Ruthanna Emrys's Blog, page 4
November 26, 2016
Nineteen Days Later: Moments
I'm at the Fort Totten train station, on the liminal boundary between DC and Maryland, colony and state, travel beneath the earth and above it. On either side, a grassy slope cuts down to the platform. It's late afternoon, and leaves drift down like snow, and the light shines through like an oil painting. Two deer stand in the light, dipping their heads to taste the green. Their tails flick lazily even as the trains rumble past.
I'm at our neighborhood rally--"Not On Our Watch"--listening to a Hawiian Sovereignty activist. She tells us how she wore dark glasses to vote. The people around her were so excited about the likely Clinton win, and she didn't want them to see her crying. Clinton's policies would do terrible harm to her people and her cause--and she mourned that this was the best option on offer.
My daughter smiles when I lift her from her crib, and babbles, new words every day. She's the only morning person in the household, so we're the first downstairs. Even the dog is asleep; this is as quiet as our house gets. Outside, a squirrel is eating the pumpkin we left out on the stump, bushy tail waving. M demands "mana" for breakfast. When I give her the banana, I ask, as I always do, "Can you say thank you?" For the first time, she responds: "Dak oo!"
I'm watching Zootopia and crying. It seems so painfully and wonderfully optimistic. This week I have also cried at Belinda Carlisle's "Summer Rain" and the mere thought of putting on Hamilton.
My landlord is eating stir-fry in my dining room. We're listening to a pitch for solar panels--we've been talking for a couple of years about getting them on the house eventually, but we've agreed that it's time now. It turns out that the solar sales guy is from the same small Colorado town as one of our housemates; they're joking about snow. The sales guy seems relieved to be pitching to people who understand both architecture and math.
I'm in a Day Job meeting about innovation and crowdsourcing when I make the mistake of checking Twitter. This is how I discover that, over the weekend, the building where I used to work rented space to a bunch of nazis. I run into the bathroom and manage to avoid throwing up; a friend on Twitter talks me down so I can finish up the meeting.
I'm playing the old FASA Star Trek RPG with my household--my household is in fact a college role-playing group that decided to raise kids together; now we all chip in for sitters so we can game. We're trying to track a federation vessel that shot at a neutral ship, before it starts a war. We're convinced that it's a breakaway group of Andorian terrorists. Instead it turns out to be a bunch of refugees who got away from a fight through time travel, and think their own war's still going on.
"Are you okay," we ask everyone we meet. "How are you holding up?" Some people have already experienced the open bigotry, had to make new medical plans, realized the loss of possibilities that depended on particular laws. Some are still stuck on finding arguments for their own reassurance. I think about how the incipient dystopia permeates everything, and yet the moments of beauty and joy keep happening. I try to imagine how those moments will feel when the dystopia is no longer incipient. I try to fold myself around them, to store them, and to remind myself that they will keep occuring, in some form, regardless of what happens around them.
I'm at our neighborhood rally--"Not On Our Watch"--listening to a Hawiian Sovereignty activist. She tells us how she wore dark glasses to vote. The people around her were so excited about the likely Clinton win, and she didn't want them to see her crying. Clinton's policies would do terrible harm to her people and her cause--and she mourned that this was the best option on offer.
My daughter smiles when I lift her from her crib, and babbles, new words every day. She's the only morning person in the household, so we're the first downstairs. Even the dog is asleep; this is as quiet as our house gets. Outside, a squirrel is eating the pumpkin we left out on the stump, bushy tail waving. M demands "mana" for breakfast. When I give her the banana, I ask, as I always do, "Can you say thank you?" For the first time, she responds: "Dak oo!"
I'm watching Zootopia and crying. It seems so painfully and wonderfully optimistic. This week I have also cried at Belinda Carlisle's "Summer Rain" and the mere thought of putting on Hamilton.
My landlord is eating stir-fry in my dining room. We're listening to a pitch for solar panels--we've been talking for a couple of years about getting them on the house eventually, but we've agreed that it's time now. It turns out that the solar sales guy is from the same small Colorado town as one of our housemates; they're joking about snow. The sales guy seems relieved to be pitching to people who understand both architecture and math.
I'm in a Day Job meeting about innovation and crowdsourcing when I make the mistake of checking Twitter. This is how I discover that, over the weekend, the building where I used to work rented space to a bunch of nazis. I run into the bathroom and manage to avoid throwing up; a friend on Twitter talks me down so I can finish up the meeting.
