This morning I listened to a podcast titled, “What is your intuition telling you?” I picked it out deliberately: it wasn’t one where I was simply listening to a speaker and the title was irrelevant, I actually thought, “Hmm, I want to know what my intuition is trying to tell me,” and selected it with intention. But I was, as usual, not a very good meditator.

It turned out that it was a visualization. The speaker — henceforth to be referred to as Our Guide — started by telling us to visualize ourselves in a grove of trees. Okay, I can do that. But then she mentioned the grassy ground under the trees and I was stymied. What? Grassy ground in a grove of trees? How? Trees usually block the light, making it hard for grass to grow underneath them. My grove of trees was scrub pines — the most common type of trees in clusters in central Florida — and the ground underneath would be dirt, scattered with pine needles.

But okay, maybe this is a grove of trees in a park or something, a place where someone takes care of the grounds. Different trees than those I’d imagined… more sedate trees. But I can imagine that, of course. So I have changed my imagined trees to go along with the grassy ground, when Our Guide tells me that one tree is special, and I should walk toward it.

I’m trying to imagine this special tree and I picture a redwood, despite the problem of the grassy ground. Specifically, it’s the redwood that Suzanne and I camped under in a state park in Northern California. But now Our Guide is saying that I can climb the tree. Okay, there’s no way to climb a redwood, that’s impossible. Maybe if I had those things loggers use, that dig into the tree, but come on, I’m not going to hurt my special tree, that’s just wrong. Also, it would be so uncomfortable. Redwoods have rough bark and they’re sticky. Aren’t I going to get sap all over myself if I try to climb this tree? 

I am not enthusiastic about tree-climbing, so I decide I have a special ability, like Spiderman, and I can just walk up the side of the tree. I really don’t like heights, though. I’m imagining myself walking up the side of the tree, carefully not looking down, and eventually Our Guide says we are way above the world, we can look down and see it below us, colorful and beautiful. I’m not looking down. What if I got dizzy? What if I fell? 

Now she tells us we are standing on a small platform looking down at the world. I am just so reluctant to do this. How big is this platform? Does it have a railing? I would like my platform to have a safety rail, possibly harnesses, and also, now that we’re at it, couldn’t it have an elevator? That would have been much more efficient than climbing a tree.

Seriously, has Our Guide ever climbed a tree? It’s not so easy. You have to pull yourself up using your upper body strength. If you climb high enough to get above the world, you’re going to be exhausted and sore, probably shaking with the effort. Realistically, when I got to the top I would have collapsed on the ground, panting with exertion. No admiring the scenery for me. 

But as I’m still fretting about the climbing, Our Guide has moved on. We have walked down a path and we are at a gate. A gatekeeper stands beside it and we have to ask permission to enter. It turns out we are entering our own personal sacred safe space.

What the heck? Who is this gatekeeper, then? Why are they keeping me out of my own personal sacred safe space? If it’s a guard that I’ve put on my space, shouldn’t he or she or it recognize me? How did they wind up with the job of standing in the way of me entering my own space and what if they refuse to let me in? Do I fight them? Is it a challenge kind of thing? Should I have a password? 

But while I’m busy resenting the gatekeeper, I’ve fallen behind again. Our Guide has moved on to first visualize and then sit by a fountain. We’re asking the fountain — our intuition — a question. Not a yes/no question, but something meaningful to us. I abandon my gatekeeper annoyance and fumble around for my question for a bit — what exactly do I want my intuition to tell me? Should I be a writer? That’s a yes/no question and besides, I am a writer even if I never write another word. Maybe what I want to know is what I should be doing with my life. Yeah, that’s a good question. What should I be doing with my life? So I breathe and I try not to think, to just let the question be there. 

Eventually, Our Guide tells us to take something out of the fountain. And for the first time in this meditation, I have a moment where it feels like maybe it’s not simply my conscious mind trying to visualize all this stuff, because out of the fountain, I pull… a rock. 

Yes, my intuition just gave me a rock. 

It is big, the size of a baseball, roundish but rough, dark gray and mottled. I know, without being able to see inside, that the rock is a geode, and probably contains crystals, but I don’t know how to get it open and I don’t even know that I want to. Maybe I like the possibility of the magic inside better than the process of breaking the rock open? 

