Imaginarium 2018. I’ll be there.
Especially since things seem to be coming together, I need to be there. This year, I will be helping my writer friends, Wendy Vogel and Jeri Fay Maynard, with their vendor display booth.
It might be a reach to imagine that I’ll be in a vendor position next year, but a girl can dream. I could also try hiding in the closet with my computer…
I’ve said before that I’m a plotter and not a pantser. So when my WIP encountered a logic fail, everything was full stop. Lights out for months and months and months.
Commence flailing…I mean, pantsing. Meandering. Wandering aimlessly. Opening WordPress only to start surfing. Facebook notifications. Off on tangents. Words with Friends. Cat videos. Everything but YouTube. Pencil tapping. Staple shooting. Margin doodling. New recipes. Furniture refinishing.
Somewhere along the way, I heard something about people only being able to believe in things they can see. An idea was born. Hundreds and hundreds of OneNote words later, a new notebook was in the making. Character profiles. Reference links. Worldbuilding rules.
The light was back on, and I could see where I was going.
Resume plotting.
Twitter account. ✔ Instagram account. ✔ Website. ✔ Facebook author page. ✔ Business cards. ✔
Unified themes and logos across platforms. ✔ Website and social media accounts linked to disseminate new info evenly across platforms. ✔
I read an article a good ways back that talked about platform building. It said that even before I’m published, I should be working on building a following so that once I am published, I will have an already established audience. Okay.
The last time I checked, I had 600 followers on Twitter. Not nearly that many on Instagram or Facebook. So it seems that Twitter will be the main social media distribution avenue for news and new material.
But, let me tell you something…Twitter is overwhelming. It is monumentally impossible to give equal time to the people whose attention you demand. Is this how celebrities do it? They just open it up and see whatever they see and “Oh, well,” for the rest? I haven’t reached a place where I’m okay with that yet. I don’t know that I ever will. I feel guilty about asking somebody to look at mine when I can’t guarantee that I’m gonna look at theirs.
I can see already that this is gonna require some couch sessions.
Last year when the news broke that H2 was going off the air, I felt a tiny bit of panic. H2 was one of my main sources for inspiration when worldbuilding. I don’t have a whole lot of time to read (let alone write) and so I’m left on many, many occasions to pull double duty listening to an audiobook, a podcast, or a program on television while I’m doing something else.
Fortunately, there’s been a slew of programming on other channels that has filled the H2 void, even picking up some of the H2 shows. I would confidently say that 60% of my DVR is filled with episodes of Ancient Aliens. Even social media has stepped up with sites, pages, and articles devoted to history in a nutshell. So much so, that I created a Pinterest board to keep track of everything I find interesting or inspirational.
There is no small amount of material out there, and now more so than ever, I find myself hunched over my phone during the in-betweens Googling and reading articles. I always have questions. The answers always lead to more questions and more articles. Articles have almost become my “go-to” because they can be completed in short sittings. And for those times when I can’t read the whole article, my Writing and Inspiration board has become my own personal reference section.
Now, I don’t even miss H2.
I’ve been at a full stop for a while now.
Since then, there’s been very little meaningful creating going on. I’ve had lots of ideas. I’ve created a pile of new OneNote notebooks with single thoughts in them. I’ve pecked around here and there trying to get beyond my logic break. I’ve really been kind of all over the place. In all actuality, I’ve created a mess. My writing has taken off in all different directions, but still heading nowhere in particular.
Tomatoa (Moana) is in between my ears going, “Pick one! Pick One! I can’t concentrate…” But I can’t. I got nothing.
So, the least I can do is to tidy up my files, condense some ideas, and revisit some notes. Let’s begin with some damage control.
As long as I’m sitting on the couch doing nothing, nobody is looking for me. However, the moment I reach for my computer, everybody wants something. My husband and my 10 year old daughter regularly like to talk to me at the same time as if they don’t hear each other talking. I might go hide out in the bedroom, but my husband will find his way there, turn on the television, and then proceed to watch YouTube on his phone at a volume that will allow him to hear over the TV. My daughter will stand on the other side of the door while I am doing whatever in the bathroom and talk to me because it can’t wait until I come out. My husband will open the bathroom door while I’m showering letting all the comfortable air out and the cold air in because he needed to ask me something right then. My grandbaby uses the belt of my bathrobe like a tether to hold onto me while I move around the house.
