I don’t know how to do what the book wants me to do today.  I think I might be confused. The way the book is set up there is a short chapter for each day and then sometimes it tells you to turn to exercises at the back of the book. Today is titled “Writing Meditation” and it says “Now it’s time to slow down a bit.  This would be a great time to Recharge. Turn to page 215 and then come back here for the guided meditation” But the exercise on page 215 involves taking a day of rest or unplugging for 24 hours and then write about it. But if I took a day of rest right now I wouldn’t be able to do today’s assignment.  I thought this was supposed to be 30 days straight of writing.

Also, I’m going, to be honest.  I don’t even understand the concept of a day of rest.  How the fuck does that even work? I keep a daily task list of all the things I do every day,  on a day of rest would I just not do any of those things? Would I not do my exercises, or take vitamins? Who feeds the cats?  Who feeds me and washes the dishes? What do you even do on a day of rest, do you just stare at the wall? Do you read a book or watch TV?   While I was injured and I couldn’t do my chores and tasks I got super, super depressed. Putting the little checks on my list is sort of the only reason I get up in the morning.  I feel like taking a whole day off and not doing that stuff would be super stressful, because I would have to do it later.

I guess when I go on vacation, away from home I am not doing most of my tasks.  So it can be done…but why? I’m willing to give it a try I guess, but I don’t think now is the best time to take a whole day off.  But then again, it might be the only time. I should be starting back to work soon and I am going to be starting to move in June if everything goes according to plan.  Once work or the move starts I can’t take a whole day off. Could I instead take a long time one day off? Like 4 or 8 hours? I think I could manage that without guilt.  

Is it fucked up that the idea of not doing stuff for a day makes me feel sick levels of guilt and anxiety?  I’m not actually doing anything super important as it is. I’m not lying to myself about this, I know I mostly do my own made up list of busy work.  I feel “productive” with all my little tasks if I don’t think about it too hard, which I am now, and starting to question why I’m even alive. I think this is getting into a personal journal or talk to a psychiatrist territory, moving on.  

So, I’m not doing the exercise today,  but I am as a compromise I’m going to put on my to-do list “Day off”  this will be a day when I do my body upkeep stuff (15 minute PT, eat, take meds) and my most important household stuff (Feed cats and Do dishes) but other than that I will not do anything.  I’ll get food delivered. I’ll not write, clean, or do “high-value tasks”. I’ll spend a good solid 8 hours watching TV or something. Moving on.

The next part of today’s assignment was reading a sort of guided meditation and then writing about a time when you felt free, happy or at peace.  

The Beach, at Night

I’m on a beach,  it’s near sunset or night time.  This isn’t one specific beach or one specific date.  It’s all the times I have ever been on a beach, alone or nearly alone from sunset to sunrise.   

It’s a night in Hawaii, sitting the sand, looking out to the black waves, which are louder than the music behind me from the Monona Surfrider Hotel,  the music, and the waves sound right together, natural. I had been feeling hurt and ignored when I walked out to the beach, but the sound of the waves and faint music pull the pain out, leaving my soul silent.  

I’m a child,  we’re staying on Tybee Island.  I’m standing on the pier by myself,  it nearly high tide. The place where I played and searched for shells just hours earlier is gone, under the waves that crash against the wooden legs, shaking the pier.  There is no one to hurt me here. No one to judge me. I have never felt so completely alone before, so amazingly free. I think about stepping off, into the water, giving myself to the waves.  I don’t do it, but I realize that I could and that gives me comfort. On some of my worst days to come, I’ll look back at that night, half wishing I had joined sea, but more so reminding myself that it’s still there,  it’s always there, always waiting. If I really, really need to get away she is waiting, ready to receive me. There is a place I can go, that never changes, that always will accept me. I guess, that makes it home?

It’s sunset, near the north shore of O’ahu.  We get to the beach just as almost everyone else is leaving.  The only other people are two guys down the shore fishing and an old lady with lots of cats who lives in a tent near the tree line.  Aside from them it just me and my husband, we have had a nice day, a perfect day. With sea turtles, peacocks, weird local honey and tiny bananas.  We are both tired and happy. He wants to leave, to go back to the hotel, but he indulges me this time, letting me do something that I really want, even if it’s a little stupid and inconvenient. I am so happy.  The sand here is deep and hard to walk on, the changing area far away. I have a sarong in my bag, I put it on and strip out of my clothes under it. I walk to the water, and take it off quickly, before jumping into the burnt orange water.  I swim alone in a tiny tropical bay as the last rays of the sun fade. The only light comes from the windows of multi-million dollar homes in the distance. Those people get to see this water every day, but I wonder how many of them have ever skinny dipped alone in it?  Right now the whole ink-black ocean is mine. The moment is perfect, my life is perfect.

