INSANITY | My Poor Thesaurus

Posted on May 5, 2009 by lalber

brokenthesaurus — I murdered my thesaurus.

I just sent a message to a few friends. What I want, of course, is for them to reply that I’m not really insane. That this kind of thing is normal and happens to the best of us. I won’t believe them.

Thought I’d share it with you too, because, hey, this is my life as a writer at the moment. The other side of the coin when the writing’s not going well, when indeed you’re wondering: What’s the point of my life?

What I wrote:

I think I’m going insane. Yesterday, I accidentally overwrote all my work on a course module, then started it again, then watched myself (in a fog of something) click NO to saving the changes, and lost it again. I had a complete and total meltdown – the kind in which you pace and cry and scream and want to kill something and you even look at the dog for a millesecond before you throw your beloved thesaurus (not the pocket-sized kind) across the room hard enough to break it in half down the spine. I think in psychiatry they call this “devolving.”

And then today, I couldn’t get stuff on the laptop to work right (or maybe myself to work right) while in a coffeehouse for my supposed lunch hour, and I turned into one of those crazies you sometimes see muttering to themselves and swearing under their breaths and making loony-tune faces.

AND THEN: I somehow forgot that I was on a teleconference call, UNmuted, and proceeded to throw a fit at my computer complete with the f-bomb, and I was pretty darned audible. And it was a childish fit – completely mortifying and I can’t stop obsessing about my mortification. My cheeks are still burning up two hours later.

Something’s seriously wrong with me these days.

—

So maybe you’re thinking that my subconsious is telling me something. As if I didn’t already know that I’m veering off my best path! Yesterday as I was coming off my meltdown I ruminated as follows: I need money, and I’m only technical-writing for the money. Well then, if I’m going to work for the money, why don’t I attempt to write a romance or a paranormal or a suspense novel? I mean, if I’m working for money wouldn’t writing any type of fiction be better than what I’m currently doing?

Last night, I had to laugh (maybe there’s hope for me yet), however. I’m reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, and I happened to read this passage: …and I’ll spend my declining years in a grimy bed-sit, with my teeth falling out one by one. Oh, I can see it all now: No one will buy my books, and I’ll ply Sidney (read: editor/agent) with tattered, illegible manuscripts, which he’ll pretend to publish out of pity. Doddering and muttering, I’ll wander the streets carrying my pathetic turnips in a string bag (picture my beloved thesaurus), with newspaper tucked into my shoes…Oh God. This way lies insanity.

That’s exactly how I felt, how I have been feeling.

P.S. Later: Just discovered the teleconference session was recorded, and my fit of pique — to put it quaintly — is out there for all the muckety-mucks to hear — again.

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…

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.

<break>

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.

Negotiating With Self

Posted on February 18, 2009 by lalber

coffeehouse1 Today’s signs of spring: Dog panting on our walk and me only wearing a hoodie over a long-sleeved cotton shirt.

I’m sitting in a local coffeehouse, feeling low-grade anxiety. This low-grade anxiety tells me I ought to be working on today’s day-job task. This low-grade anxiety tells me that straight-A students don’t delay the paying work for a few hours. This low-grade anxiety tells me that someone (but who?) will get mad at me if I don’t turn around today’s day-job task one minute from now.

But here’s the first thing: The immediacy of day-job tasks will always trump fiction if I let them.

Here’s the second thing: Which means that if I’m not careful I’ll accomplish less fiction than usual.

Plus this: Unfortunately, my creativity turns off at night because by then I’m brain-tired.

However: Since I always make my deadlines and the day-job task isn’t creative, I’ll get it done this evening for sure.

So: Here I sit in a coffeehouse about to complete a few hours worth of fiction. Take that, low-grade anxiety. Pipe down, you.

How’s that for negotiating with myself?