I’m done.
Gosh, it feels strange.
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Oh dear. I’m out of the cheap wine. Guess I’ll have to drink the good stuff. Oh gosh oh golly oh darn oh drat. _______________ One more day to go! Today was….another day. Today was the day where a lot of the “oh, this is the last time I’m going to do this” things hit. I said goodbye to the cafeteria lady who always remembered my order. In fact, it was the last day Boss Lady and I will play the “Yes, let’s go to lunch now–no, wait just a minute, I have to finish this one thing” game…I think she strung me out 45 minutes on that one today. She will starve when I’m gone. I cleaned out my directory, copied things to the shared drive; cleaned out my email; put my personal files on CDs (I’ve used my work computer as my backup for all my writing…hmm, must find new system for that); took a stab at the surface of my desk (though I didn’t get far enough down the piles to find the abandoned detritus of Problem A). I organized the EndNote library into an intelligent folder and tested to make sure it still works. That kind of thing. I brought home 2 more pictures from my walls. One to go, tomorrow. One day to go, tomorrow. Man. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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2 more days. There’s too much going on to even write about it. Things got better, at the Day Jobbe; then they sort of got worse again; but, it’s two days! Whatever, I can deal. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jaylake left for Portland today. I’ll be there Sunday. In between: we’ll manage. We always do.
I did another chapter of Demonhead. It still doesn’t suck. I did three loads of laundry. And some dishes. And, well, beyond that: I feel like I have nothing intelligent to say. Maybe it’s the not-sleeping. Monday night, I lay awake till about 4am–well, eventually got up and read a while, but yeah, not even sort-of sleeping. (Until after 4am, when I did fall asleep, and had ugly ugly horrid nightmares.) Last night, I fell asleep after only about 45 minutes, but then woke again at 2, till about 4. This is Not Good. Tonight, I hope for better. Stupid brain. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Dear Day Jobbe:
Friday is my last day. I have four days of work left. Four. Days. If I had no actual projects to do, I would still be able to keep more than busy weeding and moving computer files to the shared drive, writing cheat sheets and instructions for all the things that I do, weeding and sorting paper files, and going through the piles of paper on my desk–as you have asked me to do.
Or, I might be able to do more of the Research Project of Impossibility, to at least demonstrate the impossibleness of it. Or, I could keep on with the 100-page (with 600 references) review article Boss Man wants done. Or, I could help solve the supplies problem, or get the phosphorimager service contract dealt with, or follow up on the task list and weed out the email, or hunt down that subcontract we keep not hearing back on, or any of the other fourteen things you desperately asked me to do yesterday.
But I can’t do it all. I just can’t. I have four days left. I’m only one person. I’m stressed out. My boyfriend has cancer. I got three crappy hours of sleep last night. I can’t fix the situation at work, and I can’t keep trying. I quit this job, remember? I can’t fix it. I care about you guys, I really do. I’m sorry the situation here is so broken. I’ve worked really hard over the last four years to try to fix it, but the larger world keeps breaking it, in ever more spectacular and horrific ways. I’m sorry about that. But I have to go now.
Yours,
Very Stressed Witch
*****
Dear Self:
Reread this as needed for the next four days. Maintain sanity. It will all be over soon, and you can get on with the rest of your life.
