Theodora Goss's Blog, page 62

Putting It All Together

How do you put together a creative life?

First, a status report. My next deadline is at the end of the month, when I have a Folkroots column due. I thought this might be the one in which I wrote about the myths and legends behind the Narnia novels. But that will take more research than I have time for now, and I still have to think about what to use for illustrations. So instead, this month I'm going to write a brief history of monsters. I think that might be interesting, right? Then, I need to complete the Secret Project, and I also have a dissertation chapter due. Yes, that's a lot. I know. But what wonderful projects they all are. You're really going to like the Secret Project, I promise.

And in the meantime, a very nice thing has happened: my story "The Mad Scientist's Daughter" is one of the storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2010. Here is a lovely review of the story.  I'm especially glad that people seem to like "The Mad Scientist's Daughter," because I love these characters and want to tell more of their story. There is so much more that they're going to do . . .

But back to my question. How do you put together a creative life?

I asked myself that today because sometimes I wonder if I'm straying too far from writing in this blog. After all, it is supposed to be a blog about the writing life. And there I was this week, writing about face cream. But you know, I think at some level it all fits together. I want to create a life for myself in which I'm productive, and in order to do that, I need to take care of myself. I need to eat healthily, which is not at all easy for a writer. Last weekend was a long weekend here in Massachusetts, where Patriot's Day is an actual holiday. I spent the entire weekend writing. Some nights, I was up until 3 a.m. And I found it very hard to eat healthily. I found myself substituting food for sleep. That's another thing I need to be productive, sleep. And not just sleep, but rest. I need a quiet mind, and quiet all around me. (That's why I wrote a blog post on appreciating silence, which will be broken at approximately 9:00 tonight, when Ophelia comes back with her grandparents.) And I need to feel well and happy in my own skin, which is where the face cream comes in I suppose. It is when I feel most confident, and most as though I'm being the self I want to be, that I do my best writing.

And in addition to taking care of myself, I want to take care of my surroundings, to make them beautiful, unique. I want to create my writing and living space. So I blog about going to antique stores, to thrift shops. It's all part of an effort to create an environment for myself that allows me to focus on writing.

So I think you put together a creative life out of small things. Or at least I do. Out of a rock that says BELIEVE sitting on my desk, where I can always see it. Out of just the right brand of cheap pens. Out of a collection of thrift store cardigans, brown and gray and rose. Out of an annoying cat. Out of a bowl of acorns picked up in a park.

And you put together a creative life out of all the intangible things I also write about: making choices, and taking risks, and searching for beauty wherever you can find it.

I suppose that's why this blog can seem so scattered sometimes. Because my own creative life is a continual process of bricolage, of putting together things that can seem disparate in an effort to create a greater whole. But that's what a writer does. A writer is a sort of bricoleur, always putting together the material of life in an effort to find meaning. As I attempt to do here.

Appreciating Silence

This is school vacation week, and Ophelia has been in Virginia, visiting her grandparents.

Kendrick took her down and brought back a jar of pickled peaches that his mother had bought for me. I finished them today. You can't find pickled peaches up here, which is a shame, because they really are delicious.

So over the weekend I was completely alone, and this week there have been only adults in the house. The silence has been astonishing. I suppose I've gotten used to a certain level of noise. but I've never gotten used to it completely. That's part of the hypersensitivity, that you can't block out things that other people block out just as a matter of course. It's as though I've been relaxing into the silence.

This experience has made me think about what I need to be productive. I love doing things and going places. But I think that I actually need more solitude and silence than most people. Without it, I can't think as well or write as clearly. It's partly being an introvert, partly that hypersensitivity I mentioned, which makes the wrong kind of light, noise, even touch annoying, almost as though it were abrasive.

What I need, what I dream about, is a small place where I can go to be by myself and write. (That cottage I keep mentioning.) Where everything is perfectly neat, perfectly orderly. Where I have my favorite books, and the loudest sounds are birdsong and the wind in the trees. Where all the colors are muted, where all the furniture is worn. Where there are blankets in a wicker basket. Where it's warm. I suppose we all want a refuge from the world. I think that I will need one in order to do the work I want to do.

