We’re still mired in being sick. Today this made me angry. I expressed that anger by cleaning and running all the errands. Sometimes that makes me feel better. Didn’t really work this time around. I’m still grouchy and angry. Though I am very grateful to friends on twitter who made me laugh more than once today. This was a day much in need of laughter.
The cough showed up sometime in December. Gleek brought it home from school, or possibly from somewhere else, but she was certainly the cough’s first host in our house. I didn’t think much of it. Coughing happens in winter time. But it didn’t go away. Then Patch started coughing and so did Link. I felt it coming for me only a few days before ConFusion. I did my best to fend it off, but I did not succeed. Somewhere in there it became not just a cough, but The Cough. It will lurk for hours and then pounce causing a fit of coughing and throat spasms, which are just lovely for those of my children who have more sensitive gag reflexes. It is also not fun to listen to: cough, cough, cough, sputter, gag, cough. When I hear it begin, I pause and listen to see if I need to go help with clean up once the coughing subsides.
Other than the side effects of coughing (abdominal strain, headaches from gasping for breath, sore throat, and clean up) I don’t feel really sick, just more tired and less focused than usual. Gleek is up and around despite still coughing. Patch and Link are both home from school. Again. In fact my morning was spent communicating with teachers via email, trying to sort out how to handle an extended absence. Because I’m not certain when Link will be able to head back to school. We did the obligatory doctor’s visit yesterday and determined that The Cough is likely a viral affliction and mostly what we need to do is wait it out. The doctor did swabs just in case, but mostly treatment is symptomatic.
I don’t like The Cough at all. It is annoying and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. I went yesterday to find look at various possible remedies for reducing coughs. So far cough drops have been the most effective suppression method. We’re also boiling a huge pot of water on the stove in the hope that humidifying the house will help. Even if we could reach the point where Patch and Link were well enough to function at school, that would be good.
I have friends who write novels. Many novels. Long novels. I have friends whose books are shelved face out at Barnes and Noble. Some of them have been on the New York Times Best Seller’s list. I have friends who shepherd their books solo through drafting, editing, design, and releasing out to the reading public. Many of my friends have won awards for the words that they have written. I don’t really covet the awards, shelf placement, agents, editors, sales, or recommendation lists. All of those things come, or don’t come, after the primary effort is done. First my friends had to write the words. Hundreds of thousands of words. They sat at their keyboards and worked until they had a novel, or two, or ten. This is something I have yet to do. It is something I admire. I’ve blogged, written essays, created two picture books, drafted short stories, and crafted a memoir. These things are not insignificant. They are good and important works, but I have not written a novel.
My novelist friends succeed where I have not, because they have habits that I do not have. I’ve been watching them lately and looking at my daily schedule. I’m trying to figure out which habits I can fit into my life and what things that are currently in my life will have to get pitched in order to make space. Because no one gets more than twenty four hours in a day, not even novelists who create alternate realities. The time for considering is almost over. I need to start shoehorning writing habits into my days. I’ll start with one or two and see how far that gets me.
It is always interesting to me what transformations occur on my internal landscape when we hit my birthday. There have been years where I reached a landmark age and felt strange about it. Some years I’ve really needed affirmation and appreciation. There were times when I needed it and didn’t get it. Other times I needed it and it arrived. For several years I posted short stories on my birthday, but then came a year when that felt too stressful so I stopped. I’ve had forty one birthdays, which is a large enough sampling that I can confidently say that I don’t know how birthdays will affect me in the future.
So much of how I approach my birthday depends on the months that came before. This year I had an extremely affirming Kickstarter experience in December followed by a wonderful convention last week and another convention to look forward to. I’m feeling full-up and that fact of my birthday feels somewhat irrelevant. I like feeling this way about my birthday, because on the years where I really needed recognition I wanted to feel this way instead.
Except I think I might be wrong in this. There is true value in celebrating a person, not because of anything they did, but because each person is a miracle worthy of celebration. That core fact sometimes gets buried in the trappings of gifts, notes, cakes, and balloons. Then we lament the physical symbols of celebration, when what is truly lacking is the recognition of value. It is so much easier for me to celebrate someone else than to celebrate myself. It is easier to see how amazing my friends are than it is to recognize similar things in myself.
“How old are you Mom?” Gleek asked as we drove home this evening.
“Forty one.” I answered.
“Really? I thought you were like 38.” She kept talking and I got the sense that somehow she didn’t want to think of me as being that old.
“I like being Forty one. It is a good age.”