Love,
Witch
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Apparently, the thing to do at this juncture is to say, Ahem, it’s Nebula-nominating time, and, well, I’ve got a few things to draw your attention to… So, um, here they are: “Eastlick” –in Black Static, May 2009. I love this story. It’s not in the least autobiographical. Well, except for the setting, and the pre-teen emotions. And some details. But, other than that, nope, not at all. “By the Sea”–in the anthology Grants Pass. This uber-cool post-apocalyptic anthology is getting some Stoker attention, BTW…. Rolling Steel (collab with Jay Lake), Clarkesworld, April 2009. A collaboration with jaylake , and also a podcast. Do I need to say anything more? Okay, that’s surely plenty. Go forth and nom(inate). Or don’t. It’s all good. I’ll still like you.  ____________ In other news: I edited the first two chapters of Demonhead last night, and they actually did not suck. Of course, the beginnings of books never do, when you’re at the wide-open part of the parabola. So, I’m sure it will be horrible as I progress. But so far: not horrible. I might even do some more tonight… And jaylake has been working on Our Lady, and reports that it similarly does not suck. (Except for that inexplicable bit about the shoal beds.) So, yay! _____________ Day Jobbe, on the other hand, sucks quite a bit. But: four days left. I can do this… Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Nice weekend around here. jaylake posted the details, so I won’t repeat it all, but will only reiterate: yeah, last night was fun. And today is going to be fun too: he is in the kitchen now cooking up a storm ("a simple light lunch" is a concept that has no meaning around here…) , and Notorious G and her swain are arriving in a few minutes to eat up that very same storm. This, we just realized, will be the first time I’ve tried to have four people around my table. Which should be interesting, and will definitely involve the moving of furniture. Later this afternoon, I am finally, finally, finally going to tackle this gigantic pile of paper that is the printout of Demonhead. I’ve been busy, and distracted, sure; but there’s more to it than that. It’s the age-old problem of Start Panic. Starting a new novel, starting a new edit, a new great big anything: it’s too big! I can’t do it! Where do I even begin!? I know the answer: you just do, and it’s fine. But still, the anxiety, the angst is there. So, tomorrow I hope to report some progress to you. For now, I want another bite of whatever that was that jaylake just brought me. It involved cheese and some kind of fried cured pork product. More, more! Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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It’s the age-old question: why do we blog? I started blogging because “they” said a writer should blog. It’s a way of reaching out to your readers, of getting your work and your name out there, of providing a more personal connection beyond your publications for people to relate to. Of course, when I started blogging, “publications” and “readers” were pretty much theoretical concepts for me. That’s changed a little bit anyway… I keep blogging, though, because I like it. I like it a lot. I enjoy sharing funny or annoying bits from my day; I like keeping you all posted on my writing progress; I LOVE announcing sales (!); I like working out process thoughts or other questions and getting feedback from you guys. I mean–I’m a writer, and this is writing, and I just enjoy doing it. I love reading all your blogs too–the thoughtful, the personal, the funny, the cranky and ranty. I get most of my news from blogs…it’s a weird filter, just the things people on my LJ friends list choose to link to or talk about. But you know? It works. Perhaps most importantly, though (at least these days), I find that blogging works very, very well when your life is moving along at a billion miles an hour and lots and lots of things are going on and changing very fast, and a lot of people want to know about it, and there’s a lot of detailed information involved. Like, oh, I don’t know, say when your boyfriend is facing surgery for metastatic colon cancer in a few weeks. Or when you’re leaving your job of many, many years, and going through a divorce. You know. Stuff like that. Not all my friends read my blog. Not all my family reads my blog. (I know this is not unusual.) But…it kind of bothers me, you know? I put effort into this, and it’s personal information about my life, and it’s out there because I want people to know it. Especially people who care about me. Of course there’s things I don’t post about–tons and tons of things. Of course more happened in my life yesterday than an oil change and an annoying thing at work. And I know people are busy and don’t have time to sit at a computer all day and catch up on everyone else’s ramblings. But…it seems like a good leg up, if you want to know what’s going on in someone’s life, if they keep a blog. A woman I’ve known since college, and was very close to for a while in the years after graduation, but who has since moved off in a different direction, will call me on my cell phone every three or six or nine months and want to catch up. (Never mind that the cell phone is an awful way to get hold of me…the only worse way might be, oh, buying an ad during the Super Bowl or something.) I’ll eventually get the message and write her an email. She’ll call again. Anyway–sometimes we do manage to actually get together for lunch. And I have to tell her everything that’s gone on in my life since we last talked. And she’ll react with astonishment and disbelief and maybe even a tinge of judgment, because it’s all so surprising, because we haven’t been in touch in so long, and so much has happened! (Well, that’s especially true this year.) And I feel like, Well, you could be more available; or more interested; or (gee) read the blog. But then she’ll vanish again into her own life, which is busy and fulfilling and interesting to her, and that’s all fine. This is not a good friendship model for me. Friends I am close to now, I talk to them a LOT. On email, mostly, and chat; but I’m even learning how to use the telephone more these days. (Land line, mind you.) But the important thing here is, some of these friends that I am close to now are people I’ve never actually met in person. (Stupid big planet.) But they are engaged. They don’t vanish for months and months, and then resurface and want it all told to them, as the amusing chronicles of What That Wacky Shannon Is Up To Now. Am I being needlessly cranky here? Is it unreasonable to ask one’s friends and loved ones to read one’s blog? Notorious G doesn’t read my blog–she told me, “I feel like it’s an invasion of your privacy.” I’m all, Goofball, it’s the opposite of that. It’s public–that’s why it’s on the internet! The private stuff is what I’ll tell her when we talk. Why waste time catching her up on the public stuff? It can start to feel like I’m repeating myself. I dunno. I can really see both sides here, though. jaylake’s dad doesn’t read his blog; he says, “If you need me to know something, I trust you will tell me.” The witch-husband would read my blog, but it would really, really annoy him if he learned something there that I hadn’t told him first–no matter how minuscule. (Which, I get that; I didn’t know about jaylake’s mask project till I read about it on the blog, and I got a little twinge of, Hey, we didn’t talk about this.) But it’s part of who we are–especially regular, wordy bloggers like jaylake and me. If you want to know us, don’t you want to know this part too? Speaking of wordy. Sorry folks. I do go on. But…I realized this morning that my dad probably doesn’t even know that jaylake is having surgery on the 25th, unless my mom happened to run into him and tell him. That just strikes me as strange. And yes, the problem there is much larger and more complex than his not reading my blog…but that would be the subject for a different screed. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Damn trunk light keeps burning out on the Witchmobile. {or, boot light, I think, for you English folk.}
I mean, brand new car, last year. Every time I take it in for an oil change, I say, “And can you fix the trunk light please?”