I'm playing the old FASA Star Trek RPG with my household--my household is in fact a college role-playing group that decided to raise kids together; now we all chip in for sitters so we can game. We're trying to track a federation vessel that shot at a neutral ship, before it starts a war. We're convinced that it's a breakaway group of Andorian terrorists. Instead it turns out to be a bunch of refugees who got away from a fight through time travel, and think their own war's still going on.
"Are you okay," we ask everyone we meet. "How are you holding up?" Some people have already experienced the open bigotry, had to make new medical plans, realized the loss of possibilities that depended on particular laws. Some are still stuck on finding arguments for their own reassurance. I think about how the incipient dystopia permeates everything, and yet the moments of beauty and joy keep happening. I try to imagine how those moments will feel when the dystopia is no longer incipient. I try to fold myself around them, to store them, and to remind myself that they will keep occuring, in some form, regardless of what happens around them.
November 18, 2016
Ten Days Later
Anger and fear are settling down into what I hope is a sustainable banked fire, something to keep me moving and acting and loving for the duration. I keep encountering new indications that this will not be normal. Yesterday it was Japanese internment suddenly being invoked as a perfectly reasonable policy precedent. Today it's the threat of FADA, which both houses of Congress have said they will pass and T**** has said he will sign. Then there are the ongoing additions to the Cabinet of Deplorables...
I've made the first Congressional Office calls of my life, something I always left to the extroverts before. Yesterday my hands were shaking for an hour afterwards; today I just felt a little queasy. We've gotten a quote on solar panels. Going to a neighborhood Not On Our Watch meeting this weekend, hoping to solidify the looking-out-for-each-other energies that we've found talking with neighbors individually.
Before this, I had let the day-to-day business of job and kids and household come before actively working to repair the world. In the abstract, I felt that making a better world was a vital part of parenting, of householding, of a full adult life--but in practice there was so much I didn't get to. I'm not hubristic enough to think that me, alone, speaking up more would have changed the election. But me and thousands of other busy people, overwhelmed by the minuata of daily life... I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way now. I'm heartened by the number of people I see being galvanized around the country. Even hopeful, some moments.
I think my writing must be part of this repair. My "yay, 1st book coming out" excitement feels like an artifact of that brighter alternate universe. I'm trying to focus now on sharing strength and empathy, and speaking truth in the best way I know how. For a week before the election I was too distracted to write, and for a few days afterward too much in mourning. Now the words are coming again, the second book going in a slightly different direction than I thought it would, truths clarified by current events. I'm trying to weave solace and hope and truth: strange bedfellows. Aphra's stories have always been about understanding across barriers, fighting for survival with allies who are themselves eldritch to you. We have always described groups of people in monstrous terms when we wanted an excuse to treat them badly; therefore any description of a whole group as monstrous must be questioned deeply and forcefully. And yet we also need to know how to recognize and fight the real monsters...
A little of everything that needs doing, every day.
I've made the first Congressional Office calls of my life, something I always left to the extroverts before. Yesterday my hands were shaking for an hour afterwards; today I just felt a little queasy. We've gotten a quote on solar panels. Going to a neighborhood Not On Our Watch meeting this weekend, hoping to solidify the looking-out-for-each-other energies that we've found talking with neighbors individually.
Before this, I had let the day-to-day business of job and kids and household come before actively working to repair the world. In the abstract, I felt that making a better world was a vital part of parenting, of householding, of a full adult life--but in practice there was so much I didn't get to. I'm not hubristic enough to think that me, alone, speaking up more would have changed the election. But me and thousands of other busy people, overwhelmed by the minuata of daily life... I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way now. I'm heartened by the number of people I see being galvanized around the country. Even hopeful, some moments.
I think my writing must be part of this repair. My "yay, 1st book coming out" excitement feels like an artifact of that brighter alternate universe. I'm trying to focus now on sharing strength and empathy, and speaking truth in the best way I know how. For a week before the election I was too distracted to write, and for a few days afterward too much in mourning. Now the words are coming again, the second book going in a slightly different direction than I thought it would, truths clarified by current events. I'm trying to weave solace and hope and truth: strange bedfellows. Aphra's stories have always been about understanding across barriers, fighting for survival with allies who are themselves eldritch to you. We have always described groups of people in monstrous terms when we wanted an excuse to treat them badly; therefore any description of a whole group as monstrous must be questioned deeply and forcefully. And yet we also need to know how to recognize and fight the real monsters...
