Home for the Holidays

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It's going to be just us four (five, if you count the dog) this year for Thanksgiving, and I find I'm very happy about that. I know a lot of people value this time with their larger family--aunts, cousins, grandparents, etc. I usually do, too. After all, I don't see them often. I miss them.

But I find myself feeling very grateful for a few days at home with just my own little family around me. For people who all share a home, it can feel like we don't get to see each other that much. School and work take the bulk of the day. By the time, we're all home, it's dark outside.

Then, we all have homework. Even the seven-year-old has responsibilities to keep up in terms of homework. The high schooler sometimes drowns in it. The people who employ my husband seem to think they have the right to demand his evening hours, too, all too often. I've been doing better at leaving work at work, but, since I've taken on more with my writing, it's almost like working a second job.

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Life moves so quickly these days that I blink twice and another week has passed. Most of the time, I feel like I'm running as fast I can just to stand still.

So, the idea of several days where we might sit on the couch and watch a movie or play a board game, or just talk around leftover pie and a fire? Heaven. Those who know me know that these sentiments are strangely homebody for a the girl with a wanderlust that took her to Alaska as a younger woman. I'm normally up for anything that starts with "Do you want to go . . .?" It's a new feeling to me to say, "You know, I don't want to go anywhere."

So, this year I am thankful that my larger family has plans without me. I'm looking forward to time at my own hearth.

Fall into Winter

I used to love fall. Crunchy leaves under my feet and cooler weather--sweater weather--was my idea of a perfect day. Part of me still does . . .I just want different things from the days than life is offering. This fall, I'm not loving it.

Maybe it's just that I had made the decision to leave the classroom last year, but failed to find a financial option that let me do so. Maybe it's the new responsibilities that my first significant successes as a writer have brought into my life (without taking any of my old responsibilities away).

Either way I'm grumpy, and trying to shake it.

Daylight savings didn't help. It never bothered me to go to work in the dark, but it bothers me a lot to come in the dark and feel like I never got to see the sun.  Getting extra-cold super-fast didn't help either. There's frost already! It makes my hands, knees and foot ache with that deep internal pain that we're not yet admitting out loud is arthritis. (I'm only 43!) I may have to buy a coat. I haven't owned a real coat since I moved to North Carolina.

There are compensations, though.

Since it's cold, I get to sit next to the fire warming my toes under a blanket and drinking cocoa, often with cuddles from husband, child or dog. I get to wear jeans to work as part of our holiday fundraiser at school. It's not hot (if you think I don't like cold, you should hear me kvetch and moan about hot). I look cute in sweaters.

I think it's time to find the joy of fall again. If I can get home during daylight, I'll rake up a pile of leaves and jump in with the kids. There's a special sort of joy that comes only when you have colorful leaves in your hair. You wanna come? I'll make the cocoa.

NaNoWriMo 2014--Week Two

design by Elizabeth Doyle

NaNoWriMo is in full swing. This is my second year. Last year, I ended up with a historical fiction piece that I feel really good about (It's third in the queue for rewriting right now). This year, I'm writing a young adult magic and friendship novel. My working title is Rat Jones and the Lacrosse Zombies.

For those who haven't done it. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's November every year. The idea is that you write 50,000 words in one month.  It amounts to a little less than 2,000 words a day to make it on time. People either love it or hate it.

This year, I'm doing both.

What's great about NaNoWriMo is that it keeps me from overthinking things. I can't stop and research a lot. I have to keep moving forward even when I'm not at all sure what might happen next. That can be really good for a story, giving it a sense of spontaneity and leaving room for the characters to surprise me.

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What's bad about NaNoWriMo is exactly those same things. It's not my natural process to barrel through, ignoring flaws and plowing forward. I'm a pantser, which means that I don't outline or heavily plan before I begin writing. But, I also am not comfortable with what people call "the vomit draft." I do what I call a "discovery draft." I write, just following the characters and story until it makes itself clear. Once, I know where it's gong, I do more planning.

I also edit and write at the same time . . .circling back and adding scenes to support a subplot when it comes up, going back and changing a detail as soon as it changes.

For where I am in my writing life right now, though, I'm still glad I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. A little success has put more time pressure on things, and it feels really good to set aside this one month for exploring a brand new idea. It'll give me a mental break from the world I've been creating for Going Through the Change and its sequels and let me come back to that sequel with fresh eyes.

Sometimes, you just need to play with some different imaginary friends.

It hurts a little less now . . .

Ah. Rejection.

I got eight in the month of October (and one acceptance!). It was a pretty good month.

