I'm writing a short post literally just so I can say that I wrote a short post, and posted, well, something.
Life has been crazy, recently, and I know they say that it just gets crazier the older you get, but for the sake of my sanity, I hope it doesn't get too much crazier. Leastways crazier in a not good way. Crazier in an awesome way would be just fine. And even though some of the crazy stuff that's been going on has been not good, it's been way less not-good than it could have been. Things can always get worse, so for that, I'm super grateful that the not good stuff has actually been as super awesome as not great stuff like it can be. And yes, I know, I'm not really making a lot of sense but I'm very superstitious (hey, my Great Nona collected fingernail clippings and hair trimmings so the gypsies wouldn't get them and put spells on the kids) and some things I just can't hardly talk about, either aloud or in writing, for fear of jinxing the good, or invoking the bad. Suffice to say, a family member has been dealing with something many women find themselves dealing with, but *so far* the treatment has gone very well, and the prognosis is awesome. *so far* So, pray or cross your fingers, or however you send good juju, for me and mine that this continues to go well!
In brighter, much more easily talked about news, I'm considering shelving Catskin (formerly titled Gone Missing Girl). Not forever, but for now. I've been thinking about it A LOT recently, while all of these not great things have been going on, and it's gotten to that place where each rejection is affecting me more than it should. The business is subjective. Rejections aren't something I should take personally. But I'm starting to be injured by them where Catskin is concerned. Mostly, I think this is related to being in a very stressful situation emotionally that has nothing at all to do with writing. But some of it relates directly to Catskin. Primarily, the fact that both I and my closest critique partner agree that the ms is at a point where needlessly fiddling with it will be a major screw-up in the making. Am I opening to revisions on Catskin? TOTALLY. But I need guidance from inside the publishing machine before making changes. Otherwise, I'll just be blundering along changing shit for the sake of changing it, with no direction or vision of what the end result should be. Definitely something I don't want to do. So until I get feedback/revision suggestions from an agent, or editor, it's going to stay as it is.
That said, I do have the ms with both an agent (one whom I love!) and an editor (!!!) Which is not to say that anyone has requested the ms, these were just resubs, and while they make me hopeful and excited, I'm trying to brace for rejection. I think I've got the fortitude for two last blows before backing away from Catskin for a while and retreating to the writing den to work on the next submission-worthy project (code name Silver Cage) which I hope I can get written over the winter.
I also intend to maybe go back and dally with Evernow, which while I have no immediate plan to try and peddle (dystopia is still dead, after all) I still love and find refuge in.
Also, I've managed to collect half a bucket of pohickery nuts, which I plan on cracking (they're very tricky, and I've never tried it) and which always puts me in the mood to play with the few period pieces I've started, because they involved Appalachia and, well, there's just no place like home :)
Monday, October 6, 2014
Saturday, August 23, 2014
A Jaunt On The Hunt For Tree Bones, and Thoughts on Suicide
We've got my niece at the house today, which means that I get to take her adventuring with me in the woods. She and I do this a lot. It's kind of our 'thing' when she's here. Today, we went to visit the Great Swamp (which isn't actually there, all of a sudden, and we're not sure why, though you can see where the water once stood, and it's still very wet, so maybe it'll come back) and then on to where I'd found a pig skull earlier this year. It was still fleshy and in need of the attention of scavenger beetles, so I'd left it, hoping to return later and get it. Because, well, I don't have a pig skull and bones are so awesome. I know, I'm weird.
Anyway, off the two of us went, discussing what we were looking for, and what we might find. There is something glorious about jaunting with small kids. Everything is new to them, and it reminds you that even if you're looking at something you've known about and understood for decades, it's still just as amazing and awesome now as it was when you first discovered it. You've just slowly forgotten how to see the amazingness and awesomeness. I virtually never go out in the woods that I don't think of the literal years my twin sister and I have spent out in them running feral. I also never go out in them that I don't think of Eddie Coles.
I didn't know Eddie all that well, but I sure was fond of him. Tall and lean, with a shock of snow white hair. He was in his forties, I guess, and I was in my early twenties. A coworker at the farm had grown up knowing him, and in the horse world, everyone knows everybody in the manner of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Anyway. Eddie had an easy way about him, a good laugh. Horses loved him, and he had that elusive touch when it came to training and working with them.
