Category: Personal

Long Work Days and Writing Sessions

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There are just some days at the Day Job that leave me so exhausted that you say okay fine, I’m taking a day off and passing out on the bed instead of trying to work through this chapter. And as all good writers do, I always feel incredibly guilty about it, even though I should know better that creativity rarely works well during a drain of energy.

It’s been a couple of busy days at the Day Job, mainly due to back to back holidays known to be extremely chaotic in retail (Mother’s Day and Memorial Day), a strong wave of warm and sunny days in the neighborhood, as well as the final days of the local middle and high schools wrapping up, bringing twitchy teens loading up on snacks and drinks.

Usually I can get a few hundred words done despite this, but the deal-breaker this time has been allergies. Those warm and sunny days have brought along several blooming and pollenating plants and trees that have kept me stuffed up and/or handling a migraine throughout my shifts. I look forward to days off when this kind of thing lays me low.

Still…I don’t feel too guilty about missing a few days or doing the least amount of writing work. It annoys me that I have to sacrifice that and not something else, but I’ve made my peace with that some time ago. As long as I’m able to get back to work soon enough.

Non-writing creativity

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So what am I working on creatively when I’m not writing? No, sadly I haven’t been playing music or making art lately.

However, A and I have been working on the above — our own little six-by-six plot at the local community garden! It’s mostly A’s planning, perseverance and plant selection, but I’ve been, as they say, getting stuck in when we stop there every couple of days. One or both of us will stop by every other day, maybe harvest some of that ridiculously fruitful red and green lettuce, and give it all a good watering. [The above picture is courtesy of A, btw.]

Funny thing is, I never thought I’d be all that excited about gardening, even though we’ve been watching Gardener’s World on BritBox for a good few years now. But when we started working on this, I really found myself having a lot of fun with it. And not just that, it’s forcing me to get out of my reactive don’t wanna mode that often gets the best of me. The other weekend when we participated in a monthly garden community gathering to clean and weed, I really got stuck in and weeded the hell out of a significant area that had been bothering me since we got the plot. It feels really weird to feel that sense of pride in something I never thought I’d get actively excited about. It’s kind of made me rethink a lot about how I approach a lot of things in life, and that’s a super healthy thing to do.

Plus, we’ve been having a TON of free salad these days, and that can’t be a bad thing.

Outside

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I think it’s safe to say that the cold rainy season here in the Bay Area has finally come to a close (I hope), which means that I’ll be able to return to something I’ve been wanting — and needing — to do at work for a while now. And that’s go outside during my breaks.

I was doing it for a while there, heading up to the roof parking deck for my ten minute breaks and the back half of my lunches. For a while there I was just heading to our small break room and slumping into one of the chairs and, well…maybe not doomscrolling, but passively reading news sites and social media again. At least I’m not getting myself worked up like I used to, so there’s that.

Anyway, I think heading up to the roof, or even out to the side parking lot for a few minutes can’t be all bad, especially since I have a small notebook in my inside jacket pocket that’s been itching to be used for quite some time now. I’ve been using it to work out a few vague ideas for Theadia, but I think it’s time I start using it more often like I used to in the Yankee Candle days: working out what I want to write for the current chapter, that way I’m not wracking my brain at the start of my writing sessions.

As long as the weather is with me, I think this is a fine idea!

[On a side note, I can safely say I don’t need to head outside to do any exercise, as this day job keeps me on my toes and I can easily rack up a few miles’ worth of steps on my fitness app. I’ve joked with one of the bakery workers that any of the cake slices I buy from them get worked off by the end of the day, considering how much I flit around the store!]

I should be walking

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For a while I was walking to and from work, but due to the winter weather here in SF, it gets super cold and sometimes rainy and I’d rather either drive in or take the bus. I always feel like I’m being lazy and wasteful because it’s only eight blocks. It’s not even worth turning on the radio as it’s only a three minute drive. But it’s spring now, it’s warming up, and the days are getting longer so I won’t always be walking there or home in the dark, depending on the shift. And the walk is only ten minutes. [I timed it when I first went for my initial interview.]

What do I do in that ten minutes? It’s not as if I really do all that much deep thinking about things. Sometimes I’ll think about what I’ll be doing for the rest of the day when I have a morning shift, and after midday shifts I’ll wonder what’s going on in the neighborhood now that everyone’s come home and had their dinner already. I might even stop into one of the three coffee shops I pass and grab a cup to go.

