Adventures du jour!
Ugh, last night was the kind of restless night that used to drive me outside for long walks that went on for miles.–In Vemillion (South Dakota) I used to walk out to the river in all weather, or rollerblade; in Iowa I used to take this defunct set of train tracks out through the fields toward the next small town. (Great in summer = fireflies.) Or I’d go for a drive in the dark along some particularly curvy roads through the green hills of Earth.
It was more difficult to burn off restlessness in Colorado, being surrounded by more people, having less access to transportation (we only had one car for a while), and having a kid (and a spouse I couldn’t trust her alone with most of the time) meant that I had to just endure it–or plan ahead so I got regular doses of wandering. There was always drama sooner or later, but I went some lovely places that I could probably never find again in a million years, because I would just turn the car in a direction and go.–I got in the habit of asking people where to go, where to eat, WHAT to eat while I was in Iowa. “The oracle of strangers.” Once people who are able to handle basic non-asshole interaction realize that you’re pretty much open to anything, they brighten up and tell you their favorites. It’s GREAT. Someone introduced me to the House on the Rock in Wisconsin that way once, which is a De place if ever there was one.
Anyway, last night I didn’t feel competent to point the car in a direction and drive off, so I stayed at the apartment. The electricity is on the fritz on one wall, the wall with the cable connection. This means that, with worsening frequency, the power goes out on that wall and takes the Internet and the PCs with it. Because I’ve been writing the story on the laptop, it’s not a critical issue, but AUGH. I would like to at least be able to play a violent video game or two to blow off steam, but no.
So I did the yoga I skipped yesterday morning. FIIIIIINE, body, you win. I worked a lot with the foam roller.
Yesterday was a lot of chatting with close friends, which I loved.
I talked to one friend about yoga (and the foam roller, so it was on my mind), being stuck in the middle of the damn story, and other good things. I laughed my way out of being irritable. It was wonderful.
The other friend, I’d asked her to talk to me through an opportunity that I’m going to take. I knew that if I didn’t talk to her, I would wreck myself, because it’s a stretch–even though I’m the right person for it. I’m gonna sit down and write the difficult email saying “yes please” tomorrow. We got caught up on other fun things, other difficult things, and other “let’s do this together” things.
And I got a long letter from a friend that was supposed to be him venting but made me slap my head to realize something. And that’ll be good, too. I’ll have to work on that in bits and pieces, though.
The thing that was making my brain slide out the last couple of days, I worked on that a bit but WOW the brain was still sliding out, and in fact had started to swerve entirely: “Oh, you have something else you need to be doing!” thoughts came up every time I tried to work on it. It was like sitting down to write and finding yourself cleaning out the closet with a toothbrush.
Fortunately, ghostwriting for clients for such a long time taught me how to catch that sort of behavior, and taking Kris & Dean’s challenging writing classes taught me how to make myself process stuff that was making me slide out: type it in.
I got about two-three minutes into the video and hit a solid FLINCH that wasn’t part of the video at all, just triggered by the phrasing, and the critical part of my brain started screaming at me in “you’re a bad writer and a bad human being.”
I’m not sure where the programming came from (update, I figured it out), but what set it off was the thought “What do you hope this story will accomplish? How dare you? It’s not allowed, you’re not allowed, you’re bad/dirty.”
I tried to sort out what I wanted with this story this morning after sleeping (badly) on it and got to: I want this story, like all my stories, to contribute to one fewer bad night for people, or if not, then to part of a process leading to fewer bad nights in the future.
When I was writing mostly horror (not that Imma stop), the toolset I had at hand was “here are the bad things that are being used to hurt you, that you think are you but are from somewhere else.” I wrote about a lot of bullies and not how to defeat them, but just even to know that they existed, which is the zero to one state of overcoming their bullshit.–The plan was to get two more horror/SF books done before I tried to do anything else.
Of course it’s difficult to get books published and out the door when your brain is screaming at you that you’re not allowed to do so, and you’re not writing for a client. I have one of those two books written already. It just needs to be edited and go out. I lock up every time I think about doing so. The other one, I started writing but haven’t finished it. I have other projects that are DONE but not published, because of the screaming voice.
At any rate, now I’m working on this story, and while it’s been more difficult to write, and I’m going to have to get drunk before I send it to beta readers, I don’t actually have the screaming voice going, “How dare you!” I do still have these points where my brain swerves off, though, so I’m going to have to be super-careful and watch myself.
