This town was meant for passing through

I tagged on the "angst" label to this post, but I don't really feel angsty. Mostly I just feel like I'm not sure what I should be doing with myself on the creative front. Not that I need more things to do to keep me busy, because I've been taking care of a lot of non-writing projects this summer. And I've been doing a lot of reading, which I count as writing-related work. And planning for the fiction writing class I'll be teaching in the fall. But I have gone a few weeks without actually writing, and I feel a little antsy and perhaps a little knee-jerk guilt about that. After all, writing is my life, right? I should be pouring my every bit of strength and free time into it if I hope to get anywhere with my career?

Except, of course, that writing is not my whole life. And these other projects give me a sense of satisfaction to work on, as well. And I'm really struggling to carve out any regularly scheduled writing time this summer. Well. Not entirely true, because the time is there. But it carries with it the knowledge that at any given moment I could be called away from the writing. And that's really just an excuse, because I know if I put my mind to it I could train myself to write under those circumstances--I have before. Remember back when the kids were little, Lori, how you used to carry around the shorthand notebook and pride yourself on writing stories in 5-minute increments, standing at the kitchen counter while the kids ate lunch? In my defense, I was writing much shorter fiction back then. But I have become spoiled by my school year routine.

My question to myself, then, is do I push to train myself to write on the spot, a few minutes at a time, again? Or do I let the writing slide for a few more weeks until the school year begins again and allow myself the luxury of using the would-be-writing time to continue catching up on reading and other non-writing projects?

I'm leaning toward the latter. It's not like summer lasts forever, anyhow. Right?

And even if we come home empty-handed

Not to be outdone by unfinished projects, the published stories in my bibliography clamored until I also tagged on their first lines.

Other things that happened this week include more painting, this time of the shared kitchen/living room wall that runs the entire length of the back of the house. Things to trim around included two arched windows, a fireplace, a half wall, a patio door, two cabinets, and a deepset window over the sink. Oh, and the kitchen counter. Not a whole lot of wide open space to roll, but the trimming made it take as long as an entire room.

A renewed interest in Crowmaker bit me right about Monday, so while I was waiting for paint to dry I tackled anew the research I'd started, found some cool connections that I hadn't stumbled across before, and made plans to hit the library. Today. As soon as I get out of this chair and get dressed.

Which is what I will do now.

So a day when you've lost yourself completely

There's a meme going around wherein working writers list the first lines of all the projects on their in-progress list. Because I have at least a half dozen other things I should be doing instead, I figured I'd play along. (Technically, some of these are done, but still in the submission process. So I'm counting them. Because I can.)

In no particular order:

1. Iris Bruckmacher felt the Northern Lights approaching, the speeding solar winds a distant roar in her consciousness, the southerly pull of the magnetic field a gentle tingle against her fingertips. (Unnamed Heimdal novella)

2. "And this is really what you want to do?" Olivia Hargrave peered up at the simple lines of the old farmhouse, as familiar a face in her childhood as those of her parents or brothers or grandparents. (Unnamed inspirational romance)

3. One crow for sorrow. (Crowmaker)

4. "I feel trapped." Rachel's first thought was that Nick really meant he was bored. (A Steadfast Love)

5. At night, sometimes, she dreamed about falling, through the window and into the bottomless winter sky. (Unnamed Loki novel)

6. The furry mole rats of the Antarctic (heterocephalus mythologicalus) lived and thrived in the coldest regions of the earth for many, many years. They thrived so well that, shortly after Max's ninth birthday, his family (mostly his Uncle Bernard, who everyone listened to because he was louder than anyone else) decided it was time to leave their cold digs and head closer to the equator. ("Strong Enough")

7. "Don't leave me," Bobby whispered. ("But He Had Wings")

8. Fifteen years since Kevin had stopped drawing breath, since his too-young heart had stopped and he'd begun the slow fade from living son to a memory as pale as a photograph's after-image. ("Pale Roses")

9. The blue wall was a six-foot-high stretch of rickety wood, painted a new coat of bright baby blue each and every spring. ("The Blue Wall")

10. The rain caused it all. (Unnamed Britomart novel)

The stars are blazing like rebel diamonds cut out of the sun

Still no writing happening, but I think I'm OK with that. For now. I sense some simmering happening way, WAY in the back of my mind somewhere. I hope.