A little of everything that needs doing, every day.
November 10, 2016
May her name be a blessing.
We just lost
tamnonlinear
. To depression and MS and fucking Donald J. Trump.
She is not the first or only loss these past two days, just the first loss of someone I knew. I know there will be others. May their names be blessings, and curses against their enemies, and protective scars on the foreheads of those who still live to fight.
If you are ideating, know that you are loved and needed, and that when you aren't feeling strong enough to march by our sides we'll carry you. We'll all be carrying each other, sometimes, these next few years.
tamnonlinear
. To depression and MS and fucking Donald J. Trump. She is not the first or only loss these past two days, just the first loss of someone I knew. I know there will be others. May their names be blessings, and curses against their enemies, and protective scars on the foreheads of those who still live to fight.
If you are ideating, know that you are loved and needed, and that when you aren't feeling strong enough to march by our sides we'll carry you. We'll all be carrying each other, sometimes, these next few years.
November 9, 2016
Words
I am feeling very shaky on words right now. Maybe I'll have better ones tomorrow, when I've slept more than I did last night.
It is okay to mourn, to cry, to feel numb and stare blindly into space, to be angry, to throw yourself immediately into organization. Now is not the time to apologize or feel ashamed of your reactions; now is not the time to expect others to react as you do. Only remember that we dare not despair for long.
I always knew that the good times don't last and hatred waxes again, that we build and lose and build a little higher next time, that the good times are worth making but the loss comes eventually to some generation. And yet somehow, until about 1AM last night, I held onto the hope, even the expectation, that the burden would not fall on my generation. And I'm ready to fight even harder for a civilization that values everybody--where it's one of the good times for everyone. Something we hadn't yet made, but were working towards, were getting closer... maybe I'll live to see the rights and protections regained that we still have in this moment. Maybe my daughters will live to see us do better.
When I write stories, I write about people working together across differences, overcoming fear, facing darkness with courage--because that's the humanity I know and understand. That feels important tonight, and maybe tomorrow when I've slept I'll find the strength to write that truth again.
I wrote Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land, in part, to say that true homelands, civilizations, countries, are carried in the hearts and actions of those who count themselves as citizens. Not in Aslan, but in Puddleglum's realization that it's better to act like a citizen of Narnia even if Narnia only exists in your imagination. That feels important too.
And still my tongue is dry with fear, and my stomach too twisted to eat more than a few bites. Maybe tomorrow, trying to find words wont hurt so much.
It is okay to mourn, to cry, to feel numb and stare blindly into space, to be angry, to throw yourself immediately into organization. Now is not the time to apologize or feel ashamed of your reactions; now is not the time to expect others to react as you do. Only remember that we dare not despair for long.
I always knew that the good times don't last and hatred waxes again, that we build and lose and build a little higher next time, that the good times are worth making but the loss comes eventually to some generation. And yet somehow, until about 1AM last night, I held onto the hope, even the expectation, that the burden would not fall on my generation. And I'm ready to fight even harder for a civilization that values everybody--where it's one of the good times for everyone. Something we hadn't yet made, but were working towards, were getting closer... maybe I'll live to see the rights and protections regained that we still have in this moment. Maybe my daughters will live to see us do better.
When I write stories, I write about people working together across differences, overcoming fear, facing darkness with courage--because that's the humanity I know and understand. That feels important tonight, and maybe tomorrow when I've slept I'll find the strength to write that truth again.
I wrote Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land, in part, to say that true homelands, civilizations, countries, are carried in the hearts and actions of those who count themselves as citizens. Not in Aslan, but in Puddleglum's realization that it's better to act like a citizen of Narnia even if Narnia only exists in your imagination. That feels important too.
And still my tongue is dry with fear, and my stomach too twisted to eat more than a few bites. Maybe tomorrow, trying to find words wont hurt so much.
October 18, 2016
2017 conventions and appearances
"Try to go to a lot of cons," my editor says. "Twist my arm," I say. In 2017, you can probably find me at:
Arisia (1/13-1/16, Boston) - In college, this was the one we saved up for all year. Now they have child care. The general rule is that I will go to any con that has child care and is compatible with my schedule/budget, even if co-parents are actually watching the kids. Because that is a thing that should be encouraged. In this case, the kids are in fact coming along, because the entire household is coming along, because this is the one we used to save up for all year in college.
Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference (2/8-2/11, DC) - Because I got invited to pinch-hit on "The Infinite in the Finite: One Hundred Years of H.P. Lovecraft's Legacy." The programming looks awesome. Among other things, this is the one where Daniel Jose Older is doing the "Writing White Characters" panel.
Fogcon (3/10-3/12, San Francisco) - Tentative, because budget. But I've been hearing awesome things about this con for years, and they have child care.
April book launch mysteries - Tentative because we're still trying to make all the puzzle pieces fit together. There will almost certainly be a launch party in DC. There may be something at Lunacon (4/7-4/9, Westchester NY). If Lunacon happens, there may be an appending event in New York. The universe is inherently chaotic and unpredictable.
Wiscon (5/26-5/29, Madison) - I haven't been back to my home con in three years--way too long! They have child care! A Lovecraftian Girl Cooties party, featuring me and best co-blogger Anne M. Pillsworth, and anyone else we can dragoon all our wonderful co-conspirators, is in the works.
Readercon (7/13-7/16, Boston) - I've been hearing so many good things about this one, too.
Necronomicon (8/17-8/20, Providence) - Because of course.
Nothing planned past August, so far. The universe is inherently chaotic and unpredictable.
Arisia (1/13-1/16, Boston) - In college, this was the one we saved up for all year. Now they have child care. The general rule is that I will go to any con that has child care and is compatible with my schedule/budget, even if co-parents are actually watching the kids. Because that is a thing that should be encouraged. In this case, the kids are in fact coming along, because the entire household is coming along, because this is the one we used to save up for all year in college.
Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference (2/8-2/11, DC) - Because I got invited to pinch-hit on "The Infinite in the Finite: One Hundred Years of H.P. Lovecraft's Legacy." The programming looks awesome. Among other things, this is the one where Daniel Jose Older is doing the "Writing White Characters" panel.
Fogcon (3/10-3/12, San Francisco) - Tentative, because budget. But I've been hearing awesome things about this con for years, and they have child care.
April book launch mysteries - Tentative because we're still trying to make all the puzzle pieces fit together. There will almost certainly be a launch party in DC. There may be something at Lunacon (4/7-4/9, Westchester NY). If Lunacon happens, there may be an appending event in New York. The universe is inherently chaotic and unpredictable.
Wiscon (5/26-5/29, Madison) - I haven't been back to my home con in three years--way too long! They have child care! A Lovecraftian Girl Cooties party, featuring me and best co-blogger Anne M. Pillsworth, and anyone else we can dragoon all our wonderful co-conspirators, is in the works.
Readercon (7/13-7/16, Boston) - I've been hearing so many good things about this one, too.
Necronomicon (8/17-8/20, Providence) - Because of course.
Nothing planned past August, so far. The universe is inherently chaotic and unpredictable.
August 28, 2016
Writing After Publication
I'm now a little under halfway through Deep Roots, the sequel to Winter Tide. I'm learning things. For example, that writing around a toddler is harder than writing around a pregnant wife who sleeps a lot. Who knew? And that I need to write something new every day, even when prior-book edits intervene, because the ease of getting started the day after a 50-word day is noticeably better than the ease of getting started the day after a 0-word day.
Publication changes my writing process, both because of the practicalities of the editing cycle, and because I've learned things from writing and editing the first book. Winter Tide isn't my first completed novel--it's my 3rd--but it's the first where I've had to go beyond making a few cosmetic changes based on beta reader feedback. Structural edits have always scared the hell out of me. I couldn't see how to fix a lopsided plot or a lack of foreshadowing, or how to stitch in and rip out entire threads of plot or theme. I could get away with that--right up until a book was accepted for publication. I owe Carl and Cameron endless gratitude for demanding those changes, and then holding my hand through several rounds of them.
