Alex Hughes's Blog, page 3

Productivity, Focus, and that Foggy Feeling…

It is widely believed that the brain rewires during pregnancy, in part to allow the mother to tune into her baby’s cry under nearly any circumstances (including unconsciousness). I have found this to be so, and (combined with my genetic shortage of folic acid) likely explains why I felt so stupid and fuzzy-headed during pregnancy. It also explains why so much of my brain work has felt so different since she was born. Certainly hormonal changes play a role in the brain function changes–though I got the not-good hormones rather than the ones the author of an article I recently read got, wherein she compared being the mother of a 4 month old baby to that feeling she got “that one time I did opium in Thailand.” But given that I couldn’t breastfeed and my hormones have largely settled a year after the birth and the brain changes seem to continue, I don’t think that’s all that’s happening.

What’s been frustrating to me is that suddenly, my brain doesn’t like to do what Cal Newport in his book of the same name calls “deep work.” Instead, it seems to want to multitask constantly. While that’s useful when I’m keeping my crawling daughter from leaping off the couch or ingesting that odd bit of something not-food she found on the floor, it’s not at all useful in my writing work. I look up at every peep the baby makes anywhere in the house, stopping everything–even if I know that she’s being well taken care of by my husband, relatives, or whomever at the time. I derail constantly, looking for a chance to switch tasks even in the middle of reading a book at night, when I’m tired. It’s frustrating because most of the work I really need to do is the opposite of multitasking.

Many people claim that “preggo brain” lasts about two years after the birth, sometimes longer if you breastfed for longer and thus extended the hormone changes. Some claim that it lasts forever, but we’ll try to look at the bright side and remind ourselves that many women do incredibly demanding cognitive tasks with elementary school age children and do just fine. So whether it’s re-training the rewired brain for its original function, or whether it’s the brain settling down from its emphasis on multitasking as the now small child becomes less likely to do any number of stupid and potentially life-altering or -ending things, well, it seems there’s an end to the “preggo brain.” It becomes notable to me that Rachel Aaron only figured out her 2k to 10k system when her son was about two (or so I remember from a conversation with her).

So in the meantime, I’m looking at how to harness my slightly-altered brain and start training back into deep work. Maybe I’ve lost a lot of my previous training in attention and focus. Maybe I’ve gone from running metaphorical half-marathons to metaphorically huffing and puffing on the way to the mailbox. But what can be trained once can be done again. It’s back to sprints and pomodoro techniques. It’s back to working on different techniques to figure out how I can game the system better in the meantime, so that by the time my daughter is two, whether by nature or nuture my brain will be back to writing at the level I was used to once again. I only have so many hours now! I can’t spend many of them staring at the screen feeling foggy and stupid and task-switching among low-level tasks.

So two thoughts that I’m working on this week: the brain works best off of good food (high quality fat, not too much sugar) and good blood flow. Diet, sure. But also getting up every 25 minutes to do something like squats, climbing the stairs, yoga, etc. to get the blood flow going. With my whole system wanting to rest and get fuzzy-headed at the slightest reason, this has become an important habit. Also helps with lingering postpartum depression stuff. Exercise, even on a small scale, really–really–seems to help. So it’s time to work at getting walks with the baby, push-ups or squats periodically during writing sprints, etc. etc. This is not at all an obvious habit and one that’s going to take some work to remember and do. Already today I feel more focused, however.

Second thought. I once worked with a brilliant graphic designer with pretty severe ADHD. She took a small dose of meds to help her focus, but otherwise, did something very odd. She ALWAYS had at least five windows open on her computer, and every minute or two or five would switch between windows and tasks. If you watched her, it was EXHAUSTING. I couldn’t keep up, much less do good work at the time with that habit. But over the course of an hour or two or five, she accomplished as much or more than everyone else. It worked for her brain.

So if my brain seems to want to task-switch even after I’ve exercised, maybe I can do what I’m doing today. I can go back and forth between a blog post and two different fiction scenes, for example. Give my brain a chance to task-switch while remaining in similar enough tasks that I don’t get derailed. Today it seems to be working. Today, I seem to be doing much better. But it’s going to take some tests to see if this approach long-term helps the mommy brain wiring to be happier, or just makes me stop.