Meanwhile the meditation has moved on. Our Guide is climbing back down the tree, but I am not doing that — who can climb a tree while carrying a rock? So I take the elevator down, still holding my rock, still wondering. I’m pretty sure my intuition is not telling me to become a geologist, but I honestly don’t know what it is trying to say. So it goes. Tomorrow will bring another meditation, another chance to listen to my intuition and be confused.

But now it is time to begin the day. My day is going to include walking the dog, dumping the tanks, eating healthy food, learning something interesting, appreciating something nice, and probably playing at least one game of Ticket to Ride. I don’t expect it to be exciting, but I do think it’ll be pretty nice, as days go. I’m grateful that I get to live it.

In the standard set of questions that authors supposedly* get asked, one of the big ones is, “Where do you get your ideas?” According to Neil Gaiman, the standard flippant response is, “There’s a P.O. box in Schenectady.”  (I say supposedly because I think I’ve only been asked that question once. Most people just ask me, “Oh, what do you write?”)

But for a lot of authors, that question is mystifying because the answer is, “Everywhere. Anywhere. My brain never ever stops feeding me snippets of stories.” Or at least that would have been my answer. But my imagination seems to have shut off. It’s just not working right now. The stories are gone.

It’s a really strange and honestly quite unpleasant feeling. Maybe it’s a little like losing your vision, and I say this as someone whose need for glasses has been growing steadily over the years. I used to have perfect sight, 20/20. Now a black blur in the distance sets off all my “beware of dog” triggers until it gets closer and closer and closer and my eyes finally give me enough information to say, “Oh, Macie! That’s Macie! I love Macie!” and I can relax.

But now that I’ve written that, I can say that it’s nothing like losing my imagination. Losing my imagination is much more like losing a tooth. I keep poking at the hole and there’s nothing there. And it is not settling in to a new normal, where the hole becomes as familiar as the tooth once was, and it stops being weird. It keeps being weird. Where are the stories? Why doesn’t a song trigger them? Why doesn’t a dream keep going when I wake up? Why don’t I know what Cici does next?

Some authors believe the universe is giving us our stories. Elizabeth Gilbert, in Big Magic, or Lauren Sapala in The INFJ Writer, would probably suggest listening, waiting for the universe to murmur to me. I’ve been listening. The universe is feeling very, very quiet.

In my morning words the other day, I wrote this:

I’m running away from the existential pain of feeling like there’s no story in my soul that wants to come pouring out, or even being yanked out into existence. This is what it must feel like for people who ask, “but how do you think of those things?” The answer is, it comes to me. Until the day when it doesn’t come to me, not at all. There’s no story in my head. Maybe it’s because I was ignoring the stories that wanted to be written, the one about the former rock star, the one about the lottery winner, the one about the girl who went through portals with her sister, the one about the bazkide. Maybe I needed to not be ignoring those stories. But it felt like I had too many things to write and now it feels like I have nothing to write.

I miss the characters talking to me, I miss the puzzles popping into my head. Maybe it’s because I didn’t respect APM enough, because I didn’t go crazy for making it perfect… ohh, so desperate to play solitaire right now. Maybe it’s because I’m depressed at the lack of enthusiasm for APM. Maybe it’s because I liked it but only four people have bothered to leave a review and no one seems even interested in reading it. Maybe it’s because no one is laughing at my jokes, a big fat thud out into the universe, not even people interested enough to hate it. And you put yourself out there — not you, me — I put myself out there and it was ignored, and so I’m feeling burned. Metaphorically burned. But too hurt to want to create. Too sore to have that part of my brain eager to perform for other people. Yep, I’m a performer and no one has come to my show and so I’m ready to stop putting on my show. 

It’s a good realization, now I think I need to sit with it for a while. Not that I want to sit with it, I want to make my coffee and find my book and maybe play a lot of solitaire. But at the same time, I think I can let my heart feel this pain and that it’s okay to just feel the pain and not drive myself to create when the creativity muscle is hurting. On the other hand, work through pain, always a way to develop a muscle, right? Not always. Yeah, I don’t know. 

I wound up deciding to let the universe give me a sign. I was thinking — well, a job offer, that’s what I was thinking. My friend in Arcata telling me she knew someone who desperately needed a nanny; a headhunter related to my previous career reaching out on LinkedIn; a Help Wanted sign in the local bookstore.

