Humming Rain

It’s been quiet around here, for a number of reasons. Most of it was school, which started towards the end of January or so and only wrapped up a few weeks ago. It was my first semester of my Masters of Library and Information Science, and it was intense towards the end. Mostly because of an intensive class that was run in half the time of a usual class, meaning I essentially went from taking one class to taking three, instead of having a nice and even two classes throughout the semester. *Never* doing that again. It was a lot, and stressed me out something fierce. To make it worse, near the end I was so overwhelmed and busy that I stopped doing fiction writing for a while. Even when I did do it, it was slow. But I’m going to make a concerted effort to get back into it, and tonight and Team Tentacle writing group I did a decent job.

Woo! First time I’ve hit 1k in over a month!

The semester has since ended, of course, so what have I been up to? Not much, unfortunately. That sneaky grey specter, depression, came up from behind and smacked me over the head. There’s probably a lot of sources, including being sleep deprived and just being too busy in general, even without school, but I can’t quite pinpoint a cause yet. Still, I’m trying to get back into the swing of things, make sure I spend time doing things I enjoy instead of just sitting around feeling bummed out and doing nothing. And playing a lot of Fallout 4. Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. Hopefully everything will work out on the mental health front. (Updates as events warrant.)

There are happy parts, of course! I’ve moved into a new apartment with my lovely boyfriend, which has been quite the adventure. Except for the part where I lost my work keys in it over this weekend and we can’t find them, but I digress. It’s in a new neighborhood of Seattle, much more residential than the old one. I’m loving the quiet, and the ability to pull out of my unit’s driveway without risking the nose getting taken off of my car by passing traffic. The space of the apartment itself is great, just the right amount of space for the two of us, allowing for privacy without isolating us from each other. It’s also close to nature, with a park literally out our back window, and Discovery Park just a couple blocks away.

Woodpecker friend as seen from the back deck/balcony of my new place.

It’s pretty cool waking up to this view every morning.

Over the weekend I got a chance to go and hike the loop trail of Discovery Park with a friend from out of town. All the moving and school chaos had completely destroyed my exercise routine, so it was so refreshing to just get out and exercise for a while. Being in nature was fantastic, too, something I don’t get a lot of even though I live in the Pacific Northwest, land of a thousand forested hiking trails. It was definitely a nice change from a lot of where I spend my time day-to-day: in a windowless, heavily air-conditioned server room where I spend a lot of time sitting in the server’s airflow output for warmth. (Those boxes get hot when they’re running 24/7!)

One of the great views from Discovery Park bluff.

I’m looking forward to what’s next. I’m trying to treat June as a clean slate, where I get back into consistently doing the things I love. Exercising will be a big one (need to order the weight equipment, but I want to start running/biking again ASAP). Writing, including submitting more things to markets. It’s been far too long since I’ve had anything published. And perhaps most importantly to long-term project finishing, working on finishing up the current draft of Nautilus and editing my doorstop of a fantasy novel.

So here’s to a hopeful June, everyone. See you again soon.

PS I got an Instagram, and will be trying to post one picture a day to encourage myself to do more photography. Please check it out if that sounds fun to you!

(This is continued from my 2015 in Review post.)

If you’ve stuck with me so far you are both a real trooper and awesome, and I salute you! I’ve decided not to do strict resolutions this year, bcause that’s a good way to accidentally overcommit. (I’ve noticed resolutions tend to be pass/fail and rely on hard numbers, making them easier to blow, whereas goals can be worked on and refined as you progress towards them (or stall).)

This is an ambitious list, and I don’t expect to be firing on all cylinders for all of them all the time. But hopefully I’ll make enough progress on each of them to say I met my goals nonetheless. 🙂

1. Write More, Write Better, and, perhaps most importantly: SUB MORE

Like most years, my goal for this upcoming year is 365,000 words, an average of 1k a day. I’ve never quite made it, but this year could be the year! And I definitely want to finish my shit. 2015 is strewn with the junk heaps of half-finished stories, whether they never made it out of draft zero or never got edited once they were done. I think if I pre-plan a little more (I’m bad at prewriting, which for me means my plots tend to go nowhere fast), more of my stories will end up in a fit state to be fixed up and sent off. So it’s not just about wordcount, it’s about stories that are truly finished stories.

I’d also like to push my writing. I’ve felt very stagnant as far as skill level over 2015, so this next year I want to do things like write outside my genre, push my use of language, try more formats for stories, etc, all in an effort to up my skills as a writer. If you’d like to recommend any articles or books that you think could help, please comment! I’ve also felt the creative well drying up a bit, so I’ll need to work on finding more inspiration so I don’t just keep writing the same sorts of stories over and over and over. I’ll also shove writing more blog posts into this goal, as I’m the worst about keeping this blog updated and I should also work out my non-fiction/personal narrative writing muscles more.

And subbing more! As noted above, I’m terrible about writing up a story, and then not editing it or subbing it anywhere. That’s no way to make a living in this business. So I want to go through the whole submission process more often this year, which should train me to take more stories through editing, finish my shit, and hopefully net me a few publications in the process. 🙂 Continue reading →

So, this is the time of year that I generally do a big end of year wrap-up and some resolutions for the New Year, and this year will be no different! It’s a little late and a little abbreviated because my December 31st ended up far busier than I planned for it to be. So, without further ado:

(Note: This was originally written as one post but has been split in two for easier readability, since it ended up so long. This post has my Year in Review. Here are my goals for the New Year.)

The Year in Review

2015 was a year that ended up being a crazy see-saw ride of ups and downs that probably ended with little Timmy hitting his head and his mother suing the city for allowing such a dangerous toy at the park. (It has now been replaced with a foam brick that is bolted in place. Timmy managed to break his arm jumping off of this onto the soft rubber padding that replaced the wood chips five years ago. Legislation from his mother is pending.)

Some of the big ups include:

– Getting to see not one, but TWO of my stories hit print. The Ones We Leave Behind was accepted last year but came out this year in the Tales from the Stop anthology. It was my first story ever accepted for publication, and I’m so excited to see it out there in the world. His Name Was Pumpkin Spice was a blast to write and is now in the Coffee: Hot anthology. It was accepted this year, which means I had one whole story get accepted this year. Woo hoo! It also meant I got to write outside my usual genre, which was really fun and now I want to do it again.

– Meeting PK. This is a personal romantic thing, so I’m not going to go into a lot of detail (sorry, all 1.5 readers), but PK has been great and wonderful and so supportive of me in all my endeavours, even when he thinks they might be a little crazy. So yeah. Definitely an up. 🙂 Continue reading →