Category Archives: Grace

Lake Catherine State Park, Arkansas

19 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by in Campground, Grace, Randomness, Serenity, Travel

≈ 3 Comments

I’m sitting outside, computer in my lap, both dogs roaming around in the piles of dead leaves around me. The sun is shining, there’s a cool breeze off the lake blowing wisps of hair into my face, the birds are incredibly noisy, and I am feeling supremely content. The only improvement in my mood would be if I could write myself through this stupid scene in Grace. Actually, the major improvement in my mood would be if I could finish Grace and move to some other project, but enough said about that.

Yesterday, I left Oklahoma reasonably early and took the scenic drive to Arkansas. The first part was by far the most exciting: the road that my GPS took me down—well, up, really—was a logging road. Dirt and gravel, narrow and steep. It was ten minutes of thinking, “Oh, shit, what happens if I run into someone else on this road?” And then I did run into someone else, two someone elses, in fact!

Fortunately, I was on the side that could tuck into the hill, so I pulled over as far as I could without winding up crunched and they passed by on the scarier side, waving at me as they did. But the adrenaline and the excitement and the… the sheer FUN of the uncertainty was great. I was so worried that the road was going to come to an abrupt end and I would have to figure out how to turn around or how to back all the way down. Backing all the way down would have been disastrous. And then when it let me out onto this itty-bitty two-lane road, which turned out to be the scenic highway, I was so pleased. I stopped at a bunch of scenic vistas and took pictures of clouds. Look, more clouds!

Clouds on the Talimena scenic highwayI had just enough glimpses beyond the clouds that it was obvious that it was a really, really pretty road. In better weather. Someday, I will try again.

Arkansas, meanwhile, has been delightful. I emerged from the clouds into sunshine and spring, just as I’d hoped. For a lot of the drive, the woods alongside the road were simultaneously autumn and spring — lots of trees that hadn’t lost their orange and red leaves from fall yet, interspersed with pink plum trees. (I think plum trees.) But very lovely.

Because I needed dog food, I wound up coming all the way down to Hot Springs, and then beyond to Lake Catherine State Park. (Zelda will consistently eat Fresh Pet and their website lets me know where I can find it locally, but it’s not always available within a 50 mile range. I couldn’t find it in Oklahoma or my first stop in Arkansas, Mena, so I kept driving until I did.) The park had one campsite available, because of a cancellation, and it was available for four days, so I took it. And here I sit, ridiculously cheerful.

It’s the sun, I think. Well, and also, the campground is packed with happy families having fun camping, which is enjoyable to listen to. There’s water (surprise, a lake at the Lake Catherine park!), and trails, and people with boats, and kids on bikes and skateboards and it feels like… Spring? Vacation? Joy. It feels like joy.

Last night, I sat in Serenity watching other people’s flickering campfires and smelling wood smoke and appreciating the bare branches of trees against the dark sky with its sprinkling of stars. This morning, the sunrise was golden-orange against the same dark branches. I couldn’t find gluten-free granola in any of my most recent stores, so I’m baking some of my own and the van smells delicious, of coconut oil and baked oats and cinnamon. I’ve got a Verizon signal, but no T-mobile, so my internet is very limited, but I will still be able to talk to R today. The previous campers left behind a rawhide chew, so Z is having a very good time burying it in the leaves, then moving it to another spot and burying it again. All these little random pieces, they add up to happiness.

And now I have to open up Grace and ruin my mood. *sigh. But I’m going to give it one hour, timed, and then I’m going to do other things: a hike, maybe; dragging out the kayak, maybe; making myself some delicious lunch, maybe. Maybe all three!

Galveston Beach

07 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Grace, Personal, Travel, Zelda

≈ 4 Comments

Beach and shells

Dead things

It’s a measure of my mood yesterday that I walked along the beach thinking about how beaches are really just big cemeteries. Sand? Just the decayed and crumbled skeletons of sea creatures. Shells? Leftover body parts. Dying jellyfish? Well, you know, dying jellyfish.

