The Weird Social Media Reciprocity
All of my friends are on Pinterest now. Well, maybe not all of them, but a lot of them. And almost all of the say it’s hugely addicting. And they suggest that I would love it, and that I would be able to pin all kinds of craft patterns to my boards and get a bunch of great ideas and on and on.
I’m not going to join.
As part of trying to rebalance my life this year, I’m looking seriously at how I use social media and which platforms are worth keeping for me. Despite my past Facebook rants, I’ve managed to make peace with Facebook, even if I occasionally need a little time off from it. I don’t want to be that person who unfriends people, but I have blocked and restricted a lot of people who were really testing my patience. But I have to ask: why did Facebook become just a way to spread Internet memes and stupid pictures and videos? I mean, I’m guilty of it, too. And dude, if you follow George Takei’s page, you end up sharing a lot of silly pictures.
I’ve also made peace with Twitter, and it’s actually sort of growing on me. I don’t feel quite so clumsy on Twitter, most of the time. I think that’s in large part due to the fact that so few people on Twitter are also people I know in real life. On Facebook, I have a lot of real-life friends who are also Facebook friends, so I’m always scared of saying something that will offend or hurt someone.
But Google+, Chime, Tumblr, Flickr, LinkedIn, Quora, Foursquare, Plaxo, and on and on and on?? Ugh! I’m going to be deleting or inactivating my accounts on those I’ve signed up for. For one thing, I’m sick of all the e-mail notifications. For another thing, I never use these. Ever. I used to maintain LinkedIn a little more, because I did have some business contacts there, but I hardly touch it now.
I do think I have to stay on Goodreads, even though I hate it. It’s Facebook for readers, and I don’t need another Facebook in my life. Plus, I can easily avoid seeing my reviews on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords–I just don’t even have to go to the book pages, you know? But when I log into Goodreads, all the ratings and reviews are RIGHT THERE STARING AT ME. I can’t take that. So I’ll be a name on Goodreads, but I’m going to turn off all my e-mail notifications and such. It’s not good for my peace of mind.
Blogs are great. I will stay in the blogosphere. I have to, and I like the blogosphere. I love the little blogs (like mine) because people talk to each other in the comments. But let me tell you all right now–I don’t comment much on other peoples’ blogs. I do read them when I get time, but I often just don’t have anything to say. And this is where the weird social media reciprocity thing starts to get to me. If you comment on my blog, I feel like I should go to your blog, read it, comment on it so you know I was there, share it, “like” it, or whatever. I feel guilty if I don’t.
It happens on Facebook, too. People “like” or comment on my posts, so I feel like I should visit their posts and comment or “like” something. And Twitter–that’s the worst for reciprocity. I actually like it when people respond to my tweets and start a conversation with me, but I’m not very good at initiating conversations. The really weird thing is the follow and unfollow business, though. I unfollowed a bunch of people a while back, and one of them PM’d me to ask why. Dude, I don’t even know you–not really. We’ve never even talked on Twitter until now. I don’t even know why I was following you. I re-followed him because I felt guilty, but have I talked to him even once since then? I don’t think so.
Here’s where it gets tricky… I need to manage Facebook and Twitter better, and I think the only way to do that–for ME–is to unfollow/unfriend some people that 1) I don’t know, 2) irritate me, 3) I never talk to, and/or 4) don’t really contribute anything of value to my world. That’s such a harsh thing to say! I worry about fallout, but the truth is that by eliminating some of the clutter around my social media life, I will probably be able to develop better relationships with the folks who are left.
I think my personal Facebook page will become truly a personal page from here on out. I intend to unfriend some folks who I just honestly don’t even know–writers, mostly, who are just friends because we’re both writers. I don’t have anything against those people–we just never talk to each other. I just plan to manage my personal Facebook friend list a little more tightly. I will probably also tighten up the security there so that I don’t feel so ookie about posting pictures, especially pictures of my kids. And since Sparky is almost 13 and wants to be on Facebook soon, I kind of want to make sure people can’t really get to him through me. So yeah–if I talk to you a lot on Facebook, I’ll keep you as a friend. This is really more about the people I don’t even know. I’ll still have the fan page, though.
As for Twitter, I need to set up better lists, for one thing, but I also just need to reduce my follows by about three hundred people. Honestly, I don’t even have a clue who most of the people I follow are. I started following them back when I joined Twitter and was just gathering followers, but seriously, don’t you think that’s extraordinarily weird and stalkerish? I kind of do. Anyway, I think once I slash my follows, I’ll be able to set up better lists and enjoy Twitter more.
The thing I have to remember is that I can’t let the reciprocity thing guilt me into keeping people as friends or follows or whatever. The truth is that in real life, I would just simply never be in contact with people who guilted me into stuff. I don’t live that way. I’m not friends with guilt-mongers. I have no room for those people in my life. So why would I have room for them in my social media life?
