Friends

There are a few things in my life I’m very grateful for: family, friends, good work, health, well-being. These I understand and are within my realm of reality.

There is something new this year, that I’m extremely thankful for, that’s somewhat new. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and have dreamed about seeing my name on a book in the local bookstores. Over the years, the bookstores have changed, but the dream has lived on. I walk the aisles of each of them, touching the artifacts, the colorful spines of the books I’ve always loved, and dream of the day my name will sit alongside so many wonderful story tellers. That time is drawing near, thankfully, and I’m still amazed.

Black Blade Blues will hit the shelves on April 27th, 2010. They are calling it a May launch, but every day sooner is good news to me. I’ve worked hard for this. Practiced my craft, honed my skills, studied and networked. I’ve done all the work needed to get a good enough manuscript in front of a paying editor and decades of dreaming is finally coming true.

I wrapped the second book in this series Christas eve. I completed the first draft on Thanksgiving day, but needed to read it, fix the glaring errors, polish it for my first readers. Now I wait for them to get back to me, to let me know if my new paper child, the third book I’ve completed, and the second in this series, is as good as I think it is.

Funny thing is, I’m not one to believe the words are good enough yet, but apparently I’m a very harsh critique of my own work. Of course, talking with all my writing friends, this is not a rare phenomenom. Many of us are hard on ourselves, on our words. But there comes a time when you have to let them out into the world, to fly as they can, while you turn to the next piece.

So today, my thoughts turn from HONEYED WORDS, to the next book in the series: HEARTH & HOME.

Beginning this one is surreal, as I’ve not turned in the last to my wonderful editor, but I have words burning in me to get down. I’ll start outlining, taking notes, figuring things out while my mind changes gears. Who knows what will happen. It’s not due for over a year, but when the words are rich and frothy, it’s hard not to let them flow.

I hope you and yours are having a wonderful holiday season. I’m off to take down a few notes and visit with my family some more.

Peace

Originally published at J.A. Pitts. You can comment here or there.

Because Rob was out of town until Monday and I’ve been working a lot, we hadn’t had a chance to get a tree until yesterday. You know… Christmas Eve. We walked to the tree lot that’s two blocks from our apartment but they were gone.

That was okay, because there was another one at the foot of the hill, so we walked down to 42nd where that tree lot was also gone. It turns out that all the tree lots wrap things up so by four o’clock there’s no where to buy a tree.

We figured that Fred Meyer would be open and have leftover trees so we walked down to 30th and on the way passed a tree lot. With Trees! But it was locked and the attendants had gone home.  Although we joked about hopping the fence, I suggested taking the somewhat more legitimate route and going into Freddie’s to actually purchase a tree.

They had five.

Five dry, needle-dropping trees that were free, probably because they were fire hazards.

So we walked back to the abandoned tree lot and Rob hopped the fence. We took a tree and left a note and $20.  Actually, poaching a Christmas tree has a long tradition in my family.  For decades my [unnamed relative] has poached a cedar from [redacted] on the grounds that it is growing in a place where it has to be removed anyway.  It’s nice to have these family traditions.

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Originally published at spitkitten dot com. You can comment here or there.

Happy holidays, everyone. I hope this day finds you surrounded by people you love with easily-cured heartburn caused by delicious food.

I didn’t do a holiday letter this year. I meant to. Consider this my holiday letter to all of you.

This year was a year filled with financial hardship and great kindnesses. I learned some good lessons about how to be an adult, how to ask for help, and how to accept help I’ve asked for. I’ve made some strangers into friends, and I hope they know how much I have begun to treasure them.

(I hope I taught some lessons too: how to endure, how to take risks, and how to start again, again. I’m pretty good at all that.)

There were also some triumphs—a few good publications, awards, and wins; the start of a new novel; the birth of Brain Harvest; Chris’ first school transcript showing all As.

I am often terrible at keeping in touch; even worse at regularly blogging interesting things. But I thank you for bearing with me and continuing to take this ride.

Here’s to 2010 kicking metric fucktons of ass.

