On the Road Again

Okay, not so much on the road as on the plane, train, and autobús, but the saying is a good one!

I love to travel. This time, I have embarked on a somewhat-impromptu trip to gorgeous España. Hey, when the airfare deal is hot, you got to strike! (See also, my upcoming trip to Peru.) I love Spain, and my boyfriend has never been, so I am very excited to be here with him. I studied Spanish in college, including a month-long study abroad program in Spain, and although my skills have gotten verrrrry rusty, I still love the langage and the chance to speak it.

Aside from the opportunity to "grathias" my way across the Spanish countryside, travel opens my mind to the world beyond myself and energizes me to re-approach my own life with renewed perspective. I love seeing the people walking past, each an entire universe unto themself, complete with their own set of thoughts and problems just as deep and intricate as my own. As I am facing some Big Life Decisions right now, it is a much-needed dose of context!

I also find that travel helps fill my creative wells. Yesterday, we traipsed through 14th century ruins of a palace and its accompanying castle fortress, and the place practically sprang to life. I could almost hear characters calling to each other across the tiled courtyards, the creaking of armor as they patrolled the narrow ramparts, the aching sense of enclosure and safety both beneath the thick walls. And that was just one place we visited! While I may not have much time or energy to actually do a  lot of writing when I travel (I prefer to read during my down time--this blog post is brought to you only by my boyfriend's need for a pit stop), it recharges the parts of my brain that can help come forth with details, stories, and lush bits of magic that make a manuscript sing.

The random WiFi hotspot aside, I am disconnected from the world in a way that I badly need from time to time for the benefit of my sanity and my writing.

I hope you are on a good road yourself!

Guilty Pleasures

As they like to say in my industry, I am going to put the bottom line up front: life is too short to feel guilty about enjoying things!

Yes, that is my take on guilty pleasures. We waste way too much time, energy, and effort on chastising ourselves or judging ourselves about the merits of what we enjoy. The only reason you should feel guilty about enjoying something is if it’s causing harm to someone else. If beating someone up is your guilty pleasure, then yes, you fucking well should feel guilty about it (also: stop doing that, and get some counseling!). Otherwise, please, just enjoy what you enjoy!

Is the prose in that book you’re devouring somewhat less than pristine? Who cares! It’s brought you hours of joy, swept you away from the dull pedestrianism of your daily life. Stop judging yourself for it! Is the acting in that series you’re glued to melodramatic? Who cares! Watching that with your SO next to you and a good glass of wine is the highlight of your week. Is the genre that you prefer looked down upon by those who “know better”? Yep, you guessed it—who cares! It’s what feels right and true for you.

So when people ask me what my guilty pleasures are, I shake my head. I know what they mean, that I ought to have reservations about the bodice ripper on my nightstand or the stash of chocolate in my desk, but I don’t. This life of mine is the only one I’ve got. My days and hours are limited, and the time I get to spend doing things for fun even more so. And so I shall continue to enjoy the things I enjoy without apology, without qualification, and most definitely without guilt.

Yeah, I had so much fucking fun, look elsewhere for apologies!

Post-Hiatus Hello

Welcome back! No, not to you, to me!

It’s been a little bit since I’ve blogged. I make no apology, since it was an entirely planned absence on my part. My boyfriend returned from his extended deployment two months ago, and I wanted to spend time focusing on reintegrating him into my life and processing the general change and upheaval that accompanies such a time period. I enjoy blogging, but it’s not my number one priority. Oh, and we went to Guatemala for a couple weeks, which throws one’s schedule quite off kilter!

It was awesome.

But now that things have settled into more of a routine, I have some time to start looking back at my Todoist list of “Blog Post Ideas”. I’m not sure what is coming next—probably a (belated) fun-with-numbers look at the books I read in 2014. What can I say, I crave making graphs.

Anyway, besides blogging, I have a lot going on right now. I still want to spend basically every moment possible with my boyfriend. Turns out I kind of love the guy. Unfortunately/fortunately, he works a lot more than I do and has to stay on his boat for duty every few days, so I still have time to chase after my own pursuits. And oh boy am I chasing!