Then, one day Eddie went missing. When we got to work, my friend who'd grown up knowing him arrived bleary eyed and exhausted. She'd been part of the search crew who'd been looking for him since the prior afternoon. That was how I found out he was missing. The area where the farm is located is a network of sprawling ancient estates, and old houses, but it's a close community. Most people have lived there for years, if not generations. They'd all been looking for Eddie since the prior afternoon. We went to work as usual, but opened one of the barns which wasn't in use, so that members of the search party could stall their horses and rest them. The farm was just two farms down from Eddie's place, so we saw a lot of those searching for him.
Eventually, they found Eddie up on the ridge, sitting against a fallen log, facing the east to watch the sunrise. His wrists had been cut, deeply and without hesitation. He was dead.
What I didn't know about Eddie, was that behind the easiness, the smiles and laughter and gentle hand with the horses, he suffered from depression. And he'd been fighting it for years. I have been depressed, but I've never suffered from depression. Not even close. Nor have I felt the side effects of medicine that's supposed to help the depression, but often causes all sorts of other problems. Back then, I knew even less than I know now. At that time, all I understood, was that for reasons I didn't understand, Eddie had gotten tired of dealing with the depression, the drugs, the therapy, the everything, and he'd decided that he'd rather be dead, than keep dealing with it. I cried because Eddie was gone, but I remember distinctly thinking 'But that must have been nice, sitting there watching the sunrise, and looking out over the land you love so much. I wouldn't mind going out like that.'
Of course, I didn't mean it would be nice to cut your wrists and kill yourself. But even then I didn't blame Eddie, or get mad at him for doing what he did. He'd done something that I couldn't (and, for the most part, still can't) imagine doing. But the way I saw it, he chose his own path, and I didn't have any right to an opinion about it.
Now, I'm older, I understand more about depression, and the fact that it's not as simple as making a choice. But since then, my Mother's cousin has committed suicide, and I've had other experiences with it. In my Mother's cousin's case, she was diagnosed with ALS (love the ice bucket challenge stuff!) and the disease was progressing very quickly. She chose suicide over succumbing to the disease. I get that. I would too, I think. I simply would rather die the way I choose to, than in a hospital bed like that. Many people choose to live with ALS. Maybe they're stronger than me. But I know I don't want to go out like that.
Since Robin Williams' shocking death (and I think it was shocking mostly because even though many people, me included, knew that he had his demons, we just never pictured Robin deciding to not fight them) there has been a huge avalanche of opinions on suicide. Some folks have called it the 'cowards way to go' some folks have said he didn't even understand what he was doing, because the depression had taken over. I think neither one was probably the case. Robin wasn't a coward. If he was, he'd have never flung himself before the American public into showbiz the way he did. And I don't think the depression had robbed him of his understanding of things. He was much too strong for that. I think that the only thing we can know for sure about Robin, and the choice he made, is that we'll never know quite what it was like to be Robin and have that choice to make. Just like I'll never know exactly what it was like to be Eddie, and have the choice he had to make.
Suicide is a funny unpredictable thing. You might stop on the street and tell a total stranger how nice they look, and your remark might be the one thing that makes her decide not to take too many sleeping pills that night when she gets home. You might smile at someone in the park, or make them laugh when you lose your shoe playing in the puddles with your niece, and that afternoon when he's sitting there looking at the handgun on the table in front of him, he hear your laughter and decide to put it back in the cabinet. And then maybe it's someone you know. Someone you love. Someone you've told of your love many times. Someone you've held and stood by. And it still isn't enough to keep them from deciding not to go on. Suicide is a twisted thing.
For me, I will always love Robin. I'll love Eddie and anyone else who chooses to do something I wouldn't choose. I will love them while I have them, do everything I can to keep them as long as I can, for as long there is something I can do to help them stay. But when, if, they suddenly aren't there, I will not blame them, I will not rage at them, nor will I blame myself, or rage at myself because I did not somehow stop them from leaving. I will just look back and know that I loved them, that they knew that I loved them, and that both of us did all that we could.
