy writing that I do in two notebooks. I had my morning pages notebook (which I filled up yesterday) and a notebook dedicated for the exercises. This is on top of the notebooks I am using for daily necessity like my planner, writing bullet journal, and my food log (stupid diabetes).

Every year, when I hit the seasonal affective disorder for the past few years, I drag out a well worn copy of The Artist's Way and work through it. The results are a little different every year. This year, I had the wild idea of making it a full year project. You can see how well that worked out. Doing AW as I am working on books is going to be a little challenging. I think, however, the challenge of doing so will keep me from collapsing farther into the seasonal depression I get. As long as I am busy with something, I don't have time to perseverate on unhealthy things.

Part of this reboot of AW is going to include artwork that I am making. I am going to be audacious and count things like my crafting for charity as part of my artwork. I am also going to put some effort into my work on keeping an art journal. I'm ten days behind on inktober. I think I'm going to try to catch up. It may get a little weird because I do abstract art. But if you like it, that's awesome. If you don't, that's ok to. Abstract art isn't for everybody.

Here's the tags/subject lines to look for on here if you are following along my work through The Artist's Way.

AW: Morning blog no. [insert number here]
AW: Art
AW: Exercises Week No. [insert number here]
AW: Reading Notes

Book status: Book 4 of the Umbrel Chronicles.

Dear Reader,

I'm sitting here with a massive head cold waiting for my proofs to arrive. It should be sometime within the next day or two. I'm impatient to sit down and make sure that everything which looked good in the previewer is just right in the hard copy before I officially release it. In the meantime, I'm spinning my wheels because I am stuck on how to conclude book seven. Book five is a bit of a bear to be editing right now. My head cold isn't doing much to help me focus.

The only thing that seems to be going right at the moment is my work making scarves and hats for charity. The current scarf is garishly bright but that is a good thing. While it is not my favorite color palette I know someone out there will like it. And, if nothing else, it will be bright enough to make them a little more visible in the cold weather. My box for the NICU hats to go into for donation is just about full.

The e-book for volume four of the Umbrel Chronicles is complete. I plan on officially releasing both books at the same time. Still, if you decide to search for it and pick up a copy, I won't take it amiss. Shades of Twilight is not as long as the other books in the series. It's more of a novella. That said, I am pretty pleased with it. I just need my proofs to get here so that I can make sure that the physical copies look as good as the digital ones. Details like making sure that pagination is correct and such are important.

Book five is a headache. I'm still juggling multiple plot lines. I narrowed the number of plot lines to juggle down but editing this monster is almost as bad as my sinus headache right now. It is my hope to have book five out by December. I have yet to set up the hard back versions over on Lulu.com because I'm still trying to make sure that the cover art for that version is along the same theme. It's a bit difficult.

My hope is when I finally get book six out, I can do a discount on both Amazon and Lulu so that if you wanted to buy the whole series in one shot you can. I don't have the means to set up fancy box sets right now. But, that is a goal down the road.

AW: Morning Blog no. 31

I have filled up my A5 notebook. The store where I picked it up is out of them. I thought about doing the entry in my writing journal but decided to just do it here. I already was doing morning blogs here, on a slightly shorter length. I am probably going to start doing the exercises here again.

I'm sick with an awful head cold. I was taking a nap when some ass with a chainsaw and a wood chipper started going to town on trees up the road. I can't really sleep through something like that. I'm currently listening to Ludovico Einaudi's concert at the Royal Albert Hall. I'm not sure why I enjoy his music so much. It's just vivid and colorful in a way that reminds me of the composers of the Romantic period. I guess that's what makes it so appealing to me. The concert was recorded in 2010. I found it on Spotify.

I like Spotify. There is an incredible range of music on there. Just about anything that can fit my mood or what I'm working on. I just want to go to sleep right now. I don't like the fact that this cold has me exhausted. I can't focus very well. I keep making typos and then going back to delete them and retype the sentence.