“I thought people got upset about being forty.”
“Some people do. But I’m here. I’m healthy. I’ve accomplished many of the things I want in life and I’ve got time left to accomplish more. This is a good place to be.”
It seems like a good assessment. I’ve got a whole year ahead of me to enjoy being forty one.
At ConFusion I spoke with many of my writer friends. At home I keep in touch with them and many more via social media. Everywhere I hear stress, frustration, and fear. There are so many parts of publishing that are out of the writer’s control. We even brought that up in a panel, how it is important to focus on the things we can control, the choices which are ours because the ultimate financial success or failure of our projects is out of our hands. This is hard when the result is so very important.
I think about this and then I think about my own published works, most of which have not paid me any significant amount. As a business, my writing career has yet to break even. From a cold calculation stand point, continuing does not make sense. But then I look at the projects themselves. They are each something that now exists in the world that did not before. Each one has added to my life and to the lives of some of the readers. I can’t easily measure that in dollars and I don’t want to. No matter what comes in the future for my writing, I have triumphs that can’t ever be taken from me. Strength of Wild Horses funded. Hold on to Your Horses continues to be read to children and make them happy. My Cobble Stones books remind me of the value of the words I write here. I got to go to ConFusion and speak on many different topics. I’m going to get to teach at LTUE. These are all treasures that can not be taken from me, no matter what blows life and publishing have in store during the years to come.
Right now I am drafting my first full novel. (I don’t really count the three quarters of a novel that I wrote in junior high, nor the half novel I wrote in high school.) I’m ten thousand words in and I’ve been stalled there for quite a while. Today I opened it up and refreshed my memory of where I’m at and where it needs to go next. Over the next weeks I’m going to get to draft that novel. I don’t use the word “get” lightly. Being able to work at writing fiction is a gift. It is one I have to fight for, I have to defend the writing spaces and decide to work when my brain wants to rest, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have this opportunity. Never again in my life will I get to write the first draft of my first novel and I’m not going to let that experience be buried in fear or stress. I don’t want to let it slip away either. Because life may not always be kind enough to allow me time to write.
When the time comes to submit this novel, I hope I can savor that opportunity as well. It will definitely bring discouragement, but I hope I can feel it all fully and add to my pile of life experience treasures.
It was Sunday night and the convention was over. The attendees had departed for their homes and the hotel staff was doing their best to make everything back to normal. Usually Howard and I try to depart before the hotel is emptied of the people we love, but this time we stayed an extra night. We did it on purpose so that we would have time to visit with some dear friends who were local to the convention, but who had not had time to come. Two hours is not enough time to catch up when you haven’t seen a friend for two years, but we snatched the hours we had.
I sat there across the table from my friends. Howard had already said his farewells and gone, exhausted, to bed. I lingered because I don’t know when I’ll see these friends again. An anecdote wound down and my friend asked “So how are you doing. Really.” And I began to talk. I tried to summarize, but each detail trailed a cloud of explanation. They listened to all of it. At one point I found myself telling the story of the hardest day last Spring, when the Elementary school staff called me down to discuss Gleek and I met with her teacher, the principal, and three other staff members to discuss what steps were necessary going forward. It was the week when Gleek stayed at home for a few days while we figured things out. The same week when Patch’s teacher also called me to say she was worried about Patch. I was telling that story with all the details of the specific incidents, and I realized that I was using my best story teller mode.
We were laughing through the whole thing.
It was an overwhelmingly, ridiculously difficult week and that was why we laughed.
I couldn’t have laughed at that story six months ago. I’m not even sure I could have laughed two months ago. Last Sunday I laughed. Because it is done, we survived, and the details of the story display the cleverness of my daughter even in difficult emotional circumstances. I can’t promise that all hard things will have laughing later, but far more of them will than we ever expect when we’re going through them.
Long ago in Livermore, California I went to junior high and high school. Last weekend I went to ConFusion in Michigan and participated in a panel on strong female characters. I did not expect these two facts to be in any way relevant to each other, but after the panel Rae Carson turned to me and said “Where did you go to high school?” She asked, because long ago she knew a girl named Sandra who wrote stories. She recognized me even though I had failed to recognize her. (In my defense, she went by a different version of her name when I knew her previously.) We attended the same junior high and high school. At least once we were at the same slumber party. It took me far longer to find the memories because I really did not expect them to be relevant at a Sci Fi convention in Michigan. Also because I think I dumped a lot of memories from that era in my life the same way that I dumped the yearbooks. It was more than I wanted to carry around constantly. This left me sitting next to Rae Carson, talking about people we used to know and that neither of us has kept in touch with.