So, now I'm back to picking up pig bones (or not, because we never found the pig skull) and tree bones (my niece's knew term for sticks and logs) and turning over rocks, catching praying mantises, playing in puddles and dragging home acorns, nuts, stones, moss, and a myriad of bones. Eddie would have loved this kid. I like to think Robin would have too. I honor them by teaching her to love the outdoors, the sunrise, to laugh, even at the things that hurt, and to never lose her own little spark of madness.
Anyway, off the two of us went, discussing what we were looking for, and what we might find. There is something glorious about jaunting with small kids. Everything is new to them, and it reminds you that even if you're looking at something you've known about and understood for decades, it's still just as amazing and awesome now as it was when you first discovered it. You've just slowly forgotten how to see the amazingness and awesomeness. I virtually never go out in the woods that I don't think of the literal years my twin sister and I have spent out in them running feral. I also never go out in them that I don't think of Eddie Coles.
I didn't know Eddie all that well, but I sure was fond of him. Tall and lean, with a shock of snow white hair. He was in his forties, I guess, and I was in my early twenties. A coworker at the farm had grown up knowing him, and in the horse world, everyone knows everybody in the manner of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Anyway. Eddie had an easy way about him, a good laugh. Horses loved him, and he had that elusive touch when it came to training and working with them.
Then, one day Eddie went missing. When we got to work, my friend who'd grown up knowing him arrived bleary eyed and exhausted. She'd been part of the search crew who'd been looking for him since the prior afternoon. That was how I found out he was missing. The area where the farm is located is a network of sprawling ancient estates, and old houses, but it's a close community. Most people have lived there for years, if not generations. They'd all been looking for Eddie since the prior afternoon. We went to work as usual, but opened one of the barns which wasn't in use, so that members of the search party could stall their horses and rest them. The farm was just two farms down from Eddie's place, so we saw a lot of those searching for him.
Eventually, they found Eddie up on the ridge, sitting against a fallen log, facing the east to watch the sunrise. His wrists had been cut, deeply and without hesitation. He was dead.
What I didn't know about Eddie, was that behind the easiness, the smiles and laughter and gentle hand with the horses, he suffered from depression. And he'd been fighting it for years. I have been depressed, but I've never suffered from depression. Not even close. Nor have I felt the side effects of medicine that's supposed to help the depression, but often causes all sorts of other problems. Back then, I knew even less than I know now. At that time, all I understood, was that for reasons I didn't understand, Eddie had gotten tired of dealing with the depression, the drugs, the therapy, the everything, and he'd decided that he'd rather be dead, than keep dealing with it. I cried because Eddie was gone, but I remember distinctly thinking 'But that must have been nice, sitting there watching the sunrise, and looking out over the land you love so much. I wouldn't mind going out like that.'
Of course, I didn't mean it would be nice to cut your wrists and kill yourself. But even then I didn't blame Eddie, or get mad at him for doing what he did. He'd done something that I couldn't (and, for the most part, still can't) imagine doing. But the way I saw it, he chose his own path, and I didn't have any right to an opinion about it.
Now, I'm older, I understand more about depression, and the fact that it's not as simple as making a choice. But since then, my Mother's cousin has committed suicide, and I've had other experiences with it. In my Mother's cousin's case, she was diagnosed with ALS (love the ice bucket challenge stuff!) and the disease was progressing very quickly. She chose suicide over succumbing to the disease. I get that. I would too, I think. I simply would rather die the way I choose to, than in a hospital bed like that. Many people choose to live with ALS. Maybe they're stronger than me. But I know I don't want to go out like that.
Since Robin Williams' shocking death (and I think it was shocking mostly because even though many people, me included, knew that he had his demons, we just never pictured Robin deciding to not fight them) there has been a huge avalanche of opinions on suicide. Some folks have called it the 'cowards way to go' some folks have said he didn't even understand what he was doing, because the depression had taken over. I think neither one was probably the case. Robin wasn't a coward. If he was, he'd have never flung himself before the American public into showbiz the way he did. And I don't think the depression had robbed him of his understanding of things. He was much too strong for that. I think that the only thing we can know for sure about Robin, and the choice he made, is that we'll never know quite what it was like to be Robin and have that choice to make. Just like I'll never know exactly what it was like to be Eddie, and have the choice he had to make.