Anyway, this isn’t a rant or anything like that. These are things I’ve been mulling over for quite a while. If I talk to you on some form of social media, rest assured–you’re not going anywhere. 
And if you don’t talk to me on some form of social media, what are you waiting for? Come chat on my Facebook page or on Twitter! I’m a nice person.
No really. I am.
The rest of you with your snarky comments? Shut up.
Hacked by Martha Stewart
I wanted 2012 to be the Year of Balance. I’m afraid my kids will remember it as the Year Mom Was Hacked by Martha Stewart.
Last week, I looked up and thought, “oh crap–it’s almost Valentine’s Day!” This is totally normal for me, by the way. What isn’t normal is my reaction to it this year. First, I went on a small yarn-buying binge. (Yes, I totally used Valentine’s Day as an excuse to buy yarn. I swear, I need an intervention.) I reasoned that I could make some scarves and/or hats for the family for Valentine’s Day. This was the result:
Valentine's Day pretties for The Man and the beasties--one hat and four scarves.
Just FYI, the reason for the green and yellow scarves is the Oregon Ducks. Even though neither The Man nor I are U of O alums, follow college football (or any football), or really have any interest in sports whatsoever, our boys love the Oregon Ducks. So they got scarves in U of O colors.
Then, because I’ve been on a cookie-making spree, too, I made these:
At least the frosting is store-bought.
I also made heart-shaped ice cubes and heart-shaped blueberry muffins. And I plan to cut out heart-shaped pieces of cheese for the beasties’ lunches and heart-shaped pizza crusts for dinner tomorrow.
I ended up only working on actual writing-related stuff for about an hour today, and that was just writing my article for Fantasy Faction. The rest of the day was spent grocery shopping, baking, crocheting the final scarf for that pile, making dinner, running a few random errands, and doing homework and the typical before and after school routines with the beasties. But then, I did spent much of Sunday editing, so I guess I’ve done some work in the last several days.
The thing that scares me still is that I can’t seem to totally shake this dry spell. I finally wrote 1200 really crappy words a few days ago, and it took twice as long as it should have, but at least it was new fiction. But since then, I haven’t been back to any of my newer WIPs. I have to somehow figure out how to make time for churning out new words, because I’m still grumpy and irritable, and a huge part of it is due to not writing.
I don’t want it to sound like I didn’t enjoy making stuff for my family, because I did. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing how happy the beasties will be with their gifts and the cookies and the muffins and the other treats I have planned. But this isn’t sustainable for me. This isn’t usual. I’m the least gifty person in the world. Honestly. If I never received another gift from anyone, I’d be totally fine with that. You have to know me to realize how very true that is. And because receiving gifts isn’t a big deal to me, I tend to forget about… you know… giving gifts.
On the bright side, I have very little to do tomorrow once the kids are at school. I’m hoping to do some editing and writing. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe this is real balance–not a strict scheduling of daily hours, but a recognition of the ebb and flow of time and duties and desires.
Oh hey, you know what? I just realized St. Patrick’s Day is next month… Hmm… Maybe the kids would like some crocheted shamrocks…
No. Write. WRITE.
Whiplash
Seriously, I swear I should have whiplash from my random mood and thought swings.
I took my kids to the local variety store today. Sparky needed to get a birthday card for a friend and the rest of the beasties needed cards for school Valentine Day parties. It’s not that it was horrendous or anything, but four kids picking out cards for various things? Yeah. It’s a little overwhelming. Plus there’s all the sensory input, which is sometimes hard to bear for me. I think I have sensory issues. I don’t know how they can stand it.
Anyway, while I was waiting for Sparky to pick out a card (which took almost as long as it would take a grown woman), I was perusing the paperback books. This isn’t a bookstore, mind–it’s just the local upscale Wal-Mart. The store that has a little of everything, you know? Anyway, I was glancing over the titles and covers and such and saw Terry Goodkind’s latest (I think)–Confessor. Keep in mind that I haven’t read any of the SOT novels since about book four. I loved the first ones, but I got a little tired of the preachiness, and it started to seem like Richard was getting a little… well, full of himself. I mean, more than in the first books. (I still love the romance between Richard and Kahlan, though. I just do. Sue me.) I picked it up and skimmed through it. And somewhere amid remembering why I love Kahlan and Richard and thinking that Goodkind’s writing really has improved since the first books, I remembered again the thing that has driven me since childhood:
God help me, I so want to be on that shelf.
I know, I know. I know publishing is changing daily. I know mass market paperbacks are traditionally published. I know I can’t just walk into that store and hand them a print copy of Ravenmarked and ask them to carry it. I know all of these things, and yet–
Yeah.
