Really I ought to have a ‘before’ picture of myself to go with this blog post, but, since I’m totally avoiding being in front of cameras these days, a shot of Jo’s bicycle will have to do instead. I avoid having my picture taken because I don’t like how I look, and I don’t like how I look because I’m overweight. You know those ladies who are overweight and gorgeous? Yeah. I’m not one of them. Fun, fun.

The good news is that this year I made losing weight one of my highest priorities. I need to be healthier (and obese is not healthy) if I want to live long enough to write even a fraction of the story and poem ideas that are jammed into my brain.

Some of my goals for this year were:

Health: This relates to my writing because the healthier I am the more productive (and less dead) I am.

• Continue to eat healthy. In my case that is a low-sodium pescatarian diet.
• No drinking energy drinks
• Remember soft drinks are a ‘sometimes food’ (Thanks Cookie Monster)
• Workout at least five times a week*
• Lose 40lbs (and 64lbs overall)

I’m doing a fairly good job of sticking to these goals. I’m struggling a little bit with the soft drinks are a ‘sometimes food’ but otherwise things are going well. No energy drinks, I’ve lost 9lbs as of today (I wrote and pre-scheduled this post on March 17th) and I’m pretty good at forcing myself to exercise. The thing is, it hurts LoL

Mostly I’ve been using my stationary exercise bike. I do a pretty intensive 1/2 hour workout on it six days a week. Because that’s exclusively a lower body workout I’ve also been sneaking in a 30 Day Shred workout every once in a while, and now, with the Xbox Kinect I got for my birthday present I’ve decided to add in a Kinect workout regularily too. I’d love to do it everyday, but realistically I think three times a week would be great, because, as I may have mentioned, it hurts.

I have a buggered up ankle that doesn’t like impact much and I’m really out of shape. Really, really out of shape.

Every time I do a full body workout I’m Limpy McGimpsalot the next day. Not just a little bit either, like wincing and moaning everytime I go up or down stairs, sit down, stand up… you get the idea. Sometimes it takes several days before I stop being Ms. Wussypants, and I think I have a pretty high threshhold for pain LOL I’ve been forcing myself to do light workouts (on the bike) on my hurty days (usually) and that often helps reduce the pain, but damn. Hurtiness sucks.

So, for all you in-shape and exercisey-type people… it does stop hurting at some point, right?

I don’t mind a little discomfort, and exercise-sore is actually a kind of satisfying pain, but I could do with a little less of it, to be honest. Please tell me that this is going to decrease if I stick to this LOL

ETA: It turns out that at the peak of my pain I’d actually injured myself (groin owiness) and not really known that was the case and not just that exercise hurts. I took a couple days off and healed up and now I’m back to normal exercise-related aches and pains. The satisfying kinds. I’m still curious though, will these go away as I get more in shape, or not really because, presumably, I’ll always keep pushing myself?

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter E. Please pop by tomorrow when my daughter will be doing a guest blog about what it’s like to have a writer in the Family.

Created by MyFitnessPal – Free Calorie Counter

I’m prone to depression and it sucks.

Chances are actually pretty high that you know what I’m talking about. A google or two told me that 7% of adult americans suffer from depression in any given year, and since those 7% have friends and families, I’m betting if you haven’t had to deal with depression personally, you’ve watched someone who has and had to deal with it indirectly. What’s more, I’m not going to google for stats, but I’d bet that a higher percentage of writers/artists/creative-type people are prone to depression than the general public, and, as I said, I’m one of them.

When I get depressed it tends to manifest in a lack of things. A lack of energy, a lack of enthusiasm, a lack of interest, a lack of concentration, a lack of focus, an inability to fall asleep at night, weight gain despite all efforts to lose it and headaches all_the_freaking_time. I’m not suicidal, I don’t curl up in a corner and cry, but I’m not myself. I’m not the version of myself I want to be.

I hate the way it effects my family. I hate the way it effects my writing. I just plain hate it.

It’s funny to me how difficult it has been for me to write this post. It’s not because I’m ashamed or embaressed about depression, it’s because I’ve always struggled to not let it be an excuse for the things I do (or don’t do)… but I’m coming to realise that sometimes it might be a reason. I don’t like it. I don’t like feeling like I’m both blessed and handicapped by my brain, I don’t like realising that I’m going to have years, like last year, where I don’t get much of anything accomplished because I’m spending all my energy just keeping my head above water. I. Hate. It.

