All my life, I’ve been held back by fear – fear of failure, fear of injury, fear of the unknown. When I thought about it, I realized that most of the circumstances in my life that I don’t like are due to those fears. So, I decided that 2014 would be my Year of No Fear. I posted a manifesto recently. Fellow Turtleducker KD Sarge has joined me.
Being that we’re almost to Christmas, I thought I’d talk about Christmas traditions. We all have our own, some handed down through families, and others are from our spouses, or our spouses’ families. Or even some of them are brand new, but will be observed by many for years to come. When I was a kid, my family had traditions. As I look back on my childhood, I’ve realized how much I miss them.
Last year around Thanksgiving, I wrote about how grateful I was for my family. It is hard putting into words how amazing they are, but I tried. Today I will try again. I’d like to talk about my husband, who, when I talk about him online, I call “my beloved.” It started out as a way to keep my personal details private, but it has now grown into an actual name I call him.
In case you aren’t familiar with it, Bones is a medical/crime show centered around the character of Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist, who studies the bones of the dead to solve crime. The show is inspired by Kathy Reichs’s Temperance Brennan novels. The show is quite different from the novels, but no less good. I began watching it several years ago. In fact, I didn’t even like the first episode I watched! I’d read the books and was curious, but the episode did not move me. Then, some time later, I was looking for things for my Christmas List and decided to give it another shot. And I loved it. I loved it so much that I bought and watched the subsequent seasons until I was caught up, then began watching it live. For any Bones fans – what I’m about to talk about contains MAJOR spoilers up till last week’s episode. Read at your own risk.
Some time ago, I blogged about my love of languages and how I was learning Esperanto, Latin, Irish Gaelic, and Scottish Gaelic. And how I was refreshing myself on French. Then my eye problems started and I was focused on what little writing I could do. The language learning went by the wayside.
While I was writing a new scene for Grave Touched (the sequel to Fey Touched), one character made an offhand comment to another about “memory therapy.” I haven’t explored that yet, but since Grave Touched is science fantasy and set in a near-future Earth, I’m thinking “memory therapy” could mean erasing bad memories or something along those lines. Since the character being spoken to suffers from PTSD from brainwashing and torture, it would be something to consider…right?
Just a friendly reminder: we are looking for new members! If you have a polished manuscript of speculative fiction, we want to see it! We’re fun, we’re cool, we’re unique! So, camping. Some of my most precious memories of my family are of our camping trips. We did a lot of camping in the old days. My parents had a small trailer so we never tented it. And we’d go all over, most of the time with family, friends, or church members. While I was just wee thing back then, I still remember enough that the smell of campfire always brings me back. Always. It is said that scent is one of the strongest triggers of memory (this has been your useless factoid of the day. You’re welcome).
Yeah. So I’m on some pretty heavy meds for my eye, and I tend to get dizzy and loopy, so this should be interesting. I’m at a loss for anything to say about it, except I’ve got more tests coming up and a super dose of IV steroids next week. (Hey, I get three days off work. Gotta look at the positive).
So, after almost 3 months of not writing, I finally started writing last week. I wanted to go slow, no pressure, just to start getting in the daily routine again. Not writing for so long made me lose that spark that got me in front of the screen every single day. And it’s a scary thing when you have come to rely on something so much and suddenly, it’s gone. Suddenly, my moods were trending toward bad (on good days) and downright homicidal (on bad days). Everyone noticed this. And there was work stress I couldn’t handle without writing, so I was a bag of nerves for awhile. So I said, enough’s enough. I gotta start somehow. Even if it’s just 100 words. Something.
Due to some health issues, I’ve been forced to take a hiatus from writing. To most people, that wouldn’t sound like a bad thing. It could be a chance to recharge and rest after working so hard for a year to release my debut novel, Fey Touched. But for me, it is huge. Ginormous. Life-altering. Because apart from illness, surgery, and vacations, I have written every day for 9 years. It is so ingrained in me that I couldn’t imagine how I’d manage it. It was beyond me. I have, but not without bumps and a bit of muse-fueled insanity thrown in.