It’s not the money. It’s not fame. I don’t really care about those things. But I do want to be on that shelf, even if it’s the metaphorical e-shelf on Amazon. And I do want to have a career. Nothing drives that home more than spending half an hour at the store with my kids. I come away realizing that I am just not wired to be a full-time Martha/domestic diva. And seriously, this time away from my writing is killing me. I’m grumpy and waspish and short-tempered, and I know it’s because I’m creatively constipated. I need to get past this block (or whatever it is) and start creating again, because I am so much happier when I’m writing.
And I think, you never know what might happen in the future. Bookstores (those that survive) might eventually be more open to indie books. I might one day be able to contact a buyer and say, “hey, I’m a local author–buy my book and put it on your shelf?” I mean, I know it won’t happen today, now, but who knows about tomorrow?
The truth–the central, driving truth amid all of my angst about my writing career and life balance issues–is that I need to create. I need to write. I need it like I need oxygen. Writing feeds my soul. I want my stories to feed other souls, too.
I don’t care what it takes. I have to plant my butt in this chair and force some words out, even if they’re crappy. I don’t think I can take this “not writing” thing much longer. More importantly, I don’t think my family can take me in this “not writing” place much longer. I need to lure the Muse in a big way.
See? Whiplash. My neck is starting to hurt.
And Now For Something Completely Different . . .
After all my doom, gloom, and angst, it’s time for a happy post.
I was thinking about this scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade earlier this week:
You remember that one, right? Where Indy has to take a “leap of faith” from the lion’s head in order to cross the chasm? Only it turns out there’s a bridge there all along. He just had to find it, see it, reveal it, and only by taking that first step was any of that possible.
I took that step in November 2009 when I started writing Ravenmarked. I shared what I was doing with friends on Facebook. Then I joined Twitter. Then I started a blog (in October 2010). Then, sometime around February of 2011, I started writing for Fantasy Faction.
Now, in January 2012, something is happening that reassures me a little. I’ve noticed that the last few weeks, my articles from Fantasy Faction are getting shared a little more often. SF Signal even linked to one (which has actually happened a couple of times over the last year). Kait Nolan, one of my indie heroes, mentioned my article on parents in fantasy in one of her posts a while back. Elizabeth Craig has retweeted my articles (to all of her 12,000+ followers!) a couple of times.
I’m slowly building blog followers. In the overall scheme of things, I’m still a very small cog in a very big blogosphere, but a few times a week, I’ll get an e-mail that someone has subscribed. And when I post, I sometimes get the number of clicks I used to only get when I ranted. Also, my Facebook fan page is gradually gaining followers, and I finally broke the 1,200 mark on Twitter.
And then to top it all off, a week or so ago, my friend Traci Hilton e-mailed me about an opportunity with a quarterly e-zine. After a few e-mail exchanges, the editor and I worked out a schedule for me to contribute a 500-word column each quarter for a year. I’ll be a contributor to the quarterly e-zine Beyondaries for the next four quarters. I’ll be posting about worldbuilding in the New World Born column.
I realize that not a single one of these things is earth shattering in its significance. But sometime this week, I looked up and realized that I’m standing on the bridge called “platform.” It’s a little wobbly IKEA platform right now, but it’s there. And I keep putting one foot in front of the other, and more and more of the bridge keeps showing up.
At the end of that clip, Indy scatters gravel to lead the other folks over the bridge—to help them realize it’s there. But the thing about the bridge I’m on is that no one could show it to me. I had to find it myself. I mean, other writers can stand on the other side of it and say “this worked for me” or “this is how I built a platform,” but they couldn’t scatter the gravel for me, because my platform is mine.
Huh. Maybe 2012 will be a pretty good year.
What I Meant to Say Was…
It occurred to me that all my recent talk of looking at writing as a hobby rather than a career might be a bit disconcerting to my threes of fans who are out there waiting for my next publication. So let me say very clearly: I do not intend to give up writing. My recent effort to re-balance my life and bring things into alignment isn’t so much about figuring out whether writing fits into my life as about how to make it fit. I had things backwards. I was trying to make life fit into writing, and that wasn’t working.
So when I talk about writing as a “hobby,” what do I mean?
First, it’s a time thing. You know how a lot of you have day jobs that you write around? My day job for the next eleven years (at least) is being a mom. I was trying to make writing my full-time day job, and even when I was doing commercial work, that wasn’t good. I was just as unbalanced then as I am now. I’ve come to realize that Sparky, Princess, Squirrel, and Peanut need me more than anyone else does, and I’m fortunate that I have the luxury of focusing on them. I’m not going to squander that opportunity anymore. (Fortunately, The Man is pretty self-reliant.) That doesn’t mean I’ll never write when they’re around, but it does mean they’ll be my priority–my day job–from now on. Writing has to fit around that job, at least most of the time, and that means a lot less time spent on it.
