ROWing in a compromised sanctuary

I wrote yesterday about a crime that took place in my town that's destroyed the illusion of safety that I've had living here, in our country spot on a gentle hill that overlooks a piece of forest. We're going to have to leave--we knew we didn't want to stay here always, but I had thought we'd stay for at least a few more years. Last night, lying in bed, every sound the dogs made outside I wondered if it was the step of an intruder outside, or the sound of someone cutting the fence open out back.

I've tried to think of other solutions--ways to make living here safer, where we wouldn't be sitting ducks to anyone who decides they have a right to take what we have. The easiest is to buy guns--better ones than the ones criminals out here have--and be prepared to use them. I think because we're a society that has been desensitized to violence by watching it constantly on TV or movies, it does become easier to detach enough from the act of killing someone so I could actually pull a trigger and shoot someone in defense of myself and my family. But then...once you enter that cycle, I think your life changes, and somehow what you project out into life and what returns to you begins to follow the extremes of the shadows, and you may attract someone who wants to shoot you too--perhaps as revenge for the life you took or tried to take.

Not only that, but of course there is the danger of kid safety and guns in the house, and I have two small and very curious boys.

Anyhow, before that happens, we're trying to find a piece to install on the telephone line to protect it from being burned by lightning (which we get often here) if the house alarm is active. And before that happens we'll probably just leave.

So an uglier reality has intruded somewhat on my sanctuary. I suppose the muse wants that sort of food sometimes.

Amidst the distractions, the elements of my ROW80 goals that I've continued to meet:

• writing 1000-2000 words a day--more or less...a little less lately, but still progress every day. I'm revising Chapter 6 now of my WIP, the novel draft I wrote in three weeks.
• breath meditation daily: most days yes. I think I'll have to do this the rest of my life. If I don't do it, my regular breath lapses into its old shallow habits, with all the according sympathetic nervous system stress.
• meditation daily: most days yes. Should be longer.
• Reading Portuguese daily: most days yes. This is usually in the form of blogs or Internet research/documents I need to get through just in daily life.
• exercise: good. I had an inspiration that I need to do more Pilates in order to get rid of my belly flab that's never gone away since I had kids. We will see...

The elements I've totally lapsed in:

• fasting once a week: I can't even fast for four hours lately. Total carb creep. Working on working on it at least...but it'll be a while before I can do this again.
• Learning Spanish: ugh
• reading nonfiction daily: nope
• writing flash fiction: other than my short Campaigner entry, nothing since the end of October. I did submit a story today though.

I'm going to continue going where things are working. The other elements are on the back burner for the time being, but I hope to put them back on the plate soon.

Crime without punishment

One of the things that's different about living in a small town in Brazil (from a Northern California suburb) is that we get a little more touched by others' personal tragedies, and we see how we might be living just on the other side of chaos, if that happens to be where our fates want to lead us. For someone who lives as much in her head as I do, it can be rather startling--and in fits of solipsism, I wonder if I perhaps caused these events externally because I'm working through those emotions as I write...

This week is Carnaval, when perhaps the energy runs a little wilder and police are a little busier. Earlier this week, the owner of Lagoinha's biggest tourist attraction, a waterfall on the edge of town, was targeted by brigands in a well-planned attack. His daughter living in the town center was abducted from her house, then his wife, and then he himself. He was brought back to his house where through what I see as monumental stupidity, he had 200,000 reais stashed (and likely had told someone about it, hence the brigands knowing), and he had to pay that money to release his wife and daughter. He was beaten up and then dumped in a town in the middle of nowhere, to give the kidnappers a long head start on their escape.

Brazilian police here are fairly incompetent--I probably would be too in their shoes, with inferior weapons and numbers. Anyhow, this could happen again easily, although no one can predict when. To whom--that might be a little easier to guess; what I've feared is that my family might be on someone's list, as in a small town we do stand out.

