Home Articles posted by Siri Paulson (Page 4)

2021 at Turtleduck Press: What Just Happened?

*looks around wildly* Was that a year? Or was it a millennium? Did anyone see where it went? Or are we still living in it? WILL WE EVER ESCAPE? *starts humming “Hotel California”* Regardless, the numbers on the virtual calendar seem to have changed, so here we are again, trying to take stock of, as Kit put it, a liminal year. In 2021, KD saved our necks and pulled off the astounding feat of not only writing a book during a pandemic (writers tend to be sensitive, anxious overthinkers, which does not lend itself to creativity during an ongoing crisis) but writing a good book during a pandemic. May the Best Ghost Win is a Halloween novel, but can be read any time of the year if you’re a lover of haunted houses, reality TV shows about ghosthunting, magical secrets, found family, and banter (all the banter!). We also kept writing shorter work: an ongoing ocean-based SF serial by Kit (starts here) a ghost-story serial by Erin (starts here) poetry by me (here and here) and Erin (here) and more! And as always, we continued our weekly blog posts, which are slightly easier than stories because we writers are used to processing our thoughts through words, and blog posts don’t require higher-order thinking skills or the careful coordination of right brain and left brain. (Usually.) Still, they do require some crafting, so we’re grateful to you for taking the time to read them. We made it through the deca-um, year.…

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The World’s Tiniest NaNoWriMo

Last time I mentioned that I was going to attempt the “world’s tiniest NaNoWriMo”. I wrote it casually, offhandedly, to avoid the notice of the “No you can’t” voices. No, you’re too busy; you’re too stressed; the pandemic is still taking up too many brain cycles; you haven’t written any fiction since well before the pandemic began. That was all true…but I was determined to try. I picked a work in progress, a lighthearted fantasy novel that I had started for NaNoWriMo 2019. I’d written 20,000 words that November (an official NaNo is 50K words, and most novels are between 80K and 120K, depending on the genre). I’d written only a few thousand words on it since then, but I had an outline to guide me, and I thought I could manage to pick up from where I’d left off. I set the “tiniest possible goal”, 100 words a day, which has worked for me before when trying to restart the flow of creativity after a writing drought. (Those happen to me regularly.) Writing that slowly is not a great way to get a coherent story, especially novel length, but sometimes there’s nothing else to be done. Then I did the smartest thing: almost every evening I went and hung out with my online writer friends, and we challenged each other to “word wars”. You both start writing on your own projects at an agreed-upon time, and stop when the timer you’ve set goes off (usually 10 or 15 minutes,…

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A Piece of You

by Siri Paulson Your “hand” arrived today. Okay, okay, the haptic feedback glove that you programmed at our home on Mars arrived today. Strange to think how many months it’s been since you touched it, Marisol, and yet the pressure of its fingers on mine feels exactly as if you were here with me. The glove is supposed to make me feel less lonely – just me, myself, and I, Sophie Runningdeer-Lopez, out here in this tin can of a communications array for another year, with the Sun so far away it’s just another star. Funny thing is, I was doing just fine until it arrived. I have my embroidery and my book-reader, and I talk to the techs operating the next array over in each direction – except Karl, who insists on misgendering me – which gives me several ongoing conversations even if there’s a half-hour lag on each. Of course, conversations hum inaudibly through the array all around me; the irony of my solitude is staggering, she says dryly. It was easier when I could just put you in a little mental box, and pull you out every once in a while to think about our life together, and then shut you away again. But you would want me to use the glove, even if it wasn’t required for all solitary workers. I imagine you with the holographic sensors covering your skin, thinking of me as you went methodically through all the motions that the glove recorded. Methodical…

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Re-entry, Part 2

You’ve got me for a second time this month because KD is busy putting the finishing touches on her awesome haunted-house ghost-chaser found-family novel, which will be out just in time for Halloween! (Are you excited? I’m excited.) [CW: pandemic, mental health] I blogged a couple of months ago about facing down the prospect of re-entry, and enough has shifted since then that I thought it would be worth revisiting… Since getting my second shot in June, I’ve seen friends a couple of times a month (not that far off from the frequency in my pre-COVID social life, except that pre-COVID there was dancing, which meant seeing a lot more friends each time). I’ve been to restaurants a few times, either on patios or in very well-ventilated spaces or with very few other patrons. I’ve stayed in a hotel. I even got to see (and hug!) a few family members I don’t live with. I’ve gone out to run errands more often. I’ve been to the mall once or twice. I’ve been to the dentist, the hairdresser, the optometrist. It’s gradually getting easier and less weird to be around people again. November, though, will be the big test. I’ve been working from home since March 13, 2020 — quite happily, aside from this whole pandemic thing. But my dayjob is calling people back into the high-rise office one day a week (which, for me, also involves a long public transit ride). I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t causing…

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This Time, I Will Breathe

It’s that time again, friends – the time when I come back from vacation vowing that Now Things Will Be Different. This time, in my day-to-day life I will get outside more and move my body more (like I did during vacation…we walked 8 km / 5 miles upriver one day, and went kayaking downriver the next day!) and get on top of all those niggling appointments that need to be made (the kicker is when you get them made and then they spawn MORE appointments). This time, I will make my house feel more like the hotel I just came back from – calming, nicely decorated and nicely lit, not stuffed with random crap – and take care of all (or at least some) of the little things that have been bugging me. Oh, and this time, I will make sure to relax more. Right. You can see the problem. The goal, of course, is to stop feeling like vacation is a precious breath of air before I go under again. I’m not drowning, exactly, but I am swimming very hard. My day job is the lake I’m trying to cross, with a shoreline that seems very far away and is always moving. The pandemic is a constant undertow that makes everything ten times harder (mentally/emotionally, that is; I’m lucky that my work isn’t directly affected, except for having gone virtual). Bad news (pandemic-related or otherwise) is the slap of a wave in the face. Weekends are when I…

