Scheherazade in Blue Jeans

So while I was writing the novel, I wasn't writing much else - a few poems leaked out around the edges. A few stories, when I spent my summer unable to work on the novel because kid.

But that didn't stop the stories from gathering in my brain.

So. Aagh. I am in a place right now where I'm not stuck because I have nothing to do, I'm stuck because there is a bottleneck issue. I have so many things competing to be first. What I want to do first is the poetry project, but that feels like something I'll want to dive into when I know I have time, and with this constant snow fuckery, I can't rely upon having worktime. That, and I don't know when my readers will be done with the novel. The time travel story and the robot story will both mess me up, so even though I feel like I could do those quickly, I really don't want to be wrecked. I have essays on the list, but my brain wants fiction and poetry first.

So.

*sit*

Normally I would take a walk and the answer would sort itself out. But. Snow. Everywhere.

*sit*

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys chipmunks writers.

EDIT: I made a list; ten stories competing to be written next. Two individual poems as well as the book-length poetry project. Not counting the memoir things and future novels.

Aaaaand revisions are done. The book is with Adam and ashlyme, who were its first-readers.

I feel slightly dazed.

Also looking for a few more readers, people who *don't* yet know the book intimately. Ideally a mix of writers and non-writers. Let me know if you're interested! Not all volunteers will be chosen... want to keep it to just a few people. It's a thriller, not SF/F. Some disturbing content; if you need specific info on what triggers may exist, ask.

*stretch* What now? Well, today's a snow day, so I may as well do snow-day things. I have a stack of library books. I haven't cast on any knitting I care about this year; maybe I'll do that? (My problem there is that I have a bunch of projects I really want to do and I don't have the yarn I need for them! Some skint months lately, mostly the fault of the thousand-dollar cat on top of holidays on top of Elayna's lack of financial aid for fall.)

I have a BARCC volunteer gathering tomorrow, if the streets are not impassable (oh yeah we have four feet of snow in our backyard and are forecast to get 12-20" more today), and I have dates Wednesday and Thursday. I am, surprisingly, suddenly dating. Ten, but that's been building since New Year's; someone else who I'd seen a few times late last year and enjoyed, but holidays/sickness had kept us from seeing each other for a bit, and when we got to see each other again, BAM, and it's a thing now. :) Thursday I'm going to the Boston Grown-Ups Museum thing with Ten. <3

I have to think about what else to talk about now that I'm on pause-until-feedback with the book!

Everything is novel revisions lately. I am bearing down on the end of this thing. :) So excuse my almost-total absence!

My schedule was less jam-packed this year, so I was really frustrated with myself for feeling quite so run-down and spacey at Arisia.

Until I got home and stepped on the scale.

Oh. Under the weight at which my regular beta blocker dose becomes an overdose. I was pushing through hypotension for... how much of Arisia? Unknown. A lot.

The con itself was great! I only managed to attend three panels and a reading that I was not actually on, but honestly, that's more than usual at Arisia. Unfortunately, between that, the mandatory program staff office hours, the six panels and a reading I *was* on, and various time commitments to various people, I didn't get to actually hang out with people as much as I would've liked. Part of that problem is just that there are too many wonderful people at Arisia!

Balance. It's a process. And now I know that my #1 priority at cons has to be three square meals every day - scheduled. No relying upon the green room or grabbing snacks. Actual full meals. I've never attended a con this close to that weight threshold, but this does seem to be the weight my body's stuck on for now, so I need to be aggressive about keeping it up.

Anyway, all of my panels went well, my reading made people cry, and I had some awesome times. And thankfully my plans for yesterday got rescheduled, so I was able to take yesterday as a total rest day! Today I had an interview and am about to finally jump back into novel revisions. :)

I've talked about 2014 being my Year of Being Brave; I need to write a good wrapup post on that! And the Year of Being Brave has changed my life. Brave every year from now on. :)

But I did something else, something more subtle, something I didn't talk about as much:

2014 was the year I stopped calling myself lazy.

It used to be a tired old call-and-response thing - "I don't/didn't do X, because I'm lazy." And people would say "You're not lazy!"

And I realized that this was true. It helped that people pointed out that wow, I actually do a lot of stuff. Scroll down to my Year in Shira writing/editing post, and that's just one aspect of my life. I am driven and efficient and I do a lot of things and I do them well! So why do I call myself lazy?

The best answer I have? Part internalized ableism (I don't have a day job because disability, so clearly I am lazy) and part internalized misogyny (I don't do a lot of Lady Upkeep things, so clearly I am lazy).