What is it that we really need, to work well? Time, and rest, and a place to do that work, and the support of friends. We don't always get that, and I've done a great deal of work in places that were certainly less than idea. But I find the closer I come to having that sort of space, the more and better work I do. As I write, this, I'm sitting at my desk, typing on the computer. It's perfectly silent, except for the wind in the pine branches outside my window. If I look to my right, I can see them through the white gauze curtain. Above my desk is a painting of Lake Balaton by my grandmother. (And some sticky notes with deadlines on them. Those aren't so restful, of course.) If I look to my left, I can see some of my favorite reference books, although it bothers me that they need to be organized. I've never had the time to properly organize this space, and I dream of a space that I can make perfectly neat and orderly.

Right now, in order to get through this difficult period, there are certain things I'm holding on to. I'm holding on to that particular dream, of having the space and time to write in the way I would like. I'm holding on to the hope that time changes situations, that it makes things come out right. That things I have lost will eventually be found again, somehow. I'm holding on to the certainty that when my dissertation is done, I'll be able to spend time with friends again, in a way I can't now. That things will be easier – in the future, but the not-too-distant future. That life will be better, sooner than I expect.

And in the meantime, I'm appreciating the silence.

A Day in the Life

I'm so tired!

And I know, I've been missing blogging days, haven't I? I'm sorry about that. I thought you might like to know why, and what it is that makes me so tired at the end of each day. (Or the beginning, take your pick.) So I'm giving you a photo essay: a day in the life. My life, of course.

Today was a teaching day for me. Here I am about to leave, with a shoulder bag filled with my teaching binder, the Bedford edition of Dracula I helped annotate, papers, and the scheduler I can't go anywhere without.

Breakfast is whole wheat toast and light cheese. In the car, which I know is a bad habit. Here is the car, which is basically a truck. Yes, I drive a stick shift. You need one, in the weather we have up here.

It's a long commute, about 45 minutes on a good day. But finally I arrive at the English Department.

I have office hours, so I either meet with students or work in my office.

I spend a lot of time pondering. Well, no, I actually don't. But I wanted to include this picture. Don't I look thoughtful? And tired.

I buy lunch at the Campus Convenience: yogurt, a banana, and a cereal bar. I know, I should be eating better. It's across Commonwealth Avenue, which students risk their lives crossing every day. It makes life so much more exciting. (You get that I'm joking, right? Mostly.)

This week, there are groups of prospective students all over campus.

I walk back to my office by Marsh Chapel. You can see the law school in the background. It's not particularly attractive, is it? Things built in the seventies by famous architects rarely are.

Through the archway is the nicest green space on campus. That river in the background is the Charles. It's too cold today, but usually walking through this space involves convincing yourself that no, the frisbees aren't going to hit you.

I have no pictures for the next portion of the day because it involves teaching. I teach for three hours, going over an assignment, having the students meet in groups to talk about their papers, finishing Dracula. It's hard to believe there are only two weeks left in the semester.

And then, I drive home. Here is the small gray house we are renting. It's surrounded by tall trees, and in the back there is a sort of farm, with a white pig, some chickens, and tame deer. I like the sense of peace it gives me, being surrounded by trees.

And now I am sitting here typing, eating whole wheat toast and low-fat cottage cheese, tired but also glad that I don't have anything due tomorrow. Yesterday, I turned in part of the Secret Project, about which I can tell you the following: (1) it is a project, and (2) it is secret. I should be able to tell you more in a month. So I don't have anything due for a week. Tonight I'm going to rest for a while, and then catch up on grading. And maybe go to bed as early as midnight. That counts as restful for me.

Soon, the semester will be over, and I will be able to work on projects I've been putting off, but that I'm very excited about. I'll tell you more about them when I get there. My days will be different then, not so much rushing about. I'm looking forward to it.

Advice to a Daughter

Some time ago, my friend Nathan Ballingrud posted a wonderful blog post called "The Terrors of Girlhood." It's about being the single father of a ten-year-old girl who is just starting to experiment with things like cosmetics. It started me thinking about what I would want Ophelia to learn when she was that age, what I wished my mother had taught me. I learned these things on my own, but it was harder learning them that way, and it definitely took a lot longer.