The second thing is that by calling writing a “hobby,” I lower my expectations. It’s a mental thing. No, really, this is a good thing. I’m not normally one for lowering expectations, but since I’ve come to realize that I have absolutely no control over the market, I have to focus on expecting the right things from my work. By calling it a career or a full-time job, I was expecting to earn a living from it, and then I was frustrated and unbalanced when that didn’t happen. And when I look at what a lot of indies are doing to market themselves, I realize that there’s no way in heck I have time for all of that. So I have to lower my expectations. There’s a lot of peace in that. Trust me. By no longer expecting to make money from my work, I get to enjoy it again.
I’ve had to go back to square one and ask what I do want out my writing. The truth is that I would love to make a living from it–at least a good part-time income. Back when I used to dream of being published, I really only ever hoped to be a solid midlister. I never expected or dreamed of bestseller status, and I still don’t. There are people far more talented, savvy, and established than I am who don’t even have that status. It would be lovely to be a solid midlist author who makes a decent income, but I no longer expect that, and it’s actually kind of a relief.
What do I want?
I want to bring joy to a few people through my work. I want to make people think. I want to make people clench their fists, laugh, sigh, and weep when they read my stories.
I want to improve every day. I want to get better at my craft, my structure, my storytelling. I want to weave words better every day.
I want to eliminate my friggin’ eye tic, my unholy love of ellipses, and my ridiculous addiction to em dashes.
I want to cavort with the Muse and let her flow through my fingertips and show me new worlds, new characters, new intrigues and plots and romances.
I want to revel in the art and joy of creating new things.
I think I said it once before. Writing is like Pandora’s Box for me. I let the Furies out back in 2009, and there’s no putting them back. And truly, I don’t ever want to do anything else for money. If I can’t earn money by writing, then I just won’t have an income (unless I’m suddenly forced to go back to a real job, which I don’t see happening). And I’m okay with that, because even though my day job is unpaid, it’s still an incredibly valuable endeavor. But instead of working eight or nine or ten or twelve hours a day on my writing (which I was doing, even when I was doing commercial work), I have to flip things back around and spend that much time on my parenting job. Writing will be a three- or four-hour-a-day kind of thing.
And speaking of parenting, this is February, otherwise known as The Month When The Kids Have Virtually No School And Scouting Takes Over Our Lives. So I will likely be scarce around here until all the banquets, award ceremonies, fundraisers, birthday parties, inservice days, and holidays are over.
I’m off to take the beasties to Chuck E. Cheese. Really, I think this is above and beyond the call of duty. Is there a medal for moms who take their children to pizza arcade playlands? There should be.
I Will Not be Opening an Etsy Shop
I did something today that I haven’t done since we first moved into our first house in 1995: I mopped my floor by hand.
I started my day with a very long list of things I wanted to accomplish. And because I’m reasonably certain that my floor hasn’t been mopped well since at least last August, I really, really wanted to get the upstairs and entryway floors clean. I puttered around through the rest of my list, swept the floors, filled the mop bucket, and squeezed out the mop, only to have the flipping handle break on about the third swipe across the entryway floor (which, by the way, is only about a three-foot span).
Now, I could’ve thrown in the towel then and there. I’d already done a lot of cleaning, and I had plenty of other things on my list. But I was determined to get the floors clean. So, I went old school. And at some point between wondering if my arm would fall off and realizing that this is probably why Cinderella was always so skinny, I had an epiphany.
Well, kind of.
Okay, I have to back up even more. You’ve seen my crazy crafting angst lately, yes? Basically, back around January 15 or so, I dug out some yarn and crochet hooks, and I’ve been on a yarn and crochet spree ever since. I’ve made sixteen hats and one scarf so far. And you know what I’ve been thinking?
“Crochet is so much easier than writing.”
“I can do this with the kids around, and they don’t care. I can talk, sit in the room with them, take it with me anywhere, and they don’t mind sharing me with this.”
“I’m fast enough that I could maybe make a little money doing this. Maybe opening an Etsy shop isn’t such a bad idea.”
I even went so far as to start doing pricing research today.
And then… The epiphany.
A couple of years ago, a sweet friend about a decade younger than I am asked me for some business advice. She’s a dynamo, and I love her and her energy, spirit, intellect, and talent. She’s always starting something new and making some kind of big splash. It’s fascinating to watch. But I had to tell her then to be careful not to dilute her efforts. See, she has so many ideas and plans and goals that I fear she’s going in too many directions at the same time. There’s tremendous power in focusing your efforts on one thing, and I recommended that she focus on one or two key areas of expertise and make those things huge.
Now, maybe that wasn’t the right advice for her. But what I realized today is that it was the right advice for me. And also what I realized? The thing I need to be putting my efforts into isn’t crocheting, marketing, sales, promotion, blogging, social media, platform-building, or branding.
I have exactly two jobs: parenting and writing. Everything else is gravy.