The first few times I sent my work out into the wilds of the publishing world, when I was a mere whippersnapper of twenty or thirty years, I pinned a lot of hopes on the results. I would wait anxiously, checking the mail multiple times a day. I didn't create new work while I waited. When my poems (I was mostly a poet then), came back with broken wings and rejection notes, I took it to heart. I doubted the value of my own work. Each rejection stung.

When I reinvented myself as a fiction writer as I began my forties, it all began again in new markets. But, you know, it's less painful this time. Maybe it's the genre, maybe it's my age, maybe it's just time and experience, but, these days, when my work comes back rejected, it just doesn't hurt like it used to.

I think it's in my attitude about the work. These days, I don't wait watching the mail. I send my work out there. Then, I turn back to my computer and write something else. I don't invest my heart in the opinion of this or that editor. After all, that work is done. I'm worried about the new thing I'm creating.

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Of course, I'm thrilled if I can get an acceptance (the acceptance/rejection ratio is still pretty darn skewed towards rejection), but a rejection, especially a form rejection, just makes me shrug, choose another venue and send my work back out there again. After all, no one can accept it and publish it if I leave it sitting on my hard drive unread by others.

I've also learned to value the small victory. A very long wait time must mean that they spent a lot of time considering it, right? (Humor me). A quick rejection means that I can turn it around that much more quickly and find the venue that will love my words.  A personal rejection with a helpful comment glows like a diamond in a pile of dark coal form rejections. It promises future victory.

So, here's to rejection! It's the first step towards acceptance!
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This posting is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group blog hop. To check out other posts by writers in a variety of places in their careers, check out the participant list. This group is one of the most open and supportive groups of people I have ever been associated with. You should check them out!

#My Ghost Story

NOTE: To protect the "innocent" I'm avoiding using my childhood friend's name. I'll call her "A."

http://interiorpassage.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/DSC020881.JPG (Not really A's house)

A. told me her house was haunted, but I didn't believe her. I thought she was just embarrassed to have me over and was making excuses. My family wasn't rich, but hers was far poorer. I'd seen cockroaches skittering across the sink behind the leaking faucet when I came over to work on a school project. There was never anything to eat. You had to go in the back door because the stairs had caved in at the front door.

Still, I wanted to spend the night.

We'd be far less well supervised at her house than we were at mine. A.'s mother worked long hours and, even if she was home, was likely to be soundly asleep pretty early. Her house was near enough the Avenue (which is what everyone called the main street through town), that we could walk to a small club that I technically wasn't allowed to go to, where a boy I wouldn't be allowed to date liked to hang out.

So, I pushed. She reluctantly agreed.

I showed up with my overnight bundle right on time. Slipped into the sleeping bag was a dress I had managed to buy without my mother knowing. It was shorter and tighter than I would have been allowed to wear. Now that I'm a mother, I see her point. But this was then. I was fifteen. I knew everything. (Though the dress was a horribly 80s thing . . . so maybe I didn't know *everything*).

When my friend let me in, we went to her room to change and primp before our planned departure for our not-so-slumber party. The weirdness began right away.

I had barely entered the room, when the door slammed shut behind me, as if an angry person had thrown it closed. I jumped, squeaking a little. A. put her hands on her hips and looked up at the ceiling. "I told you to be nice!" she yelled. The door creaked gently back open again. "That's better," she said softly and shrugged apologetically at me.

I was rattled, but I was going to admit that to A. I already felt inadequate next to her in so many ways. A. had it rough and it had made her tough in a beautiful way that I admired. I felt weak and naïve next to her and was always doing foolish things to try and show that I could "hack it." She had this don't-fuck-with-me air about her. The air around me was awfully sweet and push-over-y. At least that's how I saw it then.

So, I laughed as if she had played a great joke on me, and pulled out my primping supplies. We spent an hour or so messing with each other's hair and getting our clothing to lay just so, and then we were off.

The night was nothing to remember. The boy I liked didn't show up. One of A.'s ex-boyfriend's did. The music was loud, and not my kind of music. Everyone there seemed older and more glamorous than us. Mostly we sat on a stone wall at the back and felt awkward.

Our bravado was up on the way home though, and we each pretended for the other that we had had a better time than we had. We had cheered each other pretty thoroughly by the time we arrived at A.'s back door.

Following her lead, I was quiet as we walked through the downstairs. I swung the bag of convenience store snacks I had picked up for us in one hand and followed her to the stairwell. On the landing halfway up, A. turned to me and asked me to wait. I nodded, leaning against the bannister and pulling off my ridiculous shoes. A. went upstairs ahead of me.