Right now I am getting up at 6 AM every day to write for ~45 minutes before I go to work. A small change, in some ways, but also a HUGE one. My productivity has gone way up, and I’m already 18,000 words (!) into my newest manuscript, novel 8. That’s just since March 23! I am still researching agents and querying novel 7, which takes a fair bit of time and mental energy (oh the rejections). I am training for a half-marathon, so when I get home from work (around 4:30 PM generally), I work out, plus a long run on Sundays. I just started taking a night class in accounting one night a week (contemplating changing day jobs), which means 3.5 hours on Tuesdays and then doing homework sometime during the rest of the week. And that’s just the basics—on top of that I have all the usual stuff of tending my home and my bunny, cooking, reading, running errands, etc.

But it feels great! Productivity breeds productivity, or so they say. Or if they don’t, they should. I definitely say it! I can’t promise I’ll be able to fit in a weekly blog post, but I do enjoy blogging and so it will stay on my to-do list. Unfortunately, I can’t say when I’ll be able to bring back #FlashFridayFootage. It’s something I have a lot of fun doing, but it takes a lot of time and there isn’t something else I’m willing to take off my plate right now in its place.

I hope everyone else’s spring has been going well! May the flowers be blooming or whatever happens in places that have seasons. =)

I waited 7 months for that kiss...

I Need Help: Blank Notebooks Edition

I have a confession, internet. I have an obsession with blank notebooks. I cannot resist their siren call. I stop at the notebooks aisle in Target just to flip through them. It's not just fancy notebooks, either! A simple one subject Mead can tempt me to plunk down my credit card. Not that I can say no to the thick-paged, leather journals either!

I don't know quite how to explain it. I haven't written anything significant in longhand since the first draft of novel 1 (about four years ago). I journal on a very sporadic basis. I could easily get by with one or two notebooks, but I have far, far more than that...

When I decided to write this post, I spent maybe 5 minutes collecting notebooks. This is what I found in that space of time (it's definitely not all of them):

A spiral of spiral bounds!

Do I use these notebooks? Ummmm...well...okay, there's maybe 50 pages in use between all of them. Whenever I buy a notebook I try to come up with a use for it. Sometimes I will actually use it for that. Usually that lasts about a week and then it is relegated to a dusty shelf or storage bin. Or the floor of my office, which I swear I am going to clean soon (probably when I move next month).

Let's take a quick tour of a few selected notebooks, shall we?

The red marker was the only one I had. Ugh. Clash.

This notebook, as it is so helpfully labeled, is part of my unofficial studies of philosophy. This is a subject that has always interested me—probably not surprising considering my father is a philosophy professor. He bought me Sophie's World when I was in 5th grade, and to this day it is one of my favorite books. I've probably read it at least five times. So anyway, this notebook was for my thoughts while reading Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers, a 203-page book I bought five (?) years ago, of which I am on page 21. Similarly, I have used 20 pages of this 3-subject notebook. I swear, I am going to get back to this! Someday...

Oooh, another spiral!

This is a sketchbook. I bought it early in 2013 to create a record/motivation of my weight loss. At the time I was 155 lbs (up from a low of 149) and worried about the gain. I used 5 pages in the book and my weight is currently 160 lbs. Oops.

Told you I couldn't resist Meads.

This notebook was purchased over five years ago to be my at-work notebook. However, the tag did not come off the front very easily, as you can see. So it got relegated to scrap paper. Over half the pages have been torn out over the years, and I haven't used it in gods know how long, but I still keep it under my end table. Just in case.

I feel daydreamy just looking at it!

This is one of those notebooks that I bought solely because it was cute, while insisting that I was going to use it to jot down writing ideas. (I have a whole other writing notebook that isn't even in the stack above, by the way.) I have used exactly 1 page since I bought it over a year ago. But it's still damn cute!

Orange is my favorite color, if the blog theme doesn't give it away.

