Not the tv show, which I’ve never seen and know nothing about. Just average, run-of-the-mill adventures in real life.

This was supposed to be the year I Did Nothing and Went Nowhere. Seriously. After last year I was so ready to just stay home for a while. Ha! The gods of Opportunity find this laughable. The problem is that I am not one to pass up a chance to learn and get better at this writing gig, and people keep letting me into their workshops. So, y’know. The gods. They laugh.

Anyone else find that all of their vacation time goes to writing-related events now? This year will be three conventions, two workshops, and a retreat. Tomorrow I’m off to Texas for a writing workshop, where I’ll get to reunite with one of my Taos classmates and hang out with and learn from some extraordinary people. I’ll also get to see Texas! Parts of it, anyway. This will be a neat change of pace because generally when I travel it’s for a convention and I only see the hotel grounds, so I can hardly say I visited a place at all.

Anyway, if I’m scarce for a few days, that’s why. I’m busy trying to level up. Cheers!

So this is a fraction of the disaster I’m trying to sort through. Notes dating back to 2005, notecarded scenes with the focus on the wrong POV character, things happening in a city I’ve never been to. Even just reading through the manuscript is a challenge because there are multiple versions of it. I’ve spent the past few days sifting through it all and working on an outline, and what I’ve found is that I’m basically starting the whole thing over.

The biggest change since I first wrote it is the small matter of whose story it is, which changed what kind of book it is (for the better). I’ve beefed up the bad guys, named all of my worlds, added twists and turns and other cool shit. I’m surprised at how well this is going. I mean, seven years of thinking about this thing off and on, and it’s only now starting to come together, but it’s doing it in a big way. I’m genuinely excited about this story. It seems that most of the existing 55,000 words are going to have to be tossed out, but that’s okay. We’ll call that a practice run. I’m a better writer now than I was in 2005 anyway.

The novel is consuming a whole lot of brain space right now, but of course life remains in session: Saturday was my oldest daughter’s prom, my youngest has her 4th grade California Mission project* due this week, the car remains in the shop until Tuesday, the home loan is still pending…the list of fairly major life events pending goes on. Plus John and I have a workshop coming up very quickly (he’s teaching, I’m attending). I’m not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg, but I seem to have a lot more energy for everything else when I’m enthusiastic about a writing project and making progress on it. So for now it all seems manageable.

*For those who grew up in or are raising children in the California public school system, this is a familiar assignment.

This is one of the projects I found abandoned in my files recently. I think this was around 2008 (though the dream described was around 2004 or 2005.) It’s incomplete, and what’s there is pretty terrible. The heart is there, but the vision and prose are not. I think I could do much better now. Maybe I will. After all, it’s all still true today.

Prepping the images for this one really made me aware of how limiting this blog theme is. Might be time to go theme shopping again.

Anyway, true story.

I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business.

- Benjamin Franklin

I don’t know about great changes, but I’ve really got to get this book finished. I got a little push from an unexpected source the other night, and it’s pretty clear that I need to spend the next month and a half making sense of Found Objects, the novel I workshopped at Taos last year. (My earliest notes on it are dated June 2005.) I had been avoiding it for a while because until last week I wasn’t sure what kind of book it wanted to be, but I think I know now.

I asked Twitter for help yesterday, and with your help I have A Plan. I have historically been very good at Making Plans and very bad at sticking to them. If you catch me doing anything other than working on this particular thing between now and July, feel free to flog me.

More notebook archaeology today.

When I was in high school I was introduced to the work of Douglas Adams and became an instant fan. One of the things I loved about Douglas’s work was that it challenged me. His similes were masterful, and he always chose the right word. Being a kid still, I didn’t know a lot of those words, so I read him with a notebook and a dictionary beside me so that I could learn them. Because it was all even funnier when I understood.

I hadn’t had to do that in a long time, until I read China Mieville’s The Scar in 2005. I hadn’t read Perdido Street Station, and didn’t even realize that The Scar was a sequel. I loved it with many-tentacled hearts, but damn did he give my vocabulary a run for my money.

