Not Nanoing

As Nanowrimo passes me by this year, and my prescription for my SSRI has run out without refills because I don't have a doctor locally yet, I am struggling with inertia, frustration, and feeling a little lost.

Kauai is not an easy place to live, despite being a wonderful place to have an amazing time. I have had more fun in the months since we moved here--more unadulterated joyous fun--than I had in the last ten years, easily. I love the ocean, I love waves, and I (newly) love boogie boarding. It's heaven, in that respect.

Yesterday there was a sea turtle sunbathing on the beach. It's the third one we've seen doing that since August. I mean, flipping AMAZING.

It's the most beautiful place I've ever lived. And I've lived in some beautiful places, and I even feel disloyal to those places saying it, but let's be real. There are flowers everywhere. In the bushes, in the grass, on the trees, in people's hair, everywhere. Rainbows are almost a daily occurrence. I'm not even exaggerating, I think it might actually be daily. I love the wild chickens, trailing chicks behind them peeping, and the flamboyant roosters everywhere. Geckos--some bright green--on the walls. People don't dress as tacky. I mean, I'm not the fashion police (like, at all). But give me Hawaiian prints over hot pink zebra stripes any day.

But everything you heard about it being expensive is true. It's oddly not the way I expected, somehow, though I didn't have a clear idea anyway. But Jeff and I are both working full time, and we borrowed several thousand dollars from family to move, and now I'm really stressing because we barely make ends meet and we have to pay these people back. I cannot live with not paying them back in a timely manner, I just can't deal with it. They were so generous to help us and we're eating ramen and quesadillas most nights and we are overdrawn in one bank account. It's overwhelming.

Getting a new driver's license is going to be a mountain to climb because I'd let my CA one expire so now I have to go through the whole process--road test, learner's permit, the works.

I have yet to get all my paperwork in to the Hawaii DOE for my job and I'm afraid that when I do they'll dock my salary because of sticky details that shouldn't make a difference but probably will.

My job has these wonderful aspects and these super annoying and stressful aspects that I won't go into detail about. All I'll say is that I'm very grateful to be working with the co-teacher I'm with. He's awesome.

And Jeff is seriously considering applying for PhD programs so it's likely we'll move at the end of this year. Which, considering all the things that make living here hard, is probably going to be the best thing in the long run. But it's more uncertainty and another hella expensive and challenging move... my three year old regressed on potty training with the Kauai move--will he be in diapers in Kindergarten if we move again?

I'm venting. I started out writing this post as a way to feel like I am writing even though my WiP is sitting in a digital drawer gathering binary dust instead of moving along in the Nanowrimo flow. I miss the Nanowrimo flow. I miss having more than a half an hour to write once a week when I should be lesson planning.

Anyway... are you doing Nano this year?
What uncertainties are you staring down these days?

No Nano this year...

At least, not the real 50K deal. My quiet goal is to work on my current WiP every day, or as close to it as I can. I know last year I embraced the challenge Kristen Lamb threw down to MAKE TIME. And I'm hoping next year that'll be possible, maybe. Sigh. This year I just don't see it. Between actual demands on my time and the exhaustion that some days makes it impossible to concentrate, it's too much. Do I sound like I'm arguing with someone? I am. I am arguing with the part of myself that only cares about my writing. That part is like, DUDE. IT'S NEVER GOING TO BE EASY TO SCHEDULE WRITING TIME. But right now I'm a nursing a baby parenting three kids under five part time teaching trying to keep the house from exploding machine. I'm just hoping next year, it'll be more doable. The eldest will be in school, the middle will be in preschool, and the littlest will still be napping. BY GOD HE WILL STILL BE NAPPING.

Anyway. I'm working on Masks in the Glow, the third book in the Raud Grima trilogy. The other day for the first time in months I did some work on it, rereading most of the sections for one point of view (I ran out of time but the goal was to read them all) and improving them. One of the things I'm really focusing on in this novel is voice--I have four points of view that I switch between and I really want each to be so distinct you'd have no trouble reading a couple of lines and figuring out which character it is.

Oh, and pretty cool news:

On November 18 I'm going to be interviewed on S. Evan Townsend's Speculative Fiction Cantina program on the Writestream Radio Network. He says to prepare to read a 5 to 8 minute section of one of my books (PG-13 rated). Um. This makes me really nervous. I'm going to have to practice reading it about fifty times. I don't know what to choose, either. Suggestions welcome!

