Rachael Herron's Blog, page 22

Earthquake

Earthquake last night, a 4.7, a nice long jolt–roll. Lala and I went from sleep to a very animalian huddle. I don’t know how long it took me to realize that it was an earthquake, but it wasn’t more than a second or two, because I had time to enjoy it a little. There’s still fear, but there’s also a strange frisson of “what’s going to happen next?” I’ve always assumed, and I could be wrong, that the Big One will start so violently that I’ll be in no doubt about what’s going on. So if I wake and feel an earthquake and understand what it is, I’m allowed to just kind of enjoy it.

Star Wars Jane, Sheep, and Wonder Woman all bow (to Tiny Buddha or Obama, not sure which).

I did like the way we clutched at each other. Felt like we were in a cave and there was an animal outside. Very prehistoric. We didn’t have to think, “find my partner and hold on,” we just did. I was wearing my earplugs as usual, so Lala got up to see the damage since she’d heard something falling. It was her TRS-80, still fine of course. For some reason, I find this HILARIOUS.

Then I rolled over and prided myself on being such a staunch Californian that I could go right back to sleep, and of course, I didn’t. Up for another hour, trying not to imagine carnage. It was so roll–jolty (that’s the technical term) that it felt local, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was Baja or Oregon, having an eight? I was a five–hour drive from the Loma Prieta and it felt like riding a wave of land that made me panicked and dizzy at the same time. So I had to check Twitter, which roundly woke me up. Then I dreamed of natural disaster for the rest of the night, which is completely normal for me, and something I still sometimes wonder if I can’t get fixed. I love that I dream a lot, but I hate that I have nightmares every night. Gory, bloody, violent, grief–filled ones. I’ve had them since I was a child. Someone told me I can get hypnosis to help, and I’m almost at that point. Speaking of that, I heard yesterday about someone who got hypnosis for sugar cravings. Sign me up. I wonder if I can get a two–fer?

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2018 Word of the Year

I spent New Year’s Eve and Day in bed with a wicked cold (caught from the germ-tastic aquarium, no doubt) and I’m a little wobbly today, but I’m up. Not quite up to leaving the house yet, but at least I’m (literally) standing at my standing desk as I type this.

And I’m thinking about my word of the year. Lots of people do it–I certainly didn’t come up with it–but this tool has been helpful to me in years past.

This year it’s easy: REPLENISH

It’s easy because that’s what my new collection of essays is about. Each month, I’m trying a new creative endeavor in the hopes of replenishing my spirit, body, mind, and soul, and at the end of the month, I write about how it went. Without spoiling the last essay which I sent out on the last day of the year, the Reading Month went way better than I’d expected it to.

This month, January, is about Home, making and shaping it into the best place it can be. It’s funny, yesterday was the first day of the new year, and my reading challenge was officially over as the home challenge geared up, but because I was sick, I wasn’t thinking about any of that. I just wanted to read, because the refound habit of reading deeply really sunk in over December.

And I wanted to read, specifically, a memoir about building home (DO leave me a comment if you know a great one). I loved Dee Williams’s Big Tiny, and I wanted something like that. I found Hammer Head by Nina MacLaughlin, a book about a journalist who becomes a carpenter when writing clickbait got too much. It’s exactly what I wanted. It wasn’t until I’d click Buy that I realized I was feeding the January challenge–I’d completely forgotten.

I loved realizing that the reading challenge will follow me into each of the next eleven challenges. This should have been obvious, but it wasn’t, and it was delightful to discover. (For people new to the challenge, I’m replenishing my creative spirit by doing things I want to do in my downtime instead of reading social media or frittering away time watching TV or other mindless activities. One reader thought I was doing this as my job, which I wish I was wealthy enough to do. Nope, still working 40+ hours a week writing. But I can’t complain about that because I love love love love it.)

So. What’s YOUR word for 2018? Leave a comment – I’d love to know.

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Murmuration

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium:

CC: https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnloo/

I stood alone on the upper level, facing the kelp forest, watching the silver sardines swim in their schools. They were a murmuration, the swarm of them moving together over the course of split seconds, their scales flashing gold and red sometimes. Turns out you can’t call it a murmuration when it’s fish – it’s called simply shoaling or schooling, but schooling is too simple a word for that gorgeousness of flight I watched. I could have stared at it for hours. They moved like conversation, to and fro, parts splitting off to make new sentences, flying back into each other to complete paragraphs and whole pages. It looked like song, visualized.

