Self

Return of the Business Sandra

By / June 25, 2011

Late last night Howard and I found ourselves tangled in a conversation which lasted almost an hour. We were both tired, emotions were a bit raw. He was frustrated that I had been drifting. I was sad that my calm happiness had resulted in stress for others. Howard was actively worried about the upcoming pre-order. My brain kept circling in sadness and mucking around in emotions.

Then in the space of three sentences, I found myself shifting from analyzing emotional motivations to listing off merchandise things and why I thought that we would be fine despite the specific sources of Howard’s concerns. The business manager in my brain came out of whatever dark closet in which she’s been buried and she took control of the conversation. Within five minutes Howard was feeling calmer, I had a list of things to do today, and the world seemed upside right again.

I have to remember that while it is important for me to acknowledge and experience the touchy-feely parts of my psyche, there is something to be said for that strong part of me who just gets stuff done. I’m going to have a busy few days and I need my business brain to handle them. However in the quiet moments when the work is all done, I also need to figure out what impelled me to bury that part of myself for two weeks. Vacations are allowed and important, but this wasn’t a declared vacation, it was more an unannounced abdication.

My brain gets weirder the more I pay attention to the stuff it does.

Wake Up Call

By / June 24, 2011 / 2 Comments

This morning Howard broached the subject of the family schedule, pointing out that we’re all sleeping in until 9am. If I don’t get up in the morning, no one else does either. His point was that while this is lovely and relaxing, it is not a great way to be focused or get stuff done.

My initial reaction was along the lines of: The schedule is not broken. I’m getting stuff done. I’ve been happy and relaxed. You’re telling me that my relaxation breaks everything else and I am doomed to self-sacrificing misery forever.
Then I cried. It was very like a toddler crying because someone took away a toy.

Once I attained a less over-reactive mind state I realized that perhaps I might still have some issues regarding life balance and making space for the things I want. The last couple of weeks have been pretty much me doing stuff I want to do, all day long. It was lovely, but I am not an island. I am part of a household and as such my wants do not always get to come first. They can’t always come last, which is what I’ve done to myself for months on end and why my inner child had a tantrum this morning, but there needs to be a balance so that our family routines are working for everyone.

I am most productive creatively before noon. I’ve been sleeping away half of my productive morning hours. Everyone in the family depends upon me to get moving and set the tone for the day. That pattern may need to change so that I can sometimes sleep in without disrupting everyone, but we need to start from a working pattern in order to structure change. This means that I’m going to have to start fighting the flow and trying to redirect it instead of just floating along. Sigh. Drifting was so lovely.

New Projects and Old Fatigue

By / June 18, 2011 / 2 Comments

Last night three ideas, which I have had kicking around in my head for years, stood up and told that they belong together. Obviously. Sure enough they fit together quite beautifully. So now I have the setting, characters, and themes for a book. I can’t start writing it yet, because the book has the barest wisps of what may eventually be a plot. This means that part of me wants to drop everything else and study plotting so that I can write this shiny new book. I can’t drop everything else. This shiny new idea has to get in line. It has to wait for available creative time after I finish this last revision on Stepping Stones. It also needs to wait until after the inevitable influx of creative tasks which accompany opening pre-orders. I’ll be called upon to design post cards, prints, and business cards. These things will require me to blow the dust off of my graphic design books. After all that, I will be able to tackle plotting.

Even at the same time that part of my brain is burbling with excitement about projects, another part is very tired and would really like to go watch some TV now.

“Must we learn new things?” It asks. “I’m tired of learning new things.”

“Yay, new things!” shouts the other part.

The co-existence of these two mind states defies logic, and yet here I am.