It's kind of terrible how the mind can't let go of things like this. Particularly mine, with its overactive imagination. I've already played out many scenarios--if I could possibly grab both my kids, what path I'd run, where I could hide, what I could do to keep them quiet. If I would get ticks if I huddled in the grass. If the chickens would freak out if I tried to hide in the coop. I've visualized being shot running, being cornered against the gate because I couldn't figure out which key opened it. I've tried to imagine how I could climb the fence holding a kid, and whether he would break bones if I dropped him down the other side. I've imagined holding my dog as he slowly dies from poisoned meat.

If my husband couldn't pay the ransom, would they chop off one of my fingers and send it as a warning? What would I do to stop the bleeding? Would I ever be able to do Rolfing again if I was missing a finger?

On a more mundane level, I've worried that I would be caught showering if they came at night, and whether they'd let me put clothes on. Or, would I be wearing a towel on my head and just be in my underwear, as I often am on hot nights like these? If I'm on my period, would I bleed through everything and stink up the room where I'm being held? Would my children be given anything to eat? I would doubtless stay awake all night--how much would my arms hurt from holding my kids while they slept?

What I haven't been able to imagine is shooting someone or defending myself in any way. I just can't go there.

In an odd bit of synchronicity, my main characters were kidnapped by brigands at about the same day as this incident occurred. I made the kidnappers cold and slightly insane, because when I imagine evil people I always think they must be insane otherwise how could they be so evil? But now I think about these people who did this, and I'm pretty sure they're not insane. They're desperate and deadened inside, but very, very sane. It's horrible to try to think of that perspective, but it's good to know what the shadow is capable of, if it's to be disarmed--for this type of thing to never happen closer to home.

ROW update and more tag

I've been amiss with my ROW80 updates again...but part of it is because I've been wallowing in revisions and thus my brain's felt too fried to do much beyond that! So the short of it is, I am writing and making progress on my WIP and that makes me happy.

However, today I feel I can update even with fried brain because I've been tagged again for 11 questions by a fellow Platform-Building Campaigner, Theresa Small Sneed, and thus I have a subject to write about. So here goes:

1. You're on a deserted island for six months with one person--who would it be and why?
My two-year-old! He wouldn't be that helpful with anything, but I couldn't stand not seeing him for that long, and he's cuddly and fun and I adore him.

2. You were caught in a meteor shower which left you with strange abilities. Now every time you eat chocolate, you can...what? I can turn toxic waste, non-biodegradable substances, and landfill into chocolate (unsweetened), solving hunger and environmental problems as well as increasing oxytocin production all over the world.

3. A friend takes you to an abandoned castle that has been hidden for centuries. She heard a rumor that great treasure was hidden in the sixth tower. Would you venture inside or turn it over to the authorities to investigate? What would you find? Well, since there's nothing about ghosts or monsters, I'd definitely venture inside! And of course I would find the treasure--the Seal of Solomon. Particularly so I could communicate better with animals.

4. You can only drink one type of beverage for the next year - what would it be and why? Boring answer--spring water with a little lemon and a little Himalayan pink sea salt mixed in it. Because it's healthy, slightly more interesting than water alone, and I wouldn't get sick of it.

5. Have you ever had to face a fear of yours? What was it and how did you overcome it, if you did? The past ten years I've developed a fear of flying, and I still have to face that several times a year. I do a lot of deep breathing, which helps, but I still have the fear.

6. Have you enjoyed certain ages in your life more than others? What is your ideal age and why? I generally enjoy the age I am more than all prior. I started feeling this way after age 20 and it's just gotten better. So my ideal age is whatever age I am now--I don't ever want to be in a place where I wish I were younger...we have yet to see though.

7. Has anyone totally amazed you in life? Who and why? Cheesy answer...a lot of people. All my close friends amaze me. My husband at times. My kids, every day. I'm a lot more amazed at ability to be than ability to do.

8. Have you ever written in a character in a story patterned after a real person--out of spite, because that person ticked you off? Not out of spite, but I have definitely patterned characters after real people. Gonna keep this one vague, heh.