Neither of those is a good look.

So in 2014, I looked at that, and I asked myself "why am I not doing the things I'm not doing?"

And the actual answer was "Because I have limited time and energy, and that's not where I choose to allocate it."

Boom.

It seems simple, but that reframing helped immensely. Talking about hair dye? "I don't dye my hair even though I could because I'm lazy" becomes "I don't dye my hair because upkeep on that takes time and energy that I'd rather spend elsewhere." I'd like rainbow hair, but I like what I'm doing more. Maybe I'll get some clip-in rainbow extensions from Etsy.

"I didn't clean the house, god I'm lazy" becomes "I was really in the zone with my writing, and this novel is more important to me than my toilet bowl being spotless."

These are all choices. Time/energy choices. When I say "lazy", I'm not just disrespecting myself, I'm devaluing the totally valid choices that I've made, that I'm making.

Plus it is just not true.

So that is my challenge to you for 2015. What negative thing do you say to yourself about yourself? What story are you telling yourself that isn't true or fair to you? Find it. Nuke it from orbit.

"Be very careful how you talk to yourself. Because you are listening." - Pat Cadigan

I posted on Facebook yesterday, "The difference in my life from last December to this December is really huge and 100% positive."

I've been thinking about this a lot lately - turn of the year and all. But it was brought sharply into focus by two things, one yesterday, one a few weeks ago. The one yesterday? I thought "where did I go for NYE last year?" and realized that I had turned down all party invites and stayed home on Gchat with Michael. This year, I still don't know how many parties I'm going to make it to, but I am hella going out.

The other one requires a bit more unfolding.

I go to a lot of parties! Some of these parties have an element of friendly makeouts and the pressure-free option for more than makeouts. I actually want to write about these parties and the way they're sex-positive without the sexy element being intrusive for those who don't want to take part in that, and the nifty consent-culture rules; I need to write up a draft of that post and send it to the hosts for approval! The particular parties that are relevant to this topic happen... quarterly, I wanna say? Every few months. And last December's, there was some crappy weather, enough so that I didn't want to go without getting a ride. Which I secured.

And then Michael and I had the biggest fight we'd ever had.

We always fought over these parties. (This is why I was late to every one of them in 2013.) He did not want anyone else touching me, ever. I was fine with committing to nothing below the waist, but being able to kiss people and get touch-comfort was important to me, especially in the wake of Judah (Judah and I went to one of these parties once; he was petulant that I got more attention than him and insisted upon leaving early). I needed to be able to make choices regarding my own body.

But this fight was different, was worse; he had a complete meltdown. He refused to believe me that the weather was safe for driving. ("It's barely snowing," I said; "The Weather Channel says it's unsafe," he said, and I kept repeating the actual reality of the weather, and he refused to listen.) He wandered off from Lynne and the other people they were out with to yell at me. He repeatedly blamed me for upsetting him.

I finally got off the phone with him just before the friend giving me the ride showed up. I was visibly not-okay when I got in the car; my friend could tell. And Michael kept texting me, and I kept texting back, and my friend kept glancing over at me in deepening concern. Finally he said "Y'know, 'song..."

And I automatically responded with "He's not always like this."

And we both looked at each other in perfect horrified knowledge of the script we were reciting.

Because we know this script, we know it, we know that's what they always say, and I had not fully realized, until the words from the script flew out of my mouth, that that was really where I was. Judah hit me. Judah raped me. This wasn't that, so it had to be okay, right? Even if it was tense, even if things like this happened, even if things were always my fault, even if my fooling around made him angry so it was always my fault he was angry...

My friend just looked at me like "you know," and I looked at him like "if you love me, don't make me say this or look at this tonight. Just let me go and drink and kiss people and not have everything collapse right now in this car."

And bless him, he let me.

I hadn't thought about that in a year; more dramatic stuff was soon to follow, et cetera, and it faded. But the same friend gave me a ride to the same party this year. He looked back at me and quietly said "This is better than last year."

Another friend in the car said "Oh yeah, the weather last year!" and we all nodded, but I met my friend's eyes in the mirror, and we both knew.

Y'know, it was. It was all around. The weather was better, yeah. And good friends from out of state were there, and I was bold enough to make eyes at a cutiepie I'd met at another party, and we ended up all having delicious fun that it would be inappropriate to recount here without the permission of, um, a bunch of other people. ;) And the next morning, gizmometer and I Skyped with ashlyme and told them all about our night, and though we'd missed each other, though everyone wished ashlyme was there with us, they were happy for us; we were all happy.