I’ve learned a lot of coping strategies over the years though. Failing at focus? I try a challenge like Blogging from A to Z or Write 1 Sub 1. They help me focus my attention, even if only for a short period of time, and get something done. Still having trouble writing? Set a deadline with a critique partner or two so I need to have something to send them prior to our meeting up to crit each other’s work. Struggling to get out of bed and really dragging my ass all day? Reward myself with a long nap for getting something done for Niteblade. Little tricks, little babysteps, whatever it takes to get what I need to do done.

The thing about depression, for me, anyway, is it does a fabulous job of showing me what things in my life are the most important to me. Family first, then friends, and then, like a lazer, it cuts through all the other things I do, and shows me which ones I can continue on, and which need to be put aside until that bout with depression is through. But it’s also sneaky. It always leaves, eventually, but its shadow is always over your life because you know it will come back, someday, it will come back. You never know when, or how hard it’s going to hit you, or how long it’s going to stay, but you know it will be back.

When I’m really low I can’t find the energy to care that I’m not writing because I’m spending most of it blaming myself for not getting anything done, but, at times like these when I feel like I’m climbing (oh so slowly) out of that hole, I try to remind myself of all the hardships other people have had to overcome, and I tell myself I can do this. I’m a fighter. I won’t give up. I will accomplish my goals, whether my brain likes it or not…

But damn, I wish it were easier.

If you’re dealing with depression and you feel all alone I swear to you, you’re not. You’re not alone. There are people, like me, who feel your pain and are pulling for you. We really, really are. You know how people say “Fuck Cancer”? Well, I agree with them, but also, Fuck Depression. Don’t let it beat you.

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter D. Please pop by tomorrow when I’ll be talking about… um… something that begins with E. I’m sure it will be awesome… maybe.

ETA: I know there is medication that could possibly help me with this, but I’ve decided to not take it until I have exhausted every other possibility open to me. I already take a lot of medication, I don’t want to add another to the list if I don’t absolutely have to.

Critique partners. I love mine.

Critique groups and critique partners are two different things. Each group, each person, has their own personality, their own set of pros and cons. I’ve been in terribad critique groups that actually sucked the life out of my writing (and out of me) and I’ve been in fantastic groups that inspired me to write and kept me constantly striving for improvement.

The most recent group I was in was a good one, and we used to meet in a local bar that had a popcorn machine. Like, a big popcorn machine, the type you see at movie theaters. Best of all, the popcorn was free so we’d meet for critiques and totally nom on the popcorn while we were there. It was a good group, small, (only four of us) but friendly and positive. Unfortunately, when you’re dealing with small groups, if even one person’s schedule gets changed you’re kinda screwed. That’s what happened to us, but though we no longer meet up weekly to critique each other’s work, we do get together occasionally just to talk, vent and hang out with a friend who knows what we’re going through in our writerly life.

Even without my group I still occasionally (okay, nearly always) want someone else to look over my work, to help me see the warts I’ve missed and polish up the pretty bits until they shine. On those cases I turn to my critique partners. I’ve had several over the years, and I’ve even paid for critiques (via charity auction) from some writers or editor’s whose opinions I respect.

I’ve received awesome critiques from a lot of people, I don’t want to start naming them because I’m sure to forget someone, just know that the list is long and filled with awesome. The #1 person I have turned to when I needed a critique over the past several years though, has been BD Wilson. We met in a critique group a few years ago and despite a bit of a rocky start (I certainly didn’t accidentally spoil a movie for her or anything, nope nope) we’ve become good friends. In our critique group we called her The Sledgehammer because that’s about how subtle her critiques are — but they are GOOD critiques. I’ve always envied how good her critiques are. Really. She has a skill, a way of figuring out what’s wrong with a story, and showing you in such a way that you can’t miss it, and you can usually figure out how to fix it. She’s made an awful lot of work for me over the years, rewriting, revising, totally scrapping things and trying them another way, but in the process she’s also helped to make me a better writer, and my stories far better than they would be without her.