I was sort of glad that I’d already read online that there’s no point in trying to save the jellyfish because otherwise I might have felt I should try. But a) they might sting you and b) the conditions that caused them to wash up on shore still exist, so they’ll be back onshore soon even if you do manage to get them into the ocean, so no point. And c) there were far too many of them. I know if I’d managed to save one that it might have appreciated it, but I would have felt overwhelmed by the futility. And probably stung, too.

On the other hand, look — gorgeous beach! Beautiful dying jellyfish in iridescent greens and blues. Big shells — the brown one was the biggest shell I’d ever found on a beach, and the white one was probably second. And the weather’s been crap — I swear, Texas might be the wettest state I have ever spent time in — but the sun came out twice, once at sunset last night, and then this morning for about an hour, just long enough for Zelda and I to have a really nice walk. It’s gone now and might not be back while I’m here, but at least I got to appreciate the sunny ocean for a little while.

My mood has been shaded by the mice. I’m not even sure I can explain how oppressive I find it to be living with something I’m trying to kill. Or to find mouse turds scattered across my kitchen counter. To not know whether mice are running across my bed while I’m sleeping. To never know when I open a cabinet whether there’ll be a mouse inside. To wonder whether my congestion is allergies or the first symptoms of a virus that might kill or bankrupt me. I know, total over-reaction. But Serenity is such a small space. It’s not like sharing hundreds of square feet with rodents. I’ve lived in houses with rats before and it hasn’t bothered me this much. I wonder how much the extremely high-pitched whine of the ultrasonic repeller, just at the edge of my hearing, is getting to me? Maybe a lot. But I’m not ready to give up on them, since the mice appear to be laughing at my traps.

I’ve also been probably out of proportion upset by the loss of Zelda’s duck. For ten years — literally, ten years, since the Christmas when she was not quite two — she’s had one toy that she loves. Every night, she licks it for a while before going to sleep. When people came over to visit, she would find her duck and bring it to them. One year we went on vacation in my dad’s RV and didn’t bring the duck. Every night she searched for it, then stared at me plaintively, asking for my help. We were both so glad to get home to it. It was battered and worn and gross, the fur licked off in places. But it was her lovey.

And it’s gone.

I have no idea how. I imagine a horde of mice carrying it away in revenge for the murder of their leader, but that’s pretty unlikely. I did laundry, so maybe it got caught up in the clothes? But how would I not have seen it in the laundry room? Most likely, I suppose, is that Zelda carried it outside at our last campsite and I didn’t notice. I called the campground — not that anyone would ever have turned it in to a lost-and-found, it would have looked like trash. The guy on the phone was super nice about it and promised to look, but he didn’t call back, so I’m sure he didn’t find it. I am not surprised. But oh, watching Zelda roam the camper, trying to find her duck, just breaks my heart. I feel like such a bad mom. I keep coming up with implausible places that I haven’t checked — like, maybe I put it in the microwave when I was stuffing all the food the mice might want in there. No, I didn’t. A) Why would I? and b) there’s not even enough room for the food in there. Maybe she carried it outside at this campground and it’s under the van! No, it’s not.

It’s stupid, I know. In a world where desperate refugees are trying to keep their children warm, worrying about a dog’s lovey is just ridiculously privileged. But she doesn’t understand why it’s gone and why I won’t find it for her and I… well, I am really sad about it. I understand, I suppose, that I’m projecting all my fears of losing Zelda, that anticipated pain, into her experience of loss now, but intellectualizing the emotion isn’t helping me feel better about it.

On Matagorda Bay, this weekend, we were on the beach when it started to rain. Zelda was off-leash and she started to run. She disappeared into the dunes and I had a long minute of thinking of all the possible things that could happen if she didn’t stop running — would she get lost? Would she run out into the road and get hit by a car? Would she step on a snake? And then she popped out again, cocking her head to the side, like she was saying, “Mom? Could you hurry it up here? We’re getting WET!” I hope that if she could choose, she would choose our adventures of the past seven, going on eight, months over keeping her duck safe at home. And I can’t know if she would, but I know that I would, and that does help me feel better.

Time to write more Grace. Akira’s finally coming home. I have never gotten farther than this part — this is where I’ve turned back and started over again from the beginning several times — so it’ll be interesting to see what today brings. *fingers crossed for new words,  not self-doubt.