This post won't be about writing. But I think that at least my female readers might appreciate it.

What would I want a ten-year-old girl, about to become a big girl for real, to know and remember?

1. Take care of your skin.

When I was growing up, I always thought makeup would make me look better, prettier. What I realized as I grew older was that makeup didn't make the difference. The health of my skin did. I used to read fashion magazines (still do on airplanes, sometimes), and one thing they always seem to point out is that French women teach their daughters to develop a skin care regiment at a young age. I don't know if that's true, but I wish my mother had taught me that. It's not a difficult thing. You need to clean, moisturize, and never, ever go out without sunscreen. I never had the patience for tanning, which was very popular when I was growing up, and I'm glad now. Friends of mine who tanned started getting brown spots and lines ten years ago. I'm still doing all right, although I know the lines will come eventually. But at least not from sun exposure. And this one was important for me: when you get the inevitable teenage (or adult) blemishes, take care of them rather than accepting them as a normal part of growing up.

It's almost embarrassing to be talking about this in public, because how we take care of our skin is such a personal matter, something done in the privacy of our bathrooms. But if I had a teenage girl, and of course I will, that's the first thing I would teach her.

So, embarrassment aside, here is my personal arsenal:

Cetaphil, Proactiv (because my face breaks out if you look at it wrong), Garnier. So now you know.

If your skin is healthy, almost any makeup, or no makeup at all, will look good on it. And you'll get to forty-two (which is where I am, in case you were wondering), and smile when people assume you're considerably younger.

2. Take care of your body.

I also thought the right clothes would make me look better. So I bought expensive clothes, hoping they would turn me into – something, I wasn't sure what. It took a long time for me to realize that it's the body underneath that shapes the clothes. So a healthy body is much more important. I want Ophelia to grow up knowing that she should eat healthily, and in healthy portions – and watching me do the same. And I want her growing up knowing that exercise is a normal part of life, something that one simply does every day. That one walks, runs, dances, rides horses. That moving is important, natural, part of what we do as human beings. That a girl should be strong, limber, and able if necessary to kick some zombie butt.

I want her to see me growing older still able to do a decent downward dog, or last through a Pilades routine. And eating my vegetables, so that someday she will eat them too. (Yes, well. That's a struggle at the moment.)

3. Take care of your spirit.

This one is difficult to describe. I used to see girls my own age that I admired because they seemed so confident. They decided what they wanted to do, and then did it. (They also inevitably had beautiful skin, and a sense of fashion that I envied because it was so individual, and yet seemed so right.)

It took me a while to realize that they usually came from a particular group: girls who had been raised in fairly wealthy families and who had gone to independent schools. Often, girls' schools. I hate to write that, but it's true. They had been raised differently from most of the girls I knew. They had been raised to think for themselves, to consider themselves important. Their spirits had been nurtured and cultivated from a young age. They believed in themselves, in their own vision of the world. The adults in their lives had taken them seriously, and so they took themselves seriously.

But it doesn't take wealth, or a fancy private school, to do that. Girls should be taught that they are important, that their ideas count. And they should be taught to treat themselves that way, to value and care for their own spirits. To seek out the highest and best for themselves. I think I do that when I take Ophelia to the museum and discuss art with her – why she likes some things and not others. When, rather than telling her she can't have something (even ice cream), I negotiate with her and we discuss the various options.

But this is important for all of us, I think. We all need to take care of our spirits, to give ourselves beauty, take ourselves seriously, challenge but also reward ourselves.

My ideas about this aren't well-developed, perhaps because I'm very good at taking care of my skin, and reasonably good at taking care of my body, but not particularly good at taking care of my spirit. I'm still learning. But I want Ophelia to learn better and at a younger age than I did, so she can be one of those girls I used to admire, so self-possessed, so smart. And with such great skin.

Happily Ever After

One of my stories is being reprinted.

It's the first story of mine that was ever published, and it's been reprinted a number of times. I'm pleased that it's coming out again, and it's in a particularly wonderful book: Happily Ever After, edited by John Klima. You can order it directly from Night Shade Books, or from Amazon.