(ashlyme was worried, when we started dating, that their anxiety would be a problem for me, after things with Michael. No. And there's an example of why. They missed me, but were happy for me. They did not scold or shame me.)

This has been a Year of Being Brave in so many ways. And it's been a year of freedom. It's a year of being accepted and respected by my partners - I looked very hard at everything before taking the plunge with beloved ashlyme, and to my relief and delight, they've been very, very good for me. <3 And so has everyone else. I've experimented... kinda a lot. Most of those experiments totally worked. One didn't, but in ways that gave us both interesting data, and we are still friends, so that's still a great outcome. (There is something oddly freeing about "Yeah, wow, that was a mistake for both of us! Fascinating. Still wanna go get a drink?")

Having my world kicked out from under me yet again in January gave me the opportunity to reframe, restructure, rethink, rebuild. I waited a while before becoming involved with anyone even long-distance, and even longer before becoming involved with anyone in person, because I needed to look to myself first and make decisions about what I wanted, what I did not want, what was best for me. And I've been fairly ruthless about cutting out the things that don't serve me. I joked recently that I turned a guy down for wearing those Vibram shoes, that's how picky I am!, but really, yeah, I will no longer cut off parts of my Self to be with someone. It isn't worth it.

And I am so much happier this way.

Adam wasn't sure I should write this, because it's me talking about the exes again, but: I have been carrying this, and if I never say it, I'll never get to set it down. And I want to set it down. I've had a fair amount of bullshit from people this year that's been directly attributable to the fact that I talked about a bad breakup amongst people who were pretending to be my friends. I never got the memo that we're not allowed to talk about our lives and about shitty things that sometimes happen. And I think the shame here should lie with people who play at friendship to get intel. Lots of people should look at their lives and look at their choices. It's helped me to do so.

Last December was bad in ways that I didn't have a handle on yet, because I was kept in crisis mode. This December? I had a great visit with my Florida family. That party was huge for me in all kinds of ways. The second issue of my magazine came out. I've revising my novel - you guys, I wrote a novel, I'm still chuffed about that. And I have a well-earned calm and happiness.

Last New Year's Eve, I stayed in. Tonight, I'm going out. I will wear glitter; I will dance, and I will have champagne, and I will have a midnight kiss.

Copied from my official pro-type website.

2014 was actually the most productive writing year I've ever had - it just doesn't look that way from the outside! Since I barely wrote in 2012 and wrote nothing in 2013, I only had two stories actually come out in 2014, both written in 2014. Those are "The Final Girl" and "The Cartographer's Requiem". "The Final Girl" is now the story I point people to when I want them to know what exactly I write.

This year I wrote a complete novel, my first ever; I'm currently working on revising it, and then I get to wander around looking for an agent!

I also wrote a record five stories (I know, I don't write fast/often/much). Two were published (see above), one will be out next year, and two are on submission. I've written a number of poems, mostly for a chapbook project that's not close to complete yet.

I also made my nonfiction debut with "Israel is Not My Birthright" on Salon.com.

And fellow poet Mat Joiner and I started a magazine! Check out the first two issues of Liminality: A Magazine of Speculative Poetry.

I had a lot of reprints this year!

* "Becca at the End of the World" was reprinted in Zombies: More Recent Dead, and it received an honorable mention in Ellen Datlow’s Year’s Best Horror!
* "Wool and Silk and Wood" was reprinted in The Best of Electric Velocipede.
* "The Angel of Fremont Street" and "Fortune" were jointly reprinted as The Selves We Leave Behind.
* "The Library, After" was reprinted in Mythic Delirium #30 and The Nebula Awards Showcase.
* "Valentines" was reprinted in The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women.


And what's on deck for next year? Look for "Never Chose This Way" at Apex, "Four Chambers" at Mythic Delirium, "The Binding" at Lakeside Circus, and hopefully I'll be able to tell you more soon!

Every time I pause to write here, I ponder, and I think "my thoughts on that are not complete yet".

Which, from the outside, must look like absence when it's more like heightened presence.

So. This post is an ask-me-anything, in case there's anything you were wondering about.

Anonymous commenting is on.

Signal-boosting for wired_lizard - her house, not mine!

(But mine is walking distance from hers so that's cool.)

Originally posted by wired_lizard at PLZ HALP: Housemate needed in Watertown, MA, by January 1

I'm with Adam here.


Originally posted by yendi at So