What I Did on My Lunch Hour

Posted on April 30, 2009 by lalber

Can out Luna begging for a little sandwich — Check out Luna begging for a little sandwich

Today — at noon, no less — I made the break. I wrenched myself away from my deadlines, put on semi-decent clothes plus a groovy necklace (which is really dressing up) and sped away from my home-office. With windows rolled down, I let the spring breeze mess up my already disheveled curls, which reminded me that I’m about two months overdue for a haircut.

But, no matter, because at least my hair was clean for a change, and the sun was out. Luna the Dog stared up at me, expecting and about to receive a desultory walk in the park, in which I chatted with other dogwalkers while she tried to avoid all dog-contact. She’s like that.

Then, off to a cafe with its outdoor seating back in place after a long winter. Happy day! Brie panini (a splurge, admittedly), latte, and laptop. I munched the sandwich as I munged words, achieving my hour’s worth of fiction for the day. Still not the best, still itchy that I can’t spend all day…But a step in the right direction, right?

Truth is, I could have worked another little while on the novel, but I decided to finish up my lunch hour with a little spring-cleaning. My home is a wreck, but now my balcony is habitable.

Alas, I must return to the training manual I’m editing, which means that the dog and the cat get to enjoy the balcony. Ah well, that was a mighty fine three-hour lunch hour!

Luna amidst the new geraniums and daisies

Trio on the new "anti-gravity" deck chair

On Taking a Lunch Hour — Or Not

Posted on April 25, 2009 by lalber

On advice from my friend Elizabeth, and as mentioned in my last post, I tried to take lunch hours this week. There’s a reason why they’re built into the 9-to-5 work day, after all. It makes sense to give ourselves a break for refueling on all levels: food for the body, relaxation for the brain, maybe some socializing for the soul.

From Tuesday on, I managed to get out of the house for my lunch hour around 5:00 p.m. Not exactly optimal, but still, I counted this as a step in the right direction. Elizabeth and I had been talking about how I can get at least one measly hour’s worth of fiction in each day during the week. Hence, a lunch hour.

The key is to actually leave my home and my WiFi. And, in fact, it did work even though my lunch hours occured so late in the day. I managed a few hours worth of fiction while sipping a nonfat, decaf latte in my favorite coffeehouse. And this helped my mood, yet…

Why did I still feel like crying sometimes? I don’t know what’s going to become of me. Honestly. I feel cornered by all the decisions I’ve made in my life that have landed me here: Knowing which work will truly make me happy, not knowing how I’m supposed to save for retirement and all that practical stuff…

So, though I’ve halted the descent down the depression slide, it’s still there, lurking. I still wonder how people with real lives — real career, kids, tons of responsibilities — get their novels written. Don’t they need tons of downtime to let the brain juices burble and sift? Maybe not. But I guess I do.

A Little Sanity

Posted on April 20, 2009 by lalber

Weekend writing spot: Laptop, dog, beans and rice, what could be better?

I think, but I’m not sure, that I started off this week a million times more sane than last week. Don’t get me wrong, at various points over the weekend stress nipped at me, reminding me of its existence while I went about my business trying to have a weekend away from the work.

That was my main goal for weekend — SAY “NO” TO WORK — because I needed, wanted, had to work on short story edits. This story will be published in an anthology, and I’ve been sitting on the editor’s notes for weeks, closer to two months. I’ve longed for the brainspace to sit down with the story and clean it up. But until this past weekend, I was out of my mind.

This weekend I was only a little out of my mind. In fact, I’d say SAYING “NO” TO WORK and forcing myself to ignore the stressed heart-thumps and chest pressures did me a world of good. I feel better for having time with my fiction.

(Unfortunately, I did work over the weekend, but just a little on Saturday morning and last night. Mostly, I had my weekend.)

In fact, the anthology’s editor called me Saturday morning. I rushed to assure her that the short story was open on the monitor. Apparently, she wasn’t concerned about the edits though. She was concerned that given my fragile state of late, I’d take this blog post the wrong way.

I had to laugh when I read the post, and I’m looking forward to hearing her rude-writer tales. You’ll also see my comment. Rest assured, I’m not one of the unprofessional writers she was talking about. Why? Because I communicated with her along the way — and I know how to format a bloody manuscript! (Aspiring writers: heed her post.)

She’s smart. She suggested that I might feel better if I left my apartment for a real lunch hour. That seems obvious (so why hadn’t I thought of it?). I didn’t try this today; instead, I clowned around outside with plants, a neighbor, and my dog. That counts for a lunch hour though.