I won’t be opening an Etsy shop. I won’t even be taking my hats down to my sister’s coffee shop and displaying them there (a thought that had crossed my mind). Crocheting is a hobby, not a job. I won’t dilute my efforts by focusing on another income-producing endeavor.
Also, when I asked people what they’d pay for a handmade hat, I got one really insightful comment from a friend. She pointed out that a lot of people try to make a living from handcrafted items, and to be careful not to undercut their prices just because I can afford to. That comment hit me like a splash of cold water. You know what I almost did? I almost became another 99-center in a completely different field. I’m not saying I would have intentionally undercut prices, but I probably do undervalue handcrafted things because it’s easy for me to do and because I see it as a hobby. I even said, “I’m just in this for the yarn money.”
You know what? I was almost part of the handcrafter’s slush pile. Like I need to be part of another slush pile… *shudder*
Here’s the other part of the epiphany. I said the other day that writing has ruined me for anything else. I really can’t imagine making money at any other profession. I don’t want to. I want to be a working writer. I said all that the other day, and then here I am thinking about opening an Etsy shop, for heaven’s sake. So what’s behind all of this?
Simple avoidance. I’m afraid of going down the rabbit hole again, for one thing. For the first time in months, someone could drop by my house and come upstairs, and I wouldn’t be ashamed. I think the last time it was this clean was in November 2009 when I had a girl’s night here. Seriously. And we aren’t even planning on having company… I just wanted it clean. I’m afraid that if I dive into my stories again, I won’t be able to maintain this baseline that I’ve worked hard to achieve.
But the other, bigger problem is that I am just plain gun shy right now. I can’t even explain it. I open my manuscripts and stare at the words, and I may as well be looking at Hebrew. I don’t even know where to go from here. It’s not really writer’s block, exactly. I have the ideas and the words. I just can’t get them out of my head. Maybe that is writer’s block. I don’t know.
I’ve never had this happen before. I can almost always start typing, and I’ll manage to get SOMETHING written, even if it’s crap. Now… Not so much. And I watch ten, fifteen, twenty minutes pass, and I figure, “I should be cleaning something or crocheting,” and I leave my desk.
Yeah, probably not the best coping strategy.
So anyway… The whole point is… I’m a writer. Whether I make a living from it or it remains a hobby… Well, time will tell. But I won’t be opening an Etsy shop, because I’m not a crocheter. I’m a person who crochets for fun. It’s a hobby. And at the end of this year, if it turns out I can’t find my balance between parenting and writing, then writing will go, and crocheting will still be a hobby.
Now I’m off to take some ibuprofen and rest my weary knees… Because I forgot that Cinderella was probably about twenty-three years younger than I am when she last mopped a floor.
Button Joy
If you’re a friend on Facebook, you know I’ve been on a crocheting and cleaning jag. It started with this one kicky beret and morphed into 12 days of productivity that has resulted in nine hats:
What twelve days of unresolved anxiety, fear, and nervous energy looks like at my house. There's a scarf in there, too.
Some of those are pretty ugly. In my cleaning and decluttering jag, I’ve run across bunches of scrap yarn, and I’m using it to experiment with patterns. But some of these are also quite pretty and/or feel very nice against the skin. A few are spoken for; the rest will go to a shelter at the end of the year, along with any others I can’t find a home for. The Man is afraid I’ll open an Etsy shop, but I don’t think I’m that nuts yet (although I have thought about selling them at my sister’s coffee shop–just for yarn money, of course).
I’ve also run across scads of buttons. I love buttons. When I was a little girl, both my mom and my grandma had button tins, and it was a favorite pastime to wile away an afternoon sifting through them. So many had stories–they were leftover from this project or that one, or they’d fallen off someone’s coat, or they were just pretty. And as much as I am convinced that I’m not a tactile person, there was always something soothing about letting the buttons run through my fingers, silky and cold against my skin, clinking and clunking and jingling when they hit the tin. Button tins pick up the odors of the house they live in, and my Nana’s always smelled like hay fields and fresh cake and the pleasant must of an old house dampened by Oregon rain. My mom’s smelled eerily similar. They were good smells, good sensations. The button tin was a happy place.
I made my own button tin today:
A tin of happiness.
It’s not as big as my mom’s or my Nana’s, but it’s a start.
I’ve flung a lot of crap out of my house the last couple of weeks. I’ve made three trips to local charities, filled up both the garbage and recycling bins to near overflowing for two weeks in a row, and reassessed my emotional connection to a lot of junk I have lying around. I don’t tend to be sentimental, so flinging stuff is usually pretty easy.
But I couldn’t throw away the buttons.
Buttons tell stories. Not just the stories of where they came from or what they should have been attached to. They also tell our stories. Consider:
Don Draper buttons.
These are the attractive, functional buttons–the ones on our coats, our suit jackets. Understated sometimes, but never dull. The warrior buttons–always able to come through in the clinch.