I do think about my writing. Not always, but sometimes. Just as in the past, if I’ll use the time to work out something that’s bothering me, or plan out something I’d like to try. Going for a walk these days is more about me not having to think, taking a mental break from what I’ve been doing all day, but if I’m in that creative mood, this is a perfect and peaceful time to let my mind wander a bit.

Either way, I need to start walking again. I definitely need the exercise!

More on not holding back

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The last time I talked about this sort of thing was four years ago in this entry, but a lot of things have changed in my life since then. I wrote that entry in the first year of the pandemic, about a year after I’d been forced into heading thirty miles west into the office, ten months after I’d originally come up with the idea for Theadia, and six months after I quit that former day job.

Reason I bring it up is that I’ve been talking with some coworkers at the current Day Job about personal things and surprisingly they all say that I’m probably the most got-their-shit-together person they’d ever met. Which is kind of mind-blowing, considering my past. Ask me how I was four years ago, and I’d say that I was in a much better place than I’d been even a few years before that, but I still had a hell of a long way to go.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I work on the Theadia rewrite, because I’m once again at the point where I feel I’ve still been holding back. I’ve just gotten so used to doing it over the last couple of decades for varying reasons. Getting my emotions under control, ensuring my mental and emotional health (and in the process my physical health) was no longer going haywire because I’d just been reacting to everything for most of my life.

So now I’m thinking: yeah, maybe it’s time to trust myself a bit. Far past time.

What does this have to do with my writing? I think it’s that I’ve always felt that my payoffs weren’t as grand as I want them to be. I mean, other than the epic roundup at the end of The Balance of Light where the fate of everyone is held in the hands of two characters, Denni and Saisshalé. I love my books but there’s always this feeling that I could have gone so much further with them plot-wise. Raised the stakes more. Sometimes I feel my personal avoidance of conflict in real life infiltrated the conflict in my books to some degree.

But it’s here and now, and I’m definitely not as avoidant as I used to be. And that’s another reason I want to rewrite Theadia: I can make this story a lot bigger, grander and stronger than what it currently is.

I don’t want to hold back this time.

Gardening

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One thing A and I like doing on Fridays is watching Gardeners’ World on BritBox. It’s a nice calming hour of watching Monty Don fiddle with the various sections of his land alongside the various cohosts showing their own gardens and visiting others across the British Isles. It’s a great way to unplug from work and the stresses of the world for a bit.

Recently A also finally acquired a plot at the nearby community garden. She has a background in horticulture, so this is a dream come true. And yes, I’m looking forward to assisting as well when I’m not at the Day Job. I’ve learned quite a bit both from her and from watching those gardening shows, but it’s been ages since I’ve actually done any kind of outside work like this. [I’m quite certain I’m going to get all sorts of blisters and back and knee pains, but in the end it’ll be worth it.]

What does this have to do with writing? Well, nothing much really. It’s just a nice little distraction from life and stress and whatever else is going on. And you know me — I’ll eventually find gardening time is a perfect time to do a bit of plotting in my head. Heh.

Stuff to listen to…?

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Not gonna lie, I’m totally looking forward to finding some new albums that could get some heavy rotation during my upcoming writing sessions for Theadia. Each project has had its own playlists and/or albums that become their de facto soundtrack, and I’m sure this one will be no different.

The only difference here, I think, is that I want these albums to have more staying power than the ones tied to my post-trilogy work. There are some records that will always be tied in with the trilogy (And You Think You Know What Life’s About, Sea Change, Fantastic Planet, and so on), and Diwa & Kaffi had The Sound of Arrows’ Stay Free, but that’s about it. I’m not trying to shoehorn any albums into this new project, mind you…I’m just wondering if there’s going to be any that will be as closely tied.

Which brings me to my wanting to pay a little more attention to the music I’ve been listening to. I’ve said previously that the last few years have felt more like I’d focused more on acquisition than connection, and I want to change that. And one of the ways to make that happen is to actively return to some of these albums. That’s what I did in the Belfry back in the day: I’d start off each session putting on a specific cd I wanted to hear to get myself in the mood. Sometimes it was a new release, other times it was an old classic. It really did depend (and still does) on the scene I was about to work on.

I have the music library, I just need to choose what I want to hear.