 

Palmetto State Park

02 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by in Food, Grace, House, Personal, Serenity

≈ 8 Comments

wildflowers at sunrise

Wildflowers at sunrise

At the Onion River Campground in Vermont, I walked Zelda through fields of high, dry weeds with scattered faded flowers, surrounded by deep green grass and trees with leaves that were just starting to hint at autumn, and felt like we were in the essence of late summer. I think it’s why I remember that place with so much pleasure.

At Palmetto State Park in Texas, we are in the essence of spring. It is pure spring, all around us. Trees with soft green leaves unfurling, growing so fast that it feels like if you look away for an instant they will have changed when you look back. Wildflowers — yellow and white and purple and pink — some tiny, hiding in the grass, others standing tall and proud. A robin sitting on the branch outside my window as I write. White-tailed deer leaping through the trees at sunrise. Sweet olive trees covered in white flowers, their fragrance drifting on the breeze. One of the sweet olive trees — the biggest one I have ever seen — hummed as I approached it, mysterious until I realized it was the hum of a thousand happy bees. (I then cautiously moved away because, okay, humming tree, fascinating and cool; hundreds upon hundreds of bees, totally scary.)

My day here yesterday was… I want to say spectacular, but it was spectacular in a really quiet way. Zelda and I walked the San Marcos River Trail a little after sunrise. It was beautiful and lovely. We saw the site of the old mud boils, quiet now, but still noted with a sign. (Otherwise I wouldn’t have known what I was looking at). The trail was smooth, well-maintained, shockingly litter-free, and starts about twenty steps away from our campsite. It was a perfect morning walk, chilly enough to need a jacket, overcast, but not raining, a good length, interesting things to look at.

I did some work, including updating my work blog, texted with some friends, did some knitting, made myself a delicious lunch — scrambled eggs with chorizo, brown rice, goat Gouda, avocado, mushroom, and green onion (as posted on Instagram), and ate it sitting outside looking at the view. The sky was clearing, and the air was warming.

Then Z and I went for another walk, in a different direction. We crossed the river at a low point, which for her meant wading and for me meant hopping along the stones at the edges of the paved walkway, the rest of which had water flowing across it. I felt slightly ridiculous and yet also had that little kid thrill of knowing that if I fell, I would splash.

Back at the camper, I wrote. Good words. On Grace! First time in a long while that I didn’t feel like I was trying to fix something broken, but just letting the characters be who they were. We went for another walk. I sat outside on my new camp chair ($6 at Walmart and so much more comfortable than the $50 backpacking chair that I started out with) in the sunshine, warm enough to not need my jacket, and tried to write some more. Then Z wanted to be on my lap, so instead I snuggled her and felt so grateful to be in that moment, in that chair, with my dog licking my face. At sunset, we went for another walk. We ate dinner. I wrote some more.

Then I heard a rustling and caught a mouse in my trash can. Yes! A mouse. Serenity has mice. I can’t even…* I realized Tuesday that I had a mouse problem and it really ruined that day for me. Yesterday I let it go–nothing to do about it until I get on the road again–until one of them fell into the trash can. I carried it outside and released it, telling it to watch out for owls. Unfortunately, it was either not the only mouse or it came right back inside, because there was one after my granola this morning. Gah. So today I will be buying traps and repellent while I’m on my way to my next park.

But I didn’t let the mice stress me out yesterday. Yesterday, I enjoyed a perfect spring day. And not just a perfect spring day. My day, the day that I wanted.

A year ago, I was just starting to think about this adventure. I hadn’t decided to do it yet. I could still look around my house and think, wait, this is the home that I worked so hard for, the place where I wanted to live forever, my fantasy house. The window seat with its cushion made from material my mom and I found at a garage sale, the French doors, the bougainvillea, the neighborhood with its ponds and birds, the kitchen that is exactly right… was I really going to let it all go?

Yesterday was the day for which I let it go.

sunset moon

This sunset is worth a mouse or two.

*”I can’t even…” feels like a complete statement to me, but it sure looks odd when written down. So, you know, envision it with the head shake and wince of pain and hands spread wide that it needs in order to make sense. 

Edited to add: OMG, the showers–so much water pressure, so hot! Not new and fancy, your basic rundown campground shower, but the best shower I’ve had in months.