Or what about the royal buttons? These ones say you’re important–you wear metal:
Someone should salute you or kiss your hand.
Then there are the buttons that fool you–they look sweet, but they hide a tough interior:
They look sweet and girly, but don't be fooled.
And the buttons you hardly notice:
Wallflower buttons. Beautiful, but shy.
There are cute buttons that everyone loves for some inexplicable reason:
Admit it--you love these, but you don't know why.
And elementary school buttons:
They even *feel* like Kindergarten.
But at the end of the day, they all go back in the same tin. They share the same space. They get jostled around a lot. And they come out with more character, a little dusty or nicked or funky, but better off for their time in the tin.
Don’t tell me that’s not a story.
I’m not a big antiquer or a super shopper or anything, but I’m going to start poking around at junk shops and such for old buttons and pick up intriguing ones at the fabric store when I can. I intend to keep crocheting, so some of these buttons will likely end up on hats or whatnot, but I think a lot of them will just go in the tin.
I guess the storyteller in me wants to see where this story leads.
I have button joy today. Major button joy. The Man fears I’m a little simple or I’ve gone off the deep end, but there’s a connection here–with my mom and my grandma and hundreds and thousands of girls who have gone before and understand the Tin of Happiness.
Or maybe it’s just this dang cold I have.
No, it’s button joy. And I’m going to revel in it.
How Writing Destroyed My Future, Part 2
Thanks for all the encouraging comments on my last post. I realize it was kind of a downer, and I realize I sounded really discouraged. I guess I am, sort of, but it’s kind of a matter of redefining what I expected and what I’m in control of, and to get there, I had to go through the ugly side. So here’s part two and where my thoughts have taken me in the last week or so…
I left off by saying that writing fiction has ruined me for anything else, and that’s totally true. I realized the other day that this is Pandora’s Box. If I’d never opened this lid, I might have been happier, more satisfied, less discouraged, less anxious, on and on. But now that the box is open, the Furies are loosed, and there’s no putting them back. I could no more stuff this addiction back inside that box than stuff one of my kids back in my uterus. (Sorry for that visual. It’s the first analogy that came to me.)
My friend Nina posted the other day about rediscovering the joy of writing without worrying about selling, marketing, publishing, etc. And then my friend Cathryn commented yesterday that when she backed away from all the noise, she remembered how writing is fun. I think that’s what I’ve lost sight of—the fun of it. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be work. It’s damn hard work to edit something into a presentable form, and publishing anything is a pain in the rear. But there should be joy in it, too, and that’s what I’ve been missing.
Back before the holidays, I started a new project—a new novel, unrelated to The Taurin Chronicles—and I wrote a good 2,000 words a day or so on it. It’s sitting at about 20,000 words right now, and I have a general plot mapped in my head. It’s totally awesome, y’all. I love the world, I love the characters, I love the concept—all of it.
But I haven’t worked on it in over a month. Partly that’s because of vacations and holidays and such, partly that’s because of editing pressures, but you know the other big reason?
That joy.
I was so into the joy of that project that I was in danger of getting addicted to it. And that’s what I fear—that’s the problem with the joy of writing, and it’s the thing that messes with my balance in a big way. I’m afraid of going down the rabbit hole and becoming so addicted to the joy of writing that I end up lost there again and neglect my house, family, and other duties. I guess I have kind of a tendency toward addictions. Hmm…
My house has suffered from severe neglect for—I’m not even kidding a little bit—at least three or four years. I used to do the FlyLady thing, but I wasn’t very good at it. I felt like I was cleaning all the time, and I hate that feeling. And I was trying to balance FlyLady stuff with preschoolers, part-time homeschooling, and freelance writing. I was exhausted and waspish all the freaking time. With The Man working from home and all the innumerable school papers and such, I just couldn’t stay on top of things.
So now I’m in this unique and wonderful position of having all four kids in school full-time AND being able to live on The Man’s income. Now, for the first time in our marriage, we don’t need my income AND I have time to clean, cook, and channel Martha Stewart all day. I could make this house the place where all the kids want to hang out.
But all I want to do is write. I’d rather spend time with the voices in my head than work at making my house hospitable. Writing has completely ruined my future–the future I thought I wanted, the one where I’d be the domestic goddess and write in my spare time–because I am more passionate about writing than I am about being a domestic goddess.
This is not to say I don’t love my children. My gosh, I love them so much my heart skips a beat sometimes when I think of them. I’m watching Sparky turn into a leader before my very eyes. My Princess is becoming a beautiful young lady, inside and out. She’s strong and independent and kind and focused and driven all at once. Squirrel’s quick wit and closet genius intellect amaze me daily. And the Peanut has a depth of empathy that nearly brings me to tears sometimes.
But cleaning? Cooking? Making our house the “party” house? Meh. I could live without it.