“Do you remember Mrs. Bell?” I asked.
“Of course I remember Mrs. Bell!” Rae answered. Then we spent several minutes discussing the junior high librarian who took us both in and loved us. That library was a haven, a place for us to go when the lunchroom felt awkward. I spent hours and hours there. So did Rae. We must have been there together often. I wish I remembered more of Rae and less of the various awkward interactions with the geeky boys who absorbed so much of my early teen attention. But we both remember Mrs. Bell and we both credit her with some of our love of writing and reading. Truly there is no substitute for a full-time school librarian. Sadly, the high school did not have a Mrs. Bell, if it had, perhaps Rae and I would have reconnected in high school.
Rae Carson is the author of a trilogy of books that begins with Girl of Fire and Thorns. It is a book about which I’ve heard many good things and which I’ve been planning to read. Rae is friends with many of my writer friends and so I was aware of her that way too. Even before the panel, I’d seen her name and thought it would be nice to have a chance to meet her. Then I discovered I already had, long ago. While I was doing my teenage best to be stylish and not-a-geek she was doing her teenage best to please her parents and fit with the cheerleader crowd. Somehow we failed to solidify a friendship which would have meant we didn’t feel so alone while scribbling away at our stories in our separate houses. Rae remembers me showing her drawings and telling her about my imaginary world. I wonder what eddy of teenage angst swirled me off in a different direction and why I failed to see the potential in our friendship. I think most teenagers are a little bit lost as they try to define themselves. I’m not going to regret the separate paths we took, because obviously Rae has arrived in a very good place with her writing and I certainly wouldn’t want to give up my journey.
It makes me wonder what potential friendships I am missing now. I know it is not possible for me to be friends with all the people, but being more attentive to those around me can only be a good thing. People hide in plain sight sometimes. At one moment while Rae and I were comparing memories and telling about our current lives, I looked over at her, seeking for the face that I used to know but had nearly forgotten. She is there. I was put in mind of the old rhyme
Make new friends, but keep the old,
One is silver, and the other gold.
I’ve felt that before. There is a security and emotional strength in friendships with a really long timeline. They are the friends who didn’t leave, or who came back. They know the old stories and places even if both have been left behind. Rae is both a new friend and an old one, and I’m really glad that she recognized me and gave us the chance to start over at being friends.
It is Monday. I’ve returned from ConFusion and none of the worries which kept me awake Wednesday night have come to pass. I hope that someday my brain will accept that my departure does not create dire consequences, but this trip was not that someday.
“How was your trip?” My mom asked after we walked in the door this afternoon. It is not an unreasonable question considering that she traveled 800 miles and spent five days watching my kids so that I could go. The shortest answer is “good” but that is an unsatisfying answer. The next shortest answer which is also still accurate is “Not easy to summarize.”
This was a trip that Howard and I chose rather than one we were offered. It was one I knew I wanted a year ago and that I’ve put effort into being able to afford. The cost of the hotel and airfare are part of the expense, but more critical, Howard and I had to adjust our thinking in such a way that we allowed ourselves a trip whose primary purpose was personal enjoyment rather than business. We are very fortunate that our chosen vacation trip looks very similar to a business trip. I think this means that we’ve chosen the right business.
We chose ConFusion because last year it collected a large contingent of people we really like. This year it was the same. I reconnected with long-time friends and made new friends. I even made one new old friend which is a story that requires a blog post of its very own. We flew below the radar, not announcing that we were coming until just before, because we weren’t certain we could until just before. The fantastic Con Com and programming staff gave us good things to do and discuss. When all was said and done, I had nine items of programming and each one added good things to my experience. Looking back, I realize that I miss the fan-facing interactions which come from us spending time in the dealer’s room, but I am so very glad that we had one show where we had time to think “what do I feel like doing right now?” instead of feeling pressure to be “on” every minute of every day. Howard and I love the GoH gigs, but we are always conscious that our hours there must belong to the convention and its guests. These hours belonged to us and I liked that. I like even more how similarly we spent those hours to how we spend hours when we owe them to someone else. That is a good thing for us to know and I think it will increase our enjoyment of future conventions
I don’t know when we’ll be able to do another show the way we did ConFusion. I’d certainly like to be able to afford it again, but I have to do the math carefully. We certainly can’t do more than one per year, probably not even that often. This trip meant a lot to me, which is probably why the anxieties were out in full force on the night before I left. Yet here I am on the other side and there is not much about the trip that I would change. Given my choice I would have skipped the part where I was coughing and hoarse during the whole trip. I felt fine, but sounded awful and I worried about transmitting germs to others. Beyond that, anything I imagine different would have to displace something good rather than displace something bad. This trip was beginning-to-end a true joy.
