Month: August 2020

Well, it’s the start of a new week, and hopefully it’ll be a more productive week than the last two. This past week, I primarily focused on getting back on the horse. I made sure to keep up my reading of one short story per day (best habit ever!), and began the hunt through the moving boxes for the notebook that contains several hand-written rough drafts that need to be converted to Word documents. I’ve just about burned through the Sims fever, which feels good, and I did manage to get some other must-be-done tasks checked off my list. I also attended the Zoom Write Place meet up to update my goals, which I’m trying to keep moderate moving into a new month. (How is it already September?! Where did August go?)

I’ve been wondering how much this sudden ennui is related to the start of the change in season. In the past, Fall has been my favorite season, in part because that’s when my birthday is, but more generally because I love the crispness in the air and the leaves and apples and costumes and the smell of woodsmoke. Fall in New England is an enchanted time. Some people have always found Fall depressing, and in the last couple years, I’ve noticed that the change in season also accompanies a downswing in my mood. It was in November a couple years ago that I realized I really, really needed to see someone about anxiety and depression. I don’t suffer from clinical depression, as some of my colleagues and friends do, but there’s a decided pattern to it, which over the past year I’ve done some good work on. This year, with all the present weirdness due to plagues, etc., I’ll need to find a new counselor, since my old one is Massachusetts-based and can’t see me now that we’ve moved. I’m still figuring out how I feel about that, and wondering where I’ll find a counselor here in NH. But so far the need hasn’t been dire, and in the past year has been pretty mild, so I’ll probably wait and see how it goes. I’ve spent quite a bit of time on CBT, so I still have a lot of those tools in my back pocket should I need them while looking for a new counselor.

I’ve also realized that other than short fiction, I’ve been remiss in reading much fiction. So yesterday, stuck under Goldbug while he napped, I ordered some novels I’ve been meaning to read (along with several short story collections, too, why not?). So we’ll see how that goes. I need to be a tad careful in the type of fiction I read at this time of year, because a heavy/depressing read can really drag me down. So I’ll have to keep an eye on picking some lighter, major-key fiction to focus on. Maybe reread Hitchhiker’s Guide or something like that: my mood-boosting go-to since college. Come to think of it, I’ve always had periods, even in high school, where I had to watch what I read, because grim/depressing books at certain times of year could tank my mood. Interesting… I’ve never realized about that before.

But it’s a beautiful day here, and Goldbug’s awake, so I’ll leave off here. We need to set up B-Bug’s remote-learning space today, and good grief I need to find my notebooks!

It may seem a little funny to be doing a quarterly check-point here at the end of August, but since December is usually such a wash for me (productivity-wise) with all the holidays and vacations, I tend not to include it as a realistic work period. So September to November it is! The last productive quarter of the 2020 (holy crap–where has this year gone?!).

Yesterday, I sat down with my notebook and hashed out the various metrics to the best of my ability. Some are tricky to do mid-year (like total word count, which involved a lot of detective work to go back and determine what words I actually added–this is something that would be good for me to track daily…. Note to self…), but most are easy enough to evaluate. As this year (2020) currently stands, by comparison to last year (2019):

Submission Attempts: 10 / 39

NEW! Submissions: 2 / 3

# Personal Rejections: 0 / 8

NEW! Rough Drafts: 2 / 3

*Total Word Count: ~11,400 / 114,000

Stories Sold: 4 / 1

Books Read: 15 / 42

Looking over these numbers really help me to priortize what work to focus on. For example, I know I have a short story draft that just needs typing up/finalizing into a complete draft which is 95% written, so if I put in the effort, I can hit the third rough draft by the end of September (maybe even the end of August…). I may even have another that I wrote a while ago, but which has never been brought over to the computer (and therefore, never looks editable) that I could whip out, so that’d be four new rough drafts with relatively little effort.

I’m fairly confident I can complete TWO new submissions by the end of the year (I have two which are primed to edit, and need some decent work, but not impossible/re-conception work).

Overall word count has been pretty pitiful, and I doubt I’ll get close to 114k this year–it’s been an editing heavy year, which is typical of the first New Baby year, so next year I’ll try to focus on this a bit more. Still, I need to review where I’ve gotten to in Dragonsired, and start thinking of where it goes next in Part II. If I can get a start on Part II by the end of the year, I’ll be happy with that.

