The Write Life

I didn’t make it to nearly as many Writer’s Track panels at this year’s Dragon*Con as I’d hoped to (I blame feeling all the mama feelings and coming home early), but I did manage “First Ladies of Fantasy” on Sunday morning. The panel featured Mercedes Lackey, Laurell K. Hamilton, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Sherrilyn Kenyon, and was moderated by Nancy Knight, author and director of the Writer’s Track. They were a delightful group, their answers to her questions candid and so very human. What inspires you? Describe your process? But then she asked, How do you balance your writing and your personal life? And it’s a question I’ve heard before, and the answers I’ve heard before, too. And they irritate the piss out of me, every time.

“What social life?” This from Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, her sentiments echoed, in one fashion or another, by all of the panelists except for Sherrilyn Kenyon, who was emphatic about her days belonging to her family (I gathered that she does much of her writing at night). Laurell K. Hamilton bemoaned that any “mundane” interruption in the morning made it impossible for her to settle down to write for an hour or more.

Every writer has systems in place that work for them. And I don’t fault anyone for setting boundaries, having priorities, or cozying up to a garden shed. What I do take issue with is suggesting that in order to be a productive, successful writer, you can’t make time for friends. For family. For leading a full, rich life that involves more than writing. And while they certainly didn’t go so far as to lay it out so plainly, I got that impression all the same, and it’s the same bleak picture of the prolific writer I’ve read before. But I think it’s dangerous and unfair to suggest that there’s only one way to live as a writer, one way to write. I had a creative writing professor who told me once that you do whatever you have to do to write. If you drink a glass of wine to wind down, you drink a glass of wine. If you need to go for a walk, go for a walk. Run. Bake. Sew. Garden. Read.

I recently set up a writing desk in my basement, but I’ve yet to use it. This doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. I’m just coming to the realization that for me, right now, the notion of needing a “sanctuary” to work is the most convenient excuse there is NOT to write (on an unrelated note, Laurell K. Hamilton even suggested that this advice is only applicable to those writers who are introverts and thrive in solitude, which I found intriguing). I am more than guilty of lamenting the fact that my daughter doesn’t sleep through the night, and if I could just count on a solid six hour block of sleep I could routinely wake up before she does and get some writing in. Neither of those things has happened yet, but I’m adapting.

I write for ten minutes when she falls asleep in the car on the way home. I write for fifteen minutes on the couch in the living room while she constructs elaborate messes with toys, books, television remotes. Between cleaning up after dinner, bedtime, freelancing to pay the bills, and paying some modicum of attention to my husband, I write as much as I can. And I never feel like it’s enough. Rarely do I have an uninterrupted hour to do anything. Rarer still is my mind completely cleared of all of the things that want and need doing, the “mundane” demands of my life as the mother of a very young child, a good friend, a wife.

Writing has taken precedence when it comes to my creative energies (I don’t write music anymore, and play my guitar but rarely). But I never want to be the writer who gives up what they love for the sake of being more productive, because actually living is what drives me to write. I’m not suggesting that these writers aren’t living or even that they're wrong, only that it’s wrong for me, right now. Do I want to write more in the future? Absolutely. But two or more hours of quiet reflection is sometimes more than I get in REM sleep. So I’ll do what I can, when I can, as much as I can.

And I won’t feel bad about it.

Kid Stuff: Dragon Daddy

When he is asleep, Elinor Anna's daddy is a dragon. And that makes Elinor Anna a dragon hunter.

When he sleeps she creeps into his fluffy den of blankets and pillows and cat fur. Her little feet pad through the carpeted tracks left by his big ones, so quiet. She waits for a great big grumble before she steals stealthily near.

Elinor Anna can see her daddy's dreams all gummy in the corners of his eyes. He's breathing fire over a great hoard of golden gaming cartridges, circa 1988. His scales are made of circuit boards and his tail hooks protectively as her arm around her lovey. She goes as close to as she dares, nose to nose, and sees that theirs are the same. She gasps and her surprise is mirrored in her daddy's face when he wakes and finds his talons turned to tickling fingers, his shrewd, slitted eyes to soft ones.

Elinor Anna can't be a dragon hunter, after all. Not when she's a dragon, too.

Chores? Nay, QUESTS

I've become more than a little bit obsessed with HabitRPG. So much so that adding a To Do to write a blog means that I am here, writing it. Is that meta? I don't know. There's something about things that are meta that make me as irritable as hipsters chattering in my favorite coffee house. Probably because they both leave me feeling like I'm fourteen again and a little slow on the uptake (I was too busy worrying about what my mother made me wear that day and hoping I didn't have food caught in my braces). Remind me to tell you the story about the time in our sex education class when we all had to swish and spit into Dixie cups*.

