Kate Larking's Blog: Anxiety Ink, page 41

“I’m on a timer.”

Late last month it was suddenly time to start nagging my fellow writing group members about content for our newsletter. Christmas was behind me but New Year’s Eve was starring me in the face. So I suggested a topic I knew would hit home: How do you keep productive during the holiday season? People responded far better than I expected, so I thought I’d give the question a whirl.

I’m the person who avoids people during the holidays. It’s what I do. I’m usually happiest solo with mini bouts of human interaction. Sometimes saying, “I have work to do,” isn’t enough to let me escape without a lot of heckling, so I developed a new strategy.

Both of my parents played sports growing up, my dad the hockey wiz and my mom the softball champ. While I never did join a team, I did inherit their athleticism and competitive streaks. We’re a weird bunch, but in our household if someone says, “I’m on a timer,” that means they’re competing against a clock and want to be left alone until the buzzer sounds. They’re aiming to win so get out of the way.

And the funny thing is we all really respect that phrase.

Now if I’m writing or sitting at my desk working on something, I say to whoever happens to be interrupting, “Sorry, I’m actually on a timer,” and they let me get on with it without a lot of questions. Sometimes you have to play to a person’s competitiveness in order to be left alone. It’s yet another reason writing in timed spurts serves me well.

Outside the house it doesn’t really work, but you can’t win them all. And for the record, I’m usually working against a timer because it aids my productivity.

Now, how do you stay productive during the holiday season?

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Writing and Single-tasking

One of the ways I have been tackling my new year is with single-tasking.

It used to be, if you asked me, I would tell you that I could write while listening to a podcast. I could do administrative work like coding or formatting while watching anime on the side. I could write blog posts while surfing news sites and finding articles for Anxiety Ink feeds and listening to music.

I’m going to call out myself now: total bullshit.

I could pretend I could but it would be more like a word here, a coded bit there, something I’ve listened to over there, a fragmented wisp of a story idea from music over there, and none of them coalesced into anything remotely resembling productivity.

So I’m trying something different this year.

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When I find myself tempted to divide my attention (or those blessed times I realize after I have already done so), I stop. I pick one thing to work on and give it my full attention. So far, this is working really well in my personal productivity time. I find I am getting more done, I’m more connected with the work that I have completed, and I am learning more as I go. I also feel settled in my mind, which anyone with anxiety or depression can tell you is a huge benefit.

The one place I haven’t been able to employ this is at work. Working in a cubicle environment is prime for constant interruptions. I’m trying, but it is really hard to balance this multitasking time with the time the way that I need to work the rest of the day to keep my wits about me and use my time to its most potential.

Have you tried to actively single-task? Specifically writing and single-tasking? Does it work for you or do you find yourself wandering constantly?

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Our Favourite M.J. King Posts

Unfortunately, Melissa could not post today due to a family emergency. While we are sending our thoughts to her and her family, we decided to go through Melissa’s posting archive to select our favourite posts of hers. Enjoy!

Kate’s Favourite M.J. King Post

I had a difficult time deciding. One of the things I absolutely love about Melissa is that she is so courageous, she faces everything head-on. At the start of this blog, she exclusively did novels. And, going over her archive, she can now add short stories, flash fiction, podcasting, scripts, and performs.

The post I picked is What’s Next? from November 18th, 2013. The reason is because that is where I am right now. The comic is a currently project, yes, but I’m looking through my personal projects and asking myself what I would like to see finished and succeed in self publication this year. Because I want to dive in, go the whole distance, just like I have seen Melissa do when she has lead by example in her various pursuits.

Elisa’s Favourite M.J. King Post

This was definitely a tough one. Melissa covers so many topics that resonate with me when she blogs that it’s difficult honing in on one I can call my favourite. Especially after two and a half years of writing! I finally stopped going through the archives because I grew overwhelmed.

The post I (finally) picked is Origin Stories from January 20th, 2014. I selected this one not because it makes all artists sound cool, even though it totally does, but because it tugs at the heart strings a little bit. I’m at a crossroads right now between needing to adult and wanting to adult. I’m in the middle playing tug of war with myself. This internal conflict sucks a lot of energy away, energy I need for my creative endeavors. Remembering why I chose to be a writer in the first place helps bolster those reserves no matter what I have going on in my head or in my life.

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Gendered Actions

Before I even start, I want to reiterate that I don’t really believe in the constructs of gender beyond the roles society does its best to force us into. Delineations of boys-only or girls-only anything is stupid. However, social constructs, when not challenged, do create certain responses in some situations. I’m going to tackle one such kind of situation and what I’m referring to as gendered actions for ease.