But now I need to rest and see if I can convince my voice to come back. I appear to have left it behind in Michigan.
We have arrived at ConFusion. The real programming will begin tomorrow afternoon, but the visiting has already begun. Sometimes I am able to blog in the spaces of a convention, other times I go quiet online for the duration. This is one of the heaviest scheduled conventions I’ve ever had, so quiet seems likely. I am truly excited for each of these program items. They did a fantastic job scheduling me. If your at ConFusion this weekend, I hope you’ll take time to say hello.
Bechdel, Mako Mori, and the “Strong Female Character”
Sandra Tayler, Mike Underwood, Brigid Collins, Rae Carson, Christian Klaver
6pm Friday – Southfield
A female character is not strong just because she can kick someone in the head. What are the limitations of the Bechdel Test (2 female characters have a conversation about something other than a male character)? How does the Mako Mori test come into play? And when did the notion of a “strong character”–meaning a rounded character with agency and a backstory–get replaced by simple physical strength? How does all of this apply beyond female characters and move into representations of other marginalized groups?
Covers and blurbs for the self published
Sandra Tayler, Janet Harriett, J. C. Daniels, Laura Resnick, Rich Morris, Gretchen Ash
10am Saturday – Erie
One of the benefits of working with a publisher is all that they do to promote the book. Blurbs, reviews, and cover art do a lot to sell a book. When seeking to self publish, these aspects are just as important. This panel will discuss some of the best strategies for getting the most out of your options with marketing your work.
SodaKlatch
11am Saturday
Join these authors for a reading of their work and a Q&A session, Rae Carson and Sandra Tayler
Hybrid Publishing
Lucy A. Snyder, John Klima, Sandra Tayler, Howard Tayler, Tobias Buckell
1pm Saturday – Southfield
Self-publishing is here to stay. Traditional publishing is still going strong. What do the people who who do both have to share about their experiences?
Why is Wonder Woman so tricky?
4pm Saturday
Writing Realistic Children with Sandra Tayler
9am Sunday – Warren
Join Sandra Tayler for readings and discussion on the topic of Writing Realistic Children. Sandra will begin the hour by reading a few examples of children in fiction, those done well and a few not so well. Then Sandra will lead a discussion about writing children, what works, what doesn’t, developmental stages, and how all of these things should affect your plot. Bring your best thoughts to share.
The Writing Family
with Ron Collins, Brigid Collins, Sandra Tayler, and Howard Tayler
11am Sunday – Rotunda
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a family of authors? Stop by and ask. How does having someone so close in the same field make things easier? More difficult?
Will Work for Food
Laura Resnick, Wesley Chu, Sandra Tayler, Ron Collins, Sarah Gibbons
12pm Sunday – Southfield
Writers can be an easily exploited group. Unscrupulous people sometimes prey on that fact, asking for free work on the promise of exposure. Why do people make that assumption, and why are they often able to find people to buy into it? Why has the professional per word pay rate not risen in decades? What do people generally just not understand about the value of writing as work?
“How are you doing?” a friend asked. We were sitting down together over snacks, neither of us in a hurry to go anywhere. Not only that, but this friend has on prior occasions listened to me for hours while I ramble about all of the many things in my life. I knew she did not want the short polite answer. I started with the short answer. “Good. Things are good.” Because in a general assessment of all the things going on, there is far more good than difficult. When you get down to details things are more mixed, but that is always the case. We could definitely do without all the coughing. I wish I could say that I was approaching the upcoming travel without tension or guilt. I’d really like to never have to deal with an infected ingrown toenail ever again. Yet in the grand scheme these things are small. In fact if I do not write them down, then a year from now I will have forgotten that they happened. I much prefer this sort of trouble to the highly-memorable struggles of last year.
There are a few landmarks scattered about. I sent Strength of Wild Horses off to print this afternoon. Howard and I get to go to a convention together for the first time in a long time. Gleek is enjoying her weekly trip to ride horses. Patch is beginning to discover the frustrations of daily cello practice, but is still enjoying it more than not. The memorable things are good, the difficult things are forgettable. I can handle that.