The universe obligingly provided a sign yesterday, when my friend Lynda shared with me that her friend told her I was one of her favorite authors. Her friend writes fiction, teaches writing, has written books on writing, and has been publishing books since I was in high school, so… well, I cried, actually.

Then the universe gave me another sign when BookBub promptly rejected A Lonely Magic for a featured deal, for the fifth time. I wish I’d saved all the rejection emails, because I’m fairly sure they come in gradations: the previous one said, “you can apply again in 30 days and you can improve your application by making your book free or available on more retailers.” ALM is now free and available on all retailers, and this rejection said, “you can apply again in a few months.” Eh. I think I am done with BookBub. ALM has a beautiful cover, over 80 nice reviews on Amazon, and is free: if it’s not good enough for BookBub to think it worth sharing with its readers, so be it. Thanks, universe, I get the message.

This morning, the universe gave me another message in the form of a review on Cici: Five stars from a tough grader! It ends with: I can’t wait to read the next one. (Please, Sarah Wynde, hurry!) I cried again, to be honest. Thank you, Deb, the tough grader. I’m so grateful for the encouragement!

But I think the universe is delivering some very mixed messages. I guess right now, though, I will just keep listening.

Back in November, I took a class called Write Better Faster, offered by the author of Dear Writer, You Need to Quit, a book that I wrote about in a post called Dear Self, Have Fun.

I have not started writing either better or faster. Alas. But I’ve been slowly working my way through some of the books mentioned in the class. I’ve been reading them very deliberatively. And I just looked up deliberatively to be sure it was the word I wanted and it is: “related to or intended for consideration or discussion.” Not deliberately, ie “consciously and intentionally, on purpose,” although obviously that’s true, too.

Anyway, my usual reading is high-speed and voracious. I can finish a book in a few hours, but I only retain the main ideas. I’ve been trying hard to read these books in more depth, pausing to think about the information and ideas, taking notes, summarizing my responses. Trying to really use them as learning tools.

My approach was unsuccessful with only one of the books: The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg. Honestly, that book was just too interesting: I couldn’t stop myself from gobbling it down. My notes for it are terrible, although I used all caps and bold for my takeaway point, which says something about how I was feeling as I finished. Takeaway point: IF YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN CHANGE — if you make it a habit — the change becomes real. Your habits are what you CHOOSE them to be. 

So far, I’ve also finished Wired for Story, Verbalize, Triggers, and Rising Strong, and I’m working on Deep Work and Story Genius.

Coincidentally, an email showed up in my inbox this morning from Mark Manson (author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck) claiming that the most important life skill for the 2020s was probably going to be the ability to learn well on your own.

Sadly, this might mean that I’m not going to do so well in the 2020s. Because at the end of all this reading — a sincere, well-intentioned, thorough, focused attempt to learn how to write better & faster — I’m not sure what I’ve gotten out of it. Apart from approximately 15,000 words of notes, that is.

It’s not that I haven’t learned things. I definitely have. I’ve learned about the habit cycle, about transitive verbs, about the relationship of myelination to memory, about the human tendency to search for patterns. I’ve learned techniques for characterization, for plot development, for resolving interpersonal conflict, for creating change in my own life.

I don’t know, though. At the moment, I’m feeling very unfulfilled by all this learning. According to the Clifton Strengths test (taken for the class), I’m both high Input and a Learner, so this approach — reading all the books and trying to learn more — is definitely my style. But honestly, I think what I really need is to figure out how to get better at the execution strengths instead. Instead of being who I am, I want to learn how to be a Discipline and Focus person. But I think the whole point of the Clifton Strengths exercise is to embrace who you are and lean into your own strengths, instead of trying to be someone else.

Meanwhile, it’s Monday, and after my week off, I am feeling ready to get back to a solid writing schedule. It’s not quite the new year, but it’s time to execute! Hmm, maybe this story needs an execution? Nah, probably not. I did decide a couple of days ago that sentient otters were definitely in order, though!

My holidays lasted a week.

On the first day of Christmas, aka last Saturday, my dad and stepmom and I went out to dinner, their Christmas present from me.