Every time, they do. Then, a few weeks later, usually after I’ve stuffed the trunk full (which, well, isn’t at all hard to do, since it’s roughly the size of an overhead bin on one of those tiny regional airplanes they fly between here and Portland), the damn thing burns out again.
It’s got to be a wiring problem, right? But this is stupid. This should not be.
Today, I take the car in for an oil change. “And can you fix the trunk light, please, like you did four months ago?” “Sure,” they say.
So they call me and tell me the car is ready. “And your trunk light is fixed. See, there’s a switch…”
Yep. My trunk light has a switch, and when I stuffed the trunk full of stuff….
Okay. I’m done now. Good night.
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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“In the Beginnings,” a collaborative flash piece with jaylake , sold to Electric Velocipede, for publication some time next year. Woo hoo! Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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NICE day off. Oh all days should all be this way. Oh wait, they will be. Eventually. I got a chunk of the to-do list accomplished (although not the tire chains, grr), and some relaxing done, including even a proto-nap on the couch (and I am one who DOES NOT NAP)–but, most importantly, I finished my first draft of “Neither Love Nor Golden Spider Beetles” and sent it out to first readers. It hit very nearly exactly 3,000 words, which I had intended before I started…and that, dear readers, is because when I got to 2,400 words and didn’t know how it ended, I thought, Self, you have to bring this story in in 600 words. So I did. Can it really be that easy? Time will tell! My first first reader (jaylake ) says it’s good…waiting to hear from the rest. And now–(yay) dinner with the doctodds, and (boo hiss) back to work tomorrow. But–7 more days! Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Yeah, I know it’s not Friday, it’s Tuesday; but, when you have a holiday Wednesday, then Tuesday is Friday and that’s all there is to it.
And for that, I am sooooooo glad.
I have severe short-timer syndrome at the Day Jobbe, and they know it. Boss Lady gave me a fairly impossible project to do last Friday–but it’s very important, and it’s squarely within my realm of responsibility. But it’s impossible! Nevertheless, I set to it on Monday, and got as far as I could, before veering off into simpler tasks and Spider Solitaire filing and organizing.
Today, I had other stuff that commanded my attention and focus, and I spent no time on Impossible Task. But I told myself I’d get right back on it on Thursday, that I’d make a real run at it, I’d do my very best, especially considering I’m still going to do freelance work for these kind and generous people….
And as I was leaving at the end of the day, I walked by Boss Lady’s office, as I always do, and she was working on Impossible Task.
Yeah, she knows.
I don’t know if she’s going to be able to figure it out any better than I could, but…well, she doesn’t have short-timer syndrome. So there you go.
________________
And there’s a holiday tomorrow! My goals for the day are:
-Finish Golden Spider Beetles draft
-Accomplish as many to-do list items as possible
-Indoctrinate Helper Elves into orchid care
-Lie around and read and relax
That seems like plenty, don’t you think?