While digging through notebooks, I found my vocabulary list from that reading. Some of these are pretty pedestrian–you can probably tell I never took the SAT. Some of them he seems to have made up, or at least I couldn’t find a definition for them. Enjoy!

Ossify
Bowsprit
Costermonger
Klaxon
Corbita
Integument
Barquentine
Brachiate
Entresol
Stevedore
Rivebow
Attenuate
Murrain
Venal
Parochial
Trifurcated
Nauscopist
Taffrail
Thaumaturgy
Puissant
Balustrade
Insuperable
Hyperbole
Inculcated
Tabes
Pusillanimous
Susurrous
Sweven
Sylvatic
Cyncope
Recreant
Nacre
Sycophant
Palimpsest
Hyperborean
Talus
Valedictory
Scree
Chitin
Etiolated
Sough
Bathetic
Aegis
Plinth
Funicular

The house that we’re buying (tentacles crossed) is undergoing renovation first. Being excited potential homeowners we drive by once or twice a week to check on the progress. And progress is being made!

Here’s the house as it was shortly after we first saw it:

A few weeks later, a new front porch and new roof line were added:

Last week, the new shingles were installed:

The yard is growing wild while this is going on, but the roses are all in bloom! I’m particularly excited about this one:

We’re starting to think about what’s going to be involved in packing and moving. The new place is smaller than the one we’re in now and the biggest challenge will be to find space for John’s reference library, which is vast. We have nearly two months to figure it out, though. I have a feeling they’re going to go very fast!

Let me respectfully remind you–
Life and death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by, and opportunity is lost.
Each of us should strive to awaken–
–awaken.
Take heed. Do not squander your life.

Found written in a composition book from 2005, when I was studying Buddhism.

We’re moving soon, and I’ve started to sort through some things destined for either the garage sale or the trash.

I’ve always kept journals. I’ve thrown most of them away, unfortunately–I wish I still had my journals from high school, and my twenties. But I don’t, for varying reasons: some of them made me deeply uncomfortable, and some of them became a weapon used against me in the second-worst relationship I ever had. So I mostly stopped writing on paper, once the cloud became available.

But every now and then I decide there’s something valuable about writing long-hand, and I give it another guarded try. In sorting through stuff this weekend, I found one of those attempts.

You guys know what my life is like now. John, brilliant kids, buying a house, a handful of publications, lots of friends, conventions, financial security on at least a for-now level. Here’s what it was like in 2003. This was written in the comfort of a double-wide trailer in Santa Barbara, CA:

January 28, 2003

D– and I have been out of work for six and a half months, and our savings is going to run out in two (end of March). I am very afraid of how things could go.

We’re taking steps. D– continues to look daily for jobs; I’ve started growing vegetables, making laundry detergent, and generally tightening the belt; our landlady gave us a temporary rent reduction for February and March; I registered with WIC and will be taking my resume to a temp agency on Thursday. We’ve taken a lot of good actions. But I’m still afraid.

There’s a positive undercurrent in all of this, though. Our lifestyle changes have been positive–without television, Danielle plays outside, which she never used to do. We’ve simplified so much. And we have both been home to watch Grace during her first six months.

This has been a big week for the girls. Danielle finally broke up with G–, the boy she’s been “with” since last year. He had taken to calling her “fat” and “tub of lard” and fortunately she thinks too much of herself to tolerate that.

Grace started scooting this week, and has said “night night” twice. I’m going to count that as her first official word, spoken January 27, 2003.

Hand is cramping. More later.

There are only three entries in this one, and the next two are full of pain, but I’m so glad I have this. I didn’t even remember what Grace’s first word was. And Danni has grown up to be a strong woman who will never tolerate that shit (she was in fourth third grade at the time)–I’m so glad I have this memory of when that young woman first emerged.