NaNoWriMo 2015!

I recently started an online writing group and it has done wonders for my motivation! I love talking about writing with other writers. I also rediscovered Kristen Lamb's blog after several years away thanks to Lori Sizemore, and found it to be super motivating. Back in September when I thought about doing NaNo this year I figured, "Meh, I'm not going to hit 50K with my current schedule, but I'll do as much as I can." Not anymore, baby. Lamb is especially responsible for this with her post about Good Girls and her post about why your writing career might be stuck. This quote from the Good Girls post really did it for me:

How many of us are getting up before dawn or staying up after midnight because our dream might just inconvenience someone else? Let them be inconvenienced for a change!

We ladies bend more than the karma sutra and that is okay, but if our husband actually has to watch the kids for an hour in the evening that is too much?

No.

Because this is me. I fit my writing in wherever I can, and I don't ask my husband for any extra time. And it's not like he'd ever say no. He's totally supportive. But I feel guilty taking time away from him and the kids to go write. After reading these articles, though, I knew I have to do it. Just for November, I'm telling myself. We'll see how it goes. But on days when the older kid comes home at noon from preschool (there are two days a week where he stays in the afternoon, giving me several glorious hours for writing), I will leave once my husband gets home and go to the library for an hour and a half to write.

Yesterday I took three loads of laundry to the laundromat (because the piles of laundry were seriously starting to take over the house, and we don't have a working dryer) and got started on my NaNo book. It's my first foray into YA, a supernatural thriller set in the 1960s. I'm so excited about it. 1750 words so far, folks. Yay!

Are you writing a novel for NaNo this year? What's your schedule like? Do you have trouble giving priority to your writing?

I'm not writing.

Not at the moment anyway. I blame this. With some luck things will go back to normal(ish) soon and I'll find the motivation. The first time around I didn't do any writing, though, so I'm not sure I'll get the urge to even if my body does find some kind of happy place soon. Of course, come January I'm not going to have any time, and I doubt that will change for quite a while, so it would be nice if I could get back into it and at least finish Veronica 4 and do the editing on my sequel to The City Darkens. Fingers crossed.

The Outcome of My Recent Resolution

Anyone with even a slight penchant for cynicism probably would have predicted the outcome of my little "I'm going to wake up early to write" idea without even trying. Yes, you cynics, you were right, that never happened. Not once.

HOWEVER, it is my pleasure to stick my tongue out at you cynical bastards and say I STARTED TO WRITE ANYWAY. (Do you like how I've suddenly turned this into some sort of bizarre adversarial thing between me and unnamed "cynical bastards"? I can be dramatic like that for no good reason other than it amuses me.)

The point is, all of a sudden* I found the energy for it. Isn't that great? Last Saturday, during the little one's nap, I sat down on the couch with my laptop instead of at my desk on my gaming computer where I go to play The Sims. I reread the 48K or so words I had done on the sequel to The City Darkens and then began adding to them. I've written about 10K more so far.

Onwards and upwards. What obstacle have you overcome recently? Even the little ones count.

_________
* It didn't happen out of nowhere. It's all due to my friend and beta-reader Kathryn, who finished reading what I had written and told me the main character, Ginna, is a badass. And I was like, "Yeah, Ginna is a badass. I really like Ginna." And all of a sudden I wanted to be writing Ginna again.

Finding a Way to Write

Other than the aberration of NaNoWriMo, I haven't written since this summer. I haven't been in the mood. And yet, I have been getting ideas for new stories. So I've thought about working on them, but I just can't bring myself to do that while my two WiPs, which are both around 50K words at the moment, languish in the background. Meanwhile, my incredibly talented beta-reader (this should probably actually say "unpaid editor," because she's that amazing), Kathryn, has been reading one of the WiPs at my request, and showering me with encouraging praise, also at my request, in an effort to jump-start my mojo again. So far, to no avail. And it's all starting to affect my mental health, as not-writing tends to do after enough time passes.

I could whine for several paragraphs about why this is all happening, but what it really comes down to more than anything is time management. And what I realized this morning is that what I must figure out a time for writing other than during the little one's nap, because that's not working at the moment.

