Home Archive by category "Bloggish Things" (Page 4)

Category: Bloggish Things

Thoughts, essays, and comments from the writers of Turtleduck.

Another August Survived

Almost, anyway. Two more days. I got this. Is it silly to say I’ll miss it? As busy and draining and wild as it is, I do love the rush of August. I wouldn’t mind doing it twice a year. No, that’s not true. That would throw me off so much. Like anything else, a school year has a rhythm, and each season brings its own challenges. August ends, we settle into September, and boom! It’s October. Fall break and the scramble to get things done while the classrooms are empty. Many of the great plans from the beginning of the year aren’t working, so rearranging and rethinking are in order. Not to mention fixing all the things we’ve been getting by with–new holes in the walls, old glitches in the heating in that one classroom…and then we’re back, and it’s second quarter, and holy CATS how is it nearly Thanksgiving break?? I certainly should be used to the rhythm of the school year by now. It’s hard for me to believe, but I’ve been working in schools for over twenty years. Many times I’ve said that I don’t know how people work in regular offices. How do you cope without regular incursions of the small and squirmy? Do you just…not have swearing teens stomp through your office demanding that their parent be called because that woman is traumatizing them? How do you manage week after week in which no parent shows up with a baby sibling to coo over??…

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So…how’s the Bad Poetry Project Going, Erin?

Well, I am glad you asked! Seems like a good time to give you all an update. But first, do you know that I started the Bad Poetry Project three years ago? Mama mia, where did the time go? I have been writing poetry like a mad thing. Yes. More than fiction, to be honest. (I’m up to 11,000 words of fiction this year, which isn’t too bad considering everything, but I was hoping for more. So I’ll be working on that, too.) Poetry is easier because it’s quick, it’s efficient, and there’s a set beginning and ending. Plus, I can sit here and pound out a poem while doing my work. So it lends itself to being squeezed into pockets of time better than fiction. Not that I like it better, per se. Just that it’s been easier as of late. So, yeah. More poems. I’ve also been using Instagram prompts, which have been so useful, because sometimes I’ll start with a nebulous idea of…something, but I’ll have no idea where or how to start. So I’ll just be like…spinning my wheels. Prompts give me a place to start it ….a leaping off point. I collect them every month from poets who regularly post them, then mine them for inspiration later. It’s very effective. I’m still writing in Esperanto, also, which has been a blast. But …drum roll please…I’ve started submitting my poems to literary magazines! Yes! I’ve taken the plunge! I haven’t done this in over twenty years,…

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Imposter Imposter Syndrome?

Hidey-ho, friends. Pay no attention to what day of the week it is. Let’s talk about Imposter Syndrome. The Oxford dictionary describes it as “the persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one’s own efforts or skills.” Writers run into this periodically, even famous, best-selling authors. Not necessarily about works of the past, but current works. “Oh, sure,” one might say, “that book is great, but this new book is trash, I’m a hack, it was pure luck that I have gotten anywhere,” etc. But what I’ve found is…sometimes that feeling is justified? There have been times where I have written something that has felt like pulling teeth, that feels pedantic and repetitive and uninspired. It feels bad. Just bad. And while most stories do go through a “this is bad and I am a hack” phase (normally in the middle somewhere), sometimes something is truly bad, and when you give it to your betas or your critique group, they do come back and say “oh, no, you’re right, something’s missing, this isn’t working.” It’s not Imposter Syndrome if you’re right, and it actually is bad, right? So if you’d asked me last week if I was a good judge of whether my own writing was actually bad, or just me going through the tough phase of the story, I would had said I was pretty good at telling the difference. However, I spent the last weekend pulling apart…