Musing upon Someday

By / June 17, 2011

Yesterday I was in the middle of the second hour of my writing time (with one more hour before I would let myself call it quits for the day), when I laughed out loud at what I was reading. My current writing project is a final tweak-things-into-place revision of Stepping Stones before I submit the thing to a contest and send out the next round of queries. What I read was an essay I wrote in the fall of 2007 in which I lamented how so many of my friends were able to spend hours per day on writing. They could make writing take a central position in their lives and at that time I could not. I found peace with my frustration by talking about how things have times and seasons in our lives, and that someday I would have time to devote hours per day to writing tasks. I have been dwelling in “someday” unawares.

I sat back and thought about it. I am actually dwelling in many “somedays” this week. I’m not chasing toddlers. My kids have been getting up and doing their chores without much argument. We’ve got a pre-order opening soon. These are all good things that in days past I looked forward to with anticipation. I still have somedays ahead of me, of course. It is good for me to be dreaming of something better, so long as the dreams propel me forward without making me bitter about today. I’m also aware that this week is a bubble of time in which most of my things are going well. Two weeks from now I doubt I’ll have time to write for 2-3 hours in a day. By August I certainly won’t have that time. Then I’ll once again dream that someday I’ll have more time to write. Somewhere beyond that, I’ll once again discover myself dwelling in someday. Times and seasons really do make a difference in my life.

New Things I am Learning

By / June 8, 2011 / 2 Comments

1. How to research and query agents. I’m starting by asking my friends about their agents, once I’ve dried up that source of information I’ll resort to the internet.

2. How to set up our online store for a pre-order. This is one of those things which I expected to learn once, but instead I have to re-learn every time I do it. The software keeps updating and changing in between pre-orders. Also our needs shift and change from book to book. On the list of things to research for the store: how to set it up to deliver electronic only files and if it can track orders based upon how a customer arrived at the site. (It would be useful to be able to figure out if a tweet or a blog post is more effective in driving sales.)

3. Graphic design. I have text books sitting on my desk and gathering dust. I fully intend to study them and get better at this job I’ve been doing for four years now. I want to know how to purposefully create rather than just muddling through.

4. How to manage four kids at home all day and still get my work done. Again, it seems I should know how to do this, but the kids change from one year to the next making hard things easy and introducing new hard things. Also the summers have different demands, different camps, different scheduled items. Last year there were swim lessons, this year I haven’t scheduled any. This year there will be a summer drama camp if I can ever get in touch with the teacher long enough to get the kids registered. Generally I get it figured out just in time for everything to shift around again.

5. Marketing. There are always marketing things to learn. If I learn and apply marketing skills then (in theory) we will have more money. More money means less immediate stress. I like being less stressed, but I still don’t like marketing.

6. Freelance non-fiction writing. I’m just on the front edge of this, beginning by emailing some people I know who do it. I have enough writing skill that I could be earning money this way. But before I can earn money I have to figure out how to find people who are willing to pay for my words. Then I have to figure out what kinds of words I am willing to sell. Ideally I’d be able to sell some of my essays with only minor revision. Getting paid is not the only aspect of this which interests me. I like being able to say things which are useful to others.

7. How to make over a dress. I already know a lot of sewing, but a make-over project is inherently dictated by what already exists. I have to figure out each step as I go. I’m also doing researches on acquiring discounted materials.

8. How to pick up and start writing a new project after completing a large project. This one is harder than I would have thought.

It would be so lovely to be able to focus on learning one new thing and be really excited by it. That is not my life. I’m not sure that luxury comes to very many people in this world. At least most of these things do not have fear attached. I like it when I can learn without being driven by terror of failure.

Snippets from the Weekend

By / June 5, 2011

Our friend Mike got baptized yesterday morning. It was one of many decisions he has made to change his life from drifting and unhappy, into focused and goal-oriented. Mike has taken control of his life and is choosing who he wants to be. The fact that he picked our church brings us joy, but even more joyful is seeing how he chooses every day to do hard things because they take him where he wants to go. Most adults are not willing to dare to change so much about who they are. It inspires me to look at my own life and see if there are things that I am afraid to change.

