Et tu, Muse?

Hello friends. Have you ever gotten near to the end of a project, and all of a sudden every other project is super interesting? Or, in the case of my current brain, all of a sudden, there are new ideas everywhere. I’ve written more new things into my idea file in the last week than probably the last six months combined. Why do we do this? (Or maybe it’s just me?) While I’m close to the end of my revision (we’re firmly in Act 3 now) I still probably have at least a month more, maybe two. And that’s only going to get longer if I get distracted by every shiny thing my brain finds for me. And, holy cow, my brain is actively searching for shiny things. They’re everywhere. And you know that if I gave in and actually switched to one of these new projects, my brain would also give up on that one, or try to redirect me to something else, or decide now is an excellent time for a fanfiction hyperfixation. (oh no, I’m giving myself ideas.) Is this normal? I know other writing friends have this happen, but arguably no writer is normal, so this is a terrible litmus. If you too get distracted in the home stretch or find that you’re actively sabotaging yourself, what do you do to counteract it? My current technique is to tell myself that as soon as I finish my revision I’ll dedicate a month to chaos, where we…

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Building in Procrastination

Heya, friends! I hope everyone enjoyed Across Worlds with You! (And if you missed it, all nine parts are now available in the freebies section!) Here we are, mid-February, about a month and a half into the year (which is a little crazy if you think about it). Last month I talked about why I thought everyone tends to be so productive at the beginning of January as well as my goals for the year, which including adding in side goals in reading, art, and video games and whether or not I thought that was going to be a bad idea. And now that we’re six weeks in, I’m going to say–I think they were a good idea. I can’t always concentrate on my big project. I’m not sure anyone is actually capable of 100% focus on their main project at all times. I’m tired from work, or I only have ten minutes before I need to go do something, or my brain is just fried in general. What I found last year was that when I hit these times I tended toward binging YouTube or playing hours of Minesweeper or something along those lines, which was frustrating because I was not doing what I wanted to be doing and also wasn’t enjoying my time doing whatever it was I was doing instead. So what I’ve found with the addition of the side goals is that instead of defaulting to the dumbest thing possible when I can’t work up motivation,…

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Chaos and Snow

Good morning, friends. Look at me, posting when I am supposed to and early in the day (pay no attention to the fact that this month’s installment of Across Worlds with You was a week late, and purely because I spaced it completely, not because it wasn’t ready). Despite time being arbitrary and all that jazz we talked about last month, there is something a bit magical about January, isn’t there? A feeling of potential, that there’s so much that could be done this year. I think it lulls you into a false sense of security. Sure, you can get a ton done in January! You have plenty of free time! The holidays are behind you (though not completely behind me, as the Christmas tree still needs to be moved to the basement), there’s potentially a bunch of days off of work for less prep-intensive holidays, sometimes it’s below zero for days on end and the whole state gives up, things like that. Add in the general feeling from the cultural zeitgeist that you can do anything because it’s a new year, and it’s really no wonder that everyone crashes in February. That being said, I am having a great January. This, too, is a false sense of security. Because I can already see what I’ve done. Traditionally I set a bunch of goals–writing goals, reading goals, art goals, video game goals, health goals, etc. Last year I cut them all out except for a single writing goal (finish a…

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2024 Looms

Good afternoon, friends. It is so cold in my house that it’s hard to type, so that may be my cue to go elsewhere (and get coffee). I had such grand ideas for today, my friends. And then I got distracted by…I don’t even know. I went to the gym, came home and took a shower, read forty pages of a book (Guards! Guards! at the moment), and then…who knows. Something. Being cold, perhaps. I have a to do list app on my computer called Today, which is lovely because you put what you want to do on it, just for the day, and then it deletes everything so you start each day with a clean slate. I use it in conjunction with Todoist, which is my main to do program, because sometimes seeing what you’re behind on is only discouraging. HOWEVER I am getting ready to retire this particular computer because it’s ancient, so I did spend some time looking for a Today-like app to download onto my phone. Which didn’t work, I don’t think. I’m trying Microsoft To Do which in theory should only show me things due on the day I’m on, but we will have to wait until tomorrow to know for sure. If you know of one, let me know. All this is a very roundabout way of saying, oh my god, it’s almost the end of the year, when the hell did this happen, and how do I get it to stop. At this…

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Can We Not Have Drama

Good evening, friends, how are you doing? I’m mostly okay–I’ve worked on my revision every day for two weeks, which is probably a record in recent times. I’m making excellent progress! Hopefully. Or maybe not. Sometimes hard to tell in the middle of a revision whether things are getting better or just getting moved around. Everything would be going swimmingly if we could just have a little less drama, if you please. Why are humans like this? Why do people come along and see something and be like, “ah, yes, I’m going to ruin this”? The big drama of the week is the Nanowrimo drama. I’m not going to go into details, because it is upsetting and a pretty big deal, but you can definitely find stuff if you’re interested in that. And having Nano tarnished by this sort of thing is upsetting, because I, like many people in the writing community, have done Nano many times and feel a sort of nostalgia for it (even as we continue to do it). It’s kind of like having your childhood ruined. Aside from that, there’s been drama in the volunteer organization we do with our children. As happens more often than not, there’s one parent who has decided they know better than everyone else and is determined to yell and bully until everyone else gives up. Most of this parent’s ire is currently directed at my spouse due to a misunderstanding, and instead of acting like a functional human being, she’s…