What about you guys? What challenges have you faced with brain power, and what seems to work to get past it for you?

The post Productivity, Focus, and that Foggy Feeling… appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

Pain, Depression and the Brain

I’ve been hanging out with an old friend today and, as usual, we’ve been talking. She went through a traumatic brain injury in a car accident a few years ago and has struggled with nerve pain since. I had an unusually high level of pain in the birth and afterwards, so we end up having a lot to compare and contrast, and when it comes up in conversation, we talk about it.

Pain is subjective and hard to observe–there’s your first problem. You can’t look at somebody and tell how much pain they’re in. That’s as true of emotional pain as physical, and since emotional pain often lightens immediately upon taking Tylenol, for example, there’s a lot of reason to suspect that the same part of the brain is affected for both. But some people are just better at functioning with high levels of pain than others. Some scream, some go incoherent, some pass out at extreme levels. You can literally die from pain–you can stroke out, among other things. But some people just go very quiet.

A lot of this is also true of depression and anxiety issues, by the way. You can’t tell by looking at someone how depressed or anxious they are. Some people function well at crazy levels of anxiety, levels severe enough to literally double or triple your risk of a cardiac event from the sheer stress on your body. They function anyway. Some people can manage to perform at high levels at school or at their jobs despite incredible levels of depression too, or PTSD, or any number of other issues. Another friend with a “hidden” physical disability posts on my Facebook stream constantly about her frustration with people’s judgements. She’s not required to “perform” her disability, she says.

We also don’t seem to have sympathy for ongoing or intractable pain in our society, physical or emotional. Buck up, we’re told. Or it’s assumed that we’re to take a pill and get over it. I was fortunate enough to heal over the course of months and to reach an end to most of my physical and emotional pain, but my friend didn’t get that lucky. She’s still looking for the right treatment protocols. She ends up doing a lot of her own research to bring to the doctor with questions.

Healthcare itself is also a barrier sometimes. Where it’s hard to find pain meds that the insurance will cover that will still let you work–or where you limp by on insufficient Tylenol and ibuprofen, watching your kidney and liver numbers and hoping they stay good. Where the treatments that work aren’t available to everyone, or the doctors’ visits eat up too much of your workday–or you can’t find childcare, and you can’t bring your children. Worse, for the people who can’t afford healthcare insurance now, or can’t afford the out of pocket fees. Or can’t find a doctor willing to listen. There’s a reason that fibromyalgia was only considered a real illness in the last few years–doctors have a long-standing habit of dismissing women’s pain as “hysteria,” a habit that continues well into the modern era.

When it comes to pain, then, we need to be slower to judge and faster to help. But as the current opioid addiction crisis shows, help is not always a quick prescription for the cheap meds (the addictive ones) and move on with your day. Help is sometimes listening, and believing. Help is biofeedback and mindfulness meditation, and yes, the correct meds at the correct dose–but ideally the safer ones, with clear guidelines on how to use them and how not to. Sometimes help is just being there, and talking. The only thing I found useful from all the books on natural labor was this: pain is sometimes required, but suffering is not. The experience of pain, the “buck up” and disbelief or uncaring, is often worse than the pain itself.

We need to get better about pain, emotional and physical. We need to get better as people, and we need to get better as a country.

The post Pain, Depression and the Brain appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

Pain, Sleep and the Brain

I’ve been hanging out with an old friend today and, as usual, we’ve been talking. She went through a traumatic brain injury in a car accident a few years ago and has struggled with nerve pain since. I had an unusually high level of pain in the birth and afterwards, so we end up having a lot to compare and contrast, and when it comes up in conversation, we talk about it.

Pain is subjective and hard to observe–there’s your first problem. You can’t look at somebody and tell how much pain they’re in. That’s as true of emotional pain as physical, and since emotional pain often lightens immediately upon taking Tylenol, for example, there’s a lot of reason to suspect that the same part of the brain is affected for both. But some people are just better at functioning with high levels of pain than others. Some scream, some go incoherent, some pass out at extreme levels. You can literally die from pain–you can stroke out, among other things. But some people just go very quiet.