The pros of the apocalypse

19 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in Depression, Florida, Grace, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

I’m camping in Blue Springs State Park this week, famed as a home to manatees in winter time. I’ve visited this park before as a day visitor, more than once, so it’s not new to me. But this morning while I was walking Zelda, I was imagining myself in a post-apocalyptic world. The kind where plague has taken all the people, not zombies. I wasn’t scared, it just felt incredibly empty. Every other time I’ve been here, there have been lots of people, but of course, that was never before dawn. Then I spotted some manatees in the water and got much more cheerful, because probably if the human beings all died out, the manatees would have a much better chance of surviving. The pros of the apocalypse.

Last night, it rained. My weather app — which honestly, seems fairly useless, except for the immediate weather — had been claiming rain for days, including an entire afternoon of lightning and thunder yesterday, but it didn’t happen until 4:43 AM this morning. I can be so precise about the time because I woke up and it had barely started, a little tap-tap-tap on the roof of Serenity, but as I lay there wondering what that noise was, it really started. It went very quickly from tapping to torrential, which sounds a lot like being inside a drum. Or maybe a heart beat. I haven’t had nearly enough rain in Serenity, because I do enjoy it so much. Last night, I could hear the difference in the sounds of the rain hitting the roof and the rain hitting the plastic vents over the fans. It was music, definitely. Albeit slightly boring music after ten minutes or so. Plenty of rhythm, but a lack of harmony.

Despite the rain and the bleak apocalyptic thoughts, I’m really happy to be here. Right now, I can see a cardinal sitting on a branch outside my open door. There have been squirrels darting through the trees—or maybe one very busy squirrel. I’m surrounded by trees and greenery. It’s definitely not the most peaceful park I’ve spent time in—the train tracks must be incredibly close because wow, the trains are loud when they rumble through—and there must be some kind of construction going on nearby because there was a lot of heavy equipment moving around, including those annoying backup beeps, earlier this morning. But it’s not a parking lot, it’s a park.

I spent the last two weeks sitting in a campground that was a parking lot: trailers on either side of me, nothing separating me from my neighbors, and my view consisting entirely of people stuff. My goal was to finish Grace or give up. I did neither. I didn’t get very far, but I did come up with a new ending and a new plan, so I’ll be persisting. But I did learn that I should really, really not sit still for so long in a place that doesn’t inspire me.

While I don’t seem to get a lot of writing done on the days that I’m moving from place to place and planning moves takes energy that I could be putting into writing, my level of depression rose steadily over the past couple weeks. Or my mood sank steadily? And the trap that is depression was sucking me in: I knew I was starting to feel bleak but I lacked the energy and motivation to make a change. It’s really only today — gloomy apocalyptic thoughts and all — that I’ve been able to wake up and realize how much I had lost my joy. That’s because having a cardinal sitting on a branch avoiding the rain brings it back. I don’t want to live in places where I have to search to find the beauty, even if they are cheap.

Of course, that does mean that I should earn some money and that means that I should be writing Grace right now. So off to do it! It’d be nice if I could get out of the scene I’m in and back to a scene with Grace and Noah together. Not that I know what happens in that next scene, but I’m a lot more likely to find out if I keep writing than if I wait for inspiration to hit.

 

Owls are cool

15 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Florida, Grace, Randomness, Serenity

≈ 2 Comments

I saw an owl this morning. Two of them, really, although the second one was a black blur on the wind. I wouldn’t have recognized it as an owl if it were not flying in collusion with the first one. And the first one… well.

It flew across the sky in the pre-dawn light, clearly a bird. Clearly a big bird. My brain had to process. What is that bird? In Florida, the default on a big bird is vulture. That’s what we’ve got the most of. But this bird didn’t say vulture to me. The wings were wrong. The flight was so smooth, such a glide, so quiet. Eagle? No. Hawk? No. Falcon?

The bird settled on a tree branch and finally my brain — in my defense, it was early, before coffee — put together the flight, the time of day, the size of the bird, its silhouette on the tree branch, and the calls of Whoa-whoa-whoa-whooooo that I was hearing and said, “Owl.”