Like most writers I know, I am an extremely skillful time waster. And like most writers I know, I lament this fact even as I'm collecting images of period gowns for an inspirational Pinboard on my latest project, perfecting my cold brew for the smoothest cup of iced coffee to accompany my morning writing, or "networking" on Twitter by fangirling about Doctor Who and retweeting Feminist Hulk. So anytime I've been able to incentivise getting shit done, especially when it comes to writing, I do it. It used to be a solid hour of writing meant a little gaming, but now that I have a baby who monopolizes most of my higher brain functions when she's awake and contributes an alarming amount to the dishes and laundry, there is no time for games. Which is why my achievement whoring heart loves HabitRPG so very much. I can collect experience points and gold for outlining a chapter? Washing a load of diapers? Writing a blog post? DONE.

But in all seriousness, it's really, really cool, and sincerely helpful in prioritizing exactly how you're going to waste time, if you must waste it, and how you're going to be productive. Sword-wielding, armor-wearing, wolfhound at your heels productive.

*Our gym teacher dumped everything into a glass pitcher so everyone could see what our water and saliva looked like all mixed up together, which is, I suppose, exactly what it would have been like if we'd all slept with the same undeserving eighth grade boy? A real gem of a girl pointed out the floaters and informed everyone of how they must've been mine, even though I brushed every day after lunch. 

An Untold Story

In the summer of 2009, I sold my pickup truck. I could've taken what profit I made and done something responsible, like put it towards my continent of student loan debt, but I didn't. I bought a netbook. And I started writing a novel. I'd had notes and something that resembled a draft leftover from college, but it wasn't the book I'd wanted to write. I changed names, tempers, ambitions. The story got fat on thought, feasting on bigger ideas than the silly one that started it. It had no title, and then it had a working title, and then it was just plain entitled to way too much of my time.

I finished writing the following spring. When I wasn't revising, I was querying. For anyone who writes, or even anyone who reads, this is not news. The sorrow and vigor of the publishing industry is more transparent now than I suspect it's ever been, but it doesn't change why we do it. The compulsion to write is primal and vital, but it's also social, at least for me (as an introvert, this is a Big Deal). I've never written a word I didn't want to share with someone else, even when I was only calling my best friend in junior high school every forty-five minutes to read aloud what was basically erotic friend fiction (but with post-apocalyptic scenarios and/or elves).

But now I get to say a thing I've wanted to say for a really, really long time. I get to share my first novel with you (and you and you and you, too, if you want). The Hidden Icon is forthcoming from Fable Press, and I am so, so ready to geek out with you about it. I'm so excited about this I'm sure something's going to go horribly awry, but a little healthy skepticism can't still the thump-pumping hunk of my heart I've put into my unreliable narrator's hands. Because now you get to meet her, too. And that's just damn cool.

Even if nothing or everything or only a little, lovely something comes of this opportunity, I won't be sorry. Because this story didn't begin in 2009, but in 1989, when I wrote my father poetry on the back of an envelope and he kept it on the dash of his work truck.

And this story isn't over yet.

Be(ginning) Like the Squirrel

There's a lot they don't tell you about the change: the 45 minutes you'll spend flossing the next morning. The big fat tips you're going to give the plumber for discreetly snaking your shower drain every month. Missing the midnight showing of the last Harry Potter movie. The minor fractures. The fleas. Nothing, of course, compares with the horror of spending spring break hunting with your family.

Movies and TV have got it all wrong. Werewolves are like the Italians. Or the Greeks.

I love beginnings. Catching the previews before the movie, a full plate, a first kiss. And when it comes to writing and reading novels, it's the same. I remember in a creative writing workshop as an undergraduate, we wallowed about in first lines for a solid week. The importance of pinning your reader in their seat from the very first wasn't lost on me, and I probably spend more time thinking about the first line than I do the next twenty pages (which is almost certainly a problem, but hey, that's what editing is for, right?)

Someone asked me once if I ever worried I would run out of ideas for novels, and I could've laughed. Not at them, mind, but at the notion that I'd ever have in my life time enough to write what comes after all of the beginnings I've already written. I'm no Joss Whedon.

Though I'm pretty sure just standing near him increases one's productivity.

So I've finished a revision of the endlessly-revised novel and already I feel like I ought to revise again, ought to revisit the next book in that series, should flirt a little more with YA science fiction, or maybe show this new adult werewolf a good time. WWJ(W)D? He'd say get on it, girl.

But not all at once.