This is my hard copy journal. I have had this since the beginning of 2012, and well, that bookmark should tell you just how much I've used it. Although the times I have, it has been very therapeutic! Speaking of which, I really need to journal. Maybe tomorrow.

Hedgehogs!

This is an example of actually needing and using a notebook! I bought this cutie specifically for the purpose of doing problem sets/exams from my actuary textbooks. I used an entire other notebook and this one is 3/4 full. Of course I stopped studying for an actuary career (no jobs in my geographic location), but I can't get rid of the notebook. You never know when it'll come in handy again!

So, there we have it. A small sampling of my deep and abiding love for blank notebooks. You might think that, being aware of the problem, I would be able to resist the lure. HA. Just today I was flipping through some blanks at Target, and I think I know which one I'm going to get next!

And don't even get me started on pens...

An Ode to My Support Staff

I wanted to write about something a little bit different today.

Writing is a very solitary endeavor. Only room for one butt in the chair and one set of hands on the keyboard, after all. Ideas spring into my head from nowhere and everywhere, and they are scribbled on scrap paper or jotted into my notebooks or typed into random Word files. Some are not written down until they are ready to come together into something new. Some never leave my head at all. This is all an individual effort.

But no man is an island, as much as I sometimes try to be. So today I want to write about someone who is indirectly indispensable to my writing process. Especially because this week he is leaving on deployment, and I don't even know what I am going to do!

His name is Jon.

Jon and I went on our first date November 26, 2011 if you ask me. If you ask him, it was the 25th. Depends on whether you want to count a certain tennis match. Anyway, it's been a while!

I don't remember when I first told him about my writing. It was within the first six months or so. Now, my writing is not a secret. I am not ashamed of my writing (obviously, hence the public blog about it!), and I will usually discuss it with just about anyone. But it is very personal for me. I don't typically bring it up unless asked, and I don't usually describe it in much detail. So it was just incredible how he always made me feel comfortable about being open with him and how supportive he has been.

He has read manuscripts that no one but myself has ever seen. He will listen to me bitch and moan about the publishing process. When I don't feel like writing, he encourages me to give it a shot anyway. He is unbelievably supportive, and I think sometimes he has more confidence that I am going to "make it" than I do. (It probably helps that he is not as familiar with the crushingly depressing statistics and process of actually doing that.) He understands when I just have to disappear into my office for a couple hours. He lifts me up when I am dejected and sick of rejection without acting like everything is sugar drops and gum balls.

I could be a writer without my boyfriend. But I am so glad I don't have to be! Thanks, boobear, I love you!!

Now there's a damn cute couple! ;)

Sometimes the Magic Works

It has never been a secret that I want to be a writer, so it is totally normal that I received Terry Brooks's Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life for Christmas sometime in high school. (The book was published in 2003, so probably my junior year.) I read the book a couple times, but this is not going to be a review of that book. Mostly because I don't remember it well enough to say much about it! (The thing that sticks out most is him saying that lounging by the pool with a drink is working for a writer mulling over ideas. I think of that almost every time I go to laze outside!)

But the title of the book, ah now there is something. That has been popping into my head all week. Why? Because it's true. Sometimes the magic works! And it is amazing.

Writing is not an easy business. I've never heard of anyone say otherwise. There are days—and months and years—where it can be incredibly frustrating. I don't even want to go in to how many times I have been checking my email, refreshing my QueryTracker list for new comments, stalking agents on Twitter hoping to glean a hint of where they are at with queries, checking my email again, etc... Rejections mount up. Ideas dry up. Words refuse to come. We wonder why we ever wanted to do this at all, and we think about giving up.

But then! There are the times that we write and write. That what we are writing may not be earth-shatteringly great, but it's pretty damn good. It's a book that I want to be written just so I can read it already. Words pour forth, scenes flow, a book comes together almost as we envision. It makes almost everything else worthwhile, to be caught up in the creation of an entirely new thing that has never existed before. It can't really be predicted or pinned down or explained completely. We take it when we can get it.

Sometimes the magic works.

I still have the book! It sits on my shelf between Theodore Rex and Service Etiquette. And don't judge my messy office!