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What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Last time, I mentioned an upcoming road trip and dance camp (summer camp for adults!). Well, I’m back, and have just wrapped up a week of staycation immediately following that. By the time you read this, I’ll be back at work, le sigh. Dance camp was…well. It was awesome, but it was also a lot. I spent much of the time trying to manage the heat and humidity (no AC!) and deal with all the peopling (lovely people, but…). I’ve gotten a lot more sensitive to both as I get older, for various reasons. I promised myself not to feel badly about skipping out as much I needed to, and it was interesting to notice myself developing strategies and finding a rhythm as the week went on. Some favourite memories: And I managed not to get heat stroke, sunburn, or *ahem* any sort of illness, thank lork. I got home a week ago Saturday and spent my staycation (in between long walks with my spouse) gradually unpacking and making baby steps towards getting the house in order. It doesn’t look much different, yet, but I’ve had the energy to push through mental blocks on a number of objectively minor things that have needed doing for a while. So I’d say the goal of R&R was a success. Now back to real life in 3…2…1…

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Even Happier Camper

Did I think June’s camping trip was amazing? Well, yes, I did, and yes, it was. July, though? July blew it right out of the water. Okay, it’s not really a competition. And also, I should go back a bit. February, 2021. I’d meant to go see what camping around Mount Graham was like for a while, but never got it done. Then I found the cabins at Roper Lake, and spent a weekend looking at the beauty of Mount Graham, learning my way (a little) around the area. One day heading back from maybe breakfast to the lake, we took a detour and drove up Mount Graham a bit. It’s a steep narrow mountain road with lots of switchbacks, though, and I was driving a 14-year-old Toyota Corolla and couldn’t remember if my tires had been inspected recently. And there was ice. I decided I would absolutely like to camp up there, but for that day I turned around before we reached any campgrounds. I had Plans. I was going to camp So Much. But Life Finds a Way–to smack the carp out of all one’s plans. I didn’t make it happen. This year, though, I’ve been camping on Mount Lemmon, and it’s becoming more familiar. Load the car, buy the food, buy the ice, go. It’s not so hard. We went in May. We went in June, and I wanted to go in July. June on my beloved Mount Lemmon, though, had been right on the edge of…

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Lessons from the Alleyman’s Tarot

So, my latest obsession is the Alleyman’s Tarot, which is a Tarot deck I backed on Kickstarter last year. It’s a bit different than the usual Tarot deck in that it’s not standard — it has the standard cards in it, but it has even more — non-standard cards and suits. It’s literally made up of cards from different Tarot decks. A patchwork or “magpie” deck, as it’s being called. It funded at over one million dollars and made history. And I am in love! It’s a bit tricky, I will admit, as I have to look up the non-standard cards in the guidebook when they come up. And sometimes I can’t tell what’s what even with the standard cards. They are all different. There’s no unifying theme or any rhyme or reason to it. It just…is. And that’s the beauty of it, I think. It forces you to expand your ideas of “normal” Tarot, of a “normal” reading, and what these cards are telling you. And there is a myth about the Alleyman, too, which I have not, regretfully, dug into yet. But apparently it’s really, really cool. He goes around collecting cards and gives them away to people. A singer was recently visited by a man who could have been the Alleyman…who gave her the exact Tarot card she needed to see on that night. The power of Tarot and universe, yo. So lately I’ve been tweeting #advicecards from the Alleyman’s deck and have been having fun. And…

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Creating a Serial

Hi friends! Hope you’re doing well! I’m not, we got hit by a TORNADO what the hell, but we persevere anyway. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice you’re getting a section of Across Worlds with You each month. There will be 7-10 parts in total (not sure exactly where I’m breaking it up yet) so we’re good for the rest of the year, and then, in theory, it’ll get consolidated and released in book form. This is the fourth serial I’ve done. Hidden Worlds (one of our launch titles, recently received a 5-star review from Readers’ Favorite) started as a serial, many many years ago, and I had a scifi one that I wrote for a prompt community over the course of 10 years. (That one is a mess and will never see the light of day, unless I am very bored one day and feel the need to rip a project to shreds.) Last year I had Deep and Blue here, if you’d like to read over that, and now we’re onto Across Worlds with You. I actually outlined Across Worlds with You something like seven years ago. I’ve found that, sometimes, it’s better to outline a story (or at least write down important parts) even when you know you’re not going to write it right then. Brains are stupid; they forget stuff all the time. I don’t know how many stories or parts of stories I’ve lost over the years because I was like “Oh, yes, that’s amazing,…