I'm still stuck on how to progress this major fight scene in book seven. I don't want to end with the rescuing party arriving on scene. I want to end with a costly victory that on one hand inspires hope for the rebellion against Askemb (the principle antagonist of the series) but also cuts the heroic figures that are leading this fight to the quick and make them realize that this is not going to be a simple matter of storm the castle and knock over Askemb.

I want to set the stage for the ugly political fights coming up. I want to set the stage for Thora to go through some major character growth by way of major challenges over come. I am, however, stuck on how to get from point A to point B and then to point C. I know that I need to write book eight that takes place at the same point in the timeline but on its own weird timeline. Because of magic and such. I know that there is a way to wrap up loose plot ends from the previous books in the same book that sets up for the big reveal.

I am dreading NaNoWriMo this year because of this tangled mess. I'm considering just writing something completely different but I am concerned that it will be like the last two NaNo attempts and I'm just recording trauma memories. I had an outline and a plan. It refused to gel and turn into a story. Now I don't know what to do if it happens again.

AW morning (somewhere) blog no. 30

I have a cold. It's a really crappy experience when you can't take any over the counter stuff to ease your symptoms. Between the diabetes and the laundry list of medications I am on, I get sugar free cough drops and hot tea/broth to take care of it.

I can't make myself a cup of broth with out my mother's bitterness coming to mind. I was home from college, on thanksgiving break, and my brother's dog was dying from a bowel obstruction. The dog had it for months and my parents never took the poor creature to the vet. He had gotten to the point where he was too ill for solid food. The dog barely had energy to do anything. I was getting out my stuff to work on a final paper for a class when my mother demanded I drop everything to make the dog a bowl of broth. I demurred because I had a lot of work to do. My mother told me that I was a heartless monster because I didn't have the compassion to make my brother's sick dog broth. I was tempted to argue with her but I just did it because I didn't want her to take what ever I said as an excuse to kick me out of the house, as she had threatened many times before.

Now, when I'm making myself or someone else broth, the sight of the broth dissolving into the water and the act of stirring the cup brings me back to that moment. I was so angry with them. I asked why they didn't take the dog to the vet. They said they couldn't afford it. I asked why they didn't put the dog down. They said because it was cruel and it would break my father and brother's hearts to do the deed.

The next day, the dog got out of the house with an unexpected fit of energy. He bolted out for the road and was hit by a car, dying instantly. My parents were furious with me for not stopping the dog as he ran out the door. It didn't matter that I wasn't in reach to grab the dog's collar. It was my fault that my brother's sick dog got hit by a car. It was cemented in their minds that I was to blame because friends of mine were driving the car that hit the dog (who came to the door extremely upset that they killed him).

I left with them and my papers in tow to go sit at a diner and talk as I reviewed my notes. I didn't mourn the dog. I was relieved that his suffering was done. My cat died the day I went back to college and no one bothered to tell me until I was home on break two months later. They made a point of telling me that my cat 'didn't suffer'. I still have days where I suspect that they may have killed my cat. It wouldn't have surprised me if they did, looking back. After all, they had no problems letting the dog rot to death from the inside out for three months.

Every time I make myself a cup of broth, I think of that and feel a weird mixture of guilt and anger. Those same feelings hit me when I sit down to write at times. Because I was at a crucial point in my education and being told that I was a monster for not dropping everything to cater to their whims. Because my mother was perfectly able to make that cup of broth but she was too busy making herself a cup of coffee. Because my brothers were perfectly able to make that cup of broth, but they were too busy playing video games to do it. Because my father was too busy watching television to do it. But, I was the selfish monster for trying to better myself and pass a challenging class.

I grew up with some real winning people. I'm pretty sure there'd be a phone call about this if they bothered to read my blog. They'd make me the bad guy all over again for talking about family business in public. But, all I've done is tell the truth. That's the thing. Once you have experienced something, it's yours. You own it. If the other parties aren't happy with how they're portrayed, then they should have treated you better.