In the meantime, I spent the week painting the two hallways leading out of my kitchen, as well as the one accent wall, which were a dark shade of grayish-green. Although not an unattractive color, it tended toward too dark for my tastes. I also hired our handy-dandy local painter to come in and do the living room--cathedral ceiling in there, and I find myself loathe to spend that much time on that tall a ladder these days. My monkey days are over, I think. The walls in there were lighter but still tinted with that grayish-green. The paint was also flat, which tends to show every speck of dirt that wanders past. I have two children. You can imagine.

At any rate, I have many shiny new walls to enjoy. (And I do. Joe wandered through at one point while I was standing in the middle of the living room just soaking up the vibes from the new color and checking out how the room seems so much bigger and lighter. "Doesn't it look great?!" I enthused at him. Without missing a beat, he glanced around and said, "Yeah. It's as exciting as watching paint dry. Oh, wait." Smart ass teenager.)

In other news, I will be teaching a creative writing elective for the boys' middle school next school year, and possibly doing something extra-curricular for a couple of the younger grades. "But Lori," you're saying, "Haven't I heard you bitch and moan about how hard it is for you to handle too much face time with people?" Well, yeah. But this will be an hour (or two) a week. And the thought of sharing my enthusiasm for writing with young minds is all kinds of appealing. And some of you may recall this moment from my tutoring stint this spring:

Highlight of my tutoring career thus far came last night. We were reviewing fractions, and one of the boys said, "We did this in class today, and I don't get it." And I said, "Let's talk about it some more and see if we can help you get it." So we did. And he did. He sat back in his chair with this most awesome expression on his face and flung his arms wide and shouted, "OH. I get it now!"

Oh yeah. You better believe I'm hooked now.

So, in summary, I seem to be on a writing hiatus, but other productive stuff is happening, perhaps most importantly the opportunities I've had to simply sit/stand around with my boys and discuss everything from video game design to scientology to watching paint dry.

We're down to six/eight summers left together. So yeah, that last one is the big one.

Mean girls make mean women

Dental work has been survived. Surprisingly, there has been very little pain. However, the novacaine (or something) left me dealing with headache and nausea. Headache is better today, nausea persists. I am feeling particularly grumpy and not particularly motivated. No writing has happened, still, but Michael wiped down the hallway walls and trim for me yesterday and I have begun taping the trim in preparation for painting. At the moment I cannot abide the thought of bending over or reaching above my head to do any more work on that project, but maybe once I've had something to eat my stomach will settle and I'll feel up to it.

If not, I have given myself permission to just take it easy today. I've been trying to catch up my WoW druid to Joe's hunter, and I recently renewed my old DAoC account just for kicks, so maybe I'll even indulge in some video games. Or finish transferring this handful of VHS tapes to the computer. Watching the home movies of Christmases and Easters and beach vacations past has been fun, but with that inevitable touch of bittersweet. It's mostly the same old motherly song and dance--I love my kids as they are now, but oh, look at those sweet little boys in the movies. And then there's remembering just how much I loved the house and the town in South Carolina. It's hard not to sing just a few choruses of the "what if" song.

In the meantime, it has been an hour since I took my thyroid meds. This means I can now eat some breakfast and suck down my morning Dt. Pepsi. Fingers crossed that food and caffeine fixes my mood a little.

