The fantastic guys over at SF Signal were kind enough to invite me to participate in this week’s Mind Meld about resolutions. (Kind of crazy to be included with people like Joe Abercrombie and Martha Wells! And I’m happy to be keeping company with my friend Stina Leicht.)

Speaking of which, with awards season in full swing, let’s not forget the service that these guys do for the community. SF Signal is eligible in the following categories this year:

Hugos: Best Fanzine, Best Fancast, Best Related Work
World Fantasy Award: Special Award, Non-professional

So, how am I doing on those lofty goals so far? Well…

The good news is that I wrote 5,512 words over the course of six days. The bad news is that’s not even close to what I was shooting for.

4000 of those were on the novel, which felt pretty substantial. The rest were on that Story-a-Week project, in which I wanted to have a story drafted each week in January.

I’m not off to a good start on that. I actually ended up starting three stories–the first was just going absolutely nowhere, so I ditched it. The second one I think is viable, but I need to think it through some more. Had I started it on Monday or Tuesday I probably could have finished it, but I just started it yesterday and it needs time to steep. The third one–which I started today–initially seemed the most promising in terms of language and structure, but I hit a wall in the middle and everything I’m coming up with now is cliche. I’m going to tuck numbers 2 and 3 away and see if I can finish them in weeks 3 and 4.

Week 2 begins tomorrow, and with it the first draft of my story for Fireside, which I’ve been brainstorming for a couple of weeks now. I have two Tuckerizations to do, as rewards for Kickstarter supporters–meaning I have to name a character after each of the people who paid for the Tuckerization reward. Strangely this actually helped me to shape the story, as they both have great names and the story is set in the real-world U.S.

That’s going to take most of my mental energy, I think, so I’m sure that the novel is going to languish for the rest of January. I might set the bar lower, like 250 a day or something, just so that I keep making progress and don’t lose the thread of it.

Oh, and so far, working on the novel and short stories simultaneously doesn’t seem to be a problem. I can’t detect any bleed-through, and it’s actually been nice when I run out of steam on one project to switch to the other.

In other news, I sold a story yesterday to Shimmer, which made my day. I’m told that it will be out in the summer issue. This was a particularly victorious sale because there’s a story behind the story–but I think I’ll save that for when it’s published.

Bring on Week 2!

I was in Alabama when I got the email from Brian White inviting me to participate in Fireside Magazine Issue #1. It was a total surprise–I hadn’t encountered Brian before, but he dropped the right name (I was suggested by someone else who had to decline). I looked him up, thought about it for a couple of hours, and replied. Yes, I said, I would love to participate. Thank you.

It’s a quirky project in a couple of ways–the writers were contracted without having written a word, for starters. And while it is Brian’s magazine, and the writers are just contributors the same way we would be were this any other sale, because it was a Kickstarter campaign that we helped to promote, I think we all feel more invested than we would otherwise.

Yesterday the project was fully funded on Kickstarter. There was a round of jubilant emails, and then we all got to work. When we turn our stories in a month from now, Fireside #1 will become a reality, and I think it will feel like a real group victory. Then it’ll be time to pass the torch to the next group of contributors for Fireside #2.

Thank you all for your support. I confess to feeling some pressure on this one. Because of the inside-out way the magazine came to be, this isn’t a story that he can easily reject, so it has to be strong, and worthy–and it has to be done in four weeks.

Right.

::dies::

I am armed with spreadsheets and a crazy idea.

I got a lot of great suggestions yesterday. It seems to really just boil down to consistency, right? Imposed deadlines, word minimums, things like that. Well, I thought about all of that, and Galen’s project, and other things like 365 projects, or Thing-a-Week, or in Matt’s case, Mucho Mango Mayo, in which he podcast a new piece of original fiction every single day during the month of May. You know what I’ve never done? A project like that.

So in addition to working on the novel, I’m going to do a Story-a-Week project. I’ve actually managed to write a couple of short stories in a week, one of which will be coming out in Daily SF some time soon, so it seems possible to produce something worth editing in that time.

While I’d love to say I’m going to do a story a week for the entire year (52 stories, errr…I can take 2013 off, right?) I suspect that’s not reasonable. So I’m going to start with just January–four stories by the end of the month, one of which is going to be my Fireside story (which will, of course, get lots of extra love and attention. The other three just get drafts). We’ll see if I make it that far.

I’m hoping that this will get my brain back into the habit of creating freely and regularly, and give me something to revise and ultimately increase my body of work.

I won’t even tell you what my word count goals are for the novel. You’d think I’m seriously nuts. But right now I’m feeling optimistic. I had a good writing day yesterday, and would like to have another one today, and tomorrow, and the day after that.

It was pointed out to me yesterday that while I’m calling myself lazy, I did omit the fact that I was doing a lot last year, it just mostly wasn’t writing. Fair point.

Thanks for your suggestions and words of encouragement, both left in the comments and sent by email. You guys are the best.

Now I’d better get to work. :)

I am not a prolific writer.