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Friends are good. I had a weekend largely away from the computer (as the sharp-eyed of you have undoubtedly noticed…), and I needed it. On Saturday, Mark arrived around noon, full of ideas and stories and good cheer. We shopped and he cooked, and also talked and talked to me about cancer and life and death and hope and faith and friendship and just all sorts of wise things. He fed me some of the best salmon I’ve ever had in my entire life. Sunday morning, he came along and we met Corry for breakfast, before she headed back up to wet, wet Seattle. She told us all about Mile High Con and other adventures as we ate far too much food at Boogaloos. After putting her on BART, I continued to torture the poor Pacific Northwesterner with our stunning weather by taking him for a walk up Buena Vista Park. Then he was off in his car for wet, wet Seattle (though I’ve just received reliable intelligence that he has been spotted in Portland). Got caught up on a few things, then the_ogre came by, with more friend-encouragement and good cheer. Honestly, jaylake has the best friends, and I am so pleased to be welcomed into their midst. Truly. __________ So, as all the details continue to unfold and organize, my own plans have been coming clear. My last “official” day at work will still be December 1, but my last actual day will be November 20th. I will leave on the 22nd to drive to Portland. jaylake’s surgery is the 25th; he’ll be in the hospital into the weekend, most likely. A whole gang of us will camp out at Nuevo Rancho Lake and rotate in and out of the hospital, as much as the authorities will let us. Then I’ll stick around through the following week, doing what is needed for the convalescent. Monday the 7th is the appointment with the oncologist, to discuss what was found in the surgery and the (probable) chemo plan. After that, I will likely drive home on the 8th, though that’s flexible, if things change. So: this is my last two weeks of work! (again…) And I’ve got a ton of things to do, to get ready for all of this. Car things–change oil, get chains, etc. Home things, though I do have helper elves lined up for the orchids already. Work things–stuff to finish up, stuff to hand over to the bosses (yeah there’s no replacement for me yet), bringing home all my personal stuff (art on the walls, etc), destroying evidence leaving the place nice and tidy for the next person. Just general life things, large and small. I probably don’t need to mention that not a lot of writing is getting done. Though I did eke out another few hundred words on the Golden Spider Beetles story on Friday, and, far more importantly, totally found the voice of the story. I think the next writing session will take it to the end…then it’ll just need some spit and polish, and I can send it around to first readers. As for when that writing session will be, I simply do not know… Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Woke up with a bit of a stomachache this morning. I can’t imagine why. _____________ Actually, I’m a little puzzled as why it all hit me so hard last night. It’s not like there was really any new information yesterday–just a surgery date set. We already knew there would be surgery, and soon; there was no doubt about that. I guess somehow it finally got through to my lizard brain, which suddenly must have realized that Oh noes, something bad is happening to jaylake and people are going to do mean things to him! Aiiieee! Anyway, I feel better this morning. I had weird dreams about needing someone to drive me home to Portland (hmm), then got up and had an excellent yoga practice. Today I need to work out logistics of when I’m leaving my job–looks like my last day will be the 20th, though I’ll still try to keep 12/1 as my “official” end date. Then have to get everything else organized for being gone for a while–orchids tended to, mail, etc. Oh, and must arrange to have my oil changed. And buy tire chains. (And now I am very glad I didn’t buy overpriced airline tickets for Thanksgiving weekend!) And, well, my apartment is gorgeously clean. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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My apartment is Very Clean.
-Floors all scrubbed/vacuumed
-Laundry done, folded, put away
-Fern trimmed, all fern fronds vacuumed up
-Toilet cleaned, along with rest of small room
-Shower/tub/sink cleaned, and rest of second small room (Victorian apartment, split bath)
-Surfaces dusted
-Windowsills vacuumed
And, yeah. Finished the potato chips, hit the pistachio ice cream hard, and drank some more of Chaz’ gin too.
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Just heard from jaylake…his thoracoscopic surgery is scheduled for Wednesday, November 25th at OHSU in Portland. The day before Thanksgiving. He’ll be in the hospital probably until the weekend. More details to come, but I wanted to get the word out. Alas, this means that OryCon is out for us. But the good news is, all the people coming to town for the con can visit us in the hospital. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Someone else wrote a long and thoughtful post today.
Mom, he’s not kidding about the TMI part (which somehow does not come through when I link it, the cut vanishes…hmmm). You are hereby warned.
