L.H. Draken's Blog, page 2

A Sleep Deprivation Study

I’m finding it hard to hold onto ideas. I feel like I’m running a study on sleep deprivation.

There are few times in ones life when we get to try something completely new for … say a few months… something you might not voluntarily walk into, but which changes your perspective on life for only a fixed period of time. Like spending two weeks getting around only on your hands and knees. Or walking backwards everywhere you go. Or only allowing yourself to run when you’re out of your home or apartment (no walking). (not sure why all my random ideas have to do with personal transportation…). The point is, we don’t often choose to do experiments with our perspective very often.

Perhaps we should.

The current experiment with perception I’m going through is extended sleep deprivation. I had a baby a couple weeks ago, and instead of being at a point in my job and work where I could just go on maternity leave and spend a couple months holing up at home and living in my pajamas while my new child learned how to cope with nights and days, I am trying to plow ahead and continue the launch of a book and building my author platform. Which… unfortunately… is exactly the sort of thing that is not 9-5 and does not have a maternity leave option. Traditional jobs do have their benefits… Instead, I’m hacking this all on my own*, and that means that instead of napping when baby naps, I’m trying to get work done.

Which means I’m not getting enough sleep.

I remember a friend saying that at Uni, one can do two of three things : Study, Party or Sleep. You can do any two of those things well, but no one gets to do three. I’m feeling the truth of that right now. I’m thanking my lucky stars that at this point I’m pulling through ok, considering the deprivation, but it’s certainly the sort of thing that would age you if you try and do it too long. Little guy is doing quite well generally, so I’ve every hope that I’ll be able to get him to start sleeping longer stretches at night before too long.

But at the moment, I’m realizing how recalling proper nouns is so much harder for me when I’m chronically tired. And how keeping a new thought in my head, like a fresh idea I’ve just created, is so much harder when you’re tired. The ideas still come, but they float away, sometimes before I’ve a chance to write them down or even properly store them in my memory.

It’s a weird and annoying feeling.

I just finished reading, “Elizabeth is Missing”, which is the story of an 82 year old woman and her development into fairly advanced alzheimers, while also trying to solve the decades old disappearance of her sister. It’s an interesting premise, and a great cozy-mystery type read. But sort of disturbing in how I felt like I was identifying with some of her struggles with alzheimers as I handle sleep deprivation. Not a good feeling.

With that in mind, I’m going to bed.

First ARC Mailer

I just sent out my very ARC to my very first group of pre-readers.

For those of you not in the know, (I didn’t know the acronym until a couple months ago myself), thats the ‘Advance Reader Copy’ writers and publishers send out to pre-readers before the book is officially available, to get feedback for corrections or prepare readers who can then also write reviews as soon as the book is launched online.

I had desperately wanted to have this email sent before my second son was born, as I knew there would be a couple weeks of lag when I would be fairly unavailable (simply exhausted), and wanted them to have the time to start in on the book. But I had issues converting to a MOBI file (the format used for Kindle devices) and obviously that’s fairly requisite for readers these days.

I did have two weeks of lag after my second son was born, but then I spent probably a week getting the MOBI document to a place where I was satisfied. So today, I finally sent out the MailChimp email with a link to download the book for my very first pre-readers. It felt monumental. I think this first time there were 25 on my ARC list. Hopefully next time I do this I’ll have built that up even further, but I’m proud to have this group of people who I think are actually mostly all really excited to read the book and help me launch.

It is a bit nerve wracking. My sister has read the original copy (ach, what a mess that was!), and my editor has read it … multiple … times. But, no one else has read it in full. Two other friends have read a couple first chapters. This is my first time throwing it to anyone beyond just a single selected person.

We’ll see how it goes!

First Printed Proof

Today was a very special day. After years of work, I received my very first printed proof of my book. There are all kinds of cliché phrases that fit perfectly right here — which goes to show how universal our journeys are. but, to use a few, ‘this has been a long time coming,’ and I feel just so overwhelmed and pleased to be at this milestone.

To be precise, the book actually arrived the day before, but the postman couldn’t be bothered to ring my bell and risk having to run up the 6 flights of stairs to my apartment, so he left a pickup notice for the post office. The next day, a beautiful sunny fall day, I had a whole list of things I needed to go shopping for downtown with my son before he started school the following Tuesday. And annoyingly, the post deliveries are only available for pickup next day after 11am, so I had to head downtown, riding the subway right past the post office, knowing my book was sitting there, unsorted, waiting for me, but just out of reach.

My son and I did all his school shopping, then for a unique little treat, we stopped at Starbucks, which I never do (perhaps once a year?) for a Pumpkin Spice Latte, and a chocolate chip cookie for him. Europe isn’t like the US where you can get PSL’s at every coffee shop. Local coffee is in my opinion often much better than Starbucks, but no one does those mixed drinks like Americans love. As we sat outside with our very American style treats, I wrote a text to my husband and told him he should prepare whatever he needed for the hospital, because I was having some pretty ‘productive’ contractions. Yes. This is the beginning of a birth story as well. There was nothing regular, but the contractions were feeling much more real than the usual braxton hicks things one often gets in the third trimester. ‘We’re okay now,’ I texted him, ‘and we’re done with our shopping, but you should be prepared just in case we need to drive to the hospital sooner than later.’

My son and I finished our treats and took the subway home. When we got off we stopped at the post office for my book. I’m not the kind of person to make excuses to cut in line – I can’t think of a time when I’ve done it before, but this day I was feeling so exceptionally tired and the contractions were taking the sap out of me. I walked right to the front and asked the kind woman if she would mind so very much if I just got my package, as I was feeling very unwell but needed the delivery before I could go home. She was very obliging. I got the box and brought it home.

I was so very pleased. It was my first time ordering a printing, and I had no idea what to really expect. But it worked! It really worked! The book looks like a real, professionally printed, well designed book! Something I’d be proud to see in any bookshop or library. I almost cried.

I wrote the first draft of the book from January 2, 2014 to Dec. 28 of that same year. My son was a year and a half old when I started, and it was the project I did because all of a sudden I wasn’t working formally, my son was ‘stable’ and didn’t need constant care, and I somehow had the time to start my next thing.

The project didn’t run full time – there were big chunks of time between finishing the first draft and where we sit today with a printed book, where I wasn’t able to work on it for various reasons, but I’ve always seen it as the project of my life with my first son.

now, hours before my second son was to be born, it had arrived. It is moments like these that the word serendipitous is made for. It felt so symbolic and planned that the book should arrive to close this chapter of time.

Three minutes before midnight my water broke and I woke my husband up to tell him we should rather go to the hospital.