Reading has also been DISMAL this year, again, largely due to NEW BABY, and also obsession with reading the news, so I’m going to readjust my expectations here and aim for 21 books total this year. That’ll be half of what I was hoping for, but still not terrible. And to make that a little easier, I’m limiting myself to one book per genre, as piling up on one kind of book (biographies, or nonfiction, or audiobooks, etc.) seems to be a key reason I get log jammed on my to-read list.

AS for Submission Attempts and Personal Rejections, these numbers were always going to be low, in large part because I’ve sold a lot more stories this year, which means my submission queue is incredibly short and I don’t get as many rejections in general. Which is good news, but does affect those numbers. So I’m not worrying about these until next year, when hopefully I’ll have gotten close to replenishing my queue.

And of course, that leads me to STORIES SOLD, which I’ve done great on this year! Very excited to have passed this benchmark from last year. No guarantees whether I could keep that pace up next year, as it’s entirely out of my hands whether a story resonates with a particular editor or not, but getting more work out is a key factor in this. Last year laid the groundwork for this year, so this year is laying the groundwork for next year, which means I doubt I’ll have quite as much coming out next year. But you never know! Just glad to have such a nice number for 2020, despite everything that’s going on in the world.

And that concludes this quarter’s review! To summarize the goals:

• Edit and submit 2 stories
• Type up 2 story rough drafts
• Read 21 books
• Plan/start Dragonsired – Part II

+ SO LATE updating this weekend from last week. So I’m keeping it brief. I did get all my edit plans completed, plus an extra one, and read all of Bartleby: The Scrivener, but I didn’t move forward on any specific edits, and I missed one of the one short story/day. This week, I’m going to: (1) Do a quick, quarterly check-in to see where I’m standing, (2) read 1 story/day, and (3) make a plan for what to focus on moving forward.

+ Officially residents! That’s right! We are officially residents of NH once again, and while there are still a few loose ends to wrap up and plenty of non-urgent paperwork to complete for insurance/etc., getting my NH license was a HUGE weight lifted. My whole week had been gearing up for that one task, and boy. Once I got that done, I pretty much let myself give up on the week and threw myself over the weekend finish line.

Which is at least partly responsible for…

+ Checking my brain at the Sims 4 door: Let me start by saying: this is not my fault. (LOL, yes it is, who am I kidding, but the INCITING EVENT was my folks’ buying a home design app and the B-Bug wanting to use it, but it’s way too hard for a kiddo because it’s a professional app.) I DID IT FOR HIM. I technically already had Sims 4 from ages ago, but my computer had gotten too old to run it well, even on Origin, so I deleted it for room. But I found my old log-in info and Andy’s computer is way more powerful than mine soooooooo…

Yeah, I got the itch and have been playing all weekend. I know, I know. I didn’t get anything really done Friday/Saturday/Sunday, but it’s hella fun, and I’m all into my little dudes and dudettes now. It’s been a long time since I just played, with no aim but just to have a good time. It reminds me that I need to go back and review The Artist’s Way and build in time to just play. I’m a vastly happier and more productive person when I allow for that.

But it’s a new week now, and I’ve got to reign it in and get back to the tasks at hand. I’m going to do a quarterly check-in for where I’m at writing-wise this year so I can make sure I’m focusing in the right areas moving forward. Since December is always a scrap month where I get little done, this is a good time to make sure I’m still on track, while still having time to course-correct before the end of the year. (GEEZ, can you believe Goldbug is rounding on a YEAR in the next handful of months? He’s crawling like a champ, now, stuffing himself with rusks and pureed carrots, and pulling up on anything he can get his wee hands on…)

I can’t be the only writer who is absolutely obsessed with notebooks. Blank notebooks, full notebooks, expensive journals, and cheaper-by-the-box Memo notebooks–I love them all. I used to watch Inspector Gadget explicitly because Penny’s “book computer” was the coolest notebook I’d ever seen. Eilonwy’s blank book of spells was just about the coolest thing I’d ever read about (and accounts for why Castle of Llyr was my favorite of the Prydain Chronicles for years). In fact, anytime anyone in a book or a movie cracked open a little pocket notebook, I swooned a bit.

Even before I could write, I loved notebooks. I would spend my allowance on those little tri-packs of mini composition notebooks. My kindergarten teacher would make construction paper-bound lined books that we kids could write in to make books. My spelling, to this day, is deeply compromised because of hours spent writing “books” in second grade with horrific phonetic spelling.