Here are the gorgeous cover and incredibly table of contents:

Bill Willingham, Introduction

Gregory Maguire, "The Seven Stage a Comeback"

Genevieve Valentine, "And In Their Glad Rags"

Howard Waldrop, "The Sawing Boys"

Michael Cadnum, "Bear It Away"

Susanna Clarke, "Mr. Simonelli or the Fairy Widower"

Karen Joy Fowler, "The Black Fairy's Curse"

Charles de Lint, "My Life As A Bird"

Holly Black, "The Night Market"

Theodora Goss, "The Rose in Twelve Petals"

Jim C. Hines, "The Red Path"

Alethea Kontis, "Blood and Water"

Garth Nix, "Hansel's Eyes"

Wil McCarthy, "He Died That Day, In Thirty Years"

Jane Yolen, "Snow In Summer"

Michelle West, "The Rose Garden"

Bruce Sterling, "The Little Magic Shop"

K. Tempest Bradford, "Black Feather"

Alan Rodgers, "Fifi's Tail"

Kelly Link, "The Faery Handbag"

Peter Straub, "Ashputtle"

Leslie What, "The Emperor's New (And Improved) Clothes"

Robert J. Howe, "Pinocchio's Diary"

Wendy Wheeler, "Little Red"

Neil Gaiman, "The Troll Bridge"

Patricia Briggs, "The Price"

Paul Di Filippo, "Ailoura"

Jeff VanderMeer, "The Farmer's Cat"

Gregory Frost, "The Root of The Matter"

Susan Wade, "Like a Red, Red Rose"

Josh Rountree, "Chasing America"

Nancy Kress, "Stalking Beans"

Esther Friesner, "Big Hair"

Robert Coover, "The Return of the Dark Children"

I've been so fortunate lately to have stories of mine reprinted in anthologies with some of my favorite authors. Susanna Clarke! I love Susanna Clarke.

But since "The Rose in Twelve Petals" was my first published story, I thought you might like to know how it was written. This is for all the writers out there who are at the same place I was at the time. Here's how it happened.

In the summer of 2000, I went to the Odyssey Writing Workshop (where, by the way, I will be teaching this summer). Before going to Odyssey, I had never published anything, for the good and sufficient reason that nothing I wrote was publishable. At Odyssey, I learned how to write publishable stories. Several months later, I started writing "Rose." I started writing it because I started thinking, what about all the other characters in the story? Don't they have stories of their own? That's something I've thought about quite a lot in general, and many of my stories are about that – what sorts of stories the other characters, the ones who are not main characters, have. I think their stories are just as interesting, in some ways more so.

"Rose," as you'll immediately realize if you read it, is a retelling of "Sleeping Beauty." It's told from the point of view of a number of characters, including the tower in which the princess is sleeping and the spinning wheel who does not want to kill her.

At first, I thought that was all I was going to do with the story. But as I wrote it, I started rewriting the history of Britain. I believe I rewrote it so that Bonny Prince Charlie won. I worried at the time about complicating the story like that, but I remembered something I had heard at Odyssey: that I should not be afraid to complicate. That complication was good. So I went with that idea, and I think it made the story stronger. At the time, I was not a particularly experienced writer, and it was difficult for me to handle a subtext. I revised the story quite a lot, getting that subtext in. Now when I write, I find that I write text and subtext at the same time. I weave it in automatically.

That's one thing that changes as you get better. You learn to write on different levels at once. I can write dialog that also reveals character and advances the plot, in the first draft. I used to have to put that other stuff in later.

So then, the next summer, I went to the Clarion Writing Workshop, which at that time was in Michigan. At Clarion, I learned to how to write the sorts of stories that pose a challenge to the genre. That's what Clarion, at least my year of Clarion, encouraged. I brought "Rose" with me, because I had just finished it and it still needed to be workshopped. Kelly Link workshopped it, and told me both what was working and what was not. I actually didn't need to make many changes at that point, and I was happy about that. The guest editor for that summer was Shawna McCarthy, and her first day there, she told us that she had already seen a story in the pile that she wanted to buy. Later that day, she told me it was mine. I was stunned, of course. To have my story bought like that! And published in Realms of Fantasy!