A lot of this is also true of depression and anxiety issues, by the way. You can’t tell by looking at someone how depressed or anxious they are. Some people function well at crazy levels of anxiety, levels severe enough to literally double or triple your risk of a cardiac event from the sheer stress on your body. They function anyway. Some people can manage to perform at high levels at school or at their jobs despite incredible levels of depression too, or PTSD, or any number of other issues. Another friend with a “hidden” physical disability posts on my Facebook stream constantly about her frustration with people’s judgements. She’s not required to “perform” her disability, she says.

We also don’t seem to have sympathy for ongoing or intractable pain in our society, physical or emotional. Buck up, we’re told. Or it’s assumed that we’re to take a pill and get over it. I was fortunate enough to heal over the course of months and to reach an end to most of my physical and emotional pain, but my friend didn’t get that lucky. She’s still looking for the right treatment protocols. She ends up doing a lot of her own research to bring to the doctor with questions.

Healthcare itself is also a barrier sometimes. Where it’s hard to find pain meds that the insurance will cover that will still let you work–or where you limp by on insufficient Tylenol and ibuprofen, watching your kidney and liver numbers and hoping they stay good. Where the treatments that work aren’t available to everyone, or the doctors’ visits eat up too much of your workday–or you can’t find childcare, and you can’t bring your children. Worse, for the people who can’t afford healthcare insurance now, or can’t afford the out of pocket fees. Or can’t find a doctor willing to listen. There’s a reason that fibromyalgia was only considered a real illness in the last few years–doctors have a long-standing habit of dismissing women’s pain as “hysteria,” a habit that continues well into the modern era.

When it comes to pain, then, we need to be slower to judge and faster to help. But as the current opioid addiction crisis shows, help is not always a quick prescription for the cheap meds (the addictive ones) and move on with your day. Help is sometimes listening, and believing. Help is biofeedback and mindfulness meditation, and yes, the correct meds at the correct dose–but ideally the safer ones, with clear guidelines on how to use them and how not to. Sometimes help is just being there, and talking. The only thing I found useful from all the books on natural labor was this: pain is sometimes required, but suffering is not. The experience of pain, the “buck up” and disbelief or uncaring, is often worse than the pain itself.

We need to get better about pain, emotional and physical. We need to get better as people, and we need to get better as a country.

The post Pain, Sleep and the Brain appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

Little Scientist

So I’ve been watching my almost-ten-month-old daughter interacting with the world lately and thinking about how much she’s like a little scientist. Everything is new, and she is busy investigating all of it with the single-minded determination that is both fun, challenging playful interaction with the world and serious work. She doesn’t know much yet, but if we all applied ourselves to the world in this kind of way, we would be experts in very little time.

There seems to be a certain number of essential properties of objects, according to the baby. As near as I can tell, they are:

(1) The sound the object makes when banged against a hard surface. (Bonus: the sound when banged against some other object!)

(2) The taste and texture of an object when you chew it. (Bonus: the texture when you chew the OTHER side or end of the object!)

(3) And, NEW: What happens when you drop it a foot from the floor. Does it flutter? Does it bounce? Does it splash? (Also, investigate VERB concept. It seems to be useful.)

Like a little scientist, my daughter when first investigating a field doesn’t have a lot of assumptions about things. Gravity? Hmm. What IS this thing? I fall down when I lose my grip on the couch. A lot. Okay. Well, does this phenomena apply to other objects? What happens if, for example, I drop THIS toy? Does it still fall? Ooh, it does? What happens if I drop this OTHER toy, with some force, at an angle? Oooh, a bounce! Can we recreate that result? She will sit there for ten or fifteen minutes (an eternity in ten month land) working to try to do similar actions over and over again to see if a result was a fluke or is indicative of a larger pattern she must then figure out.