AW: Morning Blog No. 29

For the first time in years, I am concerned that I am not going to be able to do NaNoWriMo. I haven't been well. My doctor has prescribed me something to help with the anxiety that has been running rampant. I am dealing with seasonal affective disorder right now. Between the two, I find myself concerned that I just won't have the focus to do NaNoWriMo.

And then there is all of this trauma stuff that keeps coming up as I am writing. I'm afraid that I'm going to spend NaNoWriMo writing more trauma garbage. I feel terrible about writing all of this. I want to write fiction. I want to write poetry. I want to finish my epic cycle of the war between gods and among men. For the last two years, I haven't been able to work on it except in random spurts. Book seven isn't finished. Book five is on the editing block and I just stare at it wondering if it is any good or worth even publishing. My plan was to write book eight this year.

Instead, I'm sitting here asking questions about how I am going to finish a major battle scene that I haven't started writing. I am sitting here anxious that I can't write it because all I can write now is the horrors that I have lived through. I don't know. Maybe book eight will have to wait for Camp NaNoWriMo and I'll attempt to write a memoir or a fictionalized account of my history.

Gods know that I have four notebooks and countless journals full of material to draw from. If I do write this thing, I know there will be repercussions because some of the parties are still around. And they'd have few qualms about suing me for defamation of character or something similar. Never mind that what I'd be writing was the truth about what happened. Just like what I've put up in my previous morning blog posts and in my journals.

It all goes back to something I was told when I was young. That my writing was going to make the family look bad and that I was going to put the family in danger if I didn't stick to children's books and topics that were conventional (or at least what my parents thought were appropriate). I don't know what to do. It's exhausting to sit and fight with myself like this. I know that statement was designed to quash my imagination and to keep me under control.

The question is, if they throw up a huge fit and do try to some how block me in my writing work, what do I do? I'm sick of keeping secrets. I'm sick of being the one who knows where all the bodies are buried and having to keep it quiet because I shouldn't go talking about 'family business' and being an 'embarrassment to the family' with my writing 'lies'. When I don't lie. I have been gaslighted enough in my life, I can't stand the concept of lying for pretty much any reason. It strikes me as disgusting and atrocious as gaslighting.

Book status: Bk 4 of the Umbrel Chronicles

Dear Reader,

I'm close to having book for ready for sale. There's a few minor details to be adjusted and once I review the proofs, it's going live. I'll be posting a link to the book's page on Amazon. In the meantime, here's the front cover's pic.

The Iron Lily part 26 – The Parting of Friends

Freystein reached up and checked his tree. A leafless branch hung awkwardly where it had been broken in their fall. Halthor looked at the disappointed expression on Freystein's face. "Let me up," he said. Freystein looked over at Halthor with confusion. "Let me up there and see the tree," he said, "I think I can help. If I remember how."

Freystein stooped and Halthor climbed up their leg to their knee and from the knee up to the shoulder where the tree sat precariously. Halthor looked the tree over. He could see cracks in it and a branch was just about broken off. Halthor sat down on Freystein's shoulder. "I have some rope. I can wrap it around and support the limb. I just need something solid to brace it with." Halthor gasped as Freystein shifted and the world seemed to sway for a moment. Then an enormous hand was holding a handful of skeleton bones. Halthor scrambled over and took a selection of them. A pair of femurs were tied to the trunk of the tree to brace the split wood. A collection of ribs were tied to the trunk and the branch that was half torn off. A part of Halthor said that it was a waste of rope but he pushed the thought away.

Satisfied that the tree was well supported and the rope was going to hold, Halthor put his pack back on and climbed back down. Freystein cautiously stood, reaching up to touch their tree. "HOW HAVE YOU PUT MY SAPLING BACK TOGETHER?" they asked. Halthor scratched the back of his head and looked down at the snow. "WHAT MANNER OF MAGIC DOES HUMANS POSSESS THAT MENDS BROKEN TREES?"