I've written many stories since then, some better than others. But I learn from each one. And I think that "Rose" is still one of my best. I'm very proud that it keeps being reprinted.

That was ten years ago, and all day today I've been working on a story, thinking about how far I've come since then. Is it far? I don't know, I still feel as though I'm just starting out, even though at this point I've published almost enough stories for two collections, plus essays and poems. And soon, I'm planning on starting a novel. I still struggle with writing problems, although they tend to be different problems now. But I don't think I'll ever feel as though I know what I'm doing, not fully. And I suppose that's a good thing. After all, if this were easy, it wouldn't be writing, would it?

Dealing with Stress

Today, I went to the dentist.

I've always been proud of my teeth, silly as that sounds. They've always been straight, and I still have all of my wisdom teeth (which I suppose means I have a large mouth). I try to take good care of them.

But I do have one problem with them: I tend to clench my jaws in response to stress. Several years ago, I was so stressed that I actually chipped some enamel that way. (You can clench very hard when you're asleep.) So the dentist made me a mouth guard. She took an impression of my upper teeth, and then a plastic device was made that fits over them perfect. And I have to wear it when I sleep. If you think of everything glamorous and romantic – well, this is the opposite of all that, isn't it? But it keeps me from damaging my teeth.

Today, she looked at the mouth guard, which I always bring in, and told me that I'd been clenching very hard. Also, she told me that there was more chipping on the enamel. So clearly, I'm under too much stress.

The question is, what to do about it? It's deadlines as far as the eye can see, although I've already asked for an extension on two of them. No, that's not quite true. After May 15th, there are no deadlines. After that, it's just summer and finishing the dissertation and writing a novel. No deadlines until September.

But still, what to do about the stress? Clearly, I need to do something.

Here, because I have no actual answer, I will go on a brief tangent. The dentist is in Brookline, so before my appointment, I went into Booksmith. I have what may be a bad habit in bookstores: I look to see if anything of mine is in there. You see, for a long time, when I was just starting out writing, I was intimidated by places like Booksmith. I would look around and think, so many books! What makes me think I can write one, can ever compete in this marketplace? (In a bookstore, it's obvious that you're competing in a marketplace.) But then I started seeing my stories in books on the shelves. Like these:

See? I'm in two of these books, Tails of Wonder and Imagination and The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2010. Pretty nice, hunh? And someday soon I'll be there with a book. And then more books.

And then the dentist told me that I was doing an excellent job with my teeth (other than the clenching, of course), so I rewarded myself by going to Japonaise, the bakery and coffee shop, where I bought an azuki cream. Here's what one looks like:

What you can't see in this picture is the filling: whipped cream and red bean paste. It's one of my favorite pastries in the world.

And now back to the subject of stress. The dentist suggested meditation, but I'm not sure that would help right now. I think I would stress about having to mediate. But I have to think of something. I know I'm pushing myself, not taking very good care of myself.

One day, and I hope it's one day soon, I want a small cottage where I can create a calm, peaceful space. Where I can write, and garden, and do all the other things I like doing when I'm not so completely stressed. I'm working for that – that's what the stress is all about, trying to get there. But I don't especially want to kill myself on the way there, you know? That wouldn't make sense.

So I'm going to have to think of something. Sleep and exercise, those are probably good ideas. Eating healthily. I'll probably have to start there, with basics. I know all that, I do. It's just implementation that's difficult. Because I have so much to do, and I want to do it all – because I want that cottage, more than I can properly express.

Choices and Consequences

I was thinking today about choices and their consequences. I had to make a choice recently – but I'll talk about that in a moment.

In Drawing Out the Dragons: Meditations on Art, Destiny, and the Power of Choice, James Owen says the following:

"Everything we do in our lives has to do with the choices we've made, and those choices are cumulative. Every choice you make builds a foundation for every choice that follows. And the earlier you start realizing that you are always able to make choices, the earlier you'll be able to build that foundation for everything you want to do with your life. And that's important because in our lives, not many people realize that everything they do is a choice. That you get to choose the direction things go.