In high school, when I drifted away from writing fiction as much, I kept my notebook obsession, but it swapped over to sketchbook obsession. Filling page after page, until literally every scrap sheet had something on it, was the highlight of my summer months.

As I went off to college, I graduated into fairly regular journaling, and found the same satisfaction in filling sheets–front and back–with words. I’ve kept up that habit, admittedly not as regularly as I used to (a habit I’d like to restart!), in part because I adore going back in time and reliving long-gone days. Something about journaling, capturing those moments in my own voice, really bring the memories roaring back and make me feel like I’m back there. This is one of my favorites, and surprisingly a lot bigger than the typical smaller journals I tend to use. Something about the bigger format was deeply satisfying to write in before bed, and it helps that this particular journal captured my time working in the candy factory, which is just fun to revisit:

When I started writing more seriously, I went back to writing notebooks, particularly Moleskeins, which I would decorate with pictures of things I loved and admired. This is one of my favorites, from just a couple years ago:

Another thing I did for a while, which combined my love of notebooks with my general admiration for office supplies, was using a day planner to track and annotate my writing work. I’ve tried this with various success in the past, but this one was the day planner that set the bar, complete with stickers for achievements and crossed-out dates designated for free time/unlikely to be used for writing:

More recently, I’ve fallen fairly hard for the bullet journal trend. I tend to lean more towards minimalist in my spreads, because honestly some of the art-forward journals look just too overwhelming to me, and I mostly need something to focus my thoughts and organize my days/weeks. My current BuJo looks like this, and I’m pretty happy with its simplicity:

The one thing I want to get back to in my current BuJo is a habit I used to keep on my previous BuJo, which was doing one small ink sketch per day. I still love flipping through that older book to see what I was sketching at the time, and it’s so cool to mix the visual with the simple page layouts, I really want to get back into that again:

Notebooks may just be one of the most delightful things in the world, and I must say, despite the ease of using my phone to take notes and give myself reminders and track my schedule, there is always going to be something about a physical notebook that’s going to keep pulling me back. I love watching the pages fill up, one by one. I’m still trying to work out exactly how to reconcile my daily BuJo with a daily journal effort, since sometimes they seem to overlap, and sometimes it’d just be easier to do everything in the BuJo, since I intend to keep it anyway. I have a box of notebooks I haul around with me whenever I move, and I like to think that someday they’ll be a treasure for grandkids, the way my grandmother’s travel journals are treasures to me.

This was a good week, writing-wise, for the most part. I managed to get in a couple really productive days, which buoyed me for the inevitable unproductive ones. I finished a flash fiction story called, “More than Instinct,” and even got it submitted! I also resubmitted (twice) a story that had started languishing in my submissions pile: got one rejection back lickety-split, but I fired it right back out again. I’m beginning to worry this one might be a dud, but you never know. I still have some hope for it.

Also attended another session of the writer’s accountability group on Thursday (via Zoom, of course), which was so much fun. I hit all the goals I set last week (read 1 story/day – edit & submit flash story), and I’ll admit I got a little more aggressive on my goal-setting for this week:

• read 1 story/day
• reread & make edit plans for three stories (specifically “Dynamo,” “Earthbound,” and “Last Ghost of Old Shore” (though I may add “Weeping Trees” to this list, too, if I have time))
• begin the rewrite of “Dynamo”
• start reading “Bartleby the Scrivener” again, as I’m using it as the spine for another story, yet to be fully composed

That’s a lot for me to do in a week, even if it’s more planning/thinking and less actual composing. The thinking is actually the hardest thing to squeeze into my days, when even being able to hear oneself think can be a challenge. Making goals specifically addressing the mental work of editing is an important midway step to getting myself positioned to jump into edits when I get the chance. Someday, I’ll be able to spend some time planning out new stories, too, I hope! But at least I’ve got a huge backlog of unedited work to pick from right now, which is at least helping me get some forward momentum going again.

B-Bug had a hard week this week, as he single-handedly discovered a paper wasp’s nest in our back patio rock wall, and had encounters with one of the occupants not once, not twice, but THREE times. Poor guy. He actually handled all three stings amazingly well (the last two were at the same time–the first sting we thought was just a fluke of maybe swatting it with his swinging bucket by accident, but the second time we got a good view of the nasty little dude zipping out of his nest and going after B-bug. That wasp is dead now, hunted down by Andy with a father’s rage and equipped with his Bugasalt. While I don’t normally worry too much about wasps or nests about our property, once they’ve attacked my kiddo, I’m much less sympathetic to their natural needs. The exterminators will be out next week.)