I didn't have to wait long, and that was good because the stairwell was creaky and poorly lit and I was freaking myself out pretty well. I was sure that I heard whispering. She came to the top of the stairs a minute or two later and hissed that I could come up. I hurried after her.

When I think about it now, I know it's entirely possible that A. was yanking my chain, and that she had done all the damage herself while I was waiting there on the landing. But she really did seem as surprised as me when we opened the door and there were feathers all over the room. Surprised and angry. Her face purpled.

As I stood there with my mouth hanging open, slowly figuring out that a pillow had been sliced open and the feathers had come from inside, the boombox in the corner suddenly cut on. Neither of us was standing near it. And I jumped and squealed again. The radio station went to fuzz then turned back off.

A. rolled her eyes. "Now he's showing off."

I smiled tentatively. "Boys always do." I was scared to ask who "he" was.

That made her laugh and I felt clever and brave. But when the lights cut off, we jumped into each other's arms and stood looking around at the room for a long moment. I tried not to let myself tremble. After another moment or two, the lights flickered back on and A. turned to me. "I think he's gone for now."

I nodded. "You hungry?"

"Always!"

We flopped down in the middle of the floor amid all the feather and opened our snack bag and devoured our chips and snack cakes and sodas like they were going out of style. I agreed with A. that the room felt different now. Maybe I had just overcome my fears, or maybe there really was a ghost and the ghost had finished playing with us for the night.

Weird things continued to happen from time to time whenever I visited A.'s house, though nothing as scary as that night. To this day, I don't know the name of the ghost. She said that telling his story would only make him stronger, so she refused to tell. Maybe she didn't even know. 

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This Halloween, Curiosity Quills authors are spreading the spookiness by sharing their own personal paranormal experiences. Get haunted with these bone-chilling blogs, or post your own! #myghoststory

Here are some of the others:

JE Anckorn
Michael Cristiano
Katie Teller

Growing When You're Not a Beginner

I have a lot to learn.

Sure, I've learned a lot in my first forty-odd years here on planet Earth, but in any endeavor that matters, I can still grow.

The problem is finding ways to do that.

When you're new at something, it's easy to find a mentor. There are a lot of people who are better than you and can help you move forward. There are very basic things that you don't yet know.

But, the further you get, the harder it becomes. Eventually, when you're truly top-level, you have to become your own teacher, setting for yourself what the next level is and figuring out what exercises will stretch you and get you there. Our needs as learners become more and more individual and it's harder to find a "group solution" that includes you.

I'm not there yet. But I am far enough along in some endeavors, teaching and writing especially, that I'm having trouble finding things that move me forward. Where's the training for intermediates?

I went to a teaching conference recently and found that 90% of what was being offered were sessions I could have taught. Frustrating. I've found the same thing at some writing seminars and conferences.

As a teacher, I've learned to use reflective practice to help me grow. I analyze a lesson in terms of how well my students engaged and how much they retained. The next time I teach the same topic, I make adjustments accordingly, trying to figure out how to engage more people and help them retain more knowledge longer term. It's a struggle, as reflection requires time and I only have 90 minutes per workday in which I am not actively teaching. Reflection often gets shoved down the list in favor of things like providing training to others, performing secretarial tasks necessary for lessons, and keeping up with communication streams, or, you know, using the bathroom and eating lunch.

At least in writing, I set my own pace. Reflective practice is trickier. My writing is more personal than the Spanish lessons I provide. It's harder to view objectively. So, reflective practice, for me, is a matter of finding an appropriate peer group, in putting my work out there and listening to the feedback with a heart to learn. I am fortunate in my local critique group, which includes writers in a similar part of the journey as me, as well as some who are more skilled than me, and others that I can help along. I also participate in a few online critique groups and response is varied. Not everyone is there with a heart to learn.

One of these opportunities for reflective practice, for me, is the #saturdayscenes movement on Google+. The work I present there is much more raw than the work I am sending to magazines, anthologies and other publishing venues. I value the interactions I have in this community because nearly everyone is there with a heart to learn and grow. Pontification and defensiveness are at a minimum.

So, I guess the key is, once again, community. A community of learners, all with a heart to learn.

Cover Reveal: Altar of Reality by Mara Valderran

I am so pleased today to be able to be one of the bloggers revealing the cover for Mara Valderran's new book, Altar of Reality.

Isn't it awesome? I'm already anxious to read it. If you feel like you can't wait, you can start with Heirs of War (the first book) or Heirs of War, Crown of Flames (the second book), which came out Oct. 13. There are links on her website for buying.