"Yes, our lives don't always go the way we want them to. Bad things happen, obstacles arise, problems spring up to confound our well-laid plans. But how you deal with them is always in your power to do. It's always in your power to choose your destiny. To choose how you respond to those things."

I've gotten used to making choices in my life. At the end of his book, James provides three precepts of sorts, one of which is "Live deliberately. Decide: are you the kind of person things happen to, or the kind of person who makes things happen?" I've tried to be the sort of person who makes things happen, rather than the sort of person things happen to. What I find is that when I make things happen, things happen to me, but good things – things that move me closer to where I want to go.

The thing about choices is that after you make them, you have to take their consequences. So sometimes you have to think carefully about what you're choosing. Sometimes you don't have time to think carefully. And then, you just have to go on instinct. And if you're the sort of person who is used to making choices, I think your instinct guides you. This is a story that Kendrick always reminds me of, when I'm talking about topics like this one. One day, we were driving into Harvard Square. We had not realized that it was the day of the Harvard-Yale game. The square was filled with students. As we were driving through, slowly and carefully, one of them came up to our car. He was waving a cell phone and shouting, "Run over my cell phone! Run over it!" And then he put the cell phone under the front tire of the car. Do I need to mention that he was very, very drunk? Without thinking, I got out of the car, picked up the cell phone, handed it back to him, told him that he was very, very drunk and that he needed to go home immediately and take care of himself. I realized, as I was saying it, that I was speaking in teacher voice. He was a student, and therefore he was my responsibility, one of my responsibilities. Students are, evidently, one of the responsibilities the universe has given me. I got back into the car and watched him stagger across the street into a vacant lot. Suddenly, a large man ran up to him and jumped on his back. Why? I have no idea. But he went down, and the man immediately turned and ran away. And he didn't get up. There he was, lying on the gravel. So I got out of the car again, and this time Kendrick parked. When the student turned over – he was conscious, but barely – I saw that he had fallen on shards of glass. There was blood over half his face. So I called the police, then ran to a nearby convenience store, got paper napkins, and held them to his face until a policeman came by and the ambulance arrived. I don't think I was thinking much during any of this. I was just going on instinct, and my instinct was that I was a teacher, and this was a student, and he was my responsibility until someone else came along who could take responsibility for him.

But the problem, as I've said, is that you have to take the consequences of your choices. The event I described above had no consequences for me: I don't know what happened to that student. I hope he barely remembers what happened, and that he has no scars from it. Or that he's learned from it, either way. The choice I made that had the most significant consequence was leaving the law for graduate school. Just before I left the law, I got a raise: to $100,000. The next year, I lived on a graduate student stipend of $10,000. I gave up the possibility of security, of a comfortable and lucrative life. (And I had no savings: all of my income from my three years practicing law, other than what I had needed to live, had gone to paying off my law school loans. So I could go to graduate school.) But because I made that decision, I have the head of H.P. Lovecraft sitting on my shelf, next to a sculpture of Elah Gal, from my story "Child-Empress of Mars." As a lawyer, I could never have gone to Odyssey or Clarion, never have started the writing career I'm working on now. Never have won a World Fantasy Award.

It was the choice I had to make recently that started me thinking about all this. I had to make a choice quickly, on instinct. I don't want to talk about it much. Suffice it to say that a friend asked me to make a choice for him. I refused. You can never, should never, make a choice for another person, especially not a choice that affects that person's life in a fundamental way. You can make choices for people who are not capable of making choices for themselves: children, parents who can no longer choose because of age or a medical condition. Drunken students. But you cannot make choices, not those sorts of choices, for people who are free to chose for themselves. Who are responsible for making their own choices.

I made the right choice. I know that as surely as I know anything else. But the consequence was terrible, much worse than losing $90,000. It was losing a friend. By which I don't mean what you probably think I mean: that he was angry, that he's not speaking to me. No, I mean a real, genuine loss. As I said, I don't want to talk about it much.

It made me wonder if one is punished for making what one knows are the right choices. But if you make choices, and if you are the sort of person who lives deliberately then you can't avoid making choices, you have to take their consequences. That's a sort of law of the universe, I think. And somewhere in the loss, the grief, there is a consolation: that if nothing else, you chose right.