The structural changes that Winter Tide needed weren't even major, relative to some I've heard about. The overall plot is still essentially what it was at the beginning. I added a few scenes and changed a few lines, but didn't have to cut any characters or subplots. The climax is the one I wrote originally. But the things I did have to do were scary for me. And having done them, I now know that I can. The end result is that I'm now much more willing to follow the way of the Crappy First Draft. I can take risks I wouldn't have before, when I assumed I'd be stuck with any roads that veered off cliffs. This is probably annoying for my alpha reading wife, who's dealing with in-line notes like <add a better transition here> and <people have faces, describe them> and <have Charlie do something or cut him from this scene entirely> in lieu of semi-polished prose.
Meanwhile, in the galleys, I'm learning that I really like to repeat words. One of the major things we did during line edits was to fix places where I'd enjoyed a piece of vocabulary so much that I used it three times in a paragraph. (Lovecraft never had an editor to catch these, thus the ever-amusing "cyclopean" count.) We must have fixed a couple hundred instances of this problem. Now, going over the galleys... I'm finding even more of these. My only theory is that the Great Old Ones really like repetitive words, and demand them of their scribes as tribute.
Road map:
Structural edits = Foreshadow this ending; make this threat scarier, turn up the volume on on your themes
Line edits = Make this paragraph comprehensible, cut half your cyclopeans, did you mean this dialogue to sound like flirting
Copyedits = Did you mean discrete or discreet, argue about hyphens, I don't care whether or not you capitalize Archpriest but be consistent
Galleys = Oh Great Cthulhu how did I miss that
...with a sprinkling of "fix this anachronism" throughout, because historical fantasy is hard and 1949 is a strange country.
Publication changes my writing process, both because of the practicalities of the editing cycle, and because I've learned things from writing and editing the first book. Winter Tide isn't my first completed novel--it's my 3rd--but it's the first where I've had to go beyond making a few cosmetic changes based on beta reader feedback. Structural edits have always scared the hell out of me. I couldn't see how to fix a lopsided plot or a lack of foreshadowing, or how to stitch in and rip out entire threads of plot or theme. I could get away with that--right up until a book was accepted for publication. I owe Carl and Cameron endless gratitude for demanding those changes, and then holding my hand through several rounds of them.
The structural changes that Winter Tide needed weren't even major, relative to some I've heard about. The overall plot is still essentially what it was at the beginning. I added a few scenes and changed a few lines, but didn't have to cut any characters or subplots. The climax is the one I wrote originally. But the things I did have to do were scary for me. And having done them, I now know that I can. The end result is that I'm now much more willing to follow the way of the Crappy First Draft. I can take risks I wouldn't have before, when I assumed I'd be stuck with any roads that veered off cliffs. This is probably annoying for my alpha reading wife, who's dealing with in-line notes like <add a better transition here> and <people have faces, describe them> and <have Charlie do something or cut him from this scene entirely> in lieu of semi-polished prose.
Meanwhile, in the galleys, I'm learning that I really like to repeat words. One of the major things we did during line edits was to fix places where I'd enjoyed a piece of vocabulary so much that I used it three times in a paragraph. (Lovecraft never had an editor to catch these, thus the ever-amusing "cyclopean" count.) We must have fixed a couple hundred instances of this problem. Now, going over the galleys... I'm finding even more of these. My only theory is that the Great Old Ones really like repetitive words, and demand them of their scribes as tribute.
Road map:
Structural edits = Foreshadow this ending; make this threat scarier, turn up the volume on on your themes
Line edits = Make this paragraph comprehensible, cut half your cyclopeans, did you mean this dialogue to sound like flirting
Copyedits = Did you mean discrete or discreet, argue about hyphens, I don't care whether or not you capitalize Archpriest but be consistent
Galleys = Oh Great Cthulhu how did I miss that
...with a sprinkling of "fix this anachronism" throughout, because historical fantasy is hard and 1949 is a strange country.
ARC Winner
@linsilveira on Twitter wins the ARC. Some of these monster questions are inspiring; there may be drabbles in the offing if I can find five drabbly minutes between editing and drafting on Deep Root. So basically next time I'm blocked because my aliens won't talk politics to my point of view character.
August 24, 2016
Winter Tide ARC giveaway
I haven't posted for a while, have I? *Looks around, dusts off surfaces, surreptitiously wipes hands*
But look what came in the mail today!
I'll come up with clever plans for the rest later, but for now I just want to share my delight at finally having actual books, made of actual matter, with my name on John Jude Palencar's spiffy cover. So here's the deal. Between now and a deadline of Whenever the Baby Goes to Bed tomorrow night, tell me your favorite monster, and something you wish you knew about them. I'll pick an entry at random to receive an ARC.