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Re-entry, Part 5

[CW: pandemic, mental health] It turns out there’s no clean way to exit a pandemic. Not for the world at large, and especially not for individuals who have been deeply affected for one reason or another, like me. So I’m still edging back into a new kind of normal life, still taking steps and hesitating to take other steps. I’m still wearing a mask on public transit and sometimes other places indoors, gradually getting looser (and going out to restaurants more). I have some travel coming up later this month and don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize it, but after that I plan to push myself gently to drop the mask more often. Though I have to say I don’t miss the constant colds and occasional flus…so I intend to keep wearing it on public transit. The travel I have planned will be my first contra dance trip, first non-family trip, and first cross-border travel since February 2020 (let’s just say we were very very lucky that time). It’s a road trip and then a week-long dance camp (!!!) at a summer camp venue in MA. The pandemic precautions for the camp are pretty robust, and people mostly stay on-site all week, so I felt safer going there than to a typical urban dance weekend with everyone eating in restaurants and such. Plus, it will satisfy my annual craving to get out of the city once summer hits. In the meantime, though, I’ve been gradually increasing my in-office…

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Happy Camper

So I probably shouldn’t even say this, but camping without my bio-kid is a lot quieter than camping with them. Shh. Don’t tell. Last weekend was spent in a lovely campsite, overlooking a canyon and shaded by evergreens. No one in my campsite was complaining, for most of the weekend. It was the most relaxing, peaceful, joy-bringing experience I think I’ve had in a very long time. Except that I did miss bio-kid. Negative or not (they are) I do love that kid. In their place, though, there was a chipmunk. We watched him explore the campsite with a great deal of cheek–until he hopped up into the bear box to investigate the fudge I bought at the general store, and I had to leap to its defense. I meant to take a lot of pictures. I meant to walk down to the possible-creek. (Water flowed in it last month. Does it still? I meant to find out.) Here is one picture. I meant to do a lot of things. Instead I mostly just sat vegetating in the beauty, and/or reading Howl’s Moving Castle. That is such a freaking good book. So wonderfully written. Did you know Dianna Wynne Jones was a student of J.R.R. Tolkien? Neil Gaiman wrote a lovely blog post about her, after she passed. Anyway. One of the many things I meant to do while camping was write my own blog post. As you may tell by this weak and also late effort, that didn’t happen…

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When the Muse Wakes Up

So it’s been a month and four days since Hailey’s passing, and we’re still grieving. We’re adjusting, little by little. I’ve been working a lot and trying to write, as I always do when I’m coping with something I’m hurting over. But this time…it’s like my muse suddenly woke up from a long slumber. Or, I just got tired of not writing. One of those two. Or both. And there is so much I am trying to do now, it’s not even funny: ~Poetry submissions to contests and literary magazines (online), often requiring revisions to existing poems or writing new ones, as they usually don’t accept poems published on social media (and most of my newer stuff is on Instagram). ~My short story for the TDP anthology, theoretically due next month, on its third rewrite. I scrapped what I was doing, rethought it, pulled Tarot cards on some things, and wrote 3,000 words on it already. Most I’ve written on one project all year. What?! It also spawned a SERIES IDEA which I am contemplating. ~Thinking about my poetry chapbook, Eterne (Esperanto for “Eternally”) — I wasn’t planning on publishing any more chapbooks, buuuuut I have so many new poems that it just makes sense. Already bought a premade cover. Just need to, write more, organize it, all that stuff. ~My Radish erotic contemporary romance — experiment to see how that goes (it’s a serial website similar to Kindle Vella) and how writing contemporary romance works for me. I’m about…

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