No more throwing these sorts of things away. I’m safe now.

Man, I’m a terrible blogger, aren’t I? I often think about how neglected this thing is, and then I think I have nothing really to say. Which is weird, because there’s always stuff on my mind–I’m freakish about journaling, I talk to myself in my journal all day long. But I guess I generally think that what’s on my mind is unworthy of you guys. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but either way I think I need to get better about blogging–about staying in touch, even in this kind of removed way.

Yesterday we were all faced with one more horribly unfair, untimely death of a very young artist, MCA of the Beastie Boys. He was 47, according to most sources (Rolling Stone at first reported that he was 48, but the official statement said he was 47). Cancer. (FUCK CANCER.) Ridiculous. Seven years older than I am. Do you know how much–and how little–can happen in seven years?

This is on my mind all the time. The knowledge that time is SHORT is always there, sitting on my shoulder like some cartoon shoulder demon. Or shoulder angel. I’m not sure which one it is. What’s between angel and demon? Human, I guess.

My tiny Shoulder Human sits there eating chicken wings with a salad fork and goads me on, reminding me how little I’ve done in the time I’ve had so far. Sometimes that’s inspiring, sometimes it’s a source of self-loathing. Much of the time it makes me resent anything in my life that is not directly related to family and friends, or creating. Some days it makes things like earning a living or doing the dishes nearly unbearable. If this had been the last day of my life, I think more often than is probably healthy, it would have been completely wasted.

There are so many days when I can’t do much for my writing. There’s a LOT to do. I’m making my way through this stack of research books, and that takes time. I’m thinking, thinking, always thinking about the story problems that I haven’t solved yet. I’ve always been a pantser, but I’m outlining things now in an effort to become more efficient as a writer, because I always feel as if I’m running out of time.

I scroll through my bibliography, which was nonexistent two years ago, and I think It’s not enough. I plan for the rest of the year: I can get six more stories done. Two novels. A novelette. If I only have seven months left, if I only have this year, I can maybe make that list of publications a little longer. It’s not much of a legacy, but it’s something.

Mortality: the ultimate deadline.

What I should be doing is prioritizing the things that will extend that deadline: Setting up my standing desk again (taken down after injuring both ankles a few weeks before the wedding); exercising daily; eating better; drinking less; becoming more efficient in my dayjob to reduce my stress levels. Instead I resent those things, because they are taking time away from writing.

Which is not to say that I spend every spare moment writing. I don’t. I’m often too burned out, too stressed out, or just plain stuck on whatever I’m working on. Then the sense of urgency turns into panic.

Back to the subject of being a terrible blogger: I’m bad at knowing how to wrap up blog posts. Like this one. I have no answers. I’d love to end it by saying I will now go for a walk and then write like the wind for an hour before spending an evening of quality time with my family, and make every minute count.

But that’s probably not what’s going to happen. Maybe, but probably not. And if I run out of time, it’ll be my own fault.

The first issue of Fireside has been reviewed by Keith at Adventures Fantastic. He liked it! Of my story he says:

The third story, and my favorite, was a science fiction story by Christie Yant, “Temperance”. It’s a time travel story with a flawed protagonist. It could easily become the inaugural story in a series, and I hope it does. I’d like to know what happens next.

That is convenient, actually, because the story was written as a prequel to a novel I’m working on! “Temperance” is an origin story, if you will, about the Temperance Society for Historical Preservation. The novel will largely focus on the women of Temperance, one hundred and (due to the nature of the town) 150 years after the events of the short story. Both the story and the novel require a lot of research. Much of the world-building and even one of the events in the story–the bust-up at the hotel–riffs off of local history. My little town has some fascinating and terrible skeletons hiding in its closet.

If you get a chance to read “Temperance,” you may recognize a couple of names: Anthony Cardno and Mike Epple both elected Kickstarter prizes that included having a character named after them, which made it even more fun to write.

Thank you for the kind words, Keith! I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Fireside cover art by Amy Houser