Thank you, BD

The other fantastic person who regularily reads over my work and offers valuable feedback is Lauren. Lauren and I meet once a month to hang out, eat deep fried pickles (Okay, so maybe that part is all me, but zomg, so good!) and critique each other’s work. Honestly, even without the critiquing I would look forward to our meetings, because she’s a friend and a fellow writer, and as any writer can tell you, there is something incredibly energizing about hanging out with another writer. The whole “they understand you like non-writers can’t” thing is a little trite, and perhaps overblown, but it’s based in truth. Adding the wonderful social element to valuable critique though makes it a wonderful thing. Lauren doesn’t actually read the genres I write in (except for my work, of course) and I’ve come to find that is a huge, huge asset come critique time. She’s not just going to accept something I’ve written because ‘that’s how it works in fantasy books’ or ‘well, it’s a zombie, so um, yeah?’. It helps me to not only craft better stories, but to become a stronger writer too.

Thank you, Lauren

Do you have a favourite critique partner? What is it about their feedback that really helps you? Do you send them work as you’re going, or only when it’s complete?

I used to submit parts of works-in-progress to my critique group, but I quickly discovered that, for me, that was a very bad idea, but at least one member of our group used our feedback as we critiqued each of her chapters, to help her mold what was going to come next in the story.

Different approaches to critiquing and critique groups as a whole are interesting to me, I’d honestly like to hear about yours. Good or bad LOL

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter C. Please pop by tomorrow when I’ll be talking about a super cheerful subject. D is for Depression. Wheee!

*The image I used in this blog post was taken by BD Wilson. I think that’s even a crit she did of one of my stories right there

I noticed that several of my domains were down yesterday and contacted my host about it. Long story short, there was some sort of hardware failure on my server and blah blah blah…

The point seems to be that my domains are a little yo-yoish at the moment, and for some reason the images in my blog posts aren’t loading. Fun times.

My plan for right now is to wait and see if the images come back as the server stabilizes (or whatever) and if not I’ll replace them all.

*fingers crossed*

ETA: They aren’t coming back. Every image I uploaded in March is gone and needs to be replaced. Yay! (Um, that was a sarcastic yay. You knew that right?)

Branding. I suck at it.

What I’ve read about branding tends to emphasize the difference between you, as a person, and you as a writer or brand. I totally fail at making that distinction. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. Once upon a time I had a pen name, and I sucked at keeping it separate from my real name too.

When you’re trying to figure out your brand you’re advised to pick a few keywords (most places I read said three) that describe you and make sure you use them in all your bios and such, and make sure all your public posts (blog, twitter, facebook, whatever) from your professional account have to do with those things in one way or another. It makes sense, right? I mean, you want people to know what to expect from you and to stay focused. In theory, if you want to have a place where you share things that are off-message you could have another, personal Twitter account/blog/whatever for that.

In theory.

In theory my brand is all about writing, gaming and a little bit of crafting. That means it’s perfectly all right for me to include that picture of my main character in World of Warcraft up there (Obscenity the priest. She’s awesome.) and to talk about my writing, raids and video game crushes (Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins) on Twitter. Unfortunately, it also means that it’s not alright for me to share funny things my husband or daughter do, or complain about the scale not shifting in the right direction or whatever. I’m not okay with that. As soon as I’m told I’m not supposed to do something, guess what I want to do? Also, I’m not just about writing and gaming and crafting. I’m also about being a mom, and a wife, and going to school and Niteblade and, and…

What’s more, I totally don’t have time to get another blog or twitter account for sharing ‘personal’ things on, and I’d drive myself crazy with some things trying to figure out which account to share them from.

So… that’s why I fail at branding. Thus far I’m muddling through the whole social media thing anyway, though, and hoping enough people will be interested in ‘me’ that it’s okay I don’t have a solid focused ‘brand’. *Crosses fingers*

What do you think about branding? Do you have one? Do you care about other people’s? I’m really interested in hearing what you think.

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter B. I hope you’ll stop by tomorrow when I’ll be talking about Critique Partners.

ETA: Since I wrote this I decided to try Robert Brewer’s Platform Challenge, so who knows, maybe I’ll get better at this branding thing

I was raised to be a Christian and it’s been pointed out that a fair amount of my work has a bit of a biblical flavour to it, but I’m an atheist.