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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I went to my first writers conference in, it must have been the spring of 2006. The San Francisco Writers Conference. I knew not a soul, not a single soul. But it was in my home town, and it looked like it would be a reasonably good conference, so I thought it would be a smart thing to go to. Well, I hated it. The not-knowing-anyone thing was awful, and the fact that it’s a general con for all kinds of writers–nonfiction and lit fic and self-help and everything–meant that, when you’re standing around introducing yourself to people, and they all tell you what they’re writing, and then you say, “I have a witch novel,” they all look at you like you made a rude noise, or a smelly mess on the carpet. But someone there told me about a con that was better suited to weirdos like me (though they didn’t put it quite that way)–Writers Weekend, in Seattle, a few months later. So I signed up for that, and I thank my lucky stars that I did. In Seattle, I still didn’t know a soul, but I met this nice guy at breakfast. Turned out he was from San Francisco too. He was getting married the next month, so it wasn’t anything like a pickup–but he invited me to join his crit group, pending approval of the other members. That was doctodd , my great good friend and writing buddy/collaborator. His crit group welcomed me in, and they all told me about NaNoWriMo. So that November, I did NaNo and wrote EEL RIVER. And went to the retreat, and met a whole bunch of other cool people, and got invited into a second crit group–the Zombie Club. Slowly, I started to know more writers. I went to a few more cons and retreats and whatnot. Little by little, more of my social life tended to include writers, or be made up entirely of writers. Slowly, bit by little bit, I stopped having to explain what kind of writing I did; or that yes, I have more than one novel; or that no, it’s not a vampire novel. Writers Weekend had a tiny spring retreat in New Jersey that doctodd and I went to. That was the first time that I recognized/remembered/knew people that I had met before, at other cons. That I felt like maybe there was a *community* here, and that I might someday be able to become part of it. (That’s also when I got an agent, who I later parted ways with…but that’s another story.) Then Karen discontinued the Writers Weekend cons and organized a small retreat at Iron Springs, in June of 2008. I already knew at least half the attendees there…and that’s where I met jaylake . Talk about a whole ‘nother story. Anyway. Last year at World Fantasy, jaylake introduced me to the many thousands of people he knew. He welcomed me into his social scene, his milieu. It was FANTASTIC, and a little overwhelming. I made sure to take plenty of down time, and writing time, but still, wow. This year, and my life changed…and I started going to LOTS more cons, with jaylake . And meeting lots more people. And seeing them again, every few weeks or months. And adding them as friends on LiveJournal, on Twitter, on Facebook. And the community grew. At WorldCon in Montreal, I knew so many people. We walked into the party bar and were able to choose which table to sit at, because we knew people at every one of them. We had a full schedule, with lunches and dinners and even some breakfasts planned out in advance, because of all the people that needed seeing. Even so, I made sure that I did my yoga in the mornings, and also wrote, before setting out into con-land. Then Foolscap and SteamCon…small cons, fun. Met more people. And now World Fantasy, this last weekend. It was insane. It was ridiculous. It was so much fun. We were so completely overscheduled, 100%, start to finish. There were so many people I knew and wanted to talk to, people from overseas to meet, and not enough time to see them, to even finish a conversation. The same thing happens every time I get married*: there’s all these people to connect with, who have come from so far away, and they’re only going to be here for a short time, and it’s all over too fast, and then they’re gone, and there were more people I didn’t even get to see, though I know they were there. Local people I don’t see enough of, that I kept waving at as I ran by, on my way to somewhere else. I did no yoga. I got no writing done. I didn’t even keep up with my email. I had Such A Wonderful Time. I am still recovering. Yeah. Everything is different now. I love it. _______________
*Only twice, but, still. Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Red...........1
Brown.......1
Blue.........4
Yellow......4
Green.......9
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WOW, am I tired. Four days of nonstop partying networking very seriously with drunken overgrown adolescents* industry movers and shakers really takes it out of a person. I’m sorry, I cannot even begin to describe it. I am still trying to process and remember everything. I halfway wish WFC could be a week long–but then I think it would kill me. When I got home this afternoon, I could barely lift my hands to the keyboard to let jaylake know I’d made it safely up the freeway (as he was stranded in the San Jose airport, boo fail). But oh, such a con it was! It is an unspeakable thrill to meet longtime LJ buddies in real life–and to find out that they are even more wonderful than they seemed on the internet. It is even more wonderful to spend day after day with a thousand people who love genre fiction–FANTASY fiction–who don’t think it’s weird or fringe or wrong or needs explaining or defending in any way. Who think about zombies and vampires and witches and unicorns and demons and fae and magicians in new and fascinating ways. Who are always ready to share a drink and some insight, or just a few laughs. Who leave pink codfish candy in your bed, for you to discover in an intimate moment…okay, maybe that part was less wonderful. Even so. It is some kind of special person who will leave pink codfish candy in your bed, don’t you think? And that’s after the flattened squirrel story, and the strawberry surprise. But enough about that. I am home, I am exhausted, and alas, the real world presses upon us. After Thursday, we will know when jaylake ’s surgery will be… I feel like my universe is holding its breath until then. I have four more weeks of the Day Job. I am trying not to worry about too much, especially the things I cannot control. So a weekend of distractions was deeply pleasing. ______________
*And yes, I DO include myself in that horrible slander…why do you think I’m so tired??? Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes yesterday!! It was truly a fun and fantastic day, start to finish.
I’d tell you all about it, but then I’d have to kill you, and I just don’t have time for that. Suffice it to say, it’s really thoughtful of the WFC organizers to have this wonderful con on my birthday every year, I truly appreciate it.
And speaking of the con–I’m off once more. Have a great day, everyone, and happy wordcount to those doing NaNo!
Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.
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happy
exhausted
stressed
busy
contemplative
awake
indescribable