It’s two hours before dawn when I hobble up the sand, using one crutch.  It hurts a lot, but I don’t say anything. My injured leg doesn’t like the shifting uneven ground or the beach plants that try to grab at my support.  I’m afraid of falling. I’m tired, we have been up all night. My boyfriend drove me 6 hours away from home so I could watch the sunrise on the winter solstice.  I feel grateful and oddly melancholy. We reach the beach to find it totally deserted, the only sound is the waves. There are lights in the distance, lights from the hotel behind us, but not so many that I can’t see the stars.  It’s not as cold as you would think, but cold enough. I sit in a camp chair, wrapped in a flannel blanket and wait for the new sun to be born. I feel like I’m at the edge of the world. I feel hopeful, maybe the worst year of my life is going to end this night. Maybe the sun will dawn on a new world, where I don’t hurt all the time, where I don’t feel trapped and afraid all the time. Maybe the darkest part of my life is over.  And maybe not, at that moment it’s enough to listen to the song of the waves.

I have others, but I don’t want to do this all day.  I love the ocean at night. Someday I’m going to live near the sea, someday I might die in it.  

That’s not all!   Today is going to be a long writing day!   Now the book wants me to pick a card from the prompt stack.   I had been wondering when we would start using the cards.

Prompt “How do you define living on your own terms?” 5 minutes

Money.  It’s all about money, that is the only possible freedom.  And I hate that so much it burns inside. But I accept it, because I can’t change it, that is our world.  I have spent my whole life needing others, obeying others, bowing down because that is how you live. To live on my own terms would be to have enough money to pay all my bills, to have my own home, to have enough money for food,  healthcare and medicine. If I had twice that amount I could travel, I could see the places I have dreamed of, I could be the person I wish I was. I’m not submissive by nature, but by nurture. I learned subservience equals survival.  

I still need to do my WIP writing.  But short break first.

I did some edits my friend suggested on the story I finished yesterday and then did some research on my next story, but not any actual writing it yet. 

Total time today 2 hours 13 minutes

Today is about stretching,  reaching outside of your comfort zone as a writer.  Writing in different genres or formats than you normally would.

I want to start this by thinking about I write.   When it comes to fiction I write horror, fantasy and sci-fi,  or some combination of those three. I’ve done sci-fi horror (check out Treacherous Nature for “Red, in Tooth and Claw” which is a sort of sci-fi psychological thriller, maybe fantasy horror thing).  I’ve done fantasy/horror, and even some fantasy/sci-fi. The mixing of these three genres is my jam. I am also pretty good at adding stuff to them. I’ve done steampunk, which is sort of just historical sci-fi, sometimes with a touch of fantasy thrown in. I’ve written a lot of historical horror.  I do Weird Western which is fantasy in the old west. But as far as fiction goes I very seldom step outside of those entirely. I might have never written a story that takes places in the current time, with normal people doing normal things. I guess the closest I’ve come to that is something like “Dream Girl” which is still horror.

I write plenty of non-fiction, but mostly first person, journal or essay style, about my life, opinions or experiences. Lot of topics, including homesteading (which I don’t do anymore, currently), cosplay or writing.  Like I’m doing right now, this moment. Y’all, I am writing about how I write about myself writing in a post where I write about myself writing…..deep.

I write a fair amount of poetry.  My style of poetry is something best described as “whatever the fuck I feel like”.  If it appears to have a real style, that is probably purely by coincidence. I’ve seen a lot of Shakespeare, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I write in iambic pentameter sometimes, but I don’t try to, at least not in a very long time.