Book Lust

I feel like I'm giving myself permission to write about All The Things in a way that is neither deep nor lyrical. Because I am, lately, a creativity camel. My urgent need to write and world-build and daydream is by necessity put off by diapers that need changing (and washing and drying and folding), block towers that need collapsing, toothless smiles soaked up and baby giggles bottled. When I get my figurative drink on, however, I drink deep. So I am excited about reading and writing when I can, and presently, this. I've made a concerted effort to read women in the science fiction and fantasy genre (and all books ever, really), and I love a good reading challenge. I've had Cherie Priest's Boneshaker on loan from the library and am anxious to dig in. I only wish I hadn't just finished Julianna Baggott's Pure, because, my goodness, what a note to begin on that gritty gem would've been.

Reading is such a cornerstone to writing that even when I'm reduced to a blubbering, unproductive mess by the spectacular imaginations of others, I can't regret the hours lost in another world. Because lost isn't even really the right word.

It's more like lust.

A good book is about what can't be had, only dreamed. And I can't hope to write one if I haven't read a whole hell of a lot of them.

Kid Stuff: Alien Abduction

Elinor Anna abducted an alien. He was hiding in a tree in her backyard, too-green between the leaves. When he wouldn't come down she climbed up, taking his too-many fingered hand in both of hers and leading him into the house.

He didn't like her Legos or her coloring books. She was worried he might eat the cat (he licked his lips and said a whole lot of words Elinor Anna didn't understand), so she hid him in her toy chest and fed him cheese crackers to keep him quiet.

"What's that noise?" Asked her dad from the kitchen when the alien burped the biggest burp Elinor Anna had ever heard.

"It was me!" She shouted, and thumped her belly.

"What's that smell?" Asked her mom from the hallway when he took off his rocket boots and wiggled all seventeen of his toes in Elinor Anna's face.

"It's me!" She said, pinching her nose.

"Time for a bath," said her dad, scooping Elinor Anna up in his arms. She shut her toy chest just in time.

When she had her bedtime story, Elinor Anna hoped the alien could hear, too. And when she filled her water glass, she filled it extra full so she could share if he got thirsty.

After her mom turned out the light and shut the door, Elinor Anna hurried over to her toy chest. But it was empty. The stars that danced out of her night light lit the faces of her favorite dolls and the skins on her toy drums, but her alien wasn't there. Her window was closed but she could see the stars out there, too, shining just like the stars in her room.

They must've shown him the way home.

Kid Stuff: Training Wheels

Elinor Anna's bicycle has training wheels in the fourth dimension. She pedals up one side of the street and down the other before she squeaks through a crack in spacetime.

"Be careful!" Says her Dad.

"Be carefuller!' Says her Mom.

Even if Elinor Anna melted a whole box of crayons together she couldn't make the colors here. She gathers them in her arms like wildflowers: purgurple, azureal, magentish. She brakes in a puddle of worange to say hello to her fourth dimensional friend, a grinning girl reflected in an extrasolar wind.

"Hi!" Says Elinor Anna.

"Hi!" Says her friend. Their smiles are just the same.

When Elinor Anna chases a rogue comet, her friend does, too. When her handlebar streamers attract a host of galactic butterflies, they both try to catch them. She shares her tangerine, and they take turns throwing the rind into a baby black hole.

Through the crack in spacetime Elinor Anna can see that the sky is growing dark. A lightning bug has found his way through and she pockets him gently.

"It's time for us to go home," she says. But Elinor Anna isn't sad. Because in the fourth dimension, it's already tomorrow and tomorrow and yesterday, too. Because in the fourth dimension she's always already at play.

(Hot) Flash: How to Darn a Sock

Wait until he is asleep. The needle should be sharper than his tongue. Like a cat creeping under the covers for warmth your hand must be, fingers whisker tickling his toes before you strike. There. Pinning the biggest ragged nail to the biggest callused toe to the shred of trouser sock until he howls himself out of bed.

They don't call it whip stitch for nothing.

If you don't like his railing, consider anesthesia. Or a gag. Proceed in even stitches as small as you can make them, smaller even than his esteem of you, bigger than his heart. Machine knits will repair easily, but their absorbency is poor. Take care the thread doesn't become clotted with blood.

When the petty hole, so little compared to the one he tore in you, is closed, knot the thread and trim the ends.

Wash your hands.

Pack a bag.

Call the police.

First Comes Love

The buzz of your beard trimmer before we go to bed isthe closest I come to cricket song. The kind that kept me up at night when at eleven and twelve and thirteen years old I didn't dream of someday sharing my bed with an (extra)ordinary man, but an elf.

We read together, stealing half hours from sleep as I once bribed my mother, promising just one more chapter before lights out. This is a chapter in our own lives coming to a close: your breath white noise I follow soundlessly to sleep; our baby squirming in my belly between us when we try to make love, before us in every future we might occupy. Until your whiskers shake out sparse and gray, and I haven't the bone strength to make babies anymore.