It’s fascinating to see her explore the world and put things together. We visited my neighbor’s house yesterday and my neighbor (an awesome lady) asked whether the baby had any teeth yet. My daughter reached up and poked my neighbor’s teeth immediately thereafter. She understood the word and the concept both–even though she is still currently toothless :). She does things like that periodically that make me realize she is picking up understanding FAST, sometimes in things I didn’t quite mean to teach her. Example: a small fall off the couch, where I caught her enough to prevent injury but not enough to keep her from getting scared. When I told a friend on the phone afterwards about it (in front of the baby) and how scared I was that she was trying to crawl away on the diaper change table now since she has no fear of heights, the next time I changed her diaper she was STILL. My daughter is never still

The Great Experiment

At the advice of my brilliant writer friend A.E. Decker, I am attempting the Zen Master Opposite Day feat of writing by the seat of my pants. Yes, this is everyday awesomeness for many writers–including baby writer me, once upon a time. But writing classes and plotting practice and deadlines all conspired to make me an outliner, at least in the highlights. Given that Book Five is becoming my white whale, and given all the things, Ann dared me to start pantsing, writing without an outline. Have I mentioned she’s a genius? The words are starting to flow.

There is a dinosaur, bioengineered of course. There are a series of great conversations between Adam and Cherabino. There are Super Secret Spoiler moments I’m enjoying. And finally, truly, there is the feeling that the words are coming back.

So, inch by inch, around All the Other Things, I write.

It feels damn good. Finally.

The post The Great Experiment appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

On the Page

For me, this year has been about humility. Not only the humility of realizing how hard parenting is (parents out there, I am sorry. You guys are amazing and deserve much credit!) but also the humility of struggle. There’s nothing quite like hitting your personal wall over and over again to teach you that sometimes, you can’t do everything. You can’t fight through everything. Sometimes, you just have to slog and wait.

Post partum depression hit me like an anvil a couple of months after the birth, and it’s brutal to try to work around. Tending the baby is about all I can do some days, though thus far I have done it, and done it well enough she’s securely attached. My writing time (via babysitter) often went into sleeping. Sleeping is amazing, and cannot be overstated in its importance. Babies are hard on the sleeping.

Then, extraordinary family circumstances hit me hard. The scarce energy I had left over to do things other than Baby disappeared for awhile in other family things, and I hit a new level of exhaustion. Client work slowed to a crawl, and writing time became staring at the screen time, or sleeping. I went back to reading comfort books, at night, in audio while watching the baby, and tried to keep my head above water. Crying became part of the day. I waited, and I slogged, and I waited.

Then I figured out–for the third time–that I had to toss out more than 60k on Book Five. That’s 180,000 words total on the book that I’ve had to abandon, which is two novels’ worth of words. It was like a punch to the gut. But I finally (hopefully finally) think the direction is right. I’m going back to the original plan for the series before the publisher made me change the end of Vacant, or as close as I can get now, and I’m feeling good. Some of what I threw out may eventually become Book Six. But it’s disheartening to realize the words I’ve cried over and bled onto the page through really hard circumstances have to go.

It’s about nine and a half months after baby, and I’m just now starting to feel the fog begin to clear. I hope it lasts this time. The last time–around six months–it didn’t last. So I’m in an odd place of hope and despair co-mingled, and sitting down at the keyboard with finally something to write, and the belief that maybe, maybe, this time I’ll be able to slog through, and the words will be worth keeping. But it’s hard. Most everything is hard right now.

I have said before that I will realize Book Five on such and such a date, or such and such a season. I now know better. Right now all I can promise is that I will keep slogging. I will revise and release a few old novellas if I can, if it gives me joy and makes me feel productive, but only if it does so. I will chip away at the next book as I can. And I will find things, in fiction, that make me happy and interested and intrigued.

That’s why I write, after all. It’s why we read. So that when things are hard, there is the story, and there is the joy and sadness and hope and meaning. There it is, on the page.

The post On the Page appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

Pip is here!

So it turns out that chasing after a newborn and recovering from a 40+ hour labor is kind of intense, and takes a lot of time–specifically, offline time. Pip is almost six weeks old now, though, and I’m feeling better and starting to get a vague clue of how this kid thing works. I totally get why maternity leaves are six weeks minimum though! It’s definitely that long before you can even think of something non-kid–and honestly, most of that is lack of sleep and learning curve. Public service announcement: support longer maternity leaves for everyone. And paternity too. With pay. It’s a necessity, not a luxury.