9. Do any of your characters make you totally crazy because they have a mind of their own and take you places you hadn't planned on? I was annoyed with a character because she changed love interests halfway through the book, so I had to go back and make the guy less attractive.

10. What is your most favorite phrase/paragraph that you have written? Can you share it? I don't have a favorite phrase of paragraph of mine...I tend to write it or read it and forget about it.

11. If you could sit down and talk shop with any writer from any time period--who would it be and why? Sheri S. Tepper (who is alive). Because her books show that she is just as complex and fascinating as her subject matter, and I think we would get along. :)

No more tagging from me! It took me at least an hour last time to find people to tag. Time for bed...

1st campaigner challenge: "Shadow Play"

Shadows crept across the wall, then danced, as the two-headed Bleepadeep from an orange planet in a neighboring galaxy played with puppets in the light of his laser-refractor. He tossed the puppets in the toy box; after exploring the closet and the toy soldiers poised for battle on the desk, he approached the bed where Jerry slept.  

The Bleepadeep knew the routine—zap the boy with the beta-wave inhibitor, extract pineal cells with the four-dimensional “No-cut-it” implement, test compatibility in the gene extrapolator. If a match was found, abduct the child.

But the Bleepadeep was sick of the problems of his dying race, their never-ending attempts to manipulate their bodies to withstand their changing environment. If they couldn’t find the right genes, they would die, perhaps within days.

The boy’s cells were a match! This could be the key to saving their race. Then he looked at the toy box. He still had time…

He went for it. He partied with stuffed animals, arranged battles on the carpet, and played tiddlywinks, one head against the other. Only when dawn came did he realize Jerry was awake and watching him; with a shriek he pressed the teleport button, and everything faded.

(200 words)

***

The challenge: 

Write a short story/flash fiction story in 200 words or less, excluding the title. It can be in any format, including a poem. Begin the story with the words, “Shadows crept across the wall”. These five words will be included in the word count. 

If you want to give yourself an added challenge (optional), do one or more of these:

• end the story with the words: "everything faded." (also included in the word count)

• include the word "orange" in the story

• write in the same genre you normally write

• make your story 200 words exactly!

11 questions tag!

I've been tagged by C.M. Brown to answer eleven questions she posed, and then write eleven for another eleven campaigners to answer if they so choose! Here's my answers:


1. How do the stories you write about come into fruition? I think about what stories I would like to read but can't because they haven't been written. Usually philosophical themes are woven in regarding whatever I've been thinking about lately. Other than that, it's wide open...oftentimes when I'm in the car I'll zone out and things will pop up that I'll want to write about.


2. Do you think you are the type of person who plans for every eventuality, or do you prefer to live life how it comes, without any organisation? I always have a running list of short- and long-term goals. I don't like to plan for eventualities because if they're bad, I don't want to create them by planning for them, and if they're good, I don't want to put so much energy on it needing to happen that I sabotage it. That said, I like to set the energy for how my life unfolds--thinking of how I would like to feel about myself in the future rather than exactly what I want to happen--and I like to think through the bad things that could happen in order to release any fear attached to those situations that might make them manifest through my resistance. 


3. What is your favourite song? I don't have one. Different songs at different times will evoke an emotional response in me. But maybe I ought to stop being non-committal and wishy-washy. I'll say Bjork's "Army of Me."


4. Do you sing it loudly to yourself? I'm afraid I don't do much loud singing nowadays--the only thing I sing a lot is a lullaby when getting my son to nap. 


5. Are you still friends with anyone you went to secondary school with? A few friends from junior high, and a couple from high school, but none of them are very close. Most of them are on Facebook so I know what's going on with them, but I don't keep in regular touch. I still really like the boyfriend I went out with when I was 15, but I haven't seen him in at least seven years.