I look at people like Genevieve Valentine and Ken Liu, who have stories everywhere, all the time, and I’m just in awe. Or Matthew Sanborn Smith, who is working his way up to one thousand stories. I wonder how they do it. Matt has done this while raising two teenagers on his own and working full time; Ken has a young daughter, coauthors software with his wife, and works a day job that would leave most of us gibbering on the floor at the end of the day; Genevieve accomplishes so much even while working, writing a novel, and consuming hours of media to review on her blog.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m just fundamentally wired differently than they are; other times I wonder if I’m just fundamentally lazy. I’m leaning toward the latter.

I’d like to change that this year. I’m not sure if this counts as a last-minute resolution, but maybe.

Creating new habits is hard. Limbering up the brain is hard. What’s the best way to do it? I want to focus on the novels this year, but I also want to write more short stories. Stop being so lazy. Get something done. Should I commit to spending half an hour a day on short stories before I work on the novel? Should I commit to a specific series or theme, to limit the paralysis that comes with having the entire universe, real and imagined, to write about?

Artist Galen Dara did a project a few months ago in which she asked her writer friends for characters to illustrate. She did one every day. What’s the writerly equivalent of that? It occurs to me that John Remy’s use of tarot cards as prompts might be a good way to start.

Have you faced this problem of lack of proliferation, and if so, did you find a good way to solve it?

That was it–the last task. The curtain just came down on my time as Assistant Editor at Lightspeed.

I am so grateful to the John Joseph Adams who I had only just met, who thought I was a pretty good podtern on Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, and as a result gave me the opportunity to learn from him and be a part of what has become an undeniably strong magazine.

I’m so glad I got to know Lightspeed staff mates Jordan London, Andrea Kail, Molly Tanzer, LaShawn Wanak, and Erin Stocks through the magazine–and I was so very happy to get to work with my friends Robyn Lupo, Andrew Liptak, Sandra Wickham, John Remy, Andy Romine, Carole Moleti, Jeremy Tolbert, and Alan Smale. And indirectly, my BFF Wendy Wagner, Assistant Editor at Fantasy Magazine.

I got to interview some amazing writers for the Author Spotlights, one of whom ended up writing our wedding ceremony a year later! (Thanks again, Vylar Kaftan!) I am particularly grateful to Ken Liu, Jake Kerr, and Shelly Li, for letting me muck with their words.

I brushed pixels here and there with many other people through Lightspeed–readers, writers, slushers, colleagues from other magazines, and my life is better for having you in it. I am so glad to know you all.

I don’t know what else to say. A toast, then, with thanks and love: To Lightspeed.

Another year is winding down, and I don’t know about you, but I really needed for it wind down. It was a really good year, in which I reached several important milestones. But I think I need to handle 2012 differently.

Right now I’m just trying to clear my commitments from my plate–I have a novella to proofread, a short story to critique, and a novel to beta read, plus the last few tasks for Lightspeed. When I’m done with those things, I’m going to consider myself done with everything but writing for a while. I’m also really limiting what I get to work on in 2012. Grant Stone and Matt Sanborn Smith introduced me to the concept of the Personal Kanban board–I’ve created one, and just the act of limiting myself to working on three things relieved me of a lot of stress.

That’s really my goal for this year: stress reduction. My primary sources of stress in 2011 were finances, finding time to write, and my day job. A lot of stress came off me at the day job recently, so that’s helping a lot. Getting out from under these last few commitments will free up my evenings to write. And finding the right house at the right price this spring will go a long way toward reducing my monthly expenses.

There are other things that will help, too, like eating better and exercising more. And just moving forward on my projects will eliminate the anxiety that comes with not moving forward. This week is going to be spent tying up loose ends so that I can go into the new year as unencumbered as possible.

What changes are you making in 2012?

…whereever you are and whatever you face
these are the people who’ll make you feel safe in this world…
- Tim Minchin, “White Wine in the Sun“

We have returned from our every-other-Christmas with the Yant family.

My family is pretty secular, so Christmas for us is about food and family. We rent a huge house in the mountains that will take all 20 of us, and hang out for three days. Each household family unit is responsible for bringing provisions and cooking one meal for the whole crew. One of my uncles recently started an organic/free-range/grass-fed (depending on the animal) livestock co-op and brought one of his turkeys for dinner–it was 31 lbs.! We were on breakfast duty (two kinds of french toast, sausage, and fruit salad). There’s something very satisfying about cooking for that many people.

Equally satisfying was looking up from my book on Christmas Eve to see that everyone else in the room was reading, too. My adoptive family and I don’t have a lot in common, but we do have that.

This was John’s first Christmas with us–apart from being just a generally interesting and wonderful guy, he also speaks Sports and plays games, so it went very well.

I was commenting yesterday that we’re so lucky that we don’t have any assholes in our family. There is absolutely no one to dread–they’re all just great people and we’re happy to spend time together. I’m glad that my daughter will have cousins in the area when she goes to college next year. In my (adult) experience, sometimes the best remedy for bruises that life inflicts is family.

