If you're brave enough to fly

The view looking back along the Busselton Jetty, taken last week.

The last few months I haven’t been great about keeping up here.  I have been blogging elsewhere privately, but most of that has just been noting the day-to-days.  Dealing with a kid who has night terrors and nightmares.  Dealing with recent exacerbations of chronic illness, and potentially developing new chronic illness (hooray…or something).  And in the midst of that, writing.

I’m hoping to get back into some kind of a schedule.  Also getting back to posting my links again, because that actually forces me to keep up with my rss feeds.

In news of the good, we managed to actually get away for our first family holiday – first down to Busselton for a few days, and then down to Gracetown to stay with a bunch of friends for a few more days.  And oh gods, I didn’t realise how much easier it was to be on holidays with other families.  The kids entertain themselves!  We actually got to relax!!  Sleep, not so much, for me, since I don’t sleep well away from home anyway, and the kidlet has some spectacular night terrors due to ending up overtired and overstimulated.  The end result is that I now have a tonne of photos to go through.

I have Plans for the next year.  Moving on with the writing, but moving on with other things as well.  My OBOD work, reading and reviewing more, getting back to making jewellery and toying with the idea of learning a new craft.  I can’t believe that this year is almost over.  It hasn’t been a bad one, but I feel like I should have accomplished more.  Life with chronic illness, though.  You don’t always get that choice.  And I am acutely aware, writing that, that I am seriously privileged when it comes to my illness.  I have a husband who supports me, I don’t have to work outside the home, and my mother helps with the kidlet so I can write.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

To celebrate my birthday this week we decided to take the kidlet to the zoo for the first time on Saturday.

I think he was more enamoured of the fact that we went on a bus, train and ferry to get there, and of the other kids at the zoo, than the animals themselves  But he did like the meerkats and some of the small monkeys and he seemed to love the nocturnal house.

And – so cute – on the way home he turned around and asked “Go zoo again?”.  Heh.

I took a bunch of photos that I need to spend some time processing, but here are a few:

Kangaroo who thought it was a cat, sleeping in the pathway.

Cheetah

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Gantheaume Point, one of my favourite places. Old photo, because I didn't have the camera out much this week.

This has been an odd week.  Much pain again, with the arthritis flaring with the change of weather.  I think summer is finally gone, with the nights getting cooler and the days milder.  It’s been lovely to not have to hide away in air conditioning all day, and to have fresh air flowing through the house constantly.  The great shift in my exercise routine is happening, too: no more swimming, and building up my tolerance for walking instead.  I am entertaining the idea of purchasing an exercise bike for rainy days, but slightly put off by the prices, especially of recumbent models, which I am drawn towards.

There has been writing, and I’ve been happy with the quality, but not quantity of it.  My pace is much, much slower that I use to write.  But I suppose that I should be thankful that I’m writing at all.  Between pain, a two-year-old and everything else, it would be very easy to just stop and stare at daytime television all day.

I have been devoting a decent amount of energy to uncluttering, which is a very satisfying thing.  We’re not messy people, but there are places in the house that get cluttered with stuff, and when they’re clean and tidy, things feel much better.  I have a massive list of things I’d like to do around the house (painting, for one, she says, eyeing off the horrid yellow walls in this room) but I’m tackling them in small pieces. They all add up.

Watching a child in their second year of life is incredible.  Especially when said child is sleeping well, and therefore the rest of us are sleeping well  He’s developing such an imagination – he re-enacts scenes with his trains, and tells us that Totoro lives in every big tree he sees  He still remains one of the cuddliest kids I’ve ever known, too, which is just delightful.  Hard to think that in a few years he’ll be in school.

Links of the week:

4 ways to hack into your mind and become infinitely more creative.

How to become a real writer.

10 books every fantasy author should read.

Making art, making magic.

Why it’s good to give your stuff for free.

10 secrets to creating unforgettable supporting characters.

How to create story structure to die for.

You must engage your creative side.

How I wrote Doll Bones (Holly Black talking word count).

An exceedingly simple guide to keeping a journal.

How to make a living as a writer, part one.  Part Two.

How will we get around in the post-apocalypse?

I want to make this for my kid: Narnia-themed playroom.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Photo by the amazing Brooke Shaden.  If you’ve never seen her work before, go and look!

I feel like I’m spreading myself too thin again, and that there’s not enough hours in the day for what I want to get done.  I want to write, I want to read, I want to organise the house, I want to play with the kidlet, I want to get the garden sorted out, I want I want I want…

I need to breathe.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

New mini shrine from the Fable Tribe

This has been a frustrating week.  My pain levels have been high, and the kidlet’s sleep has been out of whack (which means that mine has been as well).  We suspect he’s working on a molar, but thankfully he had a good night last night, which means that I actually feel human this morning.

In the mail yesterday came my new mini shrine from the Fable Tribe.  Which is amazing and magical and has found a home in my magpie collection of inspiration which lives above my writing computer.  They just updated on Friday, so if you’re looking for some magic, go and have a look at their etsy store.  I was stalking the update so I could grab a specific Glamourkin, and was very happy indeed to be able to nab it.

Not much writing done this week, though I’ve stuck to my goal of trying to get something done each day, even if it’s only a sentence.  I’m finding myself a little stuck, which means that I’ve gone wrong somewhere.  Need to untangle that.  I’m firmly in the middle of the middle of the book, so it could just be that usual middle-of-the-book syndrome kicking in.  My plan is to take a good look at my outline and see if there’s something I’ve missed or which isn’t connecting up.

I have been managing a fair bit of reading – on the ninth (and final book) of Mark Chadbourn’s massive Age of Misrule/The Dark Age/Kingdom of the Serpent series.  I find myself enthralled and frustrated by this series.  There’s so much to interest me, but I feel that there’s huge plot points that feel forced, and the characters are all-too-often sliding into cardboard cutouts.  But I’ve found enough to keep me going through the books, so that’s something.