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The Anti-Blog Post

It’s finally happened, friends. It’s been so long since I’ve written any fiction, or even poetry, that I’ve also forgotten how to blog. Not that there’s nothing in my brain. Oh no, it’s full of all sorts of things — my ever-growing to-do list at the day job, whether my broken sandal can be fixed, when it will feel safe to fly cross-country to visit my family again, how to rescue my tomato plants from the various ailments they’re suffering from this year, the various comfort viewing and comfort reading I’m doing, whether my bathroom ceiling fan is on the verge of breaking down or just needs a good cleaning, various appointments I’m putting off making because they’re not urgent, just how perfect the weather has to be before I’ll go for a long walk, whether any of my fall/winter clothes still fit and how much I should buy to replace them if my size is still changing, what we should name KD’s upcoming spooky book. The problem is that there’s no narrative. No cohesive whole. Just a set of ping-pong balls ricocheting around and failing to get into phase. Maybe it’s because of the elephant in the room that we’re all trying not to think about too hard: nothing will ever be quite the same as it was before, but when will normal things feel safe again? Will they ever? Maybe it’s because existential anxiety on top of everyday busyness is not conducive to creativity, even though we’re all…

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Furry House Guest Incoming

This week’s excitement around here is that we’re getting ready to host our first house guest since the Before Times. Oh, and she’s a cat. See, friends of ours are traveling out of province (they’re less risk-averse than I am, and case numbers are still low across Canada even with Delta), and for various reasons it wasn’t practical to cat-sit at their place. So she’s coming to stay with us during their trip. Making things extra interesting is that nobody in my household has ever had a cat, dog, or rodent for a pet. I’ve certainly interacted with plenty of cats, courtesy of many friends and family members who have them, but I’ve never taken care of one. Thankfully, the folks I know who do have cats have been happy to give advice. So we’ve been cleaning under all the furniture and securing our one houseplant and taking stock of breakables. My home office is still a mess, but less so than usual (as I make glacial headway on the piles), and anyway I’m told that having lots of potential hiding places is actually a good thing. My husband is excited; he’s hoping this experience will be a gateway for him to talk me into permanent pet-ownership. (Not with this particular cat, of course. I rather think our friends’ little boy would like her back.) My in-laws are skeptical; they grew up in India, where cats live on the street and get fed if you’re feeling generous. I’m anxious, but…

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Re-entry

[CW: COVID, mental health, depression, anxiety] Last spring, we watched COVID coming. First it was very far away, until suddenly it wasn’t anymore. First handwashing was enough, then it wasn’t and everyone was sent home (for certain values of “everyone”). Then it was a waiting game to see how bad the news would get here. Back then, I just…froze. (I’m a natural worrier anyway. I have a history of depression; I haven’t been diagnosed with anxiety, but I wouldn’t be surprised either.) My brain heard “pandemic” and went into hindbrain survival mode. Never mind that I’m not a health care worker, nor a front line worker, nor a hospitality worker watching my job or business evaporate. Never mind that I didn’t have any loved ones in long-term care. (I do have loved ones who are vulnerable for other reasons, though.) Never mind that I didn’t know anyone who died of it (until this year, but that’s another story). I’ll be honest: I spent more than a month barely functioning. Eventually I called my doctor and we tweaked some stuff and then I could function again, but it still wasn’t pretty. I turned into a workaholic instead (partly because my job got super busy right at the same time). I did manage to stay connected with friends online–multiple ongoing text chats, Zoom watch parties, Zoom yoga. Sometimes I didn’t feel like talking, but they understood. My mental health has been improving, mostly. But physically I became a hermit (to be fair,…

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Clothes Make the Woman…Maybe

Style is a way to say who you are without having to speak. —Rachel Zoe Clothing has been one of the banes of my existence. As a teen and young adult, I had no sense of fashion and didn’t know how to acquire one. It doesn’t help that this was the ’90s, or that I didn’t have the money to do a lot of experimenting (or the inclination for thrifting). So I spent a lot of time feeling awkward and out of the loop. Not just because of my clothes, of course; I just had the general sense that I’d missed an instruction manual somewhere. Despite all that, I managed to start a professional career in a real office (after being chastised by my temp agency for taking a backpack to an interview…and here we pause to acknowledge that white-collar dress codes are deliberately classist, racist, and exclusionary). I realized I had to learn how to “look the part,” so I bought style magazines and signed up for an online style guide subscription, which helped a lot in demystifying the world of personal style and how to put an outfit together. I went through a phase of trying to wear blazers, dress pants, and pencil skirts, and trying to figure out how to find office-appropriate shoes that would stay on and also not kill my feet. (I finally settled on flat mary janes.) (Insert rant about women’s shoes, office-appropriate women’s bags, women’s fashion in general, pockets, and so on.) As…

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Timelines

by Siri Paulson I am increasingly convinced that we are living in the wrong timeline the one the time traveler is supposed to come back and fix she was supposed to win he was meant to live we should have learned our lesson from the pandemic that almost was from that time we all messed up, or the other time, or the other one but she has taken a wrong turn in the multiverse he is fighting the pterodactyls stuck in the far future with the giant crabs intubated in some locked-down ward the portal dark and idle the time machine hidden and locked up tight waiting for the one with the knowledge who will never come to release it from its long and lonely wait or maybe they know not to come here maybe these are the years they always skip in their tours through the past maybe this is how things have to be if we want the shiny future we were promised long ago maybe we’re waiting for a rescue that will never come there’s no-one but us to mend the timeline to put things right one butterfly at a time we are all time travelers one second per second, one way only one day we’ll live in the future how it looks is up to us

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