And it helped!

You know what else helped? Instead of stumbling straight from bed to drowning in work-muck without coffee (much less breakfast) until hours later, I took thirty minutes to shower, say a quality “hello” to the animals, fix coffee, dress in real clothes, and step out onto the deck for a few quality inhalations.

I can’t remember the last time I showered in the morning. Usually, I get it in whenever, which is often right before bed. Amazing what a difference that makes…sigh…

Cheering Myself Up

Posted on April 12, 2009 by lalber

easter I’m sitting here on Easter Sunday, staring at a section of manual entitled “Target Settings.” I’m editing this section (fiction feels far away, needless to say), and I’m missing an annual Easter brunch with some of my best friends in the world, a couple of whom I went to college with and who know me well enough to know that I’m not there because things ain’t exactly right with me at the moment…

This is not to say that I’m forgoing all social activities this weekend. Yesterday, after five hours of work that didn’t lead to any forward progress with my many overly project-managed deadlines, I went to a friend’s house to dye eggs, drink, and eat. We consumed lilac-colored martinis made with Parfait Amour liquor. Yummy. I drank one too many.

That was good. I needed it. Not feeling tip-top right now, but I just now decided that I AM going to this same friend’s Easter dinner. I’m not going to miss both of my Easter Sunday engagements because of the work — no, no, no.

Dogwalking with camera in hand The thought of a traditional ham dinner cheers me up (as food usually does), and just now, staring at words like “configure” and “properties” and “redirection,” I got to thinking about cheering myself up in general.

Yesterday I bought an “anti-gravity” (i.e. reclines) chair for the deck so that I can sit comfortably out there with my laptop (or not) when the weather warms. I’m looking forward to this. I’m going to pot flowers too.

But right now, what? Blogging seems to be helping, actually. I’m glad to be here, writing this, blowing off the work for 30 minutes.

And what else? My camera. I remembered it a few days ago. Snapping pictures soothes me. Any mundane image will do. Here are a few other things that cheered me up this week:

Getting Depressed

Posted on April 9, 2009 by lalber

I think I’m getting depressed. I can tell because in any spare time I carve out from the day-job, all I want to do is sleep and read. I want to slide away from reality, and in feeling this way, my fiction dream feels like it’s sliding away too. And so goes the depressive cycle.

It’s funny, people who don’t get depressed probably don’t get what I’m talking about. Not truly. Their reaction might be, Just get on with it, Lisa; don’t read and sleep — write fiction! — in those carved-out hours. In my normal head, I do just this. But when depression weighs me down…Let’s just say there’s a whole ‘nother set of rules required to get through the days. It’s hard to explain the weightedness; the lurking sense that nothing’s worth it, that it’s all meaningless anyhow; the enervation (even when thinking about fiction); the sense that even the most mundane of tasks — like tidying the kitchen — are monumental.

I have to get the day-job stuff done because I need the money. It’s taking all I have. At the moment, the only thing I’m managing well is getting the dog out for walks.

I often try to analyze my way out of depression. Try to figure it out. Try to come up with alternate routines to jolt myself back into a good fictional brainspace. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Right now, it’s not working. On Monday’s post, I seemed to be equalizing, but that was apparently a commercial break from the main programming going on inside my head.

There’s the problem of partitioning, too. I need time and space away from stress to function well. At the moment, I can’t separate myself from the day-job chaos that’s swirling around me. For example, every time I check my email there are 15 new messages — it’s taking over my life. I haven’t been in this position in years — it’s wearing me out, sapping my creativity.

When I open the manuscript, nothing happens. I’m not the type to wait for inspiration. I get down to work and do it. But, like I said above, that’s when I’m in my normal head. Depressive head doesn’t function the same; I look at my prose and it reads like a bunch of blah-di-blah. I have no feeling for my own words. There’s no “just doing it.”

People who get depressed understand what I mean by “normal head” and “depressive head.” To put it in fictional terms: They’re totally different interior landscapes.

The day-job stuff is the trigger, for sure. Before the writing grant, I worked part-time, from home — just like I’m doing now. But it was different, more easygoing. I easily partitioned it away from the rest of my life. (Sidenote: This is a new kind of part-time called “full-time.”)

I’m hoping that I’ll get used to this day-job; and once I do, the stress will lift; and when it does, I’ll be able to partition; and when this happens, I’ll return to fictional brainspace; and when I do, my depressive state will lift. But seems far away from now, in a galaxy far far away from me.