On the second day of Christmas, we went to church, then to brunch with my sister and her kids, as well as R and his girlfriend, M. Afterward, we exchanged small presents. I gave everyone colorful socks; my dad and stepmom gave everyone t-shirts with funny sayings. Mine’s in my laundry basket, because I wore it immediately, but it says something like, “Camping, How to spend lots of money to live like a homeless person.” It makes me laugh.

On the third day of Christmas, I came back to Sanford and had Christmas dinner and presents with Christina & co. Dinner was fantastic: a maple-glazed pork tenderloin stuffed with a sausage & cranberry dressing; roasted brussels sprouts with pecans and gorgonzola; roasted root vegetables; and a chocolate mousse for dessert. And the presents were perfect. Christina and I exchanged (among other things) identical boxes. Mine to her contained Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries; hers to me contained Ticket to Ride: Europe. Great minds!

On the fourth day of Christmas (aka Christmas Eve), I drove to Port Charlotte, to M’s mother’s house. I meant to get there in time to make Christmas cookies, and we really did have time, but I don’t think we did. The days have started to blur together a little bit — did we play games? Did we sit around and talk? I think there was still some present wrapping underway, but in the late afternoon, we went to church.

The church service had the nicest beginning — a guitar player was leading people in Christmas carols as people arrived, in a Christmas singalong. Very fun. The church service itself included music; kids dressed as angels and shepherds and wise men; the reading of the Christmas story (distracted by wondering what in the world that angel was trying to do — adjust another angel’s wings, I think) and candles lit while singing Silent Night. In other words, the perfect Christmas Eve service. Afterwards, we went to an open house at M’s mom’s friend’s house. More food, fun conversation, and it was the second year in a row that I’d been there on Christmas Eve, so felt nicely familiar.

On the fifth day of Christmas, we exchanged presents in the morning, then baked and cooked. M & I made sugar cookies — I got to do the fun parts, she got to do all the work. Mid-afternoon, we went to another friend’s house for dinner. It was full-on feasting — pear salad with pecans and cheese, followed by turkey, ham, green beans, asparagus, potato salad, baked sweet potatoes, baked potatoes, cranberry chutney, bread, and homemade chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream for dessert. Oh, also, really cute and delicious antipasto skewers for appetizers. I obviously didn’t eat any of the things that included gluten, but I’m going to call that fortunate: it’s going to make the post-holiday, trying-to-fit-into-my-clothing-again period that little bit easier!

In the evening — and possibly at some other point, too — maybe earlier in the day, maybe on Christmas Eve? — we played Ticket to Ride: Europe. And then more Ticket to Ride. And possibly some Five Crowns, too.

On the sixth day of Christmas. aka Boxing Day, I intended to head back to Sanford. M’s mom, Renee, is a wonderful, welcoming and generous hostess, but M’s dog, Millie, is (potentially) unwilling to share her space with another dog. That meant Z had spent a fair amount of time alone in the van, which is hard on her. But in the morning, before I planned to leave, we all went for a really nice walk around a local pond. Lots of birds, including something pink that might have been a roseate spoonbill. In the afternoon, we tried a small experiment and let Z be on the lanai while Millie stayed in the house. After some initial excitement on Millie’s part, she settled down, so we spent the afternoon on the lanai, playing Ticket to Ride, with Z with us, Millie watching from inside. I wound up staying long enough that I would have had to drive in the dark, so I spent another night in Port Charlotte. It was a really nice day — cozy and fun and comfortable. A nice walk, some beautiful birds, some fun games, and terrific company.

On the seventh day of Christmas, after one last morning game of Ticket to Ride, I did leave. It was a grueling drive: lots of traffic, off-and-on rain. The kind where the timer on the maps app keeps getting later instead of earlier, so that after you’ve been driving for an hour, your arrival time is later than when you started. Ugh. But when I finally got back to Sanford, Christina was making bacon tacos with tomatillo salsa. Yum! (It’s not really bacon, but pork belly that’s simmered for hours. Totally delicious.) After dinner, we played Ticket to Ride, the US version this time.

All in all, two thumbs up for this Christmas. And now it’s time to get back to work. But first, maybe some bacon taco leftovers for breakfast. They’re excellent topped with an egg.

Happy New Year!