Then there are the days when my kids remind me exactly how much I need the escape of writing. Yesterday was one of those days. Their behavior was beastly all afternoon and evening. Everything they did made me want to run away into my writing cave and ignore parenting forever.
But you know what it did make me think? This is one of those expectation things again. After a week of being EXTREMELY available to them—seriously, I don’t think I spent more than two hours on the computer when they were around for about a week—after taxiing them everywhere, helping with projects, yada yada yada, they were STILL beastly.
I can expect good behavior because those are the rules I set as the mom, but I’m just not always going to get it. They still make decisions, choices, mistakes because they are little people, and people make ridiculous decisions, dumb choices, and stupid mistakes. Sometimes people make smart decisions and good choices, but not always. I can only control the rules and the consequences for breaking them. I can’t control the middle bits.
So we’re back to publishing and writing now. I can control my output and my publishing choices and my platform-building efforts, but I cannot control who buys my work, where the overall publishing industry goes, and whether anyone sees my little meager platform. I can control when and how much I write, but I can’t control the public’s response to it.
I can control how balanced I am.
I have a plan. I plan to give myself till the end of the year to get my balance back. The first part of that plan is to get my house under control again. I no longer expect a Better Homes Than Yours house. That’s just not me. But I CAN control whether I’m at peace with the state of cleanliness. Right now, I’m not. If I take some time to get it back to a baseline I can live with, then I can maintain it.
Another part of the plan: putting the kids and their activities first as much as possible. This means I won’t write as fast. But hopefully, I’ll have happier kids who feel like they are important to me. That’s a better thing than putting out twelve novellas.
And finally, I have to get myself back to “baseline” again. I’ve let so many healthy habits slide. When writing becomes an obsession, I fall into very unhealthy patterns physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I have to flip things over and put my own wellbeing back on top. Writing is important, but it’s not life. Life is life. I need to remember that exercising, eating right, reading, engaging in hobbies, praying—those things keep me centered and healthy. If I try to re-engage all of those habits at once, I’ll explode, but I’m planning to work them slowly back into my routines.
Writing gets to fit in around all that. It may mean that eventually I settle into a schedule of writing four to six hours a day, but that’s all right. That’s an awful lot more than a lot of people get. I’m still pretty dang blessed to have that much freedom. If I don’t feel like I have my balance back by the end of the year, then I’ll have to re-evaluate, I guess. Maybe writing will still have to be pushed back even further. We’ll see.
For right now, it means that I’m not writing or editing much. I’m focused on living. Balancing. Breathing. Taking steps forward instead of backward.
Reclaiming my future.
How Writing Destroyed my Future, Part 1
This is a rambling post. I’m just warning you all now. It’s been a week since I blogged, and I’ve had a lot of time to think about a lot of things, and they’re all sort of stored up and ready to explode. Bear with me.
I have not written or edited anything more difficult than a three-paragraph e-mail this whole week. The beasties were home for three days last week, but I can’t even blame my lack of work on them. I simply chose not to write, which, in itself, is extraordinarily creepy.
Don’t misunderstand. I was incredibly productive. I ran a bunch of errands. I helped the Peanut cross stitch her first project. I made four hats and a scarf. I decluttered the girls’ room on Thursday, and I decluttered the boys’ on Friday. Yesterday, I took the Princess shopping and made cookies with the Squirrel. Today, I got a good start on cleaning out the monster closet under the stairs.
I also cleaned out my closet and work space. And the biggest part of THAT project, at least emotionally, was boxing up almost all of my commercial writing stuff.
I blogged a while back about the decision not to renew my subscription to The Portland Business Journal. Now, I’ve taken it all one step further and boxed up all my notes, records, background material, files, and portfolio samples from the last few years of freelance commercial writing.
This is sort of a big closure thing. It’s not that I’ll never do commercial writing again. I’d take on projects if old clients called. I have taken on projects as recently as November, in fact. But I haven’t actively marketed myself as a freelance commercial writer in a few years. Ever since Ravenmarked took over my life, I just haven’t really wanted to take on a lot of commercial work. It’s not that I don’t like it—I love it. I just love writing fiction even more.
So I sort of said goodbye to commercial writing. Sort of. The files are all there, easily accessible if I decide to open up shop again. But for the time being, I’ve closed the door.
Now what?
Okay, this is where it gets trickier.
Back when The Man and I were first engaged and talking about our future together, we assumed I would be a stay-at-home mommy. He knew I wanted to write, and he supported that dream, and we both talked about how cool it would be if I could be published someday, but mostly, we figured I’d stay home with the kids and make our home a place where everyone could hang out. I looked forward to that future. I wanted that future.
A year passed, then two, then five. No babies. He had his share of career crises, and I kept working, and then we had trouble getting pregnant. By the time our first child was born, we’d been married about eight and a half years. I’d worked full-time almost that entire time. When I wasn’t working full-time, I was going to school part-time and working part-time.