Since my waking hours tend to be the same as everyone else’s waking hours, I’ve been contemplating caffeine and writing during off hours. Unfortunately, my control issues stand in the way of my having a solid relationship with caffeine. You know that Lipton lemon iced tea mix? The powdered stuff? It is SO GOOD! And SO ADDICTIVE! At one stretch last summer, I was having about 24 ounces a day that I mixed in an insulated water bottle. On a couple of days, I had two bottles. Then one day, I didn’t have any. That next morning, I swear to you, somebody had turned up gravity! I had to roll myself out of bed because I couldn’t just sit up. I spent that entire day dragging my butt around on the floor and wondering why I was feeling so crappy. Then, it dawned on me: I hadn’t had any caffeine. I mixed up just a little bit to test it out and felt 1000% better.
That kinda spoiled it for me. I don’t have an addictive nature, and I don’t like the idea of being out of control which is also why I don’t drink. I wouldn’t even take the Percocet after having a c-section.
So, until I can find the balance between a little caffeine and early morning writing, or reconcile caffeine with being in control, I will just have to keep trying to squeeze it in where I can.
I can’t write in a straight line. And it’s probably because I already have some idea of where I want to go. That usually involves writing different parts of the story out of order and then piecemealing them together.
Linear storywriting, for me, turns into a lot of screen staring. For whatever reason, I am unable to continue on to the next part and the next part in order. I start at the beginning, of course, and write as much as I have. Then I skip ahead to an episode where I want to end up. Thereafter, I connect the dots. It works for me. It helps me maintain logic. It also precludes me from bringing anybody along as I write.
My inner introvert probably likes it that way.
You know, sometimes you just don’t feel like it – whatever “it” is.
For as much as I cry about not being able to find time to write, sometimes when I catch an opening, I just wanna do nothing. I wanna veg out. I wanna exhale. I want to channel surf. Catch up on the DVR. Lay on the couch. Inhale Pringles. Or maybe even…read.
When I’m tired, writing turns into one other thing that I need to get done, and it becomes another chore. There’s no joy in that. It might be easier if I could schedule some designated writing time, but that would require cooperation from the entire household. I have to go to the grocery store just to get some ME time.
*sigh*
I think that maybe I just ought not stress over it. It took George RR Martin six years to write A Dance with Dragons. I’ve got time.
So, I finally made it to my first Con. In a nutshell, I had a blast! Admittedly, I had no idea of what to expect. Or maybe I did…
My husband gives me the side eye enough that I’ve learned to save my inner nerd for appropriate company. True to form, he decided to accompany me to Louisville because he was concerned about me traveling alone, but also refused to participate in any activities with me. So, needless to say, I missed out on the literary character costume contest because I felt compelled to have dinner with my husband who had been channel surfing in the hotel room all day.
Next year, I’ll be returning to Imaginarium. I’ll be a little more prepared, though. I’ll be armed with some practical application of some of the things I learned this time around, and I’ll have some writer friends who will appreciate and help me celebrate the literary nerd within.
I have small, gray notebook with the word IDEAS embossed on the cover. I also have two of those Staples jobs with the discs for a spine. And a larger brown notebook with a sueded back cover. And a thick black book of crispy graph paper that I really like. And several others of various shapes, sizes, and colors.
In every single one of these, I write notes to myself. One thing that each and every one of these notebooks of notes has in common is that as I write a new note to myself, I have a clear mental picture of what I want to remember. HOW. EVER…as I occasionally go back to revisit some of my notes-to-self, I find
“the jump between cave man and civilized man.”
Wait…what?
What the hockey sticks was that about? The phrase was just sitting there on the page in a section all by it’s lonesome. There were scribbles above and below it, but nothing else with it. No context. No arrows. Nothing in the margins or highlighted.
And then,
“nobody knows what it feels like to be a machine.”
*crickets*
I’m fairly sure that these notes had something to do with a new story idea.
Note to self: I gotta do better…