Fine print: I'm posting to Twitter as well; it's the same ARC and the same contest on both platforms. I'm willing to ship anywhere, but if you're overseas it may arrive on the very slow boat. Or quickly, but very wet and delivered by someone with gills.
But look what came in the mail today!
I'll come up with clever plans for the rest later, but for now I just want to share my delight at finally having actual books, made of actual matter, with my name on John Jude Palencar's spiffy cover. So here's the deal. Between now and a deadline of Whenever the Baby Goes to Bed tomorrow night, tell me your favorite monster, and something you wish you knew about them. I'll pick an entry at random to receive an ARC.
Fine print: I'm posting to Twitter as well; it's the same ARC and the same contest on both platforms. I'm willing to ship anywhere, but if you're overseas it may arrive on the very slow boat. Or quickly, but very wet and delivered by someone with gills.
January 3, 2016
Mommyblogging: Or, My Tendency to Post About Problems Only After They Are Solved
The first year of one's child's life is expected to be both exciting and stressful (it was). One isn't expected to get much done other than take care of the child, and go to one's day job if one has one (I didn't). In our case, the major reason for not getting much done was that M--while quite good at everything else--totally failed to learn to go to sleep on her own or sleep through the night. So for the past year we've had an unpredictable 1-4-hour intensive process involved in putting the baby to bed, and most nights gotten woken up by her crying 1-3 times. S, bless her, did most of the getting up and getting her back to bed, but it was still no fun for anyone. At one point we tried the standard ferberization technique that's "supposed to" work for everyone, leaving her alone in her crib and coming in at slightly increasing intervals to check on her, which resulted in her not sleeping and being phobic of her crib for a week.
Also this year, I sold a book. This was awesome, and among other things eventually resulted in the arrival of a book advance. Part of which we spent on a sleep coach. This is possibly the best decision I've ever made short of getting married to my wife. For the last couple of days M has fallen asleep downstairs in her own space, needing one of us in the room for less than half an hour, and slept for 11-12 hours. And taken a 2-3-hour nap in the afternoon. (Did I mention that she rarely napped, previously?) And we're less than halfway through the process that is supposed to result in a nice, easy bedtime routine and a child who can fall asleep without adult supervision. All of a sudden, I have back 3-4 hours every evening. I can talk with my wife and read and catch up on chores and correspondence and write or edit, without feeling like every second spent on one of those is stolen from the others.
Probably someone wants to know what a sleep coach does. About half of it is taking textbook behaviorist stuff that I could lecture on in my sleep, and explaining how to turn it into an on-the-ground intervention that I would not have been able to intuit correctly even without the sleep deprivation. Basically we're doing a variation on habit deconditioning or phobia fading--sitting a little farther away from the crib each night and providing a little less scaffolding for her falling asleep. The other half is family-specific--she talked to us about everything from when M gets fussy during the day to the fact that she may have a predisposition to anxiety, and helped us adapt techniques and figure out when in the day to apply them based on that input. If we'd known the technique, we probably could have figured everything out eventually, but it made the whole process smoother and less stressful for everyone involved.
The other other half is coaching--reassurance and on-cheering and a heads-up on what pitfalls and patterns to expect. After the fubar with the ferberization, it helped tremendously to know that we had expert back-up if something went drastically wrong again.
All of which is to say--if I've barely spoken to you for the past year, or always been rushing off somewhere when we have a moment to talk, or neglected e-mails or posts, I hope and expect that my time and energy will be much less constrained in 2016. Ditto if I, um, owe you novel edits. Just as a hypothetical example.
But for now, I'm going to go to bed, and very likely stay there for a few hours. Best Christmas present ever!
Also this year, I sold a book. This was awesome, and among other things eventually resulted in the arrival of a book advance. Part of which we spent on a sleep coach. This is possibly the best decision I've ever made short of getting married to my wife. For the last couple of days M has fallen asleep downstairs in her own space, needing one of us in the room for less than half an hour, and slept for 11-12 hours. And taken a 2-3-hour nap in the afternoon. (Did I mention that she rarely napped, previously?) And we're less than halfway through the process that is supposed to result in a nice, easy bedtime routine and a child who can fall asleep without adult supervision. All of a sudden, I have back 3-4 hours every evening. I can talk with my wife and read and catch up on chores and correspondence and write or edit, without feeling like every second spent on one of those is stolen from the others.
