I have utterly no clue what I said I was going to do this month. I think it was said with the full understanding that if I hadn't mentioned Golden Fleece Press yet, it was already hovering in my work folder and therefor whatever I thought was going to happen was more or less slated for failure.

It's hard to say I failed last month, when I sit back and look at everything I actually did. Did I do the stuff I said I was going to do? Well...no. I'm pretty sure I did nearly none of it. 

Whatevs. It's a new month full of new beginnings. I opened a publishing company last week! Arguably with a crap-ton of help and the coolest business partner in the universe, but I digress.  So. Goals for this new month.

• Ignore the faintly horrifying number of blogs I am responsible for upkeep on and ACTUALLY DO THEM. I know, this one might be a little difficult. Still, moonbeams and stardust and all that jazz.
• Edits. For the thing that's my placeholder in this whirlwind snowball of doom. I have months, but given everything else I need months so...
• I am doing Camp Nano. Because you all know I am crazy and I said I wouldn't, but you all knew that was a lie. You did, come on, admit it. I'm writing content for projects to be announced later and I know for a fact at least one of them is going to be utterly unhelpful in the way that means a 25k word project decides to be ten books. So. I've got that to look forward to. 
• Plan out a blog tour. Because my professional life isn't full to the gills already.

Right. So. There's my July, mixed in with my birthday and my kid's birthday and two visits from my parents and one national holiday and...

I wonder if there's a floor on my attic. That seems like a legitimate place to hide.

I vaguely recall, a couple of days ago (alright, so it was nearly a month and that's how lost I am) that I was going to stop missing days, on this whole blogging thing.

I'll wait until you're done laughing.

We're getting closer to the point where I can be honest about that giant project in the background that's eating my life. Granted, I'm relatively sure everyone who actually reads this thing already knows about it...

But we're not quite ready for launch yet, and I'm keeping quiet until we are. 

It's Well Written Wednesday and since I'm allowed to talk about writing (spuriously) I'm going to talk about what it feels like to have an 'author's' life on the internet anymore. 

There are currently, on that nifty little panel that Google gives you to pick which username you want to sign in with, eight choices. My to-do lists in Wunderlist consistently exist about a half-step away from being utterly out of control. I am either responsible for--or nearly responsible for--four blogs, three twitter accounts, probably more like twelve email addresses if you count the non-google ones, one web forum I have utterly failed at for months, and three websites. Not counting the giant PROJECT OF DOOM I'm not actually owning up to yet I've got Nano, some involvement in First Book, my own writing career, a position as the Enrichment Coordinator for my son's school, the Book Lover's Bazaar coming up in September, and another nine and a half weeks as a full-time childcare person.

Arguably, at the end of all of that I should be talking about the impending crash, should I?

But I'm fine. Not even pretending at fine, I'm actually fine. Sure, there are moments where it feels a little big. Like tonight, when I signed out of Google for a second and got slapped in the face with way more directions than I needed right then. There's a sort of constant cloud of things that haven't made it on a to-do list yet swimming around in my brain, and I'm still having dreams about the PROJECT OF DOOM that basically equate to my brain getting caught in circles because I'm spending a lot of time staring at the same information is sixty different ways. 

Someone mentioned Camp Nano, next month, the other night and I just laughed hysterically. We won't tell anyone I was laughing because it should be 'oh god NO' but I will absolutely, I nearly promise, be writing something. 

Welcome to life as a modern writer. I'm decently hopeful it's not like this for everyone.

“A book's a strange thing. It's ideas, feelings. It's fragile and complicated. You can't make them like refrigerators or cars.” 
                                                                                                   ― Étienne Davodeau, Les Ignorants

I got my first professional edit letter this weekend. And I was all set to tell you about how that was going for Well Written Wednesday. Not that I had the first clue what I was going to say yet. That was the plan.

And then Maya Angelou died Wednesday.

I spent most of Wednesday and a good portion of today trying to find something to say about that, and at this point I think I'm just accepting that brevity is the soul of wit. 