I continue to pare down my online life.  I left a bunch of Facebook groups yesterday, and I’m going to be going through and paring down my general reading lists as well.  I’m already feeling better for it.

And now it’s a lovely long weekend, which shall hopefully be filled with lots of cuddles from the kidlet.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Australian magpie surveying his domain. Taken using my zoom lens; he was right on the top of a Norfolk Pine.

This week has been frustrating.

I’ve been sick and exhausted and worn out and unable to focus on much at all.  This has resulted in not much writing, not much reading.  Lots of wanting to do things, but being unable to do them.

When I don’t write, I tend to spiral into depression.  One of the things that I’ve been learning in therapy (which should be bleedingly obvious, really) is to take note of the other things that I do get done, especially when my concentration is shot and I can’t work on creative projects.

I’ve maintained the house, cooked meals, played with Liam a lot.  We got some new furniture this week – a new wall unit and new DVD shelving, and I’ve worked to fill them.  Which included polishing of some very tarnished silver.  I’ve exercised every day (doing minimal amounts some days when I was feeling awful).  So, I’m still accomplishing stuff, even if it isn’t what I’d really like to be doing.

The good news is that I’m starting to feel better, and I hope that I’m going to be able to get back into some writing work next week.  I have writer’s group tonight, too, which always kickstarts me creatively.  I don’t have the words to express how much I love my writer’s group.

I am also loving the new camera, and am so happy to have it.  I’ve been running around after the kidlet a lot messing about – he’s very used to having the camera shoved in his face by now.  I look forward to playing more with photography and expanding my skills.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Today, for the first time in a long time, I wrote.  1,200 words, and they were easy and they are good.  And lo, I am happy.

I’ve lost pretty much a solid month to this awful flu, and the fatigue aftermath.  Last week, the flu itself was mostly passed, but I was hit with bone-crushing fatigue.  Which meant that pretty much everything stopped.  On the worst days, I couldn’t read or focus on anything for more than five minutes.  True lost days.

Somewhere in there, ideas for Bone Girls started to come together.  I’m not certain of the story, but the general shape of its protagonist is starting to emerge.  Ideally, I’d like to have an outline put together by the time I finish this draft of Never, so I can go onto working on the first draft.  Yes, I appear to have become an outline writer.

We finally managed writer’s group this weekend (it had been delayed twice because I had been sick).  It was still hard, because I was one with the fatigue and fever (and spent part of the evening lying on the floor because of it).  I didn’t get much actual writing done, but just being with the other writers is something that feed my soul.  I have wanted a good writing group for so long, and I feel so damn blessed to know these people.  We’re all very different writers with different methods and inspiration, but they all feed me, and they’re all so damn talented with what they do.

Today I am tired, but it’s mostly lack-of-sleep-tired, not bone-crushing fatigue (and yes, they are two different things, and anyone who’s dealt with a fatiguing illness will know the difference).  Despite the sleepiness, I managed to clean the house, deal with laundry (and jag getting it all dry around rain), cuddle the kidlet a lot, nap while he did and begin the process of catching up on everything that I’ve put off for the last month.  I have a lot of Aurealis reading to do, for one thing, which means that a few other things (like my Her Worlds and Words project) are going to get put on the backburner for a while.

It is good to be writing again, oh yes.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

The title pretty much says it all.  Despite getting decent amounts of quality sleep, today was a day of much fatigue.

Despite that, I did manage to be somewhat productive.  1,600 words on Never, a little bit of reading (currently reading The First Australians, which is pretty eye-opening).  Played with the kidlet a lot, managed a trudge (instead of a walk).

And then the husband came home with the Star Wars saga on Blu-ray, so now we get to geek out for a bit.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Today.

Today I wrote poetry for the first time in well over a decade.  The lines are blurred out, because this poem is a gift for someone.  It’s simple, but I hope it will be a light.

You will also spot a new pile of Glamourkins that arrived today.  I am giving serious thought to using my stash as writing prompts for poetry over the next little while.

Beneath my poetry journal is the printout of the third draft of Ghosts.  I won’t be looking at the line edits until Monday, however.

I did also catch up on my slush reading.  I need to make a post about reading slush sometime soon.  The take home message from today is this: please, please make sure you use correct grammar in your first sentence.  I can forgive some grammar wobbliness if I’m immersed in the story, but right at the beginning it often puts me off from reading any further.

I finished reading Remnant Population, which I enjoyed immensely.  Next book will be We Have Always Lived in the Castle ahead of the next Writer and the Critic episode.  And then I really have to get to some reviewing.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

A view from my walk today.

Yesterday was a lost day, thanks to the lingering post-migraine exhaustion and mental fuzziness.

I’d actually expected today to be not much better.  As it turned out, it was a useful day.  I wrote 2,200 words of the third draft of Ghosts.  Which will be the final full draft I write, I think.  Next step after this is to print it out and do line edits.  And then profit submission!  I’m fairly confident about it as a story, and have had great feedback from beta readers.  Who knows if it’s a fit for the editor’s view of the anthology, though.  We’ll see in due time.

The kidlet had an unexpected long nap this afternoon, which allowed me to finish reading Firebird.  I’m still a little undecided as to how I feel about this book.  I love the fairy tale form, but I feel like more could have been done with it, I think.

This afternoon, a glorious, albeit too short, walk.  During which I listened to the end of the last Writer and the Critic podcast.  Kirstyn and Ian never fail to have me laughing to myself like a loon as I walk down the street, headphones in ears.  I’m really looking forward to hearing them on the Outer Alliance podcast.

Today, spring is creeping over the land.  I think winter has loosened its hold.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.