Actually, it was more like my brain said, “Owl. Owl, owl, owl, owl, OWL!” I’ve seen them in captivity and I’ve seen them in photographs and once or twice, I’ve seen one in the wild from a far distance when someone else has pointed it out to me, but this was my first real close-up of a wild owl. And then another one flew by, and the first one joined it and they tried a different tree. I tried to follow them, but they moved again, out of the campground and deeper into the fenced-off forest that surrounds the campground, and I resumed walking my dog. But my morning no longer felt prosaic and dusty, but a little bit magical.

Owls are cool.

In other news, I’ve been having the most amazing time writing. Not, alas, writing Grace. But approximately 16 days ago, I got impatient and frustrated with myself and I decided that every day — every single, solitary day — I would write 1000 words of fiction. Not careful polished words, not words where plot and characterization mattered, not words that built to something, that were part of some larger whole, just… words. Quick sketches. Snippets of scenes. Bits and pieces of story. But a thousand of them every day.

I missed one day, because it was a moving day. That was the day I left Trimble Park and spent the night in my dad’s driveway, so it included cleaning and organizing, drying and stowing the kayak, loading up the camper, and then much sociability. Apparently I just didn’t even think about writing that day. But every other day for the past two weeks, I have written 1000 words and wow, I have been having so much fun with them! There is something about the freedom to write terrible words, the joy of pointless words, that has let me get madly creative. Most of the words have been starts to stories, world-building that goes nowhere, but I’ve had magic and vampires and dramatic confrontations, children of the gods and immortal courts and SO. MUCH. FUN.

I’m trying not to stress about the future. A writer who only starts things and never finishes them is really never going to earn a living, even if she’s trying to subsist on ramen noodles and other people’s driveways. And I’m still working on Grace every day, even though what mostly seems to happen is that I have a great time writing for a few hours and then grimly open the Grace file about mid-afternoon and stare at it until I can escape into feeding and walking the dogs. But yesterday I actually had some Grace insight and my 1000 words of fiction included several hundred on Grace, so maybe today…

Weather report

17 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in Grace, Randomness, Recipes, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

I parked in this parking-lot campground seven days ago and I haven’t left it since. I ought to be going totally stir-crazy — I haven’t even spoken to another person in the past week, apart from the occasional hello to a passing stranger — but I’m really not. Every day the weather report says that it’s going to be cloudy and rainy and every day it’s actually mostly sunny instead. That’s sort of representative of my mood, too. I feel like I should be bored, but I’m quite content.

I keep thinking that I’m going to need to go to the grocery store, because I’m going to run out of food, but then I keep making up something new from what I have. Yesterday, I had leftover pancake batter that was too liquid. It was the last remnants of the box of gluten-free pancake mix and not quite enough mix to balance out the single egg that needed to be added. Since it was going to be crepe-like, I made it savory — I added green onion and cilantro, then topped it with hot sauce and rolled it up. I tried to convince myself that it didn’t violate my “no complicated meals” rule and it really didn’t — it was leftovers! — but making something interesting and delicious out of remnants is so satisfying. Today, I still have two apples, some cheese, some salad greens, a cucumber, eggs… I even still have some of my precious gluten-free chocolate chip cookies left. Yeah, so today will still not be the day I go to the grocery store. Maybe tomorrow.

I’ve mostly stuck to my only knitting and writing principle. I did give myself a book on Saturday night, but I’d done great work during the day, so it felt justified. Yesterday was not so great — only 700 words — but I have high hopes for today. And since I have nothing interesting to blog about — really, I wrote about the weather? — I’m going to get back to the words that I’m really working on. Favorite lines from yesterday… dang, all the good ones are too spoiler-y. But good words were written!

Favorite non-spoiler-y lines from the weekend (brought back from a previous version, I think):

Grace crossed her fingers again. “I’ll do that.”

She shouldn’t lie to her brother. But it served him right. He shouldn’t be such a pain in the ass.

 

 

Vero Beach

13 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by in Bartleby, Grace, Pets, Travel, WIP, Zelda

≈ 2 Comments

I’m attempting to bore myself into writing. So far… eh, it might be working, but if so, it’s going slowly. Maybe by Monday I’ll have made some real progress.