Merry Christmas! One of the things I love most about this time of year is that its the one time of the year when fantasy and the real world intersect.  I mean, in households all around the world, people are participating in the world’s largest fairy tale as they open presents under the tree to see what Santa brought them. (St. Nick is, after all, described as a “right jolly old elf.”) Granted Santa is unique in the world of elfdom, but it’s possible that any number of his kin could rise to the occasion. So let’s take a look at some fantasy elves who could carry the mantle, should the big guy ever decide to take a year off.

Check out my complete list at of Six Fantastic Candidates for the Next Santa Claus.

Comments? -- Link.

Originally published at www.WillpowerEngine.com. You can comment here or there.

There are at least three good times to target a new life goal:

1) When a person doesn’t have a goal at the moment and decides to improve life by getting one
2) When the goal or goals a person has already been pursuing turn out to be no longer necessary or not as high-priority as they once were (or once seemed), or
3) When work toward a current goal has gone so far that everything needed to keep on track for that goal has become habit, or in the case of a goal that’s a specific project, when that project is finished.

Should I always have a goal?
It’s hard to imagine that there’s anyone who has achieved every goal that would ever do them or others good–which suggests that if it’s practical, it’s probably worth having a goal nearly all the time.

But there’s that limitation, “if it’s practical”: is it always practical? Probably not absolutely all the time: if a person is dealing with a major crisis in the family or temporarily working 80 hours a week to deal with a short-term problem, there’s probably so much time, attention, and energy going into that short-term problem that long-term goals would wither from having too little effort going into them.

At the same time, for many people it feels like there’s always a special situation or problem going on: financial crisis after financial crisis, or having to work 80 hours week after week, or constant breakdowns in an important relationship. Even though these can be real crises, the fact that they’re continuing over a long period of time probably means they’re systemic problems: in other words, there’s some underlying difficulty that probably needs to be addressed if these crises are going to stop. Addressing that underlying difficulty would be a goal.

What if I need to pursue two or more goals at once?
Often there are battling needs in our lives that present multiple, top-level priorities, all of which need to be addressed at the same time. Right?

Actually … no. The idea that priorities “need” to be addressed is a broken idea, because “need” is absolute. “Needing” to be done doesn’t mean a thing necessarily can be done, or that it’s the highest priority, or that absolute devastation will occur if it’s not done. A more effective way of looking at things that seem to need to be done is to phrase them in terms of actions and consequences, for instance “If I don’t get the house cleaned before my friends come over, they will see my house dirty” or “If I’m late paying that bill, they’ll charge me an extra $25 and call to ask me where the money is if I don’t call them first.” This is instead of “I need to clean the house!” or “I can’t miss paying that bill!”

The reason I’m pointing to this problem of thinking of priorities as needs is that with rare exceptions, we really can’t take on more than one significant goal at a time. Successfully pursuing a goal means changing habits, devoting thought to the subject, and pulling time and energy away from other tasks. It’s true, has a lot of extra time all of a sudden, for example due to recent retirement, it might be possible to pursue more than one goal at a time, like getting fit and starting a consulting service. Most of us, though, have lives that are already full of other things, and even if some of those things aren’t necessarily a good use of our time, in most cases we’re used to doing them, and it will take a lot of focus to change over to doing something different.

The upshot is that even if there are several really pressing problems to address at the same time, the most effective way to deal with them will be to decide which will pay off the most extravagantly if it’s done first. For instance, if you are constantly overcommitted and don’t have enough money to pay your bills, both of those are pressing problems, but in many cases it will make sense to deal with the overcommitment problem first, because if that’s addressed effectively, there will be more time to address the financial problem, which may in many cases require extra time if a solution is going to be worked out.

Making multiple goals into one goal
There actually is one approach to choosing a goal that can accomplish multiple major life priorities at the same time, which is to focus on process and organization instead of on the goal itself. For instance, I could adopt a goal of trying to do a very good job of making every choice, however small. Practicing this goal would mean things like regularly thinking back over good and bad choices made to try to repeat the good choices and fix the bad choices; becoming more mindful of thoughts; and possibly adding healthy improvements to life, like meditation or more exercise.