Pip was born in mid-December at 8 lbs 10 oz in great health. She’s kind of adorable–even the nurses at the hospital said so. Judge for yourself:

Pip – photographed by Jill D., http://www.jilldphoto.com

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’ll see you guys on the flip side!

The post Pip is here! appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

Cover Reveal for the Cherabino Novella!

Hi all,

I am thrilled to reveal the cover for Temper, the novella from Cherabino’s point of view. It happens at the same time as Adam’s novella, Fluid, and judging from beta reader reactions, everyone is *loving* the chance to get inside Cherabino’s head. She was very fun to write!

The amazing Scarlett Rugers has done it again. Here’s the incredible cover she came up with for the novella.

 

Here’s the text we’ve come up with for the back cover:

Introducing Temper, the first Mindspace Investigations novella from ex-Homicide Detective Isabella Cherabino’s point of view…

Some Clients Test You More Than Others

Getting fired from the DeKalb County P.D. was hard, and starting up a private investigation firm has turned out to be even harder. The bills aren’t getting paid, and it doesn’t help that my partner the telepath keeps getting called away to work for the police department that dropped me like a bad habit. It makes me sad. And angry. A whole lot angry. But when a big-time steel mill mogul comes to Mindspace Investigations PI for help finding his blackmailer, I jump at the chance to get justice for someone again.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot more to this case than meets the eye. Shady union dealings. Ties to the mob. Questionable motives. Lies and half-truths. But we need the money, and I can’t afford to be picky about jobs right now. No matter how much I dislike the client.

My sensei used to tell me that picking a fight was a bad idea for anyone, but a particularly bad idea for me. But sometimes you don’t get to pick your battles. I just hope this is a fight I can win without crossing too many lines.

 

I’m getting so excited! Line edits got finished today, and the book will be off to the formatter ASAP. Assuming that Pip holds off on her arrival until at least mid-next week, I’m planning to set up a preorder for the novella then, and having it automatically release on Wednesday, December the 16th. (If Pip is early, there will be a delay, but there will be baby pictures, which make everything better. ) If the preorder goes up on time, assume we’re on schedule and feel free to shout about the release to all your friends.

If I don’t talk to you guys on the blog here for a few weeks, I wish you all the joy in the world, a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, and a joyous and grateful New Year! Sam and I are already looking forward to our own cute little Christmas present.

The post Cover Reveal for the Cherabino Novella! appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

Rabbit Trick Now Free!

“Rabbit Trick,” the very first short story featuring telepathic detective Adam Ward, now has a new cover by the amazing Scarlett Rugers! To celebrate, the ebook will be completely FREE for the next few weeks on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

If you have friends or family who’ve been wanting to get into Mindspace, this is a great opportunity for them to get a taste. Please spread the word!

The post Rabbit Trick Now Free! appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.

Two New Covers!

I’m excited to announce two new covers from the amazing Scarlett Rugers, one for an old project and one for a new one

First, for the old project. I’ve long been dissatisfied with the cover for the first short story in the series, Rabbit Trick, and Scarlett has redesigned the cover for me. Isn’t it gorgeous? I particularly like the parking deck lit by the neon light, since it ties so forcefully into the overall story. I’ll be updating this cover on Amazon and the other retailers soon.

 

And for the new project! Those of you who’ve been following my email newsletter already know about the Three Words Project, where readers sent me sets of three words and I wrote flash fiction stories inspired by those three words. It was such a fun project that I did it twice–in the summer of 2014 and then the winter of 2014-2015. By popular demand, I’ve collected those stories into a single collection coming out end of November for ebook and print, titled appropriately The Three Words Project: Short Stories Inspired by Readers. Here’s the cover:

Isn’t it phenomenal? I’m so incredibly happy with this cover!

What do you guys think?

The post Two New Covers! appeared first on Alex Hughes - Author of the Mindspace Investigations series.