Other creatures in the tank were mesmerizing, too, of course. I love the leopard sharks and the kelp bass the size of my car that stays near the front round window as if he knows he’s the star of the show. But the flight-song of those sardines is my favorite aquarium magic. Yes, I love the cuttlefish, with their chromatophore skin (I feel them – with my hot flashes and tendency to blush, I can’t help but think they wouldn’t choose to be so showy and placed in an aquarium for it, but that’s my anthropomorphism showing). The octopuses this time finally seemed kind of amazing instead of gross (Lala is wearing off on me). We watched a day octopus sleeping, and we watched it dream. Scientists struggle to agree on whether they dream or not, but this layperson can tell you with assuredness that they do. He was tucked against his rock, all creamy and pendulous, his one visible eye tightly shut. He puffed out his siphon. He wriggled. He twitched, his arms uncoiling and then coiling back up again. His skin mottled quickly, brown spots, and then flashed back to cream. He twitched again, his eye shutting more tightly closed and then relaxing. His siphon panted. He was obviously chasing cars.

But still, those sardines were more magnificent. I’d always thought they swam together for safety in numbers – some might be picked off but not all. But in fact, they actually look like one big fish making the other actually huge, predatory fish believe they’re tiny and weak in comparison. There’s a lovely metaphor there – stronger together, etc – but what I really love is watching that shared brain in action. Like watching wind, if wind was silver and had intention. And there, in the middle of a Christmas holiday week, surrounded by approximately 400,000,000 children, I was alone with the magnificent, awed and hushed.

(Not the kelp forest exhibit, but from the Open Ocean exhibit.)

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Dear Lola

Dear Lola,

I had a realization this Christmas, one that should have been obvious but wasn’t. I saw you grasp Sven’s hands and hold them. Sven isn’t blood, but he is family. You leaned right in toward him as he thanked you for the Christmas Eve feast you’d made and said, “Every year, you hear me? Every year, you’re here.”

This was my realization: You are the glue.

You’re the glue that holds the family together. Dad and we girls can be lazy, but you’re the one who tirelessly says, “Come over. Come down. Come eat. Stay.” Or you say, “We’re coming up. When can we see you? Can we do dinner? Your dad wants to see you so much!”

I love the way you give my dad shit and he takes it. I love watching the way you love each other. I love the way you worry about his health. I love the way you’ve accepted us girls so whole-heartedly into your life. I love the way you honor our little mama, always speaking of her with respect, which makes my heart leap out of my chest with gratitude. You’ve said you don’t want to replace her, and I so appreciate you saying that, but you don’t need to worry about that.

You’ve done something better.

You’ve made your own Lola-shaped place in our family, and no one — absolutely no one — could ever fill that. I am eternally grateful for whatever force sent you to us. We’re a better, stronger, more loving family because of you, and I’ll never be able to thank you enough, but I’ll keep trying.

We are the lucky ones, to have you. Some people’s hearts (like mine) are made of love and gunk and some chunks of concrete and gravel and that dirt that gathers at the bottom of a purse. Your heart seems to be made of nothing but love (okay, and a little piss and vinegar, a great combination).

Thank you with all my heart for making our family yours.

I love you,

Rachael

 

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Christmas wishing

Five days from Christmas! How I would have been freaking out as a kid. Christmas was everything. It was the lottery. Anything could happen, and though each year, every year, I felt the small taste of disappointment in my mouth when I didn’t get everything I’d asked for, I still hoped that this would be the year, this would be the one.

I thought of it, quite literally, as wishing season. I could sit around and wish and wish and wish and tell my parents my wishes, and maybe they’d all come true. It was astonishing, really, how many times they were able to come through.