A goal like this could simultaneously help in a lot of areas of life: eating better, making better use of time, improving relationships, spending money more wisely, and so on.

Other goals that serve multiple purposes include communicating better; getting very good at tracking, organizing, and prioritizing tasks; and improving mood. If there’s more than one thing you really want to accomplish in your life at the moment, ask yourself: is there any kind of practice I could learn that would benefit all of these areas?

New Year’s resolutions and other big goals
As we move toward 2010 and (for many people) New Year’s resolutions, I’ll be looking at ways to make and keep a resolution that will really make a difference. This article is the first in the series. The others will be posted over the coming week, right up to New Year’s Day, on my regular Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. On Monday: “Can just choosing a goal really change your life?”

Photo by simonsterg

Today I used my bandwidth to say:

• 08:15 Clicky and I are off to Idaho and offline for a few days - happy and joyous holidays to everyone! #

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Normally, we go to Chattanooga to spend Christmas with my family.  At this very moment, they are sitting down for a dinner with 32 people, all of whom I’m related to. It’s great fun and I am very sad to miss it.

Fortunately, Santa, being a wise man, knows how to cheer me up and sent me an entire box of Scenting the Dark! In hardcover! Yay!

I hope you are having a Merry Christmas, too.

Comments? -- Link.

Today I used my bandwidth to say:

• 10:24 Wayne got me a smartpen for Christmas (www.livescribe.com) and it is pretty awesome. I have named it Clicky. #

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I'm off for a few days to Idaho to celebrate Christmas with Wayne's family and will be offline for the most part. Happy holidays to everyone!

Things are coming along nicely with Candle-Craft.  I've got three POV characters set in stone, half of their arcs figured out (with intertwiney bits connecting the three plot-lines), new and improved world building, character backgrounds, minor character backgrounds, and some funky steampunk magic unique to the brain of the Fisch.  Some extras that are gruesomely cool :-)

And a couple of extra chapters have slowly emerged from the morass of hand-written notes and tinkerings of previous work.  I can't provide an exact word-count of this work-in-progress, but wouldn't want to anyway.  Those things feel counterproductive, I'm just gonna enjoy writing my story - as long as I keep things fun, it's dead easy to write because I WANT TO.  It's the equivalent of a slow-cooked roast, if I rush this I'm likely to fuck it up and leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

WOOH CHRISTMAS METAPHOR

Anywho, I hope you all jam with some ham and go berserky on a turkey.  Enjoy your holidays and your loved ones :-)


Edit:  Here is some brilliant plot/story advice.
http://www.tameri.com/write/plotnstory.html

at Noah's ark

thanks to Jonathan Carroll

Originally published at www.WillpowerEngine.com. You can comment here or there.

One of the real benefits idea repair has brought me since I started learning about it years ago (under the title of “Rational Emotive-Based Therapy”) is an awareness that my bad moods, when they come, generally can be traced to something. It’s true, sometimes being overtired or not having had a chance to eat (or especially, both) can jostle me over into my least flattering behaviors, but much more often, if I feel bad emotionally, it can be traced to some thought I’m having. For me, it’s usually worrying about something. For instance, I might find myself getting more anxious than really makes any sense over a minor work deadline.

The thing is, when I’m working myself up about something, often I’m signaling myself that there’s a larger, underlying problem. This points to the one limitation I know of about idea repair: idea repair helps a person feel better right away, but sometimes it helps to trace a broken idea to its source before fixing it, because our emotional reactions give us important clues to what will make us happy (or drive us out of our tree with worry or annoyance).

So when I find myself seriously overreacting to a situation, I’ll often try to find out what’s really bothering me first, and once I know that to use idea repair to bring my mood back into balance. Here are some ways to cover that first step: finding out what’s causing the negative emotions, deep down.

Interview
Major issues that bother a person usually don’t lurk too far beneath the surface. One of the quickest and most direct ways to get to those issues is to have someone ask you some very straightforward questions, or even (if you don’t mind talking to yourself a little), asking them yourself.