I don't want to go home right now

I did not pick up the Heimdal story the next day, or any of the other days after. It's still in my drawer, waiting for me to decide why I did such an about-face on it. I was very excited about the story, and then suddenly the floor dropped out on it. Some of it has to do with my mood swing rollercoaster and nothing to do with the story itself whatsoever. But that's passed, and I find I'm still reluctant to pick up where I left off with it. I have been thinking about it, however, and I'm beginning to have an inkling of what's going on. You see, I started the story with a specific market in mind. The market publishes novella-length paranormal romances, with a strong emphasis on dark and sexy. Sexy, as in at least one pretty explicit scene per novella.

I've eyed the market in the past, because I like the paranormal romance part of it. I like the novella-length part of it. The explicit sex part, not so much. I finally decided I'd try to write a story for it anyhow--even if it turned out horribly, I'd have the experience of writing the sex scene. But the place I ran aground is, sure enough, just about the place I need to write the big sex scene. Am I stalled out because I don't want to write the scene? Or am I stalled out because I don't really want to publish anything that contains explicit sex? I kinda like being able to show my stories to my kids, now that they're old enough to read most of what I write. (Although I hesitate to believe they'll have much interest in the romances anyhow.) I want to be proud to claim my stories.

Or maybe it's a little deeper than that. Maybe it's because I like the characters more than I'd anticipated I would. Maybe it's because there's this little voice in the back of my mind whispering, "Dude. You could so work all this good stuff into that other Loki story you already have in mind and make the two into one even more awesome story." So maybe it's more about the characters and their conflicts outgrowing the vehicle I'd originally planned for them.

And yet, there's this other voice, the one that sounds nagging and condescending, telling me I'll never sell anything if I don't settle down and finish what I start. That voice says to just finish the last few damn scenes and try to sell it, because selling = success. My gut instinct is to slap the nag out of that voice--except it may have a point. I probably need to finish the story I started, just to see that I can do it. And then I can reassess and decide what comes next.

In the meantime, however, I have set out a couple of non-writing tasks for myself over the next week or two. Generally speaking, once I commit to other projects which take up my normal writing time, the muse will show up and demand to have her time back. And then I have leverage. Seriously, it takes a very clever person to outwit herself like this. At any rate, I have piles of home movies in VHS format piled on and around my desk and have purchased a video capture adapter thingy to transfer the VHS movies to my computer. And I will be painting the two downstairs hallways this week. If the dental work I have done on Monday leaves me feeling up to it. I need bridgework, but first they have to extract this molar. SO not looking forward to it.

And here is your verse

I am still on a writing hiatus, for the most part. I think tomorrow I will be ready to drag out the Heimdal novella and do some reassessing and regrouping. I spent most of the weekend in the depths of battling the usual various personal demons while holding it together enough to accomplish all the family stuff that needed accomplishing. I seem to be in the process of resurfacing again, which I must confess is a part of my mood cycle I much prefer to the down days. Ugh.

I read a book a couple of months ago, and today I came across the author's web site and some excerpts of possible interest to a couple of people out there: Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto, by Anneli Rufus. The author's tone sometimes seems more vehement toward "nonloners" than I usually am. (Although on my worst days, I can muster up quite a good dose of anger and bitterness toward those who would push me to "fit in" better, I should probably admit.) I found myself chuckling in recognition and nodding in agreement in a number of places. And you know, while it would likely be uncomfortable reading for nonloners, it might also be enlightening, for reasons summed pretty well in this quote from the book:

"They take offense. Feel hurt. Get angry. They do not blame owls for coming out at night, yet they blame us for being as we are. Because it involves them, or at least they believe it does..."

"They" being the nonloners who cannot understand a loner's desire to just be left alone and insist on pushing them to be more "normal." In short, the best thing to remember about loners is this: It's not about you. That loner who is avoiding your phone calls or your invitation to do lunch is not (necessarily) indicating that she doesn't like you. She just prefers--requires--more alone time than you do. Loners do not go around urging nonloners to stay in more or talk to fewer people. We just want the same courtesy returned to us.