The only other time I can come up with is in the early morning. This time period hasn't historically been a successful one for writing, but I think I have to try it, because maybe doing that will kick my mojo back into gear and I will be able to do it during the little one's naps again. I suppose we'll see. At worst, I'll wake up early a couple of times and get a couple of thousand words written, and then I'll decide I can't maintain the schedule, and that will be that. At this point, a couple of thousand words is better than no words at all.

I'm kind of excited to try this. :)

How about you? Do you have any tricks for jump-starting your creativity when you're in a slump?

Time Just Gets Away From Me

Well, it's been ages since my last post, and I can account for that. I started a new job, and between lesson planning and everything that goes into teaching jobs, carrying for my now one year old (!) son and everything that goes into being a wife and mom, and working on my masters and everything that goes into that as well as finishing my BTSA, I just haven't had much time for writing fiction, much less keeping up with this blog. I miss it! I love being a mom, but when it comes down to it, carrying for my son takes most of my time, and I do miss the days when I had hours and hours to just do whatever I wanted, be it writing novels or blogging or whatever.

Anyway, I did get back into writing for about a week and a half in November, and I started a third book in the Veronica Barry series (technically fourth, if you count Veronica in Paris). Wait, you say, what about the decopunk serial? I will get back to it, I promise. I just hit a wall with it, and now I have to let it simmer for a while. Besides, I so strongly associate Veronica to November--NaNoWriMo, you know. In fact, I (vehhery) optimistically announced I was participating in NaNo this year, and then the holidays struck, and I was too busy making pecan pie and green bean casserole and hanging out with friends. Oh, and being a mom and writing a paper for my MA. So yeah, didn't even hit the halfway point in NaNo. Oh well. At least my novel is off to a strong start.

Although if I'm being honest, I also ran up against a big problem with the plot, and had to stop and think about it for a while. But that's resolved. So I hope to continue to make progress on that front--maybe not every day or anything, but steadily, and have a first draft done some time in the spring. Fingers and toes crossed.

My goal for this blog is to post a review of Jacqueline Carey's Naamah's Blessing soon. And what I'm really really hoping is that I might possibly maybe get her to do a little interview to go with the review. Can't hurt to ask, anyway, and hopefully she won't think I'm a big flake for taking so long to do this (she sent me the copy of the novel to review many moons ago).

Writing & Not Writing

William Tecumseh Sherman

The next couple of days are all about MA homework (I'm taking two courses this trimester: the Civil War and the 20th century). I've decided I'll be writing my final research paper--due in August, but the proposal was due last Sunday and I'm turning it in late--for my Civil War class on technology in Sherman's March. Which should actually be pretty interesting. I'm not a big Civil War buff--I tend to be much more interested in 20th century stuff. But so far I really like my professor for the Civil War course, so that helps, and I have been interested in the way technology evolved in the Civil War for some time now. It started with muskets and ended with repeating rifles and to a small extent, Gatling guns, you know. It's like it went from the Mexican-American War to World War I in the span of four years.

I'm less enthused about my 20th century course than I anticipated, though. It's super heavily weighted toward political history, which, on the whole, I find to be a big snooze. And we're barely going to talk about WWII or Vietnam, both of which I really want to learn more about. So I may tack on a couple of courses to my MA. I only have two required courses left after these: constitutional history (ick) and media and cultural history (or something to that effect--interesting, but kind of what I've been into for years, so probably not terribly enlightening--we'll see). I checked out the graduate certificate in WWII studies, and it looks fascinating, but it's 18 units and I don't know if I can really justify that expense. I'd stay a student forever if I could, though.

I haven't been working on the WiP at all these last couple of weeks. My sleep schedule has been messy--the baby started waking up two to three time a night for a while there, and still does every so often, etc. etc. So fatigue is part of it. His erratic nap schedule is also part of it. The excitement over constructing a garden is a part, and so is just plain falling out of the habit. But school is out for summer tomorrow which means after tomorrow, my husband will be around a lot more. That means sleeping in, and maybe being able to get away for a few hours at a time a few times a week to really get some writing done. Fingers crossed.