***

Yesterday evening Howard was grouchy and decided to get out of the house. He wandered his way down to the Provo Festival of Books where several of our published author friends were presenting. Within an hour he called me because he’d arranged for a whole group to head out for dinner. I set Kiki and Link to babysitting the younger two and then drove myself down to join them. The world is a wonderful place when we can gather a group of friends for dinner and then later realize that 4 of them are New York Times bestselling authors and one was a Nebula award winner. All that authorial importance at the table and somehow the evening was completely lacking in ego. I love being at the table with high-energy creative people. They work really hard and that is why they have succeeded. Just as inspiring to me were the other people at the table, the ones who have not yet earned banner success, but who are also high-energy creative people. Dinners like that one are one of the rewards for the fretting and work we do much of the rest of the time.

***

The snowball bush is finally in bloom. Usually the blooms arrive in mid-May, but they were delayed by the cool weather. This means it is time for the annual snowball bush flower fight. This is where the kids pick snowball-shaped clusters of white flowers and throw them at each other or fling them into the air like confetti. Also in full bloom are my irises. They’re swirling their petals like Spanish dancers and filling the air with a spicy floral scent. These things thrive despite my neglect of them in recent years. I hope that this summer I can spend more time with them.

***

The thought arrived during the closing hymn. We were on the second verse of “Be Thou Humble” when I knew that though my currently-in-query-process book and all my future writings will bring me criticisms, the good accomplished by them will far outweigh the negative criticism. It was a calming thought. I have been much worried about how bad reviews and hateful comments would injure me. My book is based in my life and it will be very hard to remain objective. I have some of the same concerns in my blog. I often have an impulse to leave things unsaid and thus shield myself. But the good will outweigh the difficulty. I can hold on to that.

***

The chore lists have been updated and placed on our bulletin board in the kitchen. Each child has a grid. Seven days of the week across and ten weeks down. Each day that they complete their list of chores they fill in a square. At the end of the week, each filled square represents allowance money. Each completely filled week adds to the bonus which they can earn at the end of the summer. It is a new iteration of an old system, and thus more easily understood by the kids than explained in words. They all contemplated their charts, running calculations in their heads about money they could earn and what they could buy. I look at the charts and hope that they will help tame the household chaos and teach my kids the value of daily effort. Howard and I also have daily household chore lists. We could learn the same daily effort lesson in regards to household maintenance. The system will probably fall apart. I just hope it is tight enough to last through 10 weeks of summer.

***

I sat on a stool in my kitchen reading out loud from a manuscript page. Kiki was rolling out biscuits as she listened. Link and Patch just sat in chairs, listening with bright eyes and smiles. Mom reading aloud is fairly common, but this story was about them. One of the rules I set myself for my book was that the kids would get ultimate approval about what I say about them. This was their chance to hear my words and tell me what they thought. They loved hearing the stories, even when the stories were about their mis-behaviors and childishness. We still have more to read, but thus far only Link has requested a change. It is a minor wording change which will leave the heart of the story intact. It is a small thing to do to acknowledge to my kids that their opinions matter to me.

Time to Go Home

By / May 30, 2011 / 2 Comments

In about an hour I’ll catch a cab to the airport. As I sat on my bed this morning contemplating my upcoming travel, I realized I was feeling homesick. The odd thing is that I was feeling homesick for California not Utah. California is where I grew up, and usually when I come here I have a strong “not my home anymore” feeling. This time I found myself watching the palm trees, ground ivy, and the architecture. I think it is a reflection of a longing for childhood or a simpler time. The feeling is a very quiet one. I’m only sensing it this morning because all of my usual thoughts are packed away. Indeed the minute I opened my laptop and saw my email, my mind dashed back to Utah and the interesting projects which are ahead of me.

However I am a little haunted by a conversation I had with Mary.
“I miss palm trees.” I said.
“Obviously you need to plant a palm tree in your yard.” she answered.
“Palm trees don’t grow well in Utah.” I answered.