I hope you had a happy holiday week, too, whatever that looks like for you.

Brian White has been interviewing the contributors to Issue #1 of Fireside Magazine. My interview went up this morning. In it I blather a bit about my favorite writers, mention how much I enjoyed working with Ken Liu, and talk a little about my awesome friends, the Inkpunks.

The Kickstarter is just over 30% funded, with 15 days to go. Oh, and remember the Charming Anthony Cardno? He bought the right to have a character named after him in my story! Thanks so much for your support, Anthony! ::rubs hands together and schemes::

tl;dr: Go here and read this article by Nicola Griffith about a new direction in Multiple Sclerosis research. If you care why this matters to me personally, read on.

I am a very fortunate person to be a part of two separate but equally wonderful families. I have a birth family, and an adoptive family–as a result I have two women who I refer to as “my mother.” Interestingly, they were both social workers who worked with children. One of them is a strong, brilliant, vibrant mother of five, living in Colorado. The other I didn’t get much of a chance to know. This post is about, and for, her.

My birth mother was already the single mother of an energetic boy when she discovered that she was pregnant with me. She wisely realized that being the single mother of two was not going to make life better for any of us, so she quietly put me up for adoption. It was 1971, and closed adoptions were the norm–she was told just enough to comfort her, specifically that I would be given to a family in Santa Ynez. There was something about horses. She was (I hope) satisfied that she had done the right thing–she had. I was raised by my adoptive parents to understand that, and have never once wavered in it: She did the best thing she could have done, for all three of us.

What happened next is a little uncertain. What should have happened is that the family who had gone through the adoption process would know full well that their new baby was coming home soon. Presumably that family in Santa Ynez did know, if they really existed. It’s possible that I was even there for a few weeks, because there was a six-week gap between my birth and my arrival at home. What we know for certain was that in December my mom and dad got a call saying, “We have a baby for you. Now.” They were completely unprepared.

But in mid-December, they brought me home.

Mom on the right, with her parents who eventually cared for her full-time. The small thing is me.

Six months later they had a final court date. This was it–I wasn’t really theirs until they got through this. They sweated it out, and I imagine said as little as possible, because something had happened that they didn’t want the court to know about: The week prior, my mother had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

I remember pineapple upside-down cake with little halved cherries. I remember Mom chiding my dad and making him bring me scrambled eggs in bed because he had sent me to bed without dinner for some infraction. I remember the autistic kids she worked with sometimes coming to the house, and her telling me how lucky and blessed we were. I remember her knocking politely on my bedroom door and not freaking out at all when she opened it to discover that I had cut all of the beads apart on my beaded curtains and was busy sorting them on the floor.

And I remember her walking me the two blocks to kindergarten, and having to rest half-way there. I remember the cane that she used after that. And then the stair-cane. And the walker. And the wheelchair.

I’m not sure if it was Primary Progressive, or Progressive Relapsing MS. What I do know is that after the first couple of years there was no relief for her. By the time I was seven, she was confined to a wheel chair. By nine, she was confined largely to her bed. When I was eleven she nearly choked to death on a bite of hot dog in front of me, and a feeding tube had to be put in. She didn’t eat anything by mouth for the last four years of her life. She couldn’t speak for the last two. In 1987 she died in a convalescent care center at the age of 44. She weighed 77 lbs.; the constant, uncontrollable tremors took every calorie they could possibly feed her and more.

I fucking hate MS.

It’s a baffling disease. When I was a kid there were experimental treatments like cobra venom, and standard treatments like Prednisone and Vitamin B12 injections. It seemed to be an auto-immune disorder, but nobody could seem to get much of a foothold on a treatment that worked.

The reason I’m writing about this today is because today a paper was published in the Quarterly Review of Biology that may explain why we’ve got exactly nowhere with this evil goddamn disease. The paper posits that it is not an auto-immune disease at all, but rather a metabolic disorder, much like atherosclerosis. There is a layman’s explanation of the paper by Nicola Griffith here.

I sincerely hope that this is the new direction that’s needed in treating and possibly even preventing Multiple Sclerosis. Nobody should have to go through what my mom did. I became a supporter of end-of-life choices at a very young age precisely because I watched her deteriorate and suffer horribly for a decade and a half, and she expressed to me her wish that she could just die. From what little we knew that seemed like the only option as the disease progresses. This paper may provide a ray of hope that it never has to come to that.

I couched this in a narrative of two mothers, so I suppose I should come back to that. I found my birth mother when I was twenty, and along with her my older brother and three younger sisters. Ma, as she is known, is a wise, witty woman and has been my de facto mother for many years now. I am certain that Mom would have liked her, and would be glad to know that I do still have a mother, when MS robbed us both of really knowing what that was like.

I hope that Dr. Corthals is right, and that the mothers and daughters and fathers and sons of the future will get to face MS with hope instead of despair.

Virginia Catherine Hohmann Yant, 1943-1987