Two hours a day to be productive

The title just about says it all. Luke-Andre is a sweet baby who, we've discovered, loves pureed green beans (who would have seen that coming?), but he's not big on naps. Most days--not all--he takes one 2 hour nap and a few 30 minute ones. The 30 minutes ones I use for taking a shower and eating. The 2 hour nap has become the one period in the day when I can be productive.

And I can get a fair amount of writing done in 2 hours. The trouble is, I have a lot of other irons in the fire:

• homework for my MA in history
• blogging here and the recipe blog
• knitting a blanky out of the yarn my aunt used to make a sweater he won't sleep without--so far, in a week, I've knit about 3/4 of an inch
• reading the signed copy of Naamah's Blessing Jacqueline Carey sent me herself to review (SO EXCITED)
• and, most recently, designing my covers for the serial.

I had hoped to employ a friend of Jeff's for the covers, but he's a professional artist and I just don't make the kind of money he charges, even with the hefty discount he offered.

It's ironic because the part of the cover I thought would be hard--the background--I've already finished, and now I'm struggling with the rest. The background will stay the same for every cover, to provide continuity. It's a deco skyline, with the palace and temple in the story at the center. In the foreground I intend to have a close-up of the main character, and when I paint and draw, I'm usually all about portraits. And I'm finding this really hard for some reason. I've been toying with trying to do the portrait kind of deco-style. I can't decide if I like it or not. I voted on another blog when the author posted two possible covers--that was fun, so maybe I'll do something similar here.

More than the design questions, however, I'm running into technical problems: if I want the background the same, it makes sense to scan it and add each different foreground in a design program. Except 1) I don't own a design program anymore--I used to have PaintShopPro a long time ago but that died with the computer it was on; and 2) that means creating the portrait on paper I can cut to be able to place it over the background manually, as I don't think I'm skilled enough to do a proper cutting job on the pc. And doing it on paper means using pencils or pastels, not paint, and I intend to paint the background--I've already got it all drawn out on a flat canvas.So the two may not look good together unless I can work some sort of magic with the design program I don't have.

There are probably some nifty programs that do really useful things like make it possible to scan an image that isn't rectangular without filling in the negative space with white, but the learning curve for me on anything like that is bound to be steep. And I only have 2 hours a day to do it. And I'm still writing (I'm midway through part 4--I think there will be 8 parts, although I'm still not positive). So I really could use more hours in the day.

...And he's awake. After 30 minutes. Looks like today will be one of those exceptions where there is no 2 hour nap at all.

Update for the Week

Well, this week there is good news and bad news. Good news: I sold a book! Considering the fact I did close to no promo (that's the bad news, also very little writing or editing), that's pretty wonderful.

Here's the thing, folks. I'm pregnant. Yep, about a week after I wrote that blog entry about being child-free I found out. I'm due in December. This is my first experience with pregnancy and I vascillate between joy and terror. I'm 38, which means the pregnancy is higher risk than it would typically be for a 25 year old, but so far all my tests are good.

The biggest downside is, I'm exhausted most of the time. My friend tells me I'm building a placenta and that's a big job. Okay, but I'm a writer! I need to write! A lot! Yeah. My body has other plans, involving eating crackers while lounging on the couch and watching 40s movies. And of course, I still have to go to work, and some days it's really really stressful. We had a day last week where three kids got suspended (I personally suspended one of them: a six foot tall, 250 pound, 18 year old country boy who likes to bully women) and a fourth got arrested and spent the week in the hall for threatening to stab his teacher (the same woman who told me about the exhaustion of building a placenta, actually). So the writing and everything associated to it has been suffering.

Nevertheless, I will write! My big plan for May was to do a pseudo NaNoWriMo to get 50K words written on Veronica book 3. Realistically, it probably won't be 50K. I also planned to edit the heck out of Book 2 in the hopes of being able to publish it soon. The good news is, school lets out for summer June 10, which is also the start of my 2nd trimester, and I'm told the second trimester is the least exhausting. We will be moving either in June or July, so that will take a chunk of time and energy, but I'm still hopeful that the summer will be a productive time. I really want to get Book 2 out because I plan to lower the price of River to $0.99 promotionally when I do and I'm optimistic about sales picking up then.

What kinds of crazy, unexpected things have been popping up in your life, and making achieving your writing goals harder than you expected? Do you have children? How do you find the time to write as a parent?