The kinds of questions to ask are very basic, like “So, what’s bothering you today?” or “What are you most concerned about at the moment?” or “If you could have one thing happen today to make you happier, what would it be?”

Continued questions just follow up on the answers. For instance, if a person being interviewed (or self-interviewing) comes up with the statement “The thing that worries me the most is that I don’t think I’m going to have enough money to send my daughter off to college next year,” then the follow-up question might be something like “What would happen then?” or “Why don’t you think you’ll have enough money?”

Another handy kind of question for these situations is “What else?” This is useful when the real problem still seems to be lurking out of sight. “OK, you’re worried about that deadline at work. What else is bugging you these days?”

An interesting side note for writers: this same strategy works well for character and story development. There’s more detail in my free eBook, The Writing Engine: A Practical Guide to Writing Motivation.

Journaling
It’s true, I recommend journaling for a lot of things: for detecting broken ideas, getting immediate motivation, feedback loops, tackling daunting tasks, and so on. Of course, the reason I recommend it so often is that it’s a very practical technique: writing things down draws thoughts out of our heads that we might not otherwise have pursued, and it helps give these thoughts structure and direction. It also provides a record, should we want to go back in future and remind ourselves of past states of mind.

In effect, journaling works much like interviewing, and can be done question-and-answer style if that format helps. Alternatively, a free flow of thought spurred on by focusing on the negative emotions can get to the same place by a different route.

Talk therapy
If you find that lurking anxieties or frustrations are sabotaging your mood on a regular basis, you may want to consider whether a therapist could help out. Unfortunately, therapy often seems to be thought of as being only for people with serious mental illnesses rather than also for people who are doing fine with their lives but who want to sort out a particular issue or concern or get more clarity. A good therapist can help either type of person.

Cognitive therapy particularly has a high success rate in studies done on it, for a wide variety of conditions and needs. One way to find a certified cognitive therapist is through this link on the Academy of Cognitive Therapy Web site.

Photo by manic*.

Rob and I have returned from seeing Avatar.  His verdict? It’s just bad.  Mine?  It’s very silly, with horrifically bad science and yet, if you are a visually based person, it is worth seeing on the big screen in 3-D.

If you are a logic based person, then skip this film.

Question: If every life form on the planet has nostrils in their necks and six limbs, why do the Na’vi have noses like we do and only four limbs?

Question: Where do the feathers on the bow and arrows come from since we never see a feather creature, ever.

Question: Kiss? What is this thing you call kiss, James Cameron? I mean really, there are HUMAN cultures that don’t have kissing.

I could go on. That said, it’s some damn impressive CGI.

Comments? -- Link.

Today I used my bandwidth to say:

• 08:48 Last minute Christmas shopping - good thing those Hannah Montanna gift tags were on sale.... #

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I'm delighted by the first review from Publishers Weekly:

Tails of Wonder and Imagination Edited by Ellen Datlow. Night Shade (www.nightshadebooks.com), $15.95 paper (480p) ISBN 978-1-59780-170-6

Few things alarm the experienced reader more than the prospect of a science fiction, fantasy, or mystery book that involves—or worse, fetishizes—cats. This reprint anthology is the exception, an assortment of 40 stories by authors who are for the most part willing to take cats on their own ground. Datlow avoids the trap of a too-narrow premise: though there appears to be a slight bias toward horror, the stories are various within that field, from Jack Ketchum's ghost story “Returns” to Michaela Roessner's highly scientific “Mieze Corrects an Incomplete Representation of Reality” and Edward Bryant's brilliantly repellent “Bean Bag Cat.” Other tales are amusing, like Lawrence Block's “The Burglar Takes a Cat,” or gently sentimental, like Dennis Danvers's “Healing Benjamin.” This is that rarity of rarities: an anthology of cat stories worth reading. (Feb.)

Including a review of Poe, on the Dark Recesses website
A Year-End Review by Nancy O. Greene .