Suicide is a funny unpredictable thing. You might stop on the street and tell a total stranger how nice they look, and your remark might be the one thing that makes her decide not to take too many sleeping pills that night when she gets home. You might smile at someone in the park, or make them laugh when you lose your shoe playing in the puddles with your niece, and that afternoon when he's sitting there looking at the handgun on the table in front of him, he hear your laughter and decide to put it back in the cabinet. And then maybe it's someone you know. Someone you love. Someone you've told of your love many times. Someone you've held and stood by. And it still isn't enough to keep them from deciding not to go on. Suicide is a twisted thing.
For me, I will always love Robin. I'll love Eddie and anyone else who chooses to do something I wouldn't choose. I will love them while I have them, do everything I can to keep them as long as I can, for as long there is something I can do to help them stay. But when, if, they suddenly aren't there, I will not blame them, I will not rage at them, nor will I blame myself, or rage at myself because I did not somehow stop them from leaving. I will just look back and know that I loved them, that they knew that I loved them, and that both of us did all that we could.
So, now I'm back to picking up pig bones (or not, because we never found the pig skull) and tree bones (my niece's knew term for sticks and logs) and turning over rocks, catching praying mantises, playing in puddles and dragging home acorns, nuts, stones, moss, and a myriad of bones. Eddie would have loved this kid. I like to think Robin would have too. I honor them by teaching her to love the outdoors, the sunrise, to laugh, even at the things that hurt, and to never lose her own little spark of madness.
Monday, August 4, 2014
Thoughts, Changes, Progression.
I've been thinking a lot about my blog lately. Mostly, about my lack of a blog. When I first began writing a blog, I posted regularly. Sometimes it waxed and waned, but invariably a post went up at some point. That's changed in the last year. A heck of a lot has changed in the last year.
Let's look at a little listy thing here:
Mrs. H died
Castalia was sold
I got a new job
My horse died
One of my cats died
I got Shingles
I got a bunch of rejections
My Mom got diagnosed with breast cancer
I got Shingles again
One of my sister's horses died
And not to leave things totally negative and dramatic-weepy:
I met my AWESOME new coworker, 'sister wife' and partner in crime, Valerie
I met Valerie's AWESOME husband, my new 'pseudo-hubby' and all around good guy, Cody
I got over Shingles
I got some AMAZING feedback along with the rejections
MY CRITIQUE PARTNER CHRISTI GOT PUBLISHED
My Mom is undergoing chemo/treatment and *so far* things are looking GREAT and her cancer is fleeing at top speed
I've written so much, and learned so much more, and I'm still writing and learning
So, yeah, things have changed. Some for good, some for bad, but mostly just for different. And different isn't always easy. So my blogging has fallen by the wayside. Triaged nearly into oblivion because everything somehow became more important than jotting down posts for the blog. I've been thinking about it, about how it barely exists, and that maybe I should just put it down altogether. Then I was checking other blogs in my feed (it's easier to keep up with reading others' blogs, than it is to write on mine) and happened across Kristin Cashore's blog.
I utterly UTTERLY adore Kristin. She is an old soul, a deep thinker, someone who sees so much more than most people and perceives much more as well. I love her views, and how she shares her experiences. In short, she is someone I would love to know better. And some day, maybe I'll get the chance to. Way back, at the beginning, her blog was open to comments, but she came to a point at the beginning of 2010 when she decided to close her blog to comments. I miss the opportunity for interacting with someone I greatly admire, yet I understand the simplification of things for Kristin.
