Category: Personal

Reading at night

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I was doing pretty good there for a while. I was going through a number of books on my TBR pile (or alternately catching up on my shopping list by reading library copies on Hoopla), but that seems to have fallen by the wayside again. I’m back to rereading my WIP again, and I think that’s doing more harm than good right now. I did this before with Queen Ophelia’s War…I was revision-reading so often that I kind of burnt myself out with the story for a little bit and had to distance myself for a while before picking it up again.

Mind you, I find revision-reading one of the best tools I have when it comes to writing novels and prepping them for self-publication, but I sometimes need to learn that overdoing it leads to hyperfocusing on the problems and rarely getting any further. There has to be a balance.

Not that I’m burnt out on Theadia yet, thankfully. Just that I need to put it aside for a time at night. I need to read things that aren’t my own work. How else would I happen to discover new things that might inspire newer ideas? And not even that, sometimes it’s fun just to sit down and do a bit of enjoyable reading at the end of a long day! It’s a perfect wind-down activity!

So maybe what I need to do is dust off those books in the TBR pile and start cracking them open!

Too Darn Hot

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It’s been uncomfortably hot here in San Francisco the last couple of weeks, seeing record temperatures and ridiculously clear skies. Thankfully I work in a place where temperature regulation is kind of important, so I’m spending most of the day inside where it hovers somewhere at a comfortable sixty degrees or so.

Unfortunately, Spare Oom has been a bit of a sauna at times, meaning I can’t always get a lot of work done until it cools off in the evening. Which means revision work on Theadia is falling a bit behind, but I’m not too worried about it. It’ll get there when it gets there.

It did remind me of my Boston days, especially when I lived in the Shoebox, which could get unbearably hot and stuffy during the summer even when the window wide open. The Allston apartment was a bit better, given that it was a north-facing apartment and thus never got direct sunlight, but without any AC it could still get uncomfortable. Those days I’d usually hang out elsewhere, like at a library or a record store until sunset, then stay up far too late enjoying the cool of the evening. And of course there were the summers in the Belfry…I’d often start my writing sessions after dinner when it was already cooling off.

Mind you, this is not normal weather for San Francisco. We’re more known for being firmly stuck in the upper fifties and low sixties on the good days, with the addition of consistent fog cover out here in the Richmond District. From what I hear, the weather will be dropping back down soon enough, then I’ll feel comfortable back here again.

Passing the time

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So, how is my little experiment with passing the time at work going?

Well, it could be going better to be honest. I’m still finding too many excuses (and they are excuses) not to pull out my phone and screw around on Threads for the short amount of time I have for breaks. I mean, fine, it’s downtime and there’s nothing inherently wrong with using said time to mindlessly scroll social media…but like I said, I don’t want to do it anymore, and I’m trying my damnedest to get OUT of that habit.

I’m just not trying hard enough, really.

On the plus side, though…I have been doing a damn fine job of maintaining a level of Zen while at work. For a little while there I was letting myself get too frustrated and/or distracted and reactive to situations, just like I would do in the past, but that doesn’t happen nearly as much these days. Sure, I’ll get a bit snippy or grumble to myself in certain situations, but I’ll let it go very soon after and not continue to dwell on it.

And creativity-wise? I’ve scaled back the prep work, so to speak. For a while there I was carrying a small but bulky notebook in my jacket pocket, which did get its use, but I’m back to the old-school ways again, using my trusty back-pocket pad. Why? Because it provides lower expectations. I’m not writing anything big there, but I am starting to write down more lines of lyrics/poetry and the occasional WIP note. And that’s all I really need right now.

Bringing a bag…?

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I’ve been toying with the idea of bringing my satchel to work. Right now the only thing I usually bring is my coffee thermos and my lunch bag, but I’ve been thinking lately about bringing just a few things more.

The main reason, to be honest, is to change some habits.

I’m really getting sick of spending my entire breaks staring at my phone and reading social media. I mean, there’s no real harm in it as I curate my feeds pretty thoroughly these days, but I’m kind of getting bored by it, to be honest. Not the feeds themselves, mind you. Just the habit of doing it every single flipping moment that I have a break. I don’t really enjoy it anymore, to be honest. I’ll check my emails or any texts I get from A, but not much else.

I’ve been thinking about it: bring in a few things I will definitely interact with: my moleskine personal journal, a word search magazine, that sort of thing. Preferably something not electric if I can get away with it. Perhaps bring in one of my empty spiral-bound notebooks for some longhand work.

And yes, that’s another reason: getting out of the habit of passive scrolling and into the habit of fun creativity at work. I’m not aiming to write a novel here (not just yet, anyway), but I think I would benefit from using downtime for things I enjoy. The tricky part here is that our break room is tiny, so I’d either need to find a spot outside (in the car if I’m driving, for instance) or on the roof. But I’ll figure that out when it comes to it.

Either way, I’m up for a change. I’m due for a change, at any rate.

Paying It Forward — Thanks to Holly Lisle

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Sad to hear about the passing of author Holly Lisle the other day. She was one of my first inspirations and influences within the SFF genre, having read The Secret Texts trilogy in the late 90s, right about the same time that I was writing and revising The Phoenix Effect, which of course morphed into the Bridgetown Trilogy.