Probably someone wants to know what a sleep coach does. About half of it is taking textbook behaviorist stuff that I could lecture on in my sleep, and explaining how to turn it into an on-the-ground intervention that I would not have been able to intuit correctly even without the sleep deprivation. Basically we're doing a variation on habit deconditioning or phobia fading--sitting a little farther away from the crib each night and providing a little less scaffolding for her falling asleep. The other half is family-specific--she talked to us about everything from when M gets fussy during the day to the fact that she may have a predisposition to anxiety, and helped us adapt techniques and figure out when in the day to apply them based on that input. If we'd known the technique, we probably could have figured everything out eventually, but it made the whole process smoother and less stressful for everyone involved.
The other other half is coaching--reassurance and on-cheering and a heads-up on what pitfalls and patterns to expect. After the fubar with the ferberization, it helped tremendously to know that we had expert back-up if something went drastically wrong again.
All of which is to say--if I've barely spoken to you for the past year, or always been rushing off somewhere when we have a moment to talk, or neglected e-mails or posts, I hope and expect that my time and energy will be much less constrained in 2016. Ditto if I, um, owe you novel edits. Just as a hypothetical example.
But for now, I'm going to go to bed, and very likely stay there for a few hours. Best Christmas present ever!
October 22, 2015
What It's Like Being a To-Be-Published Novelist
Things I've done over the past two days:
Bounced a lot
Gotten congratulated a lot, and been pleased by the number of people who seem to think this is good news for them rather than for me
Been pleased and a little worried by the various prayers to Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu, and Mother Hydra for the book's success. I'm pretty sure that's not the scale these guys work on...
Been terribly distracted by Miriam learning to wave
Jotted down ideas, way too far in advance, for publicity swag (Esoteric Order of Dagon Temple Fund cookbook outtakes; flyers for events at Miskatonic...)
Jotted down ideas, way too far in advance, for a post-launch party at Wiscon 2017 (salted chocolate and caramel, tome exchange, probably can't afford to feed everyone sushi...)
Been terribly distracted by the possibility of alien megastructures 1500 light years away. Tried to convince myself that weird comets and dust-free planetary collisions would also be awesome. Tried to figure out whether 1500 years is long enough to finish building a Dyson cloud.
Been very grateful that I ended up with a publisher who works ridiculously quickly. Twenty-seventeen is a long way away, and to imagine my state of mind with the usual time frame of novel sales and publication is not to be borne. I know a lot of people who've managed it; I remain deeply grateful that Carl is as impatient and deadline-driven as I am.
Found out which characters my editor ships.
Repeated to myself: "Before novel acquisition, carry water, chop wood; after novel acquisition, carry water, chop wood" as I wash dishes, feed the baby, and clean wildly in preparation for this weekend's visit from my in-laws.
Bounced a lot
Gotten congratulated a lot, and been pleased by the number of people who seem to think this is good news for them rather than for me
Been pleased and a little worried by the various prayers to Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu, and Mother Hydra for the book's success. I'm pretty sure that's not the scale these guys work on...
Been terribly distracted by Miriam learning to wave
Jotted down ideas, way too far in advance, for publicity swag (Esoteric Order of Dagon Temple Fund cookbook outtakes; flyers for events at Miskatonic...)
Jotted down ideas, way too far in advance, for a post-launch party at Wiscon 2017 (salted chocolate and caramel, tome exchange, probably can't afford to feed everyone sushi...)
Been terribly distracted by the possibility of alien megastructures 1500 light years away. Tried to convince myself that weird comets and dust-free planetary collisions would also be awesome. Tried to figure out whether 1500 years is long enough to finish building a Dyson cloud.
Been very grateful that I ended up with a publisher who works ridiculously quickly. Twenty-seventeen is a long way away, and to imagine my state of mind with the usual time frame of novel sales and publication is not to be borne. I know a lot of people who've managed it; I remain deeply grateful that Carl is as impatient and deadline-driven as I am.
Found out which characters my editor ships.
Repeated to myself: "Before novel acquisition, carry water, chop wood; after novel acquisition, carry water, chop wood" as I wash dishes, feed the baby, and clean wildly in preparation for this weekend's visit from my in-laws.