A number of weeks ago, I was watching The Closer with my mom, as one does on a Sunday night. In this episode, one of the show’s main characters, a detective, left his AA meeting late after everyone else had gone. He’d celebrated a big anniversary during the meeting and left with a cake. Exiting the building, he slowly walked the dark parking lot heading for his car. He then nonchalantly opened the passenger side door to carefully arrange the cake on the seat –and proceeded to get jumped by some huge guy while his back was turned. A big fight ensued.

Afterwards, my mom said, “What is the deal with men being so slow? Any woman would have gotten in on the driver’s side with the cake, shut the door, and leaned over the middle console to put the cake on the other seat.”

To which I responded, “It’s because men aren’t ingrained with the need to rush and be alert if they’re alone in a dark parking lot.”

Tell me none of that’s true. Exactly.

Had this been a female detective I wouldn’t have had the same response to the scene because women aren’t free to act so careless in such locales. We’re taught from a young age to not be out alone in a dark and/or secluded place. If it can’t be helped we know to have our keys ready (to use as a potential weapon) so we can get to safety ASAP and to be aware of our surroundings in case someone we don’t know is there with us. Heck, if I’m anywhere alone I have a tendency to scout escape routes, but I’m slightly paranoid.

Even before this scene started, I wasn’t 100% certain that the detective was in any danger. Again, had he been a female detective, my heart would have been pounding from the tension because there would have been no other reason to put her there alone. I can’t decide how I feel about that. Just in real life I hate seeing women walking alone anywhere because I legitimately fear for their safety. And the fact I do makes me really angry.

Whatever you want to call it, these lessons are the products of rape culture. It’s horrible and unfair, but that’s the truth. (Certain) men just don’t have to be so vigilante. Not that they don’t occasionally pay the price for it. Women always have to be careful, which is victim blaming at its finest, but it’s something changing ever so slowly in our world.

My writing takeaway from this is: play with your audience’s socially ingrained responses if only for tension’s sake. But pull the rug out from under them as often as possible. And mess with gender norms whenever you can.

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New Years Cleaning – Purging Books

I had a wonderful week off work between Christmas and New Years. And, in that time, I did a lot of new years cleaning. Instead of starting with my closet (which probably does need a cull) like I usually do, I decided to start in my office.

My office had degraded to the point that books were piling on all table surfaces, all chairs, and even in boxes on the floor. I am a book hoarder, plain and simple. And this had to be addressed.

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So, winter cleaning commenced and, after 140 books were purged, a few garbage bags of things no longer needed, and a thorough dusting session of my two desks (yup, two), and one major software update on my desktop that I rarely use, I finally had my office back.

I had hoped to change my desktop into an extended display for my laptop, but my desktop is 6 months too old to have the capability to do so (many curse words ensued this realization but I am now resigned to this fact).

Having a dedicated space to work is really beneficial to my concentration. I had made my place at the dining room table which was nice, but I was constantly distracted and the wife was not pleased that I was taking up real estate there with multiple devices. Now, back in my office, I am working on having the discipline when I am there to not goof off and watch anime, take a nap in front of the fireplace, or just hibernate in a daze.

I am also working on not bringing home so many damned books. As a book buyer, I get a lot of advance reading copies (ARCs) and while I do bring home only a couple from each batch, I was still bringing home too many.

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Language Barriers

When I was in high school, I attended a French immersion program. The next fall, I started AP English.

My first essay was kind of a mess. The teacher didn’t appreciate the French influence on grammar.

Anecdote aside, I’m a language nut. Linguaphile. Even so, it’s only recently that I’ve become aware of how rarely I see multi-lingual settings. SciFi stories often use some sort of universal translator to smooth over language barriers. In fantasy, everyone speaks “Commyn” or some other lingua franca.

In those types of settings, language barriers only appear to emphasize the foreignness of a people. It others them: sets them apart and makes them not-quite-human, whether sub-human or super-human.

One of my favorite things about visiting a larger city is the ability to walk down a street and hear half a dozen languages. Why don’t we see more of that? Multiple languages – and language barriers – is an often overlooked dynamic that can go a long way to enriching a story.

If including that dynamic seems difficult, it is. But not as hard as you’re imagining. And avoiding something solely because of difficulty settings is lazy writing.

But won’t it add too much exposition? No. It will add exactly as much as you want it to. No need to keep hammering on it; you’ll just lose readers. It can be as simple as, “She switched languages.” Three words. And once you’ve established who speaks what, a lot of it can be implied.

Remember that every word has a point – it serves a purpose – so don’t toss in words just for the sake of having them. They have to be more than flavor.