All I know is that right now, sitting here at 1:30 p.m. with a grumbling stomach and a headache because I haven’t eaten since last night, I feel like my fiction dreams are seeping away, that I was so close…I’m going to take a nap now…

Making a Wish

Posted on April 6, 2009 by lalber

dandelions My March Madness c’est fini, kaput, done for, finished, outta-here, and this morning I wished on a dandelion: Please, no more months like that. I haven’t thrown so many tantrums and broken into so many tears since I was a teenager. I’m on a high learning curve — call it trial by fire — with this new day-job gig I’ve got going. It’s completely insane, in fact. At one point, I left a screaming vent message on a friend’s voicemail, and she laughed so hard she had to share it with her workmates. (I don’t vent often; I’m the quiet sort.)

It’s not that I’m not still working like crazy, but I decided to switch off my tendency to take ownership. This is NOT my project; I’m just a pion writer, and if others don’t know what they’re doing, it’s not up to ME to instruct them, especially since I barely know what I’m doing as it is. Right? Right.

Also, yesterday I went to brunch with a couple of writer friends. Elizabeth Engstrom and Nancy Boutin — actually, I was meeting her for the first time. I haven’t felt like a fictionista for many weeks and talking with them helped me clear my head. In reality, I hardly spoke — I was still so exhausted — but I left feeling better anyhow. I’ve gotta remember that I’m working the other stuff to pay the bills, that’s all.

So now, I’m about to spend the afternoon with my neglected manuscript. This work feels like a soul-sigh.

While I Wasn’t Looking

Posted on March 27, 2009 by lalber

Spring happened while I wasn’t looking. All of sudden daffodils are blooming and trees are frothing. I vaguely recall a check-out clerk lauding the first day of spring (finally! but when was that?) and a sign-up for spring softball/baseball sign-ups. Our days sprang forward and I’m still catching up.

spring

Yesterday, a good friend sent me this note: You’ve been MIA. Everything okay with you? That was enough to stop me in my tracks for an internal check. Am I okay?

Sure, I’m okay, but I’m not thriving to go along with this season of blooms. I’ve been too busy and anxious throughout March. So, I thought I’d take a TIME OUT (yes, capped) to blog after my unintentional blog-pause.

1. Gray roots. I’m prematurely gray (since my early 20s, in fact) and my gray roots are an inch-and-a-half long at the moment. Those are the kind of roots I’d prefer not to see, especially when they’re practically yelling at me to stop with the crazy obsessiveness and pay attention to myself already.

2. Earning the moulah. Thought I had this handled, but then the project I’m on took a turn for the outrageous. I’m talking rolling deadlines and unanticipated extra requirements and, oh I don’t know. Not worth describing the details. I suppose I’m still getting used to this gig, is all, and the high-learning curve adds stress to any already hectic deadline schedule.

3. Finishing the manuscript. But maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have stressed out about the project if I hadn’t first obsessed about sending the completed manuscript to Nice Agent before the outrageous turn occured. (I knew it was due — the project is that schedule-ized.) So I worked night-and-day, even procrastinated the project by a few days, which meant that I then I had to switch over night-and-day for that, and I didn’t get the manuscript finished anyhow, and I was disappointed, and then I got so exhausted that I cried, threw a tantrum, and gave myself an almost-migraine earlier this week.

4. Submitting a short story. And then on top of it all, just to add to the grinding pressure, I’d so wanted to revise the bench short story, really shine it up, for a March 31st submission deadline. Hah! I say double Hah! to that. Yet, I tried to squeeze it in, and then other night I was awake at 3:00 a.m. with a Lisa-freak-out. So, no go with the story for now, and I’m disappointed yet again. I’d so wanted, longed, to submit a short story to an annual anthology called Voicecatcher, which is a local women writer’s community effort — to be part of a community, you know? Now I have to wait a year.

The upshot of all this, the reason I’m only “okay” is that I don’t feel like much of a fictionista right now — I let myself down in that department. I feel like a work-drone, is all. This will pass, I know, but you might be wondering why I haven’t blogged much. When I’m in happy-fiction-land, I tend to blog more often, it seems.

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Just paused within my blogger TIME OUT to coat my gray roots with Preference dark brown hair dye. This is a step in the right direction, anyhow. Taking care of the small stuff leads to taking care of the big stuff. And, I’ll just feel better without my Cruella deVille gray streak.