I’m staying at the same campground for ten whole days. And not a beautiful or fun or inspiring campground — a parking lot campground. In fact, when I first got here, I thought it was creepy as hell. I wasn’t sure I was going to stay even for two days, much less ten. The next day (aka yesterday) I realized the creepiness — a general impression of a ramshackle, disheveled ghost town — was the result of the hurricane. It’s actually been sort of fun to watch them clean it up, one stretch after another going from debris-strewn to neat and tidy.

Plus there is a lovely huge fenced field labeled a dog park. I’ve been working steadily during the past eleven weeks on improving the dogs’ stays and recalls and a big space gives them a chance to really practice. Alas, status quo remains: Z is a rocket scientist and B has absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. I tell Zelda to stay and she sits and trembles and waits as I get farther and farther away, until finally I turn and point at the ground and she barrels toward me at joyous hyper speed, her ears trailing behind her, as if she actually thought I might leave her behind. B, on the other hand, bounces along two steps after me no matter what I say or do. But hey, eight more days in this park gives us a lot of time to practice.

Especially because I’m trying really hard to not let myself do anything but write or knit. No reading, no television, no internet browsing. Walking dogs and any form of exercise, okay. Eating, yes (obviously!); planning and cooking elaborate meals, no. I’ve given myself permission to write anything so I’ve written lots of personal babble, but I’ve also done plenty of staring at Grace. And enormous amounts of daydreaming. I wish more of it was daydreaming about Grace, but at least some of it will work its way into future stories. I love lines of thoughts like “People who feel rejected do stupid things: if Fen felt rejected, I wonder what she would do? If you had magic and felt rejected, hmm…” And off my brain goes. It’s so nice to feel like my daydreaming might be useful.

My sister tells me that I write about Z a lot and rarely about B. I’m not actually sure that’s true but just in case she’s not the only one who wants to know how they’re doing with the traveling lifestyle…

B loves it madly. He is more energetic, more rambunctious, happier and bouncier than he has ever been. He gets adored in campgrounds: all small children instinctively gravitate to him and he takes their attention and sticky hands as his due. He has entirely stopped hiding under furniture and in closets, perhaps partially because there aren’t a lot of places to hide in Serenity, but he doesn’t even try anymore. Instead, he cuddles up next to me and suggests I pet him. And he’s looking great, too. People have commented that he’s lost weight and he might have, but he also just seems sleeker and shinier and healthier. And happier. In Massachusetts, I very confidently said, “B doesn’t play,” just as he tore across the room and grabbed a tennis ball ahead of Z before returning it to my uncle, tail wagging.

Z, on the other hand… I think she likes parts of it. She likes our morning walks. She likes exploring new places, sniffing new smells. But it also seems to stress her out more than I expected it to. She’s gotten even pickier about her food, often rejecting her kibble entirely, and she’s seriously clingy. She’s always been a very attached dog — the feeling is mutual, I’m very attached to her, too — but her level of worry that I might disappear entirely seems to have increased. As long as she’s touching me, she’s calm, but she seems more high-strung and anxious than she used to be. Her separation anxiety isn’t manifesting as destructiveness, thankfully, but it’s hard to leave her. Although now that I’m analyzing this, she has adjusted to Serenity as home. She’s fine about being left in Serenity now. She’s just not fine about being left in other people’s houses, which I’ve had to do because it’s been too hot to leave her in the van when I can’t run the AC. Hmm, so I just need to go to colder climates to keep the dog happy. Works for me. 🙂

But not until I finish writing Grace, so I had best get back to it!

Head hopping

25 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by in Grace, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

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One of the “rules” of fiction-writing that I learned while A Gift of Ghosts was getting critiqued at critiquecircle.com was that you should pick a point-of-view character and stay, absolutely consistently, in their point-of-view. Don’t show thoughts of other people, don’t show actions that they can’t see, don’t mention knowledge that they don’t have. (Critique Circle was extremely useful for me, so don’t take this a criticism of the site, please. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants useful feedback on their own writing.)

I wish I had never learned that rule.