Otherwise, it’s been a somewhat calm week. Insurance finally came through (because although Andy’s been fully employed for the entirety of the summer, even “job-tied insurance” has a 30 day lag before kicking in…in the middle of a pandemic… #insuranceindustrygarbage), and I got the last order of fabrics for a couple garment sewing projects I’m hoping to scrape time together to work on. I’d love for most of my wardrobe to be handmade, but I’ll settle for a few simple things to start with! If I could eventually make collared shirts, though…ooooooh, mama…

My dad’s smoking a couple of chickens in his smoker for dinner, and I am seriously grateful for a weekend. I’ve got a post on one of my favorite obsessions coming up next week, and I may do a post on the top five short stories I’ve read this month, just to keep track of the ones that really sing to me and what they make me think about, regarding short fiction. Missed my mid-week post this week, which I’m going to have to work harder at, because I’ve got a lot of things I’d like to share with you all, if I can just scrape a few minutes out of the day to jot them down! Like, are online classes helpful/worth the money? What about paying for professional editing? And I’ve got an interview with my good friend, author Katherine Quevedo, coming up in short order, so keep an eye out!

This week had some highs and lows on the writing front. On the one hand, I submitted “Candyland” for the first time, which felt great. I attended a Zoom writing accountability group which a good friend of mine recommended, and it was fantastic to even just listen to other writers talk about what they’re goals are and what they’re working on! I’ve really missed the writing community out in the PacNW. Goldbug mostly tolerated it in his Bjorn, and I got to sent a couple goals of my own for next week!

Also in the positive end, we finally got the car registered and made an appointment for it to be inspected, and made appointments for getting our driver’s licenses updated (because everything is by appointment these COVID days), so got a lot crossed off that list.

But the rest of the week was awash in anxiety and a stubborn sluggishness, amplified by days of less than optimal naps and light/tossing-turning sleep from Goldbug, which made getting any actual writing work done almost impossible. (As an example, just tried to see if he might sleep in his swing a bit for his AM nap, which could give me some focused time to work, but no–at least for today, the swing’s a no go. And even while he was somewhat happy in the swing, my brain feels like I’m trying to braid pudding: just not working well…) *sigh*

Just a rather emotionally draining week, perhaps in part because of getting some good stuff done early on, and part for lacking the restorative reading in the evenings that keeps me sane. Normally, Goldbug naps well enough for me to at least work a tiny bit, but this week, even reaching for a book on my book stand seems to break the sleep spell, and heaven forbid I should leave the room to go to the bathroom! Guaranteed angry, and awake, baby. (How dare you depart, Mommy!) But I’m probably just a bit spoiled because he’s such a better napper than B-Bug was at this age, I’m coming to expect a little quiet time during the day…

I’m hoping to get a little time to myself this weekend, maybe just a couple of hours, to work on getting a flash story ready to submit. It needs more think-y edits, and my brain needs time to focus on it without interruption if I’m ever going to get it into shape. *fingers crossed*

July was a better month for reading, let me tell you! I actually finished a couple books and haven’t let myself pick up any others in the meantime, so the list is starting to inch down from that dangerous dozen (which typically indicates I’ve got too many going, or too many of the same kind going, etc.). I may have to do a separate post of books finished, with a quick 3-5 sentence review at some point, just to keep track.

The biggest reason reading has been better this month is that in the past couple weeks, Goldbug has been shifting his bedtime to a more reasonable hour. So instead of being wide awake until 10 or 11PM and therefore going to bed when we do, he’s getting super cranky at 8:30 or 9PM, and I can actually get him to sleep then. This allows me to have up to an hour or two of quiet, uninterrupted reading time in the evening while Andy finishes his work and studying until about 11PM. In addition, last month I noted a couple books I thought I could finish with a little focused effort, and I have pretty much stuck to those few books in order to clear some space from my list.

But the itch to pick up a new book (particularly some adventure nonfiction!) is getting tough to ignore, and I’ve got a bunch of to-read books piled up, so I doubt the list will stay pared down for long.

Currently Reading:

Notes:

White Fragility— Haven’t made a lot of progress on this one. I’ll admit, I read an article in The Atlantic that kind of took the wind out of my sails on it, but I should probably still finish it. I do think, if you’ve read White Like Me (by Tim Wise)*, or even better, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverley Daniel Tatum, you may already have encountered a lot of what you’ll pick up in this book, but still. I’ll plow through it. It’s not very long, after all.