As soon as the words were spoken I could see the potential meta-ness of them. My mind set to work trying to parse out the symbolism of the palm tree. There may be some there, or there may not. Either way I’m glad I’ve seen it and written about it. This way I have a link to that quiet feeling, a thread I can follow even when the trappings of my regular life flow in to fill up most of my emotional space.

Having described the homesickness feeling, I discover that I am also looking forward to going back to Utah which is my actual and emotional home. I will slip back into it like a warm and familiar coat. As I understand it, having a coat will be useful as the weather there continues to be cold.

Facing Blogging Fears or Joining Amy Sundberg’s Backbone Project

By / May 27, 2011 / 4 Comments

One of the hard parts about making a living in the publishing industry is our complete dependence upon the goodwill of people we’ve never met in person. Most of the time our interactions with fans bring us joy. Other times are hard. Whether the words arrive as an email or a blog comment, my stomach sinks and I am afraid. The missive is from a person who is declaring that Howard or I have offended them and that they will no longer support us in any way. Most of the time the person is obviously trying to be polite despite the fact that they are upset. It would be easier if they were unreasonable and I could dismiss what they have to say.

My first reaction is always to try to make it better. I want to erase the offense, particularly if I feel it was in any way merited. My back brain churns into overtime composing and re-composing possible responses. The truth is that, at best, I can sometimes smooth a little of the anger or hurt. I can not change their mind. Sometimes all I can do is sit frustrated because as far as I can see the offense has to do with something in their head and nothing we did wrong. Even if wea are not at fault, it lingers in my mind. I’m left to wonder who else we have offended who did not take time to email or comment. In my mind’s eye I can see all of the fans packing up and quietly spending money somewhere else and leaving us without an income.

This is my fear and it is antithetical to being a daring blogger. Every time I post, or Howard posts, I know it is possible that someone will be offended. So I phrase myself carefully. I try to make sure that the posts are balanced and see all sides of whatever issue I am discussing. It has become second nature to me to see multiple sides of any issue. What is truly terrifying, and what I rarely do, is to take a stand. The minute I do, I know that I have alienated the people out there who disagree with me. I don’t want to alienate readers, in part because I like being able to afford things, but even more because I honestly don’t want to hurt anyone. Yet people can not grow if they are not challenged. I am truly grateful to the writers out there who are willing to blog their thoughts because through them I can begin to see the world in new ways. Some things are important and being conciliatory will not get them noticed or changed. I do myself, my readers, and the world no favors if I stay silent out of fear.

I was thinking about all of this when I read about Amy Sundberg’s Backbone Project. Amy intends to write three posts in which she will not be wishy-washy. I think she has offered a good challenge and I shall try. I will write three posts where I dare to address something I’ve been afraid to write. I will try to address it in such a way that readers are encouraged to participate in a conversation on the topic. Then when disagreements arrive, I will attempt to keep the comment conversation open rather than deliberately choosing responses (or non-responses) which discourage further comment.

My fears of creating an internet brouhaha are not unjustified. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve also read stories about how internet notoriety spilled over in life-destructive ways. Every day bloggers discover that things said online have real world consequences. Lena Chen recently wrote an interesting article in Salon magazine talking about the consequences of her fearless blogging and how she learned to be much more cautious about the things she wrote. She jumped into the deep end and made her way out. I’m starting from the other side, dabbling my toes in the water and contemplating swimming out to the dock. But I will swim. I j ust need to space out my daring posts. I expect this challenge to be somewhat anxiety inducing and I’ll have to carefully time the posts for days when I have the time to hover over comments. This post represents a beginning.

Packing for the weekend

By / May 26, 2011 / 2 Comments

When Howard goes on a trip, packing is always a source of worry for him. This is not because packing is complicated. Packing just ends up as the focal point for all the various stresses ahead. When Howard gets within a day of departure and his bag is not yet packed, he gets anxious and cranky. He needs the physical representation of being prepared.