"My father taught me how to do it when I was a young boy. It makes the tree grow how you want it to. He did it with quickwood to save time on carving out shapes," Halthor answered. Freystein very carefully placed a great hand on Halthor's side, a touch almost butterfly light with a hand that could crush him to death. It was a human gesture but mildly disturbing from a mountain troll. "Quickwood makes for somewhat reliable doors and such, but it's better for carving into furniature. And my father said if you really wanted a reliable good, you'd do better with anything other than quickwood." Halthor realized that referring to Alaric as his father felt good and made the ache of being alone easier to bear. "You don't have quickwood up there. But I think you'll gain glory with the bones of your foes supporting your tree," Halthor added, looking up at Freystein.

"THE LAST TIME MY PEOPLE MARCHED TO WAR, THE GREATEST OF WARRIORS WORE THE BONES OF THE FALLEN. IT IS AN HONOR ABOVE ME," Freystein said, "YOUNG HALTHOR, THE HANDS OF GODS MOVE THROUGH AND ABOUT YOU. WHEN TROUBLES COME AGAIN AMONG MEN, MY CLAN SHALL COME TO YOUR AID IN MEMORY OF THIS DEED." Halthor leaned his shoulder in against Freystein's great hand. They had traveled far though it had not seemed so. While it was impulse and a strong sense of self preservation that pushed Halthor to name Freystein as friend, he couldn't help but feel a sense that it was right and proper that he did so.

Elwis nudged Halthor in the left leg with a whine. Halthor looked down. "Alright, boy," he said, "I'm moving." He turned and began walking across the snow covered ancient battlefield. He paused a moment to sling the shield with Olerand's device on it across his shoulders. He wasn't sure how the count would greet him when he came back with his great-grandfather's arms slung across his back. He was just a builder caught up in a whirlwind of strange events. The fey dog trotted unerringly forward unto a hollowway through the trees that Halthor hadn't seen. Halthor decided that the dog knew where they were going and if he were lucky, Elwis would lead him to a traveler's rest before sundown. Because it was shortly past noontide and Halthor was already tired.

AW blog: 28

Some days I feel like everything I write is garbage. Some days, I feel like everything I do is utterly worthless. I know that it is my chronic depression rearing its head when it happens during certain times of year. Seasonal Affective Disorder fucks me up on a yearly basis from early autumn until early spring. Bipolar depressive episodes get me from spring to about the middle of autumn. Most of my year is me dealing with ptsd trauma crap with about a month or so where I'm not. That month is not November. It's around May.

This year has been harder than other years because depression has really been riding my ass hard. I am so fed up with it. I want to sit down and write. I have books to finish. I have books to start. I have short stories to finish up. I have poems I want to get back to working on. I have a life I want to live.

I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired (because I'm sick). To throw on top of all of this, my social phobia makes going out to meet up with like minded souls really hard. I have a circle of friends who write that I struggle to post in the forum that they've got set up because we're from all across WNY (and some brave souls have ventured out to points like Georgia and Texas to pursue greater opportunities). I'm struggling on so many fronts. A part of me just wants to say fuck it all. I just feel like I should be a hermit or something. I feel like I should just give this up.

I, however, can't stop writing anything more than I can stop breathing. I can't stop creating things any more than I can stop breathing. I'm torn in multiple directions. When depression hits, executive function takes a nose dive. I get overwhelmed easily. Suddenly I can't tell what item has the highest priority. Generally, that means housework turns into a mess as well. It gets ugly in my writing when I can get organized enough to do it because I word vomit all kinds of awful stuff. 

I just don't know how to shake this off my back. I just am stuck circling from half finished item to half finished item. I feel terrible about how nothing is done. I feel like I am a horrible human being because of my screwed up brain chemistry and the trauma programming that I'm trying to unravel. It's just awful.