It’s a good rule, actually. Since then I’ve read a number of works by beginning writers where head-hopping makes the narrative hard to follow and confusing. And it’s enormously helpful when writing description or setting a scene to be able to focus on what your POV character would notice or care about or feel. I stopped getting stuck on writing descriptions when I got better at remembering to think about what the POV character cares about and to use scene-setting as an opportunity to develop character. And I’m fairly sure my descriptions got a lot better, too.

But it’s also really limiting. I’ve been stuck on Grace (I know, I know, you’ve heard this so many times!) so I’ve been reading and revising early chapters, trying to figure out where this story could go. Should go. Is going? I was close to deciding to give up on her again, because even getting an ending — a good ending, a romantic ending, a charming ending! — wasn’t getting me through TO the ending. But there’s so much in it that’s fun. Their first kiss is just great. And Grace is a riot — pragmatic and romantic, efficient and flustered — she might not work for everyone, but I love her.

But I realized about six chapters in that flowing between points-of-view, not just switching at scene or chapter breaks, but actually flowing from one point-of-view character to another, would really help the narrative. All the points where it’s confusing are times when switching to Dillon for a while and seeing out of his eyes would make everything so much simpler. And most of the fun belongs to Grace and Noah, but most of the tension belongs to the ghosts. Right now, it feels like it seesaws between fun chapters and tense chapters, and if I blended — no, head-hopped, if I head-hopped — it would be much easier to keep both the fun and the tension going at the same time.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with this realization. NOT go back and start Grace over. And not revise the whole thing either. But I think I’m going to start breaking the rule about no head-hopping and write what I want to write, where I want to write it, focusing on what makes the story easier for me to tell. And if it gets confusing, well, I’ll confront that issue when I get there. Words on pages are a lot easier to fix than words that don’t exist.

Writing this reminded me that back in October I was thinking that POV was my problem with this book. I did get freer with POV after that, but not within scenes — I stuck to switching POV characters using breaks. I wonder if I’d started head-hopping back then if I’d be done now? And that’s not a useful thought so I’m not going to pursue it. But someday soon I’m going to get back to writing 1000 words a day, whether they’re good or bad, and I really hope that eventually those words add up to a story I feel good about.

Meanwhile, a few lines that were alone almost enough to keep me writing yesterday:

“You can’t escape destiny with a to-do list, Grace,” Lucas said.
Grace gave him a cold stare. “Perhaps you can’t, but I certainly intend to.

Yoga

06 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by in Grace, Reviews, WIP, Yoga

≈ 4 Comments

I haven’t been making it to yoga at the Y nearly as often as I would have liked. Partly that was motivation: with C gone, it was harder to get out of the house at the right times. Partly it was bad planning — I kept intending to go to evening yoga instead of morning yoga so that I wouldn’t be so tired in the afternoon that I didn’t write. But then I’d forget or be busy and miss the evening class. Last month, though, my favorite yoga teacher left the Y. And I knew that given my future plans, I’d be needing to come up with another solution if I wanted to keep yoga in my life.

So question one: did I want to keep yoga in my life? Easy answer: yes. As with any exercise, I struggle to get motivated. I don’t love pushing my body and it’s always easier to just sit and do nothing. But yoga enriches my life, brings me a sense of peace, helps me feel stronger and more competent, doesn’t push me harder than I want to go (hanging out in child’s pose is always an option in classes at the Y), and has generally been an all-around positive for me. Even though I’ve been going weeks at a time without making it to a class and haven’t been choosing to practice at home, I knew I’d regret it if I just stopped.

Voila, yogadownload.com. Holy cow, this place is a bargain! I didn’t want to only stream classes because I know my future life is not going to be friendly to streaming (mobile data plans are expensive and limited) so I bought the $90 elite membership, which gives me a year of free downloads of their own classes and streaming episodes from their content partners.

So many classes! So many options! So many choices to work any part of your body or to have whatever kind of yoga experience you’re looking for! I keep winding up downloading more than I can feasibly do because I’ll be looking for a class that fits one idea and I’ll see so many that interest me that I wind up with three or four. Dorm-Room-Yoga (to see if it could be future RV yoga), Moon Salutations (because it was short), Sunset Flow and Night, Night, Don’t Sleep Tight (because it was the evening), Yoga Break for Writer’s Block… I’m downloading ALL the yoga.