She's one of a very few select writers who get credit for getting me through my teens with a manageable, almost normal, amount of angst. Someone who made me understand the power of a universal story, and the visceral reality of the human condition.

My world was a better place for her being in it. That's probably the nicest thing you can say about anyone you don't actually know.

Photo from here under this license. 

I've been a history buff my entire life. Out of every book and movie and story I could give you as my favorite, ninty percent of them happened in the more or less distant past. I know an unusual amount about my family history--very little of it actually worth-while I grant--because I started asking when my great-grandparents were still alive. 
I learned a long time ago to leave my opinions and pre-conceptions at the door and appreciate the historical thing for what it was and what it said about where we were. There's a really great quote in Ken Burns The Prohibition where someone talks about how we tend to think a-historically (i.e. we invented sex or drug use or mass communication) and how not true that is. 
That's never been me. I grew up with an understanding of counter-culture that existed before 1967.
Still sometimes I find things that squick me, create this little curl of unease in my stomach, and make me start questioning things. 
Like when I catch myself happily singing this lovely tune down here...

And then I actually hear the words coming out of my mouth and thank my lucky stars I was born when I was.

I promise eventually Sci-Fi Fridays will get back to having science content (as much as I ever had science content, shush you).

For tonight I'm being simple and rambling on for a bit about something I've noticed in Sci-Fi (particularly the movies) and then giving you an update on the Marianas Trench Contest. 

Why is 'the humans are a**holes' a genre? Every time I see one of these I want to punch something small and fuzzy. It's like some ridiculous nod to the 'noble savage' novels that used to be so popular, where the native peoples on a planet are peaceful and nature loving and then the big, corrupt, evil humans come along and ruin everything. 

I'm not in any way saying I don't think we'd do this, any more than I'm saying it's not turning a legitimate historical precedent into a futuristic setting. Mostly I'm saying I'm tired of watching Pocahontas In Space. It's lazy, one dimensional story-telling. And it sells us short. 

Do I think, if we ever start colonizing space (basically it's a numbers game, imo, it's gotta happen some time) we're going to do everything right? No. Because we're human, and for good or ill forethought isn't always our most used trait. But fiction is fiction for a reason, and seeing ourselves as horrible wastes of life isn't the only way to make us question our behavior.

Okay, rant over.

So, update about the Marianas Trench Contest. I've decided on a prize, for the winner. I'd post a photo, but I don't have one that I have rights to, so it'll have to wait until I'm finished. So, whoever submits something to me by April 20th will get a hand-knitted plot bunny. I'll make it long before then and post a picture for inspiration.

They've even taken my title. 

Last week was good. Maybe not awesome, I didn't get some things done I wanted to, and I've been the kind of sick that just hangs out in the background and makes you miserable. I wrote a lot, maybe twelve words of which were actually of use, but I'm cool with that. 

I could go into reams of real life stuff, sure. My kid's been home from school for about six months now (it feels like that anyway) and all the normal stuff that comes along with that is true, when you're an introvert who gets tired of the company of people no matter how much you love them. 

I even briefly thought about leaving a few words of wisdom for posterity about the SPN/Belieber fan dust-up this week. Something about how badly you have to damage someone's house for it to result in a search warrant for eggs.

Instead I think I'm going to give in to the winter blahs and leave a few words about how my January goals are going, and then go bury my head in fantasy-ville again. 

I finished the half-draft of The Quiet Mine (2013's Nano) on Monday (? I think it was Monday, this week's turned into a gd five-headed dragon of wrong). I'm not necessarily happy with everything in it, but it's a long chalk better than it would have been if I'd walked away when I hit 'the end' during November. And I'll pop a picture of the mine-craft scarf under here, because I finished that as well. It looks like the 'other project' is going to be the mittens he wants to go with it. Which are just...gah. They're smaller and theoretically quicker, except the measurements are all strange and they're trying to kill me with small pointy needles, basically. 

So yeah, the rest of my month is mitteny things (I live in hope, I know) and a little more than 300 pgs of The Cuckoos Calling. 

*side note, the mitten you see down there is wide enough for an adult and long enough for a two year old apparently.

I know you're all in awe of my photographic abilities.