Doing Taxes

Guess what I'm doing today? Taxes, of course. Yes, I should have done them earlier, but it's been that sort of year.

I ask myself what sort of year I mean by that, and somewhere in my mind I hear these words: this is the year I'm saving my life. I don't think anyone else can save your life for you. And I don't mean that in the physical sense, of course. I'm in no danger of drowning, of going over a cliff in a car. I'm saving my life in the sense that I know there's a life I'm meant to live, and I'm not living it yet, but I'm getting there, and going to get there. That's the life I'm saving.

But I didn't actually mean to write about that. What I meant to write about was that last year, I spent about $2000 on business expenses, mostly traveling to conventions. And I made considerably less than that from writing, only about $500. So was all that travel justified?

I had spent the previous couple of years not traveling very much, barely going anywhere. I didn't have the money. Kendrick was finishing his PhD, and I was both teaching and taking care of Ophelia. And taking on any other work I could. I put my life, the life I'm in the process of saving, on hold. During that time, I did not write very much. Writing is an uncertain business, and if you want to make money, it's easier to teach extra classes, grade writing assessments, take on the sort of work there always is around a university. I wrote only when I was asked to, when I knew I could make a sale.

Last year, I thought, this is it. Kendrick is finished with his PhD, Ophelia is in school. It's saving my life time.

So I made a plan, although not a very elaborate one. I just knew that I needed to begin. I thought about where I should go, which conventions I always enjoyed. Where people were interested in my writing. I chose Wiscon, Readercon, World Fantasy, Boskone, ICFA. Readercon and Boskone were easy, because they were so close. No traveling or staying in a hotel required. I was also invited to the Sycamore Hill writing workshop, which I didn't want to miss. So those were the places I went.

I also did several other things. Most importantly, I redesigned my website – instead of my old, out-of-date one, I created this site and started blogging every day. I was already on Facebook, but I also joined Twitter, although honestly, sometimes I'm still not sure what to tweet. But it's a wonderful source of information and links. Through Facebook and Twitter, and through reading individual blogs, I feel as though I know what's going on with the people who live in my world, which is the writing world. They are all people I care about very much, people I want to hear about. They're doing such fascinating things!

So I spent both time and money.

And what was the result? Well, on the most practical level, this year I've already earned about as much from writing as I spent last year going to conventions. And I'm going to earn significantly more over the course of the year. So it's already been a good financial investment. What it did was let people know that I was available again, that I was ready to work. And they sent me work.

I think the universe functions like that. If you do good work, and you let people know that you're available to do it, they will sent it your way. And if you're out there, talking to people at conventions, you will start to do what I'm starting to do now – think up projects of your own. Oh, I don't have time to start them now. But I will this summer, and once my dissertation is finished, well – watch me! You have no idea what wonderful things I'm going to create.

I guess what I'm saying, ultimately, is that you have to invest in yourself. You have to do it wisely, of course. You have to make the investment pay. But really, what else are you going to invest in? The stock market? Better spend that money creating opportunities for yourself, so you can do the work you want and were meant to do. Saving your life, one convention, one blog post, one story at a time.

For the Readers

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may have noticed that I've been having a difficult month. The last two weeks have been particularly difficult because I've been so tired, and that affects my mood. Last weekend, all I wanted to do was crawl under the covers and sleep. But of course I had work to do.

But today, several wonderful things happened.

When I came home, I had two packages waiting for me. The first was a contract for a project I'm working on that I'll tell you about soon. I think you'll like it. The second was this:

It's my plaque from Strange Horizons, sent to me because "The Mad Scientist's Daughter" won the readers' poll for best short story! That means a tremendous amount to me because it's a readers' poll, and what I do is for readers. If there were no readers, there would be no reason for me to write.

That's why I write this blog, too. I write it partly for myself, because some days there are things I just need to say. But I write it partly for you, because you're the one I want to say them to, and I'm so grateful that you read it, and come back to read more, and comment. (And I'm so sorry that I'm behind on commenting back. It's this difficult month, and things will get better – right? I'm making that promise to myself, that things will get better. I believe that.)