Artificial…?

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(Image courtesy of Ghost in the Shell)

I’ve been reading a few social media or blog posts lately opining how AI has infested many creative fields like invasive critters, taking all the fun and the jobs from those who’ve been in the field for ages doing the actual lo-fi work the hard way.

You can always tell the pro-AI people: they have this weird salesperson optimistic shine to them, telling you how awesome it is to be able to create a novel — a whole freaking novel, even if you’ve never written one before! — just by typing in a few prompts! You can even put in a few more prompts and get a cover! You put in the ideas, the computer does all the hard work! It’s awesome! You’ll have more time for raising more bitcoin!

Oddly enough, they remind me of my worst ever job as a telemarketer at a call center, trying to sell toll-free 800 numbers back in the early 90s. Trying to push something that ninety percent of your targets don’t want, hoping that ten percent will think this is the Best Idea Ever, and you’ve made your sale. [And now you just need to get ten more in the next three hours so you can keep your job.]

It also reminds me of Virtual Reality. Remember that, from the early 90s? It was supposed to be the Next Big Thing then, back with all those crisp images that made the internet under the hood look like an amazing science fictional universe, and we’d all be Johnny Mnemonic with Thompson Eyephones, flying through digital space and opening up files and hacking through firewalls with disembodied computerized hands. Never mind that the real under the hood looked…less so. More 8-bit than CGI, really.

There’s something not entirely real about it all. Not exactly Uncanny Valley unreal, but more like you can definitely tell the difference between the messy and tactile yet endlessly fascinating real world, and the AI world that’s just a tiny bit too shiny and perfect but not quite working to spec in small yet obvious ways.

I’m reasonably sure that this too shall pass, just like VR did, just like those smart glasses and other fiddly bits of hardware that get a huge sales push and vanish a year or so later. They won’t go away, I think…they’ll still have their uses here and there. They just won’t be sold as The Latest Tech Toy You Must Own. The overwhelming reaction of AI art has been a resounding ‘meh’ from most non-tech people anyway, and most artists are pissed off about it for obvious reasons. And as a writer myself? I’m secretly laughing that most AI-created stories are easily spotted, absolutely terrible and lacking any kind of humanity within its pages. We’ll still have a few people trying to make a fast buck by generating a handful of these, but they’re few and far between and they’re not doing as well as they think they are.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve used a few low scale AI art generator websites now and again, just for the fun of it, just to see what it does and what level it’s at. If it wants to stay, I think it still has a long way to go. It might create an eye-catching picture…but with colors slightly too pastel, the smile a bit too Aphex Twin, minor but crucial details completely missing, or perhaps an extra limb or finger bending in strange ways. Plus, it currently takes up a huge fuckton of processing power that’s not healthy for the environment.

We’re still better off going old-school and doing the hard work, even if it does take a bit longer and sometimes costs money, to be honest. The end results are still much more pleasing and long-lasting.

Days away from social media

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(Art source unknown, but borrowed from this Medium article)

It’s been a little less than two months since I closed down my Twitter feed, and I can’t say I’ve missed it all that much. Sure, I still pop in from time to time for a minute or so, just to ensure I don’t lose access and to check in on those I follow who aren’t online elsewhere, but other than that, I stay well away.

I’m still on Bluesky and Threads, but even then I don’t stay for too long. Again, maybe for a minute or so. I spend more time with my east coast friends on our shared Discord, to be honest. My Instagram these days are mostly pictures of our cats Jules and Cali. Weirdly enough, the most time I’ll spend on social media is to watch some lawn care reels on Facebook, because they’re a lot of fun and surprisingly calming to watch.

That was the whole point of this detox, really…it wasn’t to take a vacation away from social media but to recalibrate my brain so I’m no longer beholden to it. I still feel like I could better use my time during breaks at work, but I’m not really beating myself up over it. I feel less stressed out, for starters. I feel less inclined to give into a daily rage about whatever nonsense is going on in the world. I’ve found a healthier social balance and I’ve decided I’m going to stay there for a while.

Does this give me more time for writing? Sure! I’ve been doing a lot of world building work for Theadia during breaks and slow times at work. I can get through a good chunk of revision work on Queen Ophelia’s War on a daily basis. I can zip through my daily 750Words. All this, and still have a bit of time left over to relax with non-creative fun things! Time management for the win!