I didn’t know how to come home and channel June Cleaver.
Working that long gets in your spirit, you know? You have an identity. When I became Sparky’s mom, I lost that individual identity that I had when I was working. I felt like I wasn’t “Amy” anymore. I was “Sparky’s mom” or “The Man’s wife” or some other third option. But with another baby a mere 20 months after Sparky, and then a move and a third baby in 2003, I didn’t really have time to think about taking on a job. I mean, daycare costs alone would have eaten up anything I made, and it wasn’t worth it. It was late in 2003 when I started putting out feelers for freelance commercial writing work. I got my first project in early 2004.
Well, now here we are again, at another crossroads. I’ve been doing this fiction thing for a couple of years now. My stories have been live for over a year. And the truth is there’s nothing I’d rather do than write fiction.
Except, perhaps, be a mom and a homemaker.
Boxing up all that stuff was me saying goodbye to something that meant a lot to me for a long time. When I started freelancing, we needed the money. There were months when my meager $125 earnings made the difference between overdrawing the checking account and making it to the next payday. We never really lived on my income—never used it to plan each month. It was always extra—something we’d use if we had to. Eventually, The Man got enough pay increases and I made enough that my income helped us pay off a crap ton of debt and save an emergency fund.
My time as a freelance writer served its purpose. It helped us out in countless ways, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But now, The Man makes enough to pay for everything we need and many things we want. We don’t need my income. That’s great, but it makes me wonder what I should do with myself now.
Confession: I’m not making any real money from fiction. There are numerous reasons for this—some I can guess and some I may never know. But the fact that I’m not making any money from it raises the question of whether I should be spending this much time on it when I have kids to raise and a house that needs some serious TLC.
And so this is the crux of the matter—the thing I’ve been mulling over while I’ve been crocheting, cleaning, and parenting this week. And the thing I’ve realized is… Writing fiction has ruined me for anything else. Because at this point, the only thing I ever want to make money doing is writing fiction. And if I can’t make money at it, well… Why bother?
And before anyone says it… Yes, I know I can’t give up the stories. They’ll always be in my head. But I can make this a hobby instead of trying to make it a career. And that’s where the real issue lies. I hate to end on a cliff hanger, but this is where my thoughts start to get muddy. I need to mull over the second part of this post. I’ll be back tomorrow or the next day with the rest of my thoughts on this whole thing.
I Made a Hat
I took the weekend off of writing.
Last Thursday, I posted about the anguish of editing and how I’d reached a good stopping place on my current WIP. I woke up on Friday feeling like I had a hangover. Now, even though I talk about drinking and I tell y’all that my love of margaritas, whiskey, and wine has no bounds, the truth is that I’ve only been drunk or had a hangover a few times in my life. Like, I could count them on one hand and have a couple of fingers left over. But that’s what I felt like on Friday–like I’d had way too much to drink, or I was getting over the flu, or I’d just come back from Alpha Centauri, or something. So Friday, I did absolutely nothing. Well, I played a lot of Angry Birds. And I did one load of laundry.
On Saturday, I started thinking about my resolution to find more happy things and be a more balanced person. I dug through my closet and found a couple of crochet hooks and some yarn, and I googled “free crochet beret pattern.” I found this lovely pattern and set to work. I finished my hat today:
My kicky new beret
See that pin? I got that when we went to Scotland in 1998. It’s the Rose Clan crest, a harp with the motto “Constant and True.” I don’t know if the Roses I came from are from Scotland, but I claim the clan until it’s proven I come from somewhere else. I love the motto. The Man’s take on it is that it means “constantly annoying and truly crazy.” I love him so, so much.
I’m no fashionista. Jewelry alone is a stretch for me. But I know berets are in right now, and with my long hair, I thought this would be pretty cute. And you know, I wore it out tonight, and I loved it. I don’t know if I just looked like a big dork or moderately trendy, but I loved it. And if anyone laughed, it was behind my back. (I have to remember–this is Oregon, and more specifically, this is the Portland Metro area. We have unicycling bagpipers in kilts around these parts. There’s very little that shocks folks around here.)
So why am I blogging about my silly hat?
Because it was absolutely fantastic to give myself a quick success. It wasn’t some months-long project that I had to keep making room for. I had a couple days where I could justify the downtime. I had a free pattern and tons of old yarn sitting around. And, I know how to crochet fairly well. I knew what the heck I was doing, y’all, and it turned out beautifully. No angsting, no worry, no drama. Just follow the pattern, and voila! A hat!
Do you know how rare that is in my life right now? My gosh, between writing fiction and parenting tweens and budding teens, there’s very little I think I’m doing right half the time. Okay, three quarters of the time. Okay, 90% of the time. Anyway.
The point is–I found a little of my balance. I gave myself a quick win.
And it felt really freaking amazing.