The book has me list out some genres I would like to try.  So far I have come up with:

1. Cozy Mystery – I’ve been reading a lot of those recently, as a divorced woman with cats, who likes to read, cook and write every heroine in these books is a representation of me.  They are pretty much as comfortable to read as the name implies.
2. Mystery in general -I like reading them and figuring out whodonit, but I’ve never gotten the knack of setting up the clues, leading the reader to put things together.  I tend to just throw narrative at my readers like hacky sacks. (Plot device to the face!!!!!!!!!!!, Duck! here comes a character development!)
3. Realism – or whatever you would call a story that takes place here and now, with normal sorts of people living life.  (hmmmm….I think I would call that boring…)
4. Literary Fiction – this is a confusing term, which might be meaningless honestly, but like porn, I guess you know it when you see it. However, I think one must first have a patron before one can write literary fiction, and maybe one requires a drug or alcohol addiction.  If anyone wants me to seriously give this a try I will require donations totaling at least $400 and half a bottle of Percocet.
5. Youtube show scripts, because that sounds fun.
6. Erotica – from what I can tell sex sells,  and this sort of writing makes money and isn’t super hard (hehehe get it?).  I could do it under my phone sex name.
7. Romantic Fiction – again, this is a good money making genre from what I’ve heard.  I tried to write a romance novel about a werewolf once I think…I wonder if that is around here someplace.  
8. Stand up Comedy-  I have tried to put together a stand of routine in the past, but not seriously,  I should give that another go. I’m super funny, and short, and odd looking. I think it could be a thing.  

The assignment is to research one of these genres for a few minutes every week and then give it a try.

It just so happens that I have the most recent issues of both “Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine” “ and “Mystery Scene”. Yes, I really do just have them on hand. I buy short story magazines because I like short stories and I want to keep up with the markets I would like to publish in.  I buy writer’s trade magazines because it makes me feel motivated and like a legit writer when I do it. No, I don’t ever get around to reading either, because who has time for that? I guess I mostly buy them for the much longed for Future Kitty who is a full time writer and needs these things for important businessing.

However today Present Kitty is going to use them!  Hosanna! (fyi, I always assumed this word meant “Yay!”  but in a fancy old-fashioned Biblical way. However it has something to do with praying for help, which isn’t applicable here, but I’m going to leave it because I know you wanted me to lay this knowledge down, also, because I still want it to mean “Yay!”).  

I’m going to grab a glass of water and read one mystery story and one mystery trade article.  BRB

I’m back

I read the short story “10,432 Serial Killers (in Hell)”  by Emily Devenport and a biography “The Remarkable Lives of Anthony Boucher”.  

I think I’ve read something by Emily Devenport before or listened to a podcast she was in, not sure, her name is familiar. Check out her blog, if you want to know more about her work.  The story “10,432 Serial Killer (in Hell)” was fun and charming, the main character was pretty adorable.   I enjoyed the story. This is an example of a story that makes me a little confused as the perimeters of the genre “Mystery”,  as the story told us right away who the bad guy was. Does “mystery” just mean stories involving crimes or stories told by characters who are cops or private investigators?  I’ll read another Mystery story in a day or two and see if it has anything to solve. If not, then maybe I can write in this genre without being good at actually forming a “mystery” to solve.   This was a pretty straightforward narrative with elements of fantasy and horror.

The article I read was about Anthony Boucher,  the writer, critic, and editor, who co-founded “The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction” back in the 1949 and was one of the organizers of the Mystery Writers of America.   He wrote a lot of short stories, a few novels and was involved in all parts of the mystery, sci-fi and fantasy industry in the 40s, 50s and 60s. Bouchercon, a big annual Mystery convention, is named after him.  I should go to this, as it’s in St. Petersberg this year, which wouldn’t be hard for me to get to if time, money and work allows.

At 2 hours and 9 minutes so far today.

Now I supposed to work on writing in the mystery style for 15 minutes.  I don’t even know where to start. I feel like I’m going to be staring at a blank screen for the next 15 minutes….

I actually worked on this project for over 40 minutes, because I came up with a good character.  But most of the time was spent in research, not writing. Research is a time consuming, but important part of writing.  And part of why my paid work averages less than $1 per hour income. 

Wow and Hosanna!  I have been working a really long time today and I’m still not to the daily slog to work on my WIP.  Being a writer is hard.

Timer is at 3 hours and 20 minutes when I finished working on the current short story.  I was working on a pretty rough, triggery scene in my WIP.  I might have to take up the drinking or drug habit after all.

I am ready to be done today.  I’m going to edit this as fast as possible and post it.  Sorry if there are errors.

Final time today is 3 hours and 45 minutes.