My atheism definitely affects my writing. In fact, one of the reasons I write is because I want to leave something of me behind when I die. I have an amazing daughter I am insanely proud of, but, as much as it pains me to think it, she is also mortal. I want to leave something behind that will last. That is, for lack of a less cheesy and egotistical word, forever.

Sometimes I envy people who believe in a life after this and if I believed in God, or an afterlife, I’m sure I’d still write, but I’d lose this one motivation. I believe this lifetime is all we get, so I’m always pushing myself to make the most of it, to write something that will last beyond myself. Some people find that motivation from other places, but this one is mine.

Unfortunately that also results in a bit of a perfectionist streak which can sometimes be counter-productive, but mostly, mostly I think it helps push me to work on those days I’d rather just curl up in bed and wish the world away.

Mostly.

Do your religious beliefs affect your writing? For better, or for worse? I’m curious.

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter A. If you find yourself with some extra time on your hands you might want to check out what my fellow participants are blogging about that begins with the letter A as well. I know I will be. I hope you’ll pop back again tomorrow when I’ll be blogging about Branding and how much I fail at it.

I don’t usually blog on the weekend. Hell, I don’t usually work on weekends period, but I’m making an exception today because today is the last day of sanity before the crazy that is going to be my April hits. Before I get into that though, I’d like to take a second to say yay. Yay! I am still on track with my Write1Sub1 goals. And also, thank gawd for Write 1 Sub 1. Without it to use as motivation I don’t think I would have produced any new material this month. But I did.

In March I continued to work my way (slowly) through the How to Revise Your Novel course with Twixt. I also started, then re-started a short (ghost) story. It’s going to require at least one more restart before I make it to the end, I think, but still… I also wrote several new poems which are currently resting before I go back and revise them next month and I revised two of the poems I wrote in November (O_o) and added them into my “submission pool” (for lack of a better description). That means I have 16 pieces all currently out looking for new homes. I made 10 submissions this month too, and if you’re paying attention that means you know I collected 8 rejection letters. Whee! LOL #trytryagain

Now, enough looking back, it’s time to look forward.

April.

April is going to be nuts, because I, apparently, am nuts.

In addition to everything I usually do I am going to be participating in three separate challenges. O_o I know, right?

First I’ll be doing the Blogging from A to Z challenge. The good news on this one is that I’ve got roughly half of my blog posts already written and pre-scheduled. That doesn’t mean I won’t have anything to do on those days though, because one of the more time consuming parts of that challenge is going to be visiting the blogs of other people who are participating. Also, I expect it to mean I’ll have increased traffic here, and I like to try to reply to all the comments on my blog, so… Yeah.

I’m also going to be doing the April Poem-a-Day challenge. I’m not actually interested in entering the contest portion of the challenge, but I want to write a poem to go with each prompt, ideally on the day the prompt is offered. If you don’t think that will be a challenge perhaps you weren’t aware that I’m still working my way through the prompts from the November 2011 Poem-a-Day challenge LOL

But wait! There’s more!

I also decided to check out Robert Brewer’s April Platform Challenge. I’m not sure how much of that challenge will be applicable to me because, well, I’ve never done a platform challenge before LOL, but it should be fun to find out.

So yeah… the crazy is going to start tomorrow. I hope the daily blog posts won’t drive you all away and I hope I’ll still be standing when May 1st rolls around.

Wish me luck, I’ll need it, and if you’re participating in any of those challenges with me, let me know. Company is always a good thing

The contract has been received and agreed to, so I feel secure in announcing that my story “Waste Not” has been sold to Stupefying Stories and will appear in one of their future issues. Yay!

Personally, I’ve got my fingers crossed that I might manage to share a table of contents with Beth Cato, but we’ll have to wait and see, I guess

I participated in the Month of Letters this year. The idea was that every day in the month of February I would send something out to someone via snail mail. I know, you’re probably looking at the date at the bottom right corner of your screen, scratching your head and re-reading that second sentence. I know the Month of Letters officially ended almost a full month ago and I’m just doing a recap about it now but, the thing is, it’s still not over. Not for me. Not really.

I didn’t know who I was going to write in February so I posted on here, Twitter and the Month of Letters forums and said if you want me to write you, send me your address. And you did. A lot of you did. I wish I’d kept better records so I could say exactly how many of you gave me your address and your blessing to send you a letter, but I didn’t. I don’t actually even know how successful I was at doing the Month of Letters LOL.