6. What would be your dream job? A couple elements of my dream job I already have--being a mom and writing! However, it would be nice if I actually made money off the writing. And I like variety, so other parts of my dream job would include being Christian Bale's Rolfer and massage therapist, growing exotic and medicinal mushrooms for profit and mycorestoration, and being an eco-home designer and builder. On top of that I would like to be a heavily influential consultant and Jungian therapist for all the world leaders. Hey, it's my dream job so why not?


7. How often do you speak with your siblings? The sister closer to me in age, maybe once a month. The other, once every two years as she's rather in her own little world.


8. If you were an animal what creature would you like to be? I really wouldn't like to be an animal, as there aren't any that humans don't consider as objects for human use. But since I can choose any, I'd want to be one that talks and has a human brain in it. Maybe a sphinx or a harpy. Nobody bothers harpies.


9. What is your favorite food? Hard to pick one. I have an addiction to sugar and in particular mangoes, but does that make sweet things among my favorites, since I usually don't feel good after eating them? By sheer quantity and versatility, I think my fave food would have to be the Almighty Egg, fresh from my chickens.


10. What piece of technology could you not live without? I try not to be dependent on any. But I would be very sad without my computer.


11. Do you have a favourite piece of furniture? My bed. I try not to be attached to furniture any more than technology.


The questions I would like to ask:
1. If you had to change your name, what would you change it to? 
2. Which Greek or Roman (or other culture's mythological) deity would you be (either who you'd like to be or who you most resemble)?
3. Would you like to marry a Vulcan?
4. Would you choose immortal life with the elves, or a human, mortal life with the one you love and a child-to-be?
5. If you had to write fan fiction, what fictional world would you choose to write in?
6. Do you believe in any conspiracy theories?
7. What do you consider your best quality?
8. What do you consider your worst quality?
9. Do you ever feel over-exposed on your blog?
10. If you were to reincarnate, what would you like to be?
11. What is your biggest pet peeve?  


Now, the campaigners I am tagging:
1. Christopher Ledbetter
2. Writer Steps
3. My Imaginary Beings
4. The Writer Coaster
5. The Accidental Novelist
6. The Capillary
8. Lara Schiffbauer
9. Shanjeniah
10. Another Author
11. Alexia Chamberlynn

Ways to maximize writing time

1. Change unnecessary routines with people in your life.
I just gained an hour of extra time every night. Not because of daylight savings, but because I finally let my son "cry it out." Before that, his bedtime ritual easily took an  hour to an hour and a half every night--half an hour of reading through a pile of 8-10 books, then half an hour to an hour of massage, hand-holding, and cuddling. I have to admit I was growing very resentful of him for taking so much time when everybody else was in bed and I wanted to write, and also resentful of my husband for never helping me put him to sleep.

Finally, one night last week he had stayed awake far longer than his bedtime and was inconsolably cranky. I put him in bed, kissed him, and left the room and shut the door. He banged on the door and screamed and cried for at least a half hour, but finally he crawled in bed and went to sleep.

The next two nights I repeated the process, and he only cried for a minute before going to sleep on his own. The fourth night, I left the door open; he got up once but went back to bed when I told him to.

My son is 2 years and 2 months old, so he's not a baby any longer, and I think the crying he does now at bedtime can be attributed more to toddler cranks and willfulness rather than trying to get needs met. I never saw the need to let him cry it out as a baby since we've co-slept since his birth and it's only been the last six months that his bedtime ritual has started getting so elaborate. I don't know why I didn't think of doing this earlier?! The additional time I have feels like such a blessing, and it makes me enjoy the book-reading time we share so much more now that I don't have to lie there in bed with him impatiently waiting for him to nod off.

2. Make small word count goals and if you need to, create external reinforcement of them.
The second thing I'm doing that is making what time I have to write more useful is I started using the Write or Die desktop app I purchased two years ago but never used. (It's free if you use it on the internet). It has you set a goal, say 1000 words in 60 minutes, and if you pause in writing for like 30 seconds this horrible alarm sounds that makes you jump in your seat, and if you pause even longer it'll start deleting what you already wrote. I didn't like it before because you have to cut and paste what you write in the box into your manuscript, and you have to reformat everything. But today I tried it because I had written 500 words in about two hours. And then I produced 2000 words in one hour. Yeah!