By closing her blog to comments, she made her blog more of an outlet for herself, and less of a podium behind which she had to stand, if that makes sense. Now, she's able to present ideas, share adventures, provoke thoughts on subjects that are important to her, but she's able to do so in the form of a written art installation. We experience her posts, but must digest them ourselves. She gives them to us, sets them free into the world and then is, herself, free of them, and is safe from hateful or argumentative comments. This is an important thing, in a world where there are no longer defined lines between oneself, and the belief that everyone has a right to have an opinion about the things that makes oneself their own. Sometimes artists (writers are also artists) need to be able to share pieces of themselves without being expected to somehow justify and explain those pieces of their shared self.
Now, I am no Kristin Cashore, and I don't have anywhere near the following Kristin does, but I find myself attracted to her policy of blog posting with closed comments. I've decided that I'm going to give it a try, simply to alleviate some of the stress that comes with the feeling that I must post something 'interesting' in order to post anything at all. I've got an active Facebook page, and I post all of my blogger stuff there as well, so there's still an option for anyone who wants to comment, to do so. Mostly, this is for me, to see if I'll find it easier to post on a more regular basis, if I know I'm able to just post tiny, interesting tidbits, etc. rather than long engaging posts.
For any of you who actually read my posts, I thank you for your continued support, and I promise I'll still be trolling everyone else's blogs! Take care, everyone!
Let's look at a little listy thing here:
Mrs. H died
Castalia was sold
I got a new job
My horse died
One of my cats died
I got Shingles
I got a bunch of rejections
My Mom got diagnosed with breast cancer
I got Shingles again
One of my sister's horses died
And not to leave things totally negative and dramatic-weepy:
I met my AWESOME new coworker, 'sister wife' and partner in crime, Valerie
I met Valerie's AWESOME husband, my new 'pseudo-hubby' and all around good guy, Cody
I got over Shingles
I got some AMAZING feedback along with the rejections
MY CRITIQUE PARTNER CHRISTI GOT PUBLISHED
My Mom is undergoing chemo/treatment and *so far* things are looking GREAT and her cancer is fleeing at top speed
I've written so much, and learned so much more, and I'm still writing and learning
So, yeah, things have changed. Some for good, some for bad, but mostly just for different. And different isn't always easy. So my blogging has fallen by the wayside. Triaged nearly into oblivion because everything somehow became more important than jotting down posts for the blog. I've been thinking about it, about how it barely exists, and that maybe I should just put it down altogether. Then I was checking other blogs in my feed (it's easier to keep up with reading others' blogs, than it is to write on mine) and happened across Kristin Cashore's blog.
I utterly UTTERLY adore Kristin. She is an old soul, a deep thinker, someone who sees so much more than most people and perceives much more as well. I love her views, and how she shares her experiences. In short, she is someone I would love to know better. And some day, maybe I'll get the chance to. Way back, at the beginning, her blog was open to comments, but she came to a point at the beginning of 2010 when she decided to close her blog to comments. I miss the opportunity for interacting with someone I greatly admire, yet I understand the simplification of things for Kristin.
By closing her blog to comments, she made her blog more of an outlet for herself, and less of a podium behind which she had to stand, if that makes sense. Now, she's able to present ideas, share adventures, provoke thoughts on subjects that are important to her, but she's able to do so in the form of a written art installation. We experience her posts, but must digest them ourselves. She gives them to us, sets them free into the world and then is, herself, free of them, and is safe from hateful or argumentative comments. This is an important thing, in a world where there are no longer defined lines between oneself, and the belief that everyone has a right to have an opinion about the things that makes oneself their own. Sometimes artists (writers are also artists) need to be able to share pieces of themselves without being expected to somehow justify and explain those pieces of their shared self.
Now, I am no Kristin Cashore, and I don't have anywhere near the following Kristin does, but I find myself attracted to her policy of blog posting with closed comments. I've decided that I'm going to give it a try, simply to alleviate some of the stress that comes with the feeling that I must post something 'interesting' in order to post anything at all. I've got an active Facebook page, and I post all of my blogger stuff there as well, so there's still an option for anyone who wants to comment, to do so. Mostly, this is for me, to see if I'll find it easier to post on a more regular basis, if I know I'm able to just post tiny, interesting tidbits, etc. rather than long engaging posts.
For any of you who actually read my posts, I thank you for your continued support, and I promise I'll still be trolling everyone else's blogs! Take care, everyone!
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