I remember seeing something in the acknowledgement pages of those books that intrigued me: she’d created what was essentially a BBS forum called Forward Motion, a smallish but very active online writing community. They — including Holly — were extremely welcoming, and being a member helped me figure out what I was trying to do with the Mendaihu Universe. I even had a few people beta read some of it at the time. I spent a lot of time at the Forward Motion site during the Belfry years, especially on the days we had ‘word wars’ — we’d all say, okay, let’s see how many words we can hit starting NOW! as a way to get ourselves geared up and excited about the projects we were working on. I’d pop into chat rooms just to see who was around…and often there would be someone asking a question or needing help, and we’d all chip in and offer advice. I got some great advice on my trilogy; one in particular that I remember is that I’d been stuck on a name for a certain character, and a few people suggested his name sound sibilant and harsh to fit his personality. Together we came up with a rather interesting name, and some years later during revision, it was shortened to Saisshalé.

I’d moved away from the FM site when I moved out to San Francisco, though to this day I still talk with a few people I met there. We still talk online and I’ve even met a few in person!

Holly stepped away from FM sometime in the early 00s if I’m not mistaken to focus on writing and teaching, but I never forgot how much that community helped me. It wasn’t just about the help, though — one of Holly’s mottos was ‘paying it forward’ and I certainly did that over the years, offering to beta read for others, and later on giving what information and suggestions I could about self-publishing during local conventions. I never forgot that either.

Thank you, Holly. Your influence as a writer may not have fully been through your writing, but your sense of community certainly stayed with me all these years.

That time of year again…

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Y’all know how I feel about autumn, heh.

The teens have returned to the neighborhood schools, which of course means twice a day, five days a week, for about fifteen to twenty minutes, twenty to thirty of them come into our store all at once and cause chaos. Some of them are just fine, some of them are troublesome, and many of them are blissfully unaware of their surroundings or how flipping loud they can get. I don’t mind them myself, but those two short stretches of time can suddenly make an otherwise calm day extremely stressful.

But I digress.

The weather here in San Francisco has definitely started its yearly changes. Our weather patterns are a bit weird compared to other places, even locations a short distance away in the East Bay. It might be humid and hot, or it might be chilly and dry, or it might be overcast, or it might be a rare moment of sunny warmth. Sometimes all of that within the span of twenty-four hours. We don’t get the glorious foliage that New England gets, but we do get the lovely colors of late-blooming flowers and the stunning oranges and reds of sunsets. [We do get the lovely blooming of cherry blossoms in the spring, so I’ll definitely take that as a plus.]

I think I’ve finally adjusted to this sort of thing, to be honest. I love a weekend walk through Golden Gate Park or Crissy Field, or even a trip down the other end of Clement Street to the local farmer’s market. And now that we have our garden plot, I even enjoy getting dirty with the weeding and deadheading and watering.

Autumn Sundays, as always, feel like the winding up of a relaxing weekend, and needing to prepare for the coming Monday. Even now, even when I have the occasional day off (like today), I spend Sundays prepping my blog posts and making vague plans for the week. What should I work on? When should I do the laundry? Do I need to do any local errands? It’s certainly not the frantic last-minute of doing homework I should have done Friday afternoon (I was notorious for that), but some days it comes close.

Still, it’s always been my favorite time of year, and I embrace it each and every time.

Not lazy, just languid

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I’ve gotten so used to my slightly unconventional two-days-on/one-day-off/three-days-on variations of my work schedule that working five days in a row at the Day Job over the last couple of weeks has thrown me for a loop a bit. [There’s also the fact that last Sunday we did some major gardening, after which I did three loads of laundry, which didn’t give me much of a day off.] I’m trying not to overdo it, so I’m allowing myself the occasional day where I do nothing much of importance.

It’s also that the weather’s been its usual weird westside SF self lately: overcast, foggy, extremely humid, and stuck somewhere in the mid-50s…plus it’s allergy season, occasionally leaving me sniffly and migrainey. On those days I’ve learned it’s best to just slow down a little bit and let nature take its course.

I am working on Theadia, just not on a daily basis and not at intense levels, so at least that’s still moving forward!

Hopefully things will be a bit less languid in the coming days….thanks for your patience!

Thank you!!!

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I’ll be honest, I spent the entirety of July thinking that no one had downloaded any of my books during the Smashwords/Draft2Digital summer sale, and now I realize that it was because I’d been expecting a notification with every download, something I’d had set up at Smashwords.

SO! Imagine my surprise and my joy when I receive my D2D sales report on the afternoon of this past Monday, and find that I’d actually gotten sixty-two downloads!! Wow! A huge thank you to everyone who downloaded the books, and I hope you enjoy them!

So yeah, now that I know that I’m not getting all those notifications, I’ll be sure to check out the sales reports more often, heh.

Walking

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I’m doing a little bit better with the walking to and from work instead of taking the car, but I could probably stand to be less lazy about it. There are days where I’ll take the bus in (after all, my commute might be only eight blocks but it’s literally all uphill) and walk back, even when I’ve had a ridiculously busy day at work, and I think I need to do that more.

It’s not as if my Day Job is sedentary…I can do up to four or five miles a shift with all the walking and moving around I do within the span of eight hours. Perhaps that’s partly why I don’t always have the moments to step aside and write out story ideas or work through something. It really depends on the day.

Still, I’m glad that I’m moving around a lot more than I was during the Previous Day Job, which had me sitting on my behind and snacking more often than I really should. All this moving around keeps me healthy and my blood pressure at normal levels. And when I’m walking home after a shift, it’s a stretch of time where I don’t have to think about anything else. I don’t use earbuds, so I only listen to the world around me. Some of those walks have been spent thinking about what needs to be done with my WIP, or working out how I want a certain scene to go. And most importantly, I get to unwind for a little bit before I start the writing work again!