My favorite is to write language barriers. I love tossing my characters in over their heads. Surrounded by people speaking a language she doesn’t know, she has to catch other clues to figure out what’s going on. (And maybe she doesn’t figure it out, which is fine, but I have to know exactly what’s being said.) It reminds me that there is so much more to human experience than what usually makes it on the page.

I’m taking a pause from a scene where my main character is fluent in both languages being spoken, but the same can not be said for two other characters. These two often hold the upper hand in terms of power – one through physical strength, the other through political. They are antagonistic towards each other, and neither speaks the other’s language.

Suddenly, the balance of power has shifted. They can’t understand each other, but she can understand both perfectly. For the moment, the main character holds the greater power.

It won’t last. Trust me.

Multiple languages and language barriers can be great tools to use and, like any tools, they require practice.

If you know any stories that use these – and, better yet, use them well – please leave a comment

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Happy New Year! Hello, 2016 Goals

Happy New Year!

2016 has flown in ultra-quickly and while I can’t believe another year is behind us I am more than ready to move forward and embrace the newness.

Like I said on the 25th of December, I’m more than pleased with how my 2015 goals shaped up by the end of the year. I think I got my priorities straight, dug deep, and stuck with many of them. Inevitably, a few were neglected, so they have made it onto this year’s list. I did rephrase a couple in order to better accomplish them.

Over the years I’ve flip flopped between quantitative and abstract goals as I tried to figure out where my strengths lie. This year I did a mix. I added detail to certain goals so that I could measure my progress each quarter, then some are vague because I have an idea of wanting to accomplish something but I’m not 100% sure at this time what that is.  Regardless, I’m excited to devote my time and energy to each goal.

All in all, my 2015 progress turned this year into a bit of a quandary –I didn’t know what I wanted to accomplish! For maybe an hour.

Say hello to my 2016 goals:

Write a minimum of 3 000 words per week, half that for blog weeks. [My desire is to hit 85% of this]
Shop “Brew Disaster” around.
Shop my literary stories around.
Read a minimum of 68 books over the year.
Introduce something new to Anxiety Ink.
Write a new short story.
Learn how to meditate. [Instead of telling myself to relax and go outside each day, which I ignore]
Keep up the exercise to boost energy.
Run 5 km without stopping. [I’m at 2.72 right now!]
Cook more often.
Try something new.
Be POSITIVE. [Staying on the list lest I forget]
Participate in NaNoWriM0 2016 and exceed 2015’s word count.
Finish writing RA2.
Turn RA1 into a readable manuscript.
Read a Shakespearean play.
Be greener.
Set goals for myself at the day job and hit them.
Edit and complete my crow story.
Draw more.

Bring it on 2016. I’m ready!

What are you hoping to accomplish this year?

 

*Side note, two days before this post went up the day job shifted radically. Again. That said, the future looks manageable with my goals, so instead of focusing on the anxiety inducing change I’m sticking to that positive factor.

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Deadlines of Promises

So. Elisa and I had made a promise in August to get a first draft done of our books by January 5th. It’s January 6th.

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Did we make it? Not really. I’m sure that Elisa will have her own post on this promise but I want to give my opinion today.

I spent a lot of time worried about the promise–which is time I probably should have spent writing. But the fact is, I was busy drowning in other things that came up.

My job, for one. I was really really event heavy over the fall semester. I hadn’t been expecting to have weeks with 4 events in them, including working on a weekend, leaving me little time to recover, let alone write.

I certainly wasn’t expecting to be sidelined by depression. When I realized it was hitting me in October, I was already deep under and struggling. I set up my support system and tried to turn things around but it took a lot of what I could do just to get out of bed.

I was not expecting that something I learned at the conference would lead to an event for the artist of Crash and Burn, thus leading to us rush finalize contracts, contributors, edit, and publish the first chapter for December. At the time, I didn’t expect to become the only writer on the project. At the time, I didn’t anticipate learning how to format a comic ebook–totally different from text-only ones! At the time, I had very little knowledge about storyboards, typesetting, and webcomic marketing.

Going back to the promise, these were all things I didn’t expect to happen. While one way to look at them is entirely defeatist and say, “Those are just excuses for why I failed,” I am looking on the upside. I am established in my job. I have a firm grounding in my comic project. I have another publication. I have a plan for next year.

Elisa and I are both mutually happy with the progress we made on our projects. That is success. We both managed to get our heads more in the game, to push harder, to expect more of ourselves and each other. I am proud of the progress Elisa made in the 5 months since we made that promise on a whim. I’m proud of myself, too. That’s what fucking matters.

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2016 Goals

For a minute, I debated doing these. Sure, I’d make my goals, but I wouldn’t need to share them on here. Besides which, if you’ve been hanging around Anxiety Ink for a while, maybe you’re bored to tears.

You know what? Too bad.