I remember the morning I came down to find that bicycle. I think the reason I go back to this memory over and over again is that I couldn’t believe it was happening to me. I’d wished for this perfect bike with the banana seat and plastic streamers at the handle’s ends, but I knew it wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t get it. My folks didn’t have the money. And somehow Mom had convinced me that Santa couldn’t meet all children’s requests, either, that he just didn’t have enough money. This I understood. It made sense that Santa couldn’t afford to give gifts to the whole WORLD without scrimping a little.

So it didn’t bother me in the slightest that it was a used bike under the tree – I completely understood why the rims were scratched and why the banana seat (o blessed banana seat) had a tiny tear along the saddle stitching. Santa had done his best and his best was perfection. It was all my dreams come true in one swoop, and I believed that Christmas was the most magical and selfish of all days, and sometime’s a girl’s dreams really could come true. I flew down the driveway on the bike, still in my nightgown. I pedaled hard up the gravel to ride back into the courtyard. I was a princess; I was a knight; I was a soldier. My bicycle meant freedom, and I wanted to ride that freedom all the way to the village to buy candy. But honestly, that was a long and scary ride, so instead, I did another loop to the bottom of the drive and back up, dodging the Corvair and beat–up VW bug parked next to the falling–down barn. I could still feel that freedom while reading my new books and eating gilt chocolate while glancing outside at my new steed every few seconds.

Magical, selfish lottery. I don’t regret a single wish. I still don’t.

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Coast Drive

Yesterday I worked at Mills and got my words done quickly, and instead of doing something more productive, I drove to the coast. I felt the need.

I loaded up my phone with writing podcasts and headed for Pescadero via Half–Moon Bay. I found myself at the yarn store, where I bought more Noro for my blanket and some sock yarn. A girl can never have too much sock yarn, ever.

After the yarn, I went to the lighthouse to see about renting out a full building for a retreat next fall, but there was no one around, so I just wandered the property a little bit. I searched for whales but was happy with pelicans.

Then went to Duarte’s, where I sat at an old brown table in the corner. The waitress seems to know me now, though I don’t go in more than once or twice a year. I sat and read Ink in Water, a graphic memoir about anorexia which is just great, and it turns out, is illustrated by Lala’s teacher (all hail the Mills library letting alums check out books!). I read and read. I ate my crab melt sandwich. Oh, god, it’s only tuna fish on steroids, really, that’s all it is, but on the crisp white bread, with the melting cheese, it’s heaven. Then I got a coffee (in the afternoon! Decadence!) and ate olallieberry pie a la mode. All while reading. I devoured dessert, of course, hoovering it up in what felt like seconds, but I made the coffee last. I didn’t check Twitter. I didn’t look at email. I just read. The reading was as delicious as the food. The air smelled like pine from the big Christmas tree in the lobby, and I could hear two waitresses gossiping about overbooking tables for Christmas. There was a couple seated near me when I arrived but they cleared out by the time my food arrived. I had the whole dining room to myself. I hid in my wee corner, listening to the noises of the attached bar, the old building, and the staff, and I was there. My happy place.

Then I drove the wrong direction, just five minutes south, to climb down to the rocks and tide pools. I managed to catch magic hour.

A post shared by Rachael Herron (@rachaelherron) on Dec 18, 2017 at 7:19pm PST

The golden sunlight filled up the holes in the crazy rocks, and the sun melted into the ocean. The water was a blue I can’t remember ever seeing before – a milk–pewter, with sunlight trailing silver sparks.

A post shared by Rachael Herron (@rachaelherron) on Dec 18, 2017 at 7:24pm PST

I breathed. And I took some pictures, of course, because it seems almost impossible to be somewhere amazing without doing that. And I don’t mind – I have thousands of ocean pictures, none of them ever capturing what it was like, but I love the attempt and the memory of the day the photos leave behind. I drove home before the sunset but noticed it happening to my left as I drove up PCH, so I pulled over just as it plunged into the sea. It did that crazy melting–flattening thing as if someone had stuck the whole sun back into the fire and was pounding it out. The glowing, dripping ball of hot yellow metal slid right underneath the ocean’s top blanket. I clapped once, and then started the car and headed for home.