So. It's a list, right? It's a short month that means strange paycheck schedules. Here in the Northern Hemisphere it's cold and wet/snowing/evil. Valentines. Maybe you have a severe phobia of Groundhogs and therefore hate February 2nd... (apparently for animals all phobias are grouped as Zoophobia, but I got that off the internets so take it with a grain of salt).

Personally, my biggest problem with February is the fact it's two months after Nano ends. Come December 1st my creative batteries are so broken I couldn't string five sensible words together, and then it's Christmas (I'm sure you can insert your winter holiday of choice here and they all cause the same thing) and I'm cooking/making/chicken-running. Then it's January 15th and I haven't taken the decorations down yet and just the thought of trying to write makes me want to burrow down for another epic six-season watch of Doctor Who.

And then, inevitably, there's this moment in the first week of February where all the stars align and I start writing again...and three weeks later I've crossed the 100k mark and I've forgotten how to talk to people who don't exist inside my head. I know, embarrassment of riches, blah blah blah. I could be all humble about how awesome it is to write that much, but I don't really see the point. I'm not pretending what I'm writing when I go that fast is better than a decently trained monkey with a type-writer.

Anyway, the point. When the writing binge happened in February this year, I let it go a little long in the tooth, and suddenly decided that for Camp Nano in April I could totally write an entire trilogy in one month. It wouldn't even be that hard, aim for about 60k a book and at the end of April I'd be at 180k with an entire trilogy drafted. Awesome, right?

I'll wait for the crazed, incredulous laughter to stop. You have a point.

We'll avoid the gory details. I did manage all of book one (It's around 75k) and all of book two (60k) and the first two chapters of book three. And some of that was good. Really good, like forget I'm supposed to be paying attention in the re-read good. I'm focusing on that, who cares if I lost the entire point of the plot arc somewhere in the middle of book two, I found it again. Sort of. 

And then it took me four months to finish book three. 

I'm sure about now you're wondering why I'm telling you this, because yay for me and all but what's this mean for you? I'm calling it an example. Most of us sit down to do something giant and we freak out. We crack the surface and go "Holy crap what was I THINKING!" And there was absolutely a lot of that. Several times over. Five months, three or four emergencies, two massive trips, and three books later I've come to a conclusion. It's over-simple and glaringly obvious. 

You'll never know what you can do, unless you try. Go forth my little Whistle-Pigs. Try.

--Cross posted from Tumblr


I'm just leaving a pithy note about nothing, because I should be writing right now and I'm going back to that. 

I love how inept I am at spelling simple words, words most of us learned in elementary school, like 'necessary'--which took 3 tries with help from spell check earlier-- but I can spell 'nudibranch' first time out the gate like a freaking Olympic spelling champion. 

Do they offer spelling as an Olympic sport? Because I feel like I could handle the two-person down hill luge with a complete stranger better than being asked to complete a fourth grade spelling test. 

--Cross posted from Tumblr


They make a fun noise as they rush past.

I know, it's a ridiculously over-used joke by writers. But it's another Monday, and pretty much everything I said I was going to do last week didn't happen. And the continued medical shenanigans going on in my life are a tailor made excuse for that, sure. That doesn't mean I should be using that.

So, last week I made some sort of vague promise about how I was going to blog about something involving writing this week. Which is a little difficult, as I haven't really managed to do much of that lately.

Hello Topic, so lovely of you to join us. Better late than never.

As you might know, I tried to write a ridiculous amount for the first part of Camp Nano this year, and while I didn't make the goal I set, I did manage to get through the first draft for two separate books and start the third. 

It's not like this is the first time I've had to stop a project in the middle and go back later. And I'm going back much quicker than I generally manage. Sometimes it's years before I pick a project back up again. I feel like the disconnect is always huge once I stop, whether it's for three weeks or a year. 

And much as I'm trying not to think about it right now, a lot's happened in my personal life since I stopped writing that book.

If this was LiveJournal I'd be hitting that little 'I'm lost' button. So I'm kicking it back to you.

What do you do when you've left a project for a while and it's time to go back?