3. Have at least two writing projects going at a time.
I've gotten a lot less writer's block since I started a second novel. Now when I feel stuck with one, I simply switch to writing the other one. Usually it'll feel like such a relief to not have to solve the problem I was just engaged in that the words just flow, and as my extremely creative friend Laura says, working on two projects is "like you can angle away from one direction toward another and build momentum that way, some kind of weird creative physics."

An overdue ROW80 update

I've missed a bunch of ROW80 updates, but now that I've finally finished the first draft of my Fast Draft novel, it's time to take my ostrich head out and look around to see what's going on with the rest of the world. I wrote about 55,000 words in 22 days; it's only the skeleton of a novel, or rather, it's like a skeleton with bits of flesh hanging off of it here and there and bone or internal organ showing in other places. I'm experiencing this heady euphoria over having finished something, although it's got a lining of shame on it because I'm aware, even without looking over it, that I wrote some pretty intense tripe especially towards the end. But that's to deal with in a day or two when I print it out and begin revisions!

So lately I've gone far above my original ROW80 word count goal of 1000-2000 per day. The other goals have fallen a bit by the wayside; I've maintained exercising most days and doing breathing meditations, but I haven't been learning Spanish and I have definitely not been fasting. I also haven't been writing any flash fiction at all. No matter; I think so long as the words are coming I don't really care whether they're in long or short fiction.

However, in flash fiction news, I am happy to report that I got my very first mention in a review, for my story "The Zombissager" in Pink Narcissus' Queer Fish anthology. Hooray! I take it as a good sign that this story, which is about detached zombie penises, got a thumbs up at a time when I'm working on a novel absolutely chock full of detached penises. Or maybe I just like writing about detached penises, I dunno.

Emerging from the cave

I haven't blogged for a week here, and I've skipped at least three ROW80 updates.

I've been doing Candace Havens' Fast Draft class, which is basically a group of around 30 women who are trying to write a draft of a novel in two weeks, and revise it in two weeks. There is almost no teaching done, but Candace cheers us on, and the main thing that gets the work done is the agreement, and the witnesses to it.

That said, my two-week first draft has already stretched to three and I think I need at least one more. My pace was excellent for the first few days but dropped off sharply as I hit the murky middle of the novel. Now I'm past the halfway point and getting into the climax, but my progress is still much slower than in the beginning--I'm probably doing about 3000 words a day at this point.

It doesn't help that practically every waking moment I've been behind the initial day's pace set for writing, but I think I mostly went into my cave of non-blogosphere communication because my brain has been so fried that I knew I wouldn't be able to come up with anything interesting to say. I think it's about being interesting to myself...anyhow, as a kick in the butt to myself to snap out of that mentality and get a little more social, I'm going to join the Fourth Writers' Platform-Building Campaign:

It's my first time! Hooray! And by the time it starts, (I hope) I'll have finished two novel first drafts and will be in the fun place--Revisionland.

Bitch

This is my post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group, first Wednesday of every month.

I am writing a lot lately and loving it. My greatest insecurity right now is: how do I keep from being a bitch to my family because they keep interrupting my writing time? In the space of the last hour I had to stop writing because my youngest pooped and took his diaper off and ran outside. So I had to clean up poop off the floor and then catch him (no easy task) to clean him up. My other son has been giving me presents (pieces of paper he made in school) and asking me how many minutes until he can eat sweets. My husband has been constantly coming to use the phone (yes we live close to the Stone Ages and have a corded phone) which is right next to the computer and how can I write with this person standing right next to me, yammering on the phone, asking me to find pens for him, coughing, and burping?

How do you deal with being bitchy because you want to be writing and your family won't let you?