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Ranking Creativity

Yesterday I cleaned my office out – getting rids of lots of books that I don’t want to read or keep. I cleaned off the desks and under them a little bit, too, all in prep for ripping out the carpet which I can’t quite seem to make myself do. I don’t know why. It’ll be hard work but mentally easy. I know how it works. I’ve spent time learning how to pull it up – I have special tools to help with things like the left-behind staples in the floor. I’m ready to mask and glove up and get this terrible, disgusting, stinky carpet OUT of here, but I’m stopped somehow. There’s a fear, and I feel it, and it isn’t like me. What on earth am I afraid of? Lala did it in her office, and it’s so much better. If my hardwood floor is too terrible to look at underneath, I can get a huge Ikea rug which would be a million times better than this carpet. But I’m still scared of screwing it up.

There’s also a part of me that doesn’t want to spend my precious free time ripping out carpet. December is my month to READ, and I’m loving it so much – I don’t want to take time away from that. Basically, all I want to do is read. On the week days, I do my work just so I can get back to whatever book I’m reading. I started my “studio journal” yesterday – idea courtesy of Janine. In it, I’m chronicling how the year is going in kind of an art-journal way. I’d love to visit it every Sunday when I plan my week. Yesterday I wrote down some of the books I’ve read this month and made some notes about them and about how I feel in the project so far. But I still don’t know how to rate the creativity I’m feeling/not feeling. The whole idea of the year of play is to be more inspired, but what kind of yardstick do I use? Maybe I should do it every day and take an overview average? What would I rank?

How good did my creative work feel to do today?

Is this perhaps the question that matters? Isn’t it the best way to rate inspiration level? I’m dropping a pebble into the well to see how long it takes for me to hear the splash. I wish I could just clock that, write down the seconds it takes and extrapolate from there. I should probably ask myself that question at the end of the day. How can I set that up so that I remember to do it? Excel spreadsheet? Take an average? Will I really open it at night? Maybe add it to my ToDo list to do when I’m done working?

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Ep. 071: Zach Bohannon on Getting Out of the Writing Chair Occasionally

Zach Bohannon talks about co-writing, the new Scrivener, launch plans and mailing lists.

Zach is a horror, science fiction, and fantasy author. His breakout post-apocalyptic zombie series, Empty Bodies, was an Amazon #1 bestseller. In addition, he is also the co-owner of Molten Universe Media, where he co-writes with author J. Thorn. The duo also hosts a unique retreat for authors called Authors on a Train.

He lives in Tennessee with his wife, daughter, and German shepherd. He loves hockey, heavy metal, video games, reading, and he doesn’t trust a beer he can see through. He’s a retired drummer and has had a beard since 2003—long before it was cool.

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing.

Listen above, watch below, or subscribe on:

iTunes | Stitcher | Youtube | Facebook

Craft Tip: Don’t overuse dialogue tags!

Book recommendation: Dark Matter, Blake Crouch

 

Sign up for Rachael’s FREE weekly email in which she encourages you to do the thing you want most in the world. You’ll also get her Stop Stalling and WritePDF with helpful tips you can use now to get some writing done (free).

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The Female Gaze

Today I need to write a bit more than I did yesterday to make my goal – trying to decide whether to go to Mills or not. Sometimes I HAVE to get away, and today is ideal to get out of the house because my first coaching call isn’t until 2pm. But honestly, I’m so loath to put on real clothes. Right now I’m wearing the pink wool socks that Pamela knit me (I’ve been wearing them all winter so far), my slippers, my thermal underwear bottoms, the black dress I wore yesterday (okay, and the day before that) and my black cashmere which I have whipped into shape as my cashmere of this year. Utterly comfortable. Probably a tiny bit smelly. Warm, and more importantly, strip–downable during the hot flashes that come about twelve times a day. (TIRED OF THEM.)

I’ve been experimenting with using the dining room table as an alternate office. At Mills, since I got the WiFi password, I turn off my internet when I get there. That’s how I get the work done. It struck me last week that perhaps I can just simulate that. So for a few days now I’ve gone to the table and turned off the internet when my computer hits the wood. I do my work, and I don’t have to get in the car to go anywhere, and best of all, I don’t have to put on a bra.