Story Trumps Structure– Haven’t picked this up in a while, so it’s still where it was. But I’ve been eliminating other “writing related” books from my list, so hopefully that’ll move this one towards the front of the pick-up list.

Meander, Spiral, Explode– Haven’t picked this one up, either, as it’s another “writing related” book on my list. I really have to stop picking up multiple writing books at the same time. One always overrides or distracts from the others, which means their various suggestions and messages get snarled and confused. This one might be the next one I pick up again, because I do really like it, but I might wait until I’ve finished longer-on-the-list books first.

+Dad is Fat– Have made a little progress on this, but not too much. Just haven’t been listening to audiobooks lately, despite having a bit of a backlog on my “to listen to” pile. Just need to figure out the best time to go through this one. It is funny, and hits some very resonant notes as a mother, too!

+Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman– Have gone a few stories further in this one, which is always a delight. I’m really just dragging my heels because I don’t want it to end. Murakami is such a specific-mood writer, that when you want that mood, it’s hard to find it in anywhere else. But I did pick up Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, so that’ll give me my fix, too, once this one’s done.

+Wild Swans– Making significant progress through this one. It’s one of two biographies on my current reading pile, so I’m trying to finish this one before I pick up The Power Broker again. Note to self: one type of book at a time, please! If genre overlaps too much, that’s when I get pile-up. Also, it’s been kind of painful to read about The Great Leap Forward and The Cultural Revolution in China when there are uncanny and disturbing similarities between leadership at that time period and current leadership. It’s not a 1-to-1 comparison, but only because one of them has a lot less authority than the other had, but the personalities and insecurities are undeniably similar… Not exactly relaxing reading, though it is fascinating.

+How to Write a Page Turner– Haven’t been looking at this one due to focusing on finishing Creativity for Life. Will probably pick this one up next as the book to finish, but I might try finishing Story Trumps Structure, but we’ll see.

The Power Broker– Haven’t touched this one again, but it hasn’t been top priority. I’m hoping to finish Wild Swans and then move onto this one next. Classic issue of too many similar-genre stories (in this case, auto/biographies). After I finish this one, I’m hoping to tackle one on George Washington, but we’ll see what happens.

Journey to the Center of the Earth– Started this one with B-Bug for our evening reading, and so far have really enjoyed it. It’s got brief chapters, it’s got that classic tone of adventure that makes it really move along, and it’s always fun digging into a Jules Verne.

*I feel like there was some kind of controversy over White Like Me, back in the day, but I don’t quite remember now, so just be forewarned.

+Books flagged for finishing this month, if possible.

Andromeda Spaceways Magazine #79 is now out! Woohoo! This issue contains “Any Day but Today…”, my snarky superhero short story. It’s only $4.95 AUD (~$3.50 USD) for an electronic copy in ePub/Mobi/PDF. And that cover-! OMG, I love it! :D

This week has been a bit better for productivity, and insanely good for reading. I managed to get a little dedicated time last weekend in which I managed to squeak in a few Pomodoros*, and then this week, switching to trying to work during that first nap was definitely a better plan. Overall, I’ve gotten through the word-cull phase and today just need to do the out-loud read, tweak it, and have one final external reader check it over for typos and inconsistencies I may have inadvertently edited in. So pretty close to getting “Candyland” out! That means it’s itinerary-building time, so I’m compiling my list of markets. Can I just say how much I love writing fiction in the 3k-5k range? There are so many more markets things can go to! :D

Reading-wise, we started putting Goldbug down a little earlier, which still requires me to stay somewhat close at hand, so I’ve been using those evening hours to read like a madwoman. It’s been great! I got a wireless booklight that has been incredibly useful (super long battery life, and very easy to use–I’m thinking of getting another one for B-Bug). I’ve been focusing on two books specifically, Wild Swans by Jung Chang and Creativity for Life by Eric Maisel, PhD. Both are very interesting in different ways, and I’ve been really enjoying them. Keep an eye out for an updated Poly-Reader Notes for August coming up soon!

Otherwise, it’s been a hot and uneventful week. But Goldbug’s melting down for his AM nap, so I’ll have to cut this short. Hope everybody’s staying safe and healthy!

*Oh, I also finally got a couple new jeans (via Reformation and Levi’s, both of which are doing a lot for sustainable clothing manufacturing) that aren’t maternity pants! I’m starting to feel like a human again! XD Small victories!