Two months ago, I blogged in this space about my struggles with imposter syndrome – the sense that you’re faking it and everyone else is more capable than you. Two weeks ago, I attended a conference that was kind of eye-opening, and kind of healing. It wasn’t a writing conference. It was a gathering for organizers of English and American folk dance, my other current passion. I’ve been doing contra dance for about five years now, but hadn’t been involved in organizing until last fall, when a volunteer friend talked me into taking the tiniest step: helping out with the Facebook page. Then this conference came up, a five-hour drive away, and he talked me into going to that too. I took a lot of convincing – not because of the distance, but because of imposter syndrome. I’m not really an organizer, I said. I don’t know the issues, let alone the solutions. I don’t know what our local community has done in the past; I’m not even sure I know much about what we’re doing now. My friend finally convinced me that I didn’t have to know everything to deserve to be at the table. So I went.

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You will have heard by now that Leonard Nimoy is dead. I’ve been struggling with what to write, knowing that I wanted to write about him and Spock but not sure how. I discovered Star Trek (both TNG and TOS) at age 12, right around the time I entered school after homeschooling up to that point. Junior high school (middle school to you Americans) was…not an easy transition. I didn’t know pop culture or slang or teen humour. I was bookish, awkward, nerdy. Of course I thought I was the only one who felt unsure and out of place. Is it any wonder I fell hard for both Data and Spock?

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Have you heard of imposter syndrome? The fear that you’ve somehow achieved everything in your life by accident, and sooner or later everyone will realize you’re an imposter who knows nothing? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Somewhere along the line, I acquired a bad case of it, and I’ve never quite been able to shake it, despite all evidence to the contrary. It’s all about the stories (and lies) we tell ourselves, how we frame events, the themes and patterns we draw out (because we’re always looking for patterns and narratives, that’s what we do, we humans).

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I have a confession to make: I’ve lost my way as a writer. It’s been a struggle to write for several years now. I struggle a lot with motivation — I set goals and miss them, I bribe myself, I procrastinate, I feel guilty, I beat myself up. All of those things are normal for many writers, but if it’s this much work to make myself write…something’s very wrong. And when I do write, I struggle with editing and go around in circles and brainstorm fruitlessly until I beat the story into the ground. It’s not fun anymore.

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I’ve won National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) multiple times, but this year was my first time tackling it since 2011. And I didn’t win — I only hit 15,000 words. (For those of you who don’t think in word counts, that’s just under 1/4 of the way through the novel I’m writing.) Here’s what I (re)learned… 5. NaNoWriMo is not worth killing your wrists over. I’ve had on-and-off wrist problems this fall, and as soon as I started to push for higher word counts, the problems flared up again. I backed off right away and wrote all of 300 words in the next five days, before cautiously starting up again. I’m still trying to pinpoint how much I can comfortably write without physical consequences (current guess is at least 800 words a day), but I’m in this for the long haul. I’ll do what I gotta do.

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I’ve recently re-learned something about weekends that I tend to forget. It has to do with travel. Ever wonder why a weekend (or week) away tends to feel longer than the same amount of time in one’s regular routine? Basically, you’re out of your rut — seeing and doing new things — so you’re actually noticing the world, no longer on autopilot. That means you’re fully alive in every moment and experiencing every detail. As a bonus: you’re also doing more fun things (unless you’re travelling for work); you’ve literally left the grind of work and other daily responsibilities behind; and you’re probably getting more exercise (walking!) and more nature. I’ve found this time-dilation phenomenon to be true of all sorts of travel, from long-weekend hops to a nearby town or city, to multi-month overseas expeditions, and everything in between. Last weekend I took a road trip through gorgeous countryside to another city, poked around a trendy street, stayed in a place I’d never been before. Earlier this fall I spent a weekend in Montreal, doing much the same things. This summer I went hiking in the Rockies for most of a week. A year and a half ago, I spent three months backpacking around Asia. All of those trips felt twice as long as they really were. Here’s the secret: you don’t have to actually travel.

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This past month, I’ve had a health scare — both my wrists just quit on me. I didn’t do anything in particular to them. Holding a cup hurt, mousing hurt, lifting a bag hurt…but I was pretty sure the culprit was *gulp* typing. As you might imagine, that’s a writer’s worst nightmare.

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Turtleduck Press is excited to announce our first ever major sale! Included in the sale are all of our novels and anthologies, all just 99 cents for an ebook at Amazon and Smashwords from October 1 to 7. If you like… …fantasy stories about women rescuing guys, try our anthology Under Her Protection, featuring short stories by all four Turtleduck Press authors …m/m science fiction romance, try Knight Errant and Queen’s Man by KD Sarge …paranormal romance, try Erin Zarro’s Fey Touched (with dark fey and science fiction) and Kit Campbell’s Shards (with angels) …YA portal fantasy, try Hidden Worlds by Kit Campbell Be sure to check out our other books as well! Again, the sale runs October 1 to 7. Buy early and often! Tell your friends! Tell the world! And may the odds be ever in your favour. (Okay, maybe not that last bit. But you never know.)  

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Way back in June, I told you about my new adventures in gardening — last year we tried vegetables, this year we decided to add flowers. Here’s how it went… Last year, our yard was 1/6 vegetables and, ahem, 5/6 weeds. This year we finally sprang for landscaping — nothing fancy, just grass and three plots, one for vegetables (about the same size as last year’s) and two for decorative vegetation. Having grass instead of weeds made the yard look fabulous even before we started planting stuff. Then we populated our vegetable garden and flower beds, and sat back to see what would grow.

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So. Robin Williams. Dammit. The first Robin Williams movie I ever saw was Mrs. Doubtfire. I was 13, my parents were getting a divorce, and my father thought that some related comedy might be healing. He was right. He and I saw a lot of movies together — RW’s and otherwise — throughout my teen years. This was a time when I was angry at my father for the divorce, unhappy at school, and in dire need of something uplifting. I won’t say that RW was my only solace, or the only reason that my father and I were able to rebuild our relationship, but he sure helped. My father loved RW. They were close in age. My father was a pastoral counsellor; RW often played psychologists and doctors. RW sometimes even sported a beard that made him look a lot like my father. I think the reason RW’s work resonated so much with my father, and with me as well, was his wistfulness. He was a comic, but behind the comedy was always something a little sad. Now, of course, we know he couldn’t fight it back any longer.

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