I suppose I’m jumping to conclusions here. In order to go outside, I don’t HAVE to put on a bra. There are no bra police, especially at a women’s college. But comfort–wise, I must, which doesn’t make much sense. At home, I want no bra. Outside the house, I can’t be comfortable without one on. Which is, of course, a direct and deep connection to the idea that my body isn’t my own when I’m outside the house, that I must be willing to let it be critiqued, that I must put on my best show. And more specifically, I can’t be seen with sagging, bouncing breasts. The idea that breasts aren’t up below our chins is offensive. And I’m a culprit in this. I am someone who notices when a woman isn’t wearing a bra, and I feel strangely embarrassed for her (something I’m sure she wouldn’t appreciate). It’s hard to look away from the nipples, hard not to extrapolate from where they reside to what her breasts look like with no clothes on and Jesus, that’s an uncomfortable feeling. Why do men WANT that knowledge? I don’t want to picture people naked. I want to picture them wearing super cute clothes and darling tights or rugged jeans and Fluevogs or Doc Martens. I want them to keep their clothes on, please. And from here on out, I’m going to try to notice when I judge a woman for no bra and change my internal reaction to cheering. Because yes. Wearing whatever the hell you want is awesome.

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I’ll Pass

Yesterday was just a workday, a normal one. I recorded three podcasts, and I wrote 2200 words, and I finished grading the novel class’s work. Those things took most of the day, and at night I was left feeling dry and tired. A bath helped, as did reading The Hazel Wood (I have an ARC, comes out in January), which is amazing. It really is that great. I’m awfully scared it ends on a cliffhanger. But that would be okay; I’m ready to read three books in this world, in this author’s voice. She has a unique, fresh way with language, and there’s such a magical feeling in this book. It’s taking me back to when I was a little girl and found the book I was waiting for. It happened over and over again, but I never knew when that particular lovely lightning would strike.

I read The Little Princess really early, perhaps too early, at maybe four or five? I read it so early that by the time I got the age it would make more sense to read it, eight or nine, I couldn’t remember the title or the author (nothing’s changed, I suppose). And I LONGED for it. I could see the secret room, I could feel her loss and loneliness, and I could feel her joy when the Captain came back, but I couldn’t figure out a way to get back to the world. I remember asking a librarian if she knew what book it was that I’d read. She couldn’t tell me (really, librarian?), and I only stumbled upon The Little Princess again by accident. The joy of that! The greeting that book gave me! Here I am! You didn’t imagine this whole story! (I couldn’t have, though I tried.) You found the treasure, and now you know the name of the book, and the treasure can never be lost.

I hope that when I’m good and old, ninety–five or more, when my mind is slipping, that I drop back into the reader I was as a child. I hope there’s a book or three like The Secret Garden or Anne of Green Gables that I keep in my hands, that I read to myself over and over for comfort. That would be a nice way to ease out of the world, I think.

Why am I thinking of easing out of the world? I have no premonition, but it did occur to me last night while I lay in bed, that IF I suddenly died, my last words on my blog would be something that would probably go viral, even though the post itself wasn’t that great. (They’re Morning Pages, after all. They don’t have to be great.) People would say, “Did you see that author? She wrote ‘Today I have spark. Today I flare.’ Isn’t that SAD? Nah, I don’t know who she was, either.” That’s a pretty terrible way to go viral, so I thought I’d mention to the universe that I’m not really interested in that. No, thanks very much anyway. I’m having too good a time right here, right now.

Again, it strikes me that writing this out loud is tempting fate, too, but that’s okay (I think). I’m not scared of death—not really. I feel like this world is big and scary and awesome enough that there’s something else out there, too. Dark matter and dark energy—that’s quite god-ish, right? I’m curious. I would just like to reject learning about it a while longer.

I think it’s the time in the world that has me thinking like this. Life is precious and fragile, and I take mine into my hands every day I’m alive, every day I dare to put my body inside my car on the freeway, every time I get on BART, every day I go to San Francisco (will there be a terrorist attack? of course there will. But when?), every time I run across the street. I could trip, I could break my neck, I could just flare out so quickly. We all could.

So I’d rather not. That’s all. I’m having such a good time here. I don’t want that to change. (But it will. Eventually. And when it does, I hope my dementia turns me into the kind of person I was at ten, completely unable to keep from reading and rereading my favorite books, the ones I knew I’d never get tired of.)

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