Almost Forgot St. Paddy

Posted on March 17, 2009 by lalber

Wow, 1:30 p.m. and I just realized it’s St. Patrick’s Day. There’s no reason I ought to remember except that I’m part O’Brien and those O’Briens like to spread around their Catholic guilt — even within my heathen veins.

ireland1

Interestingly enough, I’m emmersed in all things Irish at this moment. I’m swimming in mist and rain, in gloom and dreariness. I’m exploring drystone walls and green landscapes, Celtic tumuli and Medieval relics. Atmospherics everywhere, or so I hope.

My novel is about as contrary to St. Patrick and his missionary goodness as you can get. If anything, I might, just possibly, poke a little fun at Catholicism. No offense to anyone; I figure I can because it’s a sickness that runs in my family. (Kidding! Kind of.)

I’m on the tail-end of this revision. Really. I am. Down to the individual words. Got a wearying list of them I’m “Find”ing because I ran into them too often while reading the printed manuscript. Various forms of the words “shiver” and “lurk.” “Gaze.” “Creak.” “Glance.”

And, for some reason, “smile,” too. Despite the fact that my characters are running around on a serious quest, I’ve got them smiling alot–usually as subterfuge. Gotta remedy that.

This is THE most boring revision task. But it’s necessary, so return I must. Back to all those blasted smiles.

Have you noticed that you fall back on certain words when drafting your stories?

“Outstanding Women of Mystery”

Posted on March 12, 2009 by lalber

After so long, it’s great to see signs that Two of the Deadliest is sliding into the home stretch toward publication. It might be coming out in the U.K. first for all I know, because the U.K. edition’s cover art is available online. Good looking cover, isn’t it?

Many of the writers that Elizabeth George invited to participate aren’t mystery writers, per se. But that’s marketing for you, eh?

I’m smiling because I can’t believe how excited I am to see this baby in print! I wrote my story way back in August/September 2007. The original pub date was set for April, 2008. Then, we were looking at April, 2009. Next month! But, alas, no…July? This is what the HarperCollins site states, but I heard it might not see life until the fall — in hopes that the economy stabilizes, maybe even improves some?

One Manuscript, One Dog, One King-Sized Bed

Posted on March 5, 2009 by lalber

: Big enough bed for all of us

Frankly, I’m delirious with exhaustion. I’ve set myself another one of those quick-reading goals during another one of my self-imposed writer’s retreats.

It’s not so much reading a 400-page manuscript in 48 hours that’s got me tired. It’s this task after multiple deadlines I had to complete before I took off. I get that way sometimes, where I gotta clear the decks. So, over the past week, I completed the current revision (goes without saying since I’m here reading it), dealt with my taxes (yikes), met a day-job deadline (hefty), and wrote the short story I mentioned in my last post (compulsive purge).

I’m not going to pat myself on the back until I finish this quick-read. One-hundred-fifty more pages to go before I leave this sweet little hotel room tomorrow. And then? Pleasure reading and sleeping and nothing else for a solid 24 hours! I have a light novel waiting for me. The latest Candace Bushnell, whom I’ve never read before. I already can’t wait.

This time around, I’m not splurging on a plush ocean-front view. However, I am lodged on the grounds of a pet-friendly botanical garden called The Oregon Garden. The Oregon Garden Resort opened in October, and it’s so fresh the breeze smells fragrant as a horse stable — all that manure and spring planting. Mmm, I love that smell. It comforts me, reminding me of the horsey girl I once was.

Luna's probably nibbling a little manure back there

It’s quiet up here in the foothills, in the middle of nowhere. The Oregon Garden is a tourist attraction that never took off, so I suspect. That’s why this resort now exists with its great package deals. Last night I snuck into the gardens after dark. Frogs and gurgles and weird rustlings accompanied Luna and me. A misty half-moon gave scant light, and I bumbled around with a scaredy-cat thrilled rush, imagining bogeymen, while my dog stopped every ten feet to sniff at doggy delicacies.

But tonight, it’s all work, no play.

And how is the manuscript this time around? Better, much better! Last November, in the ocean-front room, I was mired down with uncooperative story threads. Also, possible new scenes, flow issues, and so on.

This time, I’m hiccuping on smaller stuff like awkward sentences and overused words/phrases. I’m amazed, actually. My story is growing up!

I’m an efficient quick-reader by now, and I’ve created a convenient shorthand. Underlining means come back to this sentence or paragraph because something ain’t right. “WW” means “wrong word,” as in: Is this the best I could do? Or, as in: You’ve already overused this word; get a new one. “Segue” means crappy transition or jumpy thought.

I’ll be up late tonight pushing this exhaustion to the max. But so worth it!