And then I received several emails. One from an editor of a literary journal I respect very much, asking me to submit. One from a reader telling me how much he had liked my short story collection. That was a long email also telling me why, and especially nice to receive. And one from James A. Owen, sending me a copy of Drawing Out the Dragons: Meditations on Art, Destiny, and the Power of Choice, his book about – what is it about? How to make choices, and how to be brave, and how to really, truly live. I could call it inspirational, but I don't think that would tell you very much about it. So I'll just tell you that this morning, I sat down at my computer in my university office and opened up my email. I saw the email from James, opened the PDF he had sent me, and read about half of it before I had to meet with students. And it was exactly what I needed at that particular time. It was as though someone had sent me a letter that said, "I did this, so you can do what you were meant to do." And tonight, I feel as though I can.

I think the most important words in the entire book are the following:

"If you really want to do something, no one can stop you. But if you really don't want to do something, no one can help you."

So often I see people who want to do something, but I think they must not really want to do it, because they don't put in the effort. Anything really worth doing is worth all of your effort. I know I'm going to get into trouble for saying this, but when I see people not putting in all of their effort, I think, they must not really want whatever that is. They must want something else instead.

What I really want is to be the best writer I can possibly be, and to reach out to readers, to tell them my stories (which I'm fairly certain are only part mine, and part from somewhere beyond me), and to have those stories affect them, inform them, inspire them. That's what I want. And I want to live a life that enables that ambition, which really is an overweening one, because I want to be a sort of cross between J.K. Rowling and Virginia Woolf, which is a truly ridiculous thing to want, isn't it?

"If you really want to do something, no one can stop you." I'm going to tell myself that seven times seven times a day.

A Sense of Longing

I thought I would be ready to get back to my story today, but I'm not.

I'm feeling – well, I don't know what I'm feeling exactly, but I'll try to describe it.

I woke up this morning at 8:00 a.m., had breakfast, and immediately went back to sleep. I woke up at 1:00 p.m. I mentioned that I've been tired beyond tired, and of course I needed sleep. So that makes sense.

I woke up to a terrible sense of longing. I felt restless and had no idea what to do with myself. So I did something relatively silly, which was go shopping. I went to the Land's End Canvas shop and ended up with some reasonably rational purchases. Two pairs of chinos (this is one of them, the other is a slightly darker khaki):

And a chambray dress:

They were all 60% off, which I mention just to say that I hadn't completely lost my senses. But it's fairly clear what was going on, wasn't it? I mean, look at what I bought. Where would you wear clothes like that? At the seaside, of course. I didn't really want new clothes, although I'm always happy to have them. I really wanted to go to the sea, walk on the beach with my chinos rolled up, go to a restaurant in that dress.

So I came home and had a couple of mild panic attacks, and thought of those lines from Moby Dick: "Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball."

And then I went grocery shopping, and while at Whole Foods I did something I've never done before, which is put together a plate of antipasto and bring it home for dinner. And I am in the process of eating it now, with part of a baguette and a glass of Reisling, which you wouldn't think would go with antipasto, but goes with it just fine. It all looked like this, before I started eating:

What is going on with me? The sense of panic seems to have subsided, but the sense of longing is still there – a terrible sense that there is something missing from my life, and that I have to find it. And that in order to do so, I have to change my life – not just a little, not by buying clothes or eating things I don't usually, but by truly changing it. Completely.

I've felt like this before, although never to such a degree. When I do, I revert to the habit of childhood: I get on a plane and go. I can't do that today, of course. But I'm already planning on going to Madison this summer, for Wiscon. And now I'm thinking that I should go to San Francisco for the Isabelle de Borchgrave exhibit, and a friend has suggested I visit Asheville. I guess it all depends on what I can afford, but I can't get to Europe this summer, so maybe I should fly around, visit friends and family. Maybe that's a short-term solution, and will keep me from knocking people's hats off. Although what I really want is to go to the seashore. But I'd be going by myself, and what's the point in that?

Longer term, I have to change my life, of course. But that's in process and will take a while. And that terrible sense of longing . . . The one that makes me feel as though I have a hole in my side. What to do about that? I don't know, I'll have to figure it out.