And so far the classes have been great. Clear videos, good teachers, reasonable expectations. There have definitely been moments where I have to pause and try to figure out what the instructor is doing and a couple times that I’ve been like, haha, isn’t that cute, NO!, to poses that abused my knees more than they could bear, but I am without question going to get my money’s worth from that $90. I’ve done yoga three days in a row, two classes on Saturday, and the reason I’m writing about it right now is mostly because when I woke up this morning, thinking about what I needed to do today and what I wanted to do today, yoga was at the top of my list. Yay! My Future Me is going to be very grateful to Present Me for being willing to include more exercise and stretching in our life.

Anyway, if you’ve ever been interested in learning more about yoga, but group classes seemed too ambitious or you didn’t want to over-commit, yogadownload offers some free classes or you can pay by the class or package if you don’t want to commit to a subscription. That said, the Elite membership is really a bargain.

In other news, possibly more exciting, I — for the first time ever — found an ending for Grace and Noah. I’ve had an ending for the book, a place where I thought it would close, and I’ve sort of had a scene in mind for Grace and Noah, but one of the reasons I’ve just been wallowing around in this closing third act for so long is that I didn’t see and couldn’t get to a HEA or even HFN (happy-ever-after/happy-for-now) ending to the romance. I think I found it on Saturday. Still not there, but it’s like sighting land at the end of an ocean voyage that’s been taking forever. So my other goal for the day — write lots of Grace! Get myself to that ending!

Future Self

23 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Grace, Personal, Therapy

≈ 5 Comments

I read a truly brilliant comment on reddit on Saturday.

I consider reddit a vice, unhealthy on a regular basis, best avoided, but with a lure that makes it ever so appealing on a slow Saturday evening. It’s not the worst vice in the world, pretty far from it, really, but I do try to stay away. 99% of the time on reddit, I leave feeling the same kind of vague nausea that eating too much junk food creates. Like I should rethink my life choices if I’m wasting my time that way. But 1% of the time, I read something truly inspiring. On Saturday, it was this comment on Non-Zero Days.

You should go read it, really. I cannot do justice to its splendor. Partially because I couldn’t bring myself to use capital letters like he did or swear like he did, but also because the flavor of the comment is perfect for the advice within the comment.

My favorite part of the advice, though, is Rule 2: Be grateful to the 3 yous. Ever since I read it, I’ve been thinking about Future Me and how to be nice to her and it’s such a lovely way of providing perspective in my days. Some of it is obvious: that cookie that looks so appealing? Future Me would be so grateful to Past Me for not eating any gluten today. Some of it is a little less obvious: Future Me will definitely appreciate it if Present Me unloads the dishwasher before I start piling dishes in the sink, instead of only after I have a pile of them. And then there’s the big picture stuff: how grateful to Present Me will Future Me be if I actually get better about flossing my teeth? Huh, probably pretty grateful, especially given what a minimal effort flossing really is.

But I’m also trying to take care of Present Me. I got reminded of the second half of the serenity prayer recently, which begins, “Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time;”. It’s so easy for me to get lost in worry about the future, so natural for me to spend my time wandering in mental circles of anxiety. But stopping, taking a breath, sitting on the lanai and admiring the bamboo… it feels so much better. And worrying about the future doesn’t actually help Future Me. Yes, I need to take care of her, but I don’t need to try to live her life. I’ll get there when I get there.

My backyard neighbor has lined the entire back of the fence with bamboo. It’s really tall, at least fifteen feet, maybe even taller and so beautiful. One stalk has managed to spring up on my side of the fence and it’s leaning precariously. But it sways in the wind and light filters through the leaves, and the colors are so perfect, yellows and deep greens. I think Future Me will probably have to chop down the stalk at some point, but Present Me thinks it’s lovely. bamboo picture This picture doesn’t do it justice, because I don’t know how to take a picture of light with my phone, but I’m posting it anyway to remind myself.

So this is what I’m trying to do this week: Be grateful to Past Me for her good choices, forgive her for her less good choices; take care of Present Me and live in her time; and do nice things for Future Me. Fortunately, Future Me would really, really, really like it if I could finish this book and move on to writing A Precarious Balance, so I’m hoping for lots of good writing. Happy Monday!