Because I realized that if I didn’t share my goals here, I would have no accountability. And I’m terrible without accountability. Publicly keeping track of them like this helps me more than I can say. Hopefully, you find something in this process to help you, too.

That said, my goals for 2016:

Get something more done in/for/with my house, whether that’s painting a couple rooms or finally finishing off our upstairs. I also want to continue learning to sew with my grandmother. Making pieces of my Halloween costume was great! Now I want to make things that will see more use – covers for things that need them, clothes I’ll wear more than one day a year, maybe a bag.

In social things, I’d like to reserve at least one day a month (when not involved in a show) to spend time with friends. Be social outside of family obligations and work. Actually use Goodreads to keep track of my reading list and update my personal blog with more consistency – ideally once a week or more, though two weeks when super stressed and busy would be all right.

I just came off a period of nearly three months of radio silence over on the personal blog. That is unacceptable to me and I don’t want it to happen again.

Theatre is a huge wildcard. I can’t predict what show(s) I may or may not be involved with. I want to be more active, more involved with the troupe I am now a member of. I want to audition for at least one paying gig and take a theatre class or two.

This year, productions will determine my travel plans. I desperately want to return to ReaderCon this year. I’d also love to attend When Words Collide in Calgary, with the added bonuses of seeing Kate and finally meeting Elisa in person!

Other potential travel plans include a visit to Florida for family, and maybe a West Coast tour involving LA, Portland, and Seattle. Sadly, I can’t do Calgary and the West Coast tour. And forever ago, my niece and I made (tentative) plans to take a trip to Ecuador together as a sort of senior trip. She is now a senior in high school and we have not discussed this in months.

I need more paycheck and more paid vacation. Obviously.

For reading, rather than aiming for a higher book count, I want to aim for reading more widely. Last year, I started several nonfiction books and finished none of them. I need to fix that.

And last – certainly not least – writing goals.

My submission count goal of last year . . . flopped. The year before, I focused on the writing of the stories and made more submissions than ever. This year, I’m going back to the model that work.

I want to finish the rough draft that is currently my project. Preferably by the end of February, though that’s going to be a stretch especially with the current sticking point.

Then I want to give myself three months to edit another novel. Six months with a show thrown in.

Write a play. Start another novel rough draft. Finish two short stories.

Oh, and run another writing workshop.

That’s . . . a lot. But totally doable. Right?

. . . Right?

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Thoughts on Writing Style

I recently finished reading Faith Hunter’s Blood Cross, book number two in the Jane Yellowrock series, and while I write this post I am in the middle of Jeff VanderMeer’s Acceptance, book three in his Southern Reach Trilogy. On the surface these books couldn’t be further apart, I’m pretty much the only thing tying them together. Yet both authors have a very specific writing style that I admire, so of course I got to thinking about style in general having read them so close together.

Halfway through Blood Cross, I remember thinking about Hunter’s use of language and how she describes setting and characters in her books. I like both aspects a lot, and think there’s much to learn from them. Then I recalled a comment Hunter made at WWC.

I didn’t write it down so I am 100% paraphrasing here, but I believe she said, “I write a certain way, with a certain sophistication, and if I alienate some readers because of it, too bad.”

I can’t express how much it meant for me to hear this! I write in a slightly elevated style myself, I’m not being snooty when I say that either; I have a strong vocabulary and I use it. Even in everyday life. It’s how I communicate.

I’m never going to write super lyrical prose or esoteric ramblings (at least not in the near future), but I’m tired of having to change my writing style in order to fit some perception of the genre I am writing in. I think I constructed the perception, to be honest. Or I listened to too many people tell me to “drop the flowery writing”* because they weren’t on the same level as me. I like big words, I like language, I’m going to use what I enjoy. What’s more, I want readers who are on the same wave length as me.

I’ve read quite a bit in the genre I’m currently calling my own. Not only do my favourite stories differ dramatically despite linked lore, but every single writer ranges in style and language use –Armstrong, Hunter, Briggs, Harrison, Hamilton, Butcher, and Andrews sound nothing alike, and I don’t want to sound like any of them. I have a strong writing voice and a style that, while I’m still fine-tuning, I’m very happy with.

Coming back to VanderMeer’s trilogy, I’m just excited by the fact that people are so interested in literary horror! That fills me with hope and excitement. Besides, if you want a serious lesson in artistic style, read about the Southern Reach. Expect to lose some sleep though.

 

*”Drop the flowery writing” is one of my favourite pieces of advice from a high school social studies teacher who didn’t understand the big words in my essays. Please note the sarcasm. I have yet to drop the flowery writing, for the record, and I’m sure he’s still confused. Yeah, I hold a minor grudge.

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