This book has a lot of “recognize the external bad things” tools, but it also has “recognize the good things” tools and “disenfuck yourself so you can stop sabotaging things” tools. Which, I hope, means that as I write the book, I become more able to publish the book as well as the other books.
The screaming part of my brain, about horror: How dare you say mean things about bad people!
The screaming part of my brain, about romance/spies with stuff just as bad as the horror novels, just out of view: You’re a terrible person but at least you’re not badmouthing bad people.
Because it feels very screamy (and not growly), that part of my brain is probably something picked up from my mom. She has screamed at me for saying critical things, not just about her, but about anyone with status; I can only imagine that started pretty early on, given how she treated my younger siblings. Anyway, the interesting part is that wrapping the criticism in romance changes the noise from screaming to something less immediate and vicious, if not exactly positive or gentle. “You’re dirty” is easier to deal with than “How dare you!” apparently.
…
I talked to the one friend about yoga yesterday, and she said that she always felt nauseated when she tried to do yoga, which was why she didn’t do it. I gave her my opinion about it on the call, but I wanna say here too: if you’re struggling to do supposedly “easy” activities to stay healthy, THAT IS OKAY.
When I decided I was done letting my body break down (when we moved to the AirBnB in August), I struggled to make it around the block. Or touch my toes. Or stand up straight. Or move around at all–and I *have* to move, or I’ll go nuts. (I’m dancing in my chair as I type this. I do the same thing when I stop at a red light. Or if I’m out in public and there’s music. Or the constant music in my head is particularly loud.)
I felt constantly nauseated and ill. My wrists hurt constantly. My feet and ankles were always swollen. Etc.
I’ve been doing yoga for decades now, inconsistently and without much dedication or intelligence applied to it. I did it while I was stuck upstairs in the House of Divorce (after a while I didn’t dare go out of the master suite because things would escalate in decidedly creepy ways). I stopped when I got to Florida because I had so many things to do, and because while we were at the Shithole Apartment, there wasn’t really room inside or safety to do it outside. I let it slide. And there have been loads of times before then that I ditched yoga for long periods, then picked it up again.
Every single time, I think, “I can’t do this and it’s pointless.” But every time so far, yoga has helped. I have to do it blind, lying to myself that it’s worth the time, yelling at myself for what a failure I am every time.
But I also don’t start with stuff that makes me want to puke too much, either. I don’t do the “easy yoga for beginners” videos, I don’t even let myself LOOK at yoga instructors and their toned, flexible bodies. Fuck that.
I don’t think it has to be yoga; I think it just has to be something that someone you know well and trust can design an absolute bare minimum routine for you to fall back on. My theater teacher Roberta set one up for us in college; I always fall back to her stuff as I remember it, and rebuild from there as the spirit takes me.
Whatever you choose, it should be a no-brainer that makes you feel better right away. Not all better. Just a little better is fine. Don’t have big ambitions. Just have someone you trust and their good advice on going from zero to one. (I’m not that person for yoga! Please find someone who knows shit and isn’t just a bullshit artist!)
…
On the walk, Mr. Assassin came out again, and we had a talk. He feels exhausted and stuck on this scene. He doesn’t know what I want and he feels like he can’t do it. (Which probably means he does know.) So we talked it out. There’s something he has to do, that only he can do, that the others need him to do, and it has nothing to do with the dark and violent side of him. And he’s having a brain fry over it. Admittedly, it’s not like I really know what it is or how to do it either (yay! therapy book taking me to uncomfortable places). I just know the basic shape of it and feel it should end at.
It involves a change on an instinctual level, a “no” to a “yes,” and should make things easier for him going forward. I think he’s already in the thick of it in this scene and doing fine with it, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it, because it means ditching his old habits and coping mechanisms.
When you no longer hurt yourself just to make yourself function, how do you function?
Anyway, I walked for like three hours this morning because I could *not* make myself turn around. Finally I got through to him how badly my feet hurt.
Mr. Assassin: I don’t want to hurt you but I can’t do this.
Me: Then just follow me back to the apartment. We’ll work it out together.
I talked with the one friend about Orpheus and Eurydice yesterday; that’s what it felt like, leading someone back from the underworld. I felt his hand on my shoulder for a second, and the rest of the way back I just walked. “I know you’re still there. We will get there. We will get through this.”
I was *very* glad to have talked to the friend yesterday. He feels a little more settled, and working on the scene isn’t freaking him out (although I’m still not done). And after I got back to the apartment I was able to finish the thing my brain was sliding out on; it was an effort and I kept having to stop and confront little side issues related to “How dare you?” but I made it.
One more step closer to getting all the things published.