I didn’t write everyday. I just couldn’t. However, I did write most days, and I think I made up for the ones I missed by writing two or three letters on some days. More importantly (to me) I wrote every single person who sent me their address. It took a long time, I had more addresses than there were days in February, but last week I mailed off the last letter I owed anyone from February (better late than never, right?).

Writing the letters was awesome. It gave me an excuse to buy schmexy papers and envelopes (always win) and when people wrote back it meant I got to meet new people. I feel like several of those people are going to become true and lasting friends. What’s more, it helped me connect with existing friends on a different and more real level than we previously had.

Writing letters is going to remain a very important part of my life from now on. It really is. Without sounding too flaky, I feel like regularily writing letters has been a transformative expirience for me. Writing to friends is like having a little conversation with them, except in my head and on paper (one of my new friends phrased it that way, I thought it was perfect) and it’s so awesome. In order to have that conversation I have to slow things down, focus on just what I’m doing. It’s not like writing an email where I might stop part way through to check Twitter, or where my attention is divided between four email accounts, the website I’m referencing and the open Word .doc I’m working in. When I write a letter, a real letter, that gets my complete attention. It’s relaxing, meditative.

I’m not doing a very good job of explaining, I don’t think, but it has helped me make real connections, both with other people and myself. I love it, and I have the Month of Letters to thank for it. Yay!

Do you write snail mail letters? Has your expirience been similar to mine?

If you haven’t written a letter in a long time, why not try it? Send me your address even (email, comment, whatever) and I’ll drop you a line to get you started

For the past couple years I have made a very concerted effort to keep my politics and personal beliefs far away from this blog. It hasn’t been easy, I’m a pretty opinionated woman and I don’t excel at biting my tongue, but I’ve done it. I think that was a mistake. I think it was a mistake because maybe it’s people keeping their opinions to themselves (or in my case, off my blog) that allow horrible laws to be passed. Laws like the one that requires women seeking an abortion to “consent” to a transvaginal ultrasound. Are you kidding me? I don’t want to simply re-iterate what wiser people than I have said about this (people like Jim C Hines and John Scalzi’s guest blogger) but I can’t say nothing at all. In my opinion (oh how it hurt me to write those three words) that is rape. Period.

I am pro-choice but I really, truly, do understand the pro-life position. I do. And I respect that people who are pro-life honestly and truly believe that abortion is murder. I can imagine how difficult it must be for them to accept that there are women out there who are chosing to have them, but abortions are legal medical procedures. It is NOT okay to penalise a woman for having one and, as far as I can tell, that is the primary purpose this required ultrasound serves. At best it’s meant as a deterrent to abortion and frankly, it’s not the government’s place to provide that.

I tend to find phrases like ‘War on Women’ to be a bit hyperbolic, but then, when I go from reading about state-sanctioned rape to reading about proposed laws that would make it legal for employers to fire women for using birth control it makes me begin to wonder.

I recently read “The Heretic’s Daughter” and I was talking to Jo about it. I thought it was a wonderful book, but made me tense while I was reading it. Just watching how people could throw logic, common sense and rational thought out the window and be caught up in the whole witch-hunting hysteria was horrifying to me. “Sadly,” Jo said, “we’re not really that far removed from that even now.” Is he right? I don’t know. I am beginning to think maybe he is.

In what reality is it actually okay for a bunch of strangers (mostly male strangers) to mandate whether or not a woman can use birth control, or force her to have something shoved into her vagina? No, really. I want to know.

Nathan Crowder wrote a blog post recently called “Faith: A User’s Guide“. I read it, nodding my head the whole way through. Everyone ought to read it, especially lawmakers. The most important point that Nathan makes is that your personal beliefs are just that, personal.

Until people really and truly get that, we’ll continue to require people like Stacey Newman to keep making the ‘stay out of my uterus’ point. Stacey proposed a new law that would make it illegal for a man to get a vasectomy unless he could prove that it would save him from serious injury or death. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Well, that’s because it is (which is why she proposed it in the first place). Just like these laws focused on women. The main difference is that the vasectomy law will never come into being. I wonder why?

Hmm…