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Playing Catch Up All the Time

Hey, friends, do you ever feel like you’re always catching up on things you should have done a while ago? Like, you can never start the day with a clean slate, because something’s already hanging over your head? Just me? Cool, cool. September is traditionally a busy month for me, and things–more things than normal–seem to get left by the wayside. So I spent today catching up on things–this blog post, some surveys for one of my kid’s schools, a bunch of important emails that I’ve been ignoring (still more of those to go, ugh), three emails worth of Moby Dick (I’m subscribed to Whale Weekly, though it’s not consistent on arrival), two chapters of a book for a book study, etc. It’s exhausting. My to-do list app has about six items in the red, and they’ve been there for about three weeks. What’s one to do? Is there a point where you abandon the things that haven’t gotten done? Change their due dates? Make sure you’re fitting in new things instead of always focusing on the past? I wasn’t one of those kids that was super eager to grow up, but I wasn’t against it. Little did I know adulting would be all never-ending to-do lists and eternal house repairs. Oh well. It is what it is. How are your Septembers going? Ready for spooky season? (Yay, spooky season!) Enjoying Across Worlds with You? Thoughts on the eternal drudgery of life?

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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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New Friend

Surprise! IT’S ME because I switched weeks with Siri. HaHA. (I have not been sleeping well and I think it’s starting to catch up to me. Does it show?) In the continuing saga of buying random crap in a sad and misguided attempt to improve my life, I have bought a new friend. (Well, technically I used a gift card from my birthday to buy a new friend. Is shopping therapy more or less affective if it’s not actually your money you’re using?) Anyway, here he is. Aw, look at that! He’s so happy to see you! OR NOT Anyway. I saw these advertised as tools to help neurodivergent children who might otherwise have difficulty properly displaying, communicating, or understanding their feelings. (They sell different expression combinations.) Now, I am not a neurodivergent child (that I am aware of) but they’re super cute and it also seemed like maybe I could use it as a writing tool. Hear me out. The project I’ve been working on has been a bit slow going, because I’ve been working on it forEVER and now it has emotional and mental baggage attached to it. And something that can help when you’re running into issues is designating a trigger object, whose basic use is to tell your brain that it is Writing Time and since the object is present it is time to Be Writing. So, I thought to myself, here is a trigger object I can use. It’s cute, it’s small, it’s distinctive. ALSO…

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I Bought a New Water Bottle

Hello, friends. I’m trying to take steps to become more healthy, and the first thing I’m doing (one thing at a time, so as to not overwhelm myself and to make sure I’m actually making new habits before adding new things) is working on my hydration. I tend to be a binge hydrator–not drink any water for hours and then drink a couple glasses at once–which makes me feel sick. Also, I’m likely not getting enough water in general. So, to take steps to remedy this, I bought a new water bottle. It looks like this: You’ve probably seen these before. I’ve been using it for two weeks now, and I’ve got to say, it’s working great. I’ve more or less stayed right where I’m supposed to be according to the markings every day, or if I’ve had to leave it for a few hours, I’m still aware of where I am for the day. And I do feel better. Like, just generally better. More energized. Better mood-wise. Less achy. Like my parts are well lubricated and working better. Step 2 is eating more vegetables, which I’m less sure about how to manage, but we’ll see. Anyway, I highly recommend regulating your water intake. I’ve seen such a good improvement in such a short time. Maybe after a month everything else will fix itself too. Thoughts on vegetables, friends? We normally have them with dinner (and hence sometimes with lunch, which is often leftovers) and I’ve been trying to eat…

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Why Does My Brain Hate Productivity?

Howdy, friends! How’s the new year treating you? We’re supposed to have a massive snowstorm starting tonight, so that’s fun, she said sarcastically. I think I told you guys this at some point, but at the end of 2021 I sat down with myself and had a heart to heart about what I was doing with my life, and I came out of that knowing that a lot of the things I’ve been working on for the last decade have been to either avoid or to justify a story I’ve been working on for literally ever. (Decades.) Because it’s scary, to put something you’ve put a lot of time and heart into, in case it fails. Because sometimes it’s hard to separate what you create from yourself, and if something you worked really hard on does badly, you can take it as a reflection of yourself. Anyway. I have, traditionally, set many different goals, normally on a monthly basis. Writing goals, drawing goals, reading goals, video game goals, workout goals. We’re talking, like, twenty goals per month. But what I’ve found, recently, is that I do these other goals instead of working on the above story, because hey, I’m being productive still! But I’m also still avoiding the main thing for the same reasons. So, for January 2023, I set just a single goal: work on my revision. Surely putting all my focus onto my main goal would make me do it, right? Well. I mean, I am working on…

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