Last night I sat in my chair after writer’s group and stress descended upon me. Howard saw it and asked if I was all right.
“You know that feeling you have when you’re leaving on a trip and you’re not packed yet?” I answered. “I feel that right now and I think it is focused on the childcare situation.”
My statement was a tightly controlled response, deliberately calm in opposition to how I actually felt. Odd that I can feel that everything will be fine and also want to jitter in panic at the same time.
“Sounds like making childcare arrangements is first on tomorrow’s list.” Howard said.

And so it was. I now know where the kids will be while I am in California and Howard is at CONduit in Salt Lake. I have the framework upon which I can build meal plans and instructions for the kids. I will arrange things and then I will let go.

I am not the only one planning for this weekend. Several weeks ago we pondered the logistics of Howard managing a dealer’s table by himself and determined that he needed a minion. We mentioned the job to Kiki along with the possibility that this might be a paid gig. There was a road block in that she would have to miss school on Friday. I set the problem aside to think about a different day, but Kiki did not. She talked to all of her teachers. She made arrangements to take a final exam early and to turn in homework assignments. She calmly and responsibly cleared Friday from any conflicts. She is going to CONduit with Howard and is quite excited about it.

Working a table is not the only source of excitement for Kiki. She is also putting some of her work into the art show. Yesterday included a last-minute scramble to select pieces and matte them. There were difficulties, matting is a skill which neither Kiki nor I possess at expert levels. But the job got done and the show is prepared. Whether or not her pieces sell, the experience of preparing for a show is a good learning experience for her.

Other preparations for this weekend involve Patch and Gleek. I have been working with them so that they are more independent at bedtime. For years our bedtime routines have been heavily dependent upon me being present. The structures were rigid. First snack, then reading with snack, then reading in bed after snack, then talking with mom, then a dozen excuses and delays, eventually sleep. A week ago I declared that they needed to practice putting themselves to bed. It was their job to track the time and get everything done. The results have been mixed. I’m still heavily involved in keeping them focused, but bedtime has been more fluid and they are beginning to step up and take responsibility rather than shouting at me if I try to skip steps due to the late hour. I don’t know how well bedtime will go when I am removed from the equation, but they have better ground work for success than they did a week ago.

The preparations are coming together. The pieces are starting to line up. My clothes are not yet in a suitcase, but I am beginning to feel packed.

Making and Wearing Hats

By / May 19, 2011 / 3 Comments

I went to a tea party yesterday. It was a mother daughter event which included no actual tea, but the lemonade was served in tea cups and there were scones. “Come dressed in your finest.” The invitation said. I did not actually pick my finest, formal wear is not quite right for afternoon tea. I did put on dressy clothes. Gleek did too. Then she got quite upset when she had no pretty shoes to wear. I’m not quite certain how we ended up with no nice shoes in her size. I guess she outgrew them during the past 9 months when she refused to wear anything but tennis shoes to church.
“I’ll be the only girl there with ugly shoes!” Gleek lamented as we got into the car.

By the time we arrived at the church building two minutes later, shoes were completely forgotten. Gleek found us seats at one of the tables. The first activity was hat decorating. The organizers had purchased and array of straw hats and hat trimmings. A long table was covered in faux flowers, ribbons, feather boas, feathers, tulle, glittery stickers, and pom pons. Gleek approached the project with high enthusiasm. My first reaction was more reluctant than hers, but as I arranged ribbon and flowers on my hat, I found myself enjoying the process of making something beautiful. We wore the hats for the tea.

Gleek’s hat was either a complete wreck or an absolutely brilliant expression of individuality and creativity. I loved it. I loved even more that she wore the hat to school today. As she disappeared into the school building I had a momentary fear that someone would make fun of her for her hat. Then I realized that Gleek’s absolute fearlessness meant that her peers were much more likely to decide she was cool than that she was weird. She was still wearing the hat at the end of the school day, so all went well. Now I just have to figure out when and where I am brave enough to wear mine.