Romancing the Writing - How to Take Your Writing on a Date

(Setting the mood with some candles and a mysterious raven)

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I think we've all heard the advice that "you need to write every day" and "you need to treat your writing like a job" and "you need to have a writing routine." I'm not saying any of this advice is wrong. I'm saying, if that works for you, do it. All of this advice is yours to keep and do with what you will. However, if you're burned out, bored, or just not getting the writing done, I say change it up! Try something flirty and adventurous with your writing!

So, like the title says, this post is about how to take your writing on a date. The nice thing about this kind of date is that it doesn't have to cost very much and you don't necessarily even have to go anywhere, unless you want to. You might need to kick other people out of the house so you and your writing can be alone together, but maybe not. Maybe you live with people who know how to keep a low profile when you're trying to get some writing action. 

Here's what you do. First of all, make plans in advance. This is not a spontaneous writing booty call. This is a respectful and loving date. Pick an evening when you can have a few hours to spend with your writing. Don't double-book your time or keep your mind open to canceling if something better comes along. Set a reasonable amount of time, like two or three hours. Anything shorter than an hour is not really giving the date a chance. And planning on a super-long date is kind of presumptuous, don't you think?

Second, create some atmosphere. If you're staying in, pick a nice room, maybe somewhere you don't usually write. Even if your space is small and you don't have a different room available, you can make the same room feel different. Clean it, tidy it, change the decorations around. If you can, add some candles or some other special lighting. Decide where you're going to sit and get that all set up with a notebook and pen, or a laptop, or a recorder to dictate into. If you only, ever, always write on a desktop computer, then you can set up your nice atmosphere wherever the computer is if you want, but may I suggest considering a temporary change of methods for the date instead? Because this is supposed to be a special night. That's your call.

If you're going out, of course, pick a place you'll enjoy and take your writing things with you. From now on I'm going to act as if this is a home date, but you know how to proceed if you're going out. Adapt ideas as necessary.

Plan out, acquire, and prepare an appetizer or small meal that feels a bit fancy. You don't have to be really extra about this, but try to make your food something you'll look forward to and enjoy. Same for what you'll drink. Something that feels a bit luxurious, whether it's hot or cold, alcoholic or non-. I like to have a glass of wine, but you can choose any kind of date-like drink you want.

Add some music and/or subtle background noise. I use my iPad to play both music from Pandora, and a loop of coffee shop background noise (people talking, cafe noises) with Coffeetivity, which can play at the same time and be adjusted so that it doesn't overwhelm the music. This really adds good atmosphere! It promotes that feeling of being somewhere else without going somewhere else. I'm pretty sure that I've also read a study that said moderate background noise can boost creativity. Almost positive that's why I got the Coffeetivity app in the first place.

You may think this is a bit over the top, but I also suggest dressing for a date, and doing whatever special-occasion things you might do with your hair, face, and body for a date. The fact that your writing isn't actually a person is not something you need to focus on right now. You're making this night special for YOU, and pretending you're going on a real and actual date. This means you can even wear whatever fragrances you want in whatever quantities you want, if you're so inclined, because you don't have to worry about anyone else's preferences (unless you're not technically alone in this scenario, but let's say you are. For the sake of my premise). You can consider comfort when deciding what to wear, but spiffing up will do things for you psychologically. You're making the effort.

All right? When it's time for your writing date - and I do hope you respect your writing enough to be on time for this - make absolutely sure that you put away your phone and stay off the internet, because scanning distracting other stuff is extremely rude and inattentive to your companion. Try to show up with some good "conversation starters," otherwise known as ideas about what you'd like to work on. Will you do some free-writing first? Or make a list of things that will happen next in your story? Maybe you'll start by writing down some questions, and then answering them. Another idea would be to pretend you're sitting across from one of your characters, getting to know them as you would while going out for dinner or drinks with someone. You could play the role of yourself, or of another character. Write down the conversation as you go. Or if you already know what's supposed to happen next in your story, you can seduce yourself into writing it down. 

Once you get to the end of the time you've set for the writing date, you can make plans for the next one, or stay with your writing longer if the evening's going really well. There's really nothing to lose by doing this. Ideally, you'll have a good time while getting some writing done, but at minimum, you'll have delicious food and a drink you enjoy in a space that you've beautified. That's a good, happiness-boosting way to spend an evening. Self-care is its own reward, and the reduction in stress will ripple through the rest of your life and the next day's writing. 

How to Regather Your Scattered Mind and Get Some Useful Stuff Done

(I'm here to help)

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This morning I woke up with basically nothing connecting one idea to another as I was trying to plan my day. I could think of dozens of possible things to do, but it was hard to narrow them down to a reasonable list of the most important things that I could fit in before hitting the reset button at bedtime. This meant I not only had to make a plan, but I had to start with making a preliminary plan for how to make the actual plan. Since I also didn't have an idea for today's blog post, I thought I'd share the way I sorted out my thoughts.

First of all, what I should have done was to make my plan LAST NIGHT. It's much easier to get going if you wake up with the list already made. New possibilities can come up in the morning, but then you can decide whether they're more important than the ones on your list and make adjustments. If nothing new comes up, you're all set. However, even if you didn't do this in the past, you can still figure it out now.

I decided to just write a list of all of the ideas I could come up with, because once the ideas are out where I can look at them, I don't have to spend any more mental energy on making sure that I remember everything. I have to remember ONE thing: the location of the list. 

After writing down all of the ideas, it's time to evaluate what's most important, and what's possible. If the list only has a few items that can easily fit into the amount of time you have, you're fine and you can do them in whatever order works best for you. That hardly even counts as being scattered. 

The trouble comes in when you have more ideas than time. At that point, it's best to see if there are reasons why any of the options have to be done today, or ideally should be done today. Those become the top priorities, and if that's all you have time for, you can get started with the one that's most important. If you don't know what that is, your first task is to figure it out. If you have more "must do today" items than time, you may have to ask for help or end up suffering some consequences, but that will point you toward learning more about time management in the future, I hope? 

If there are routine chores to get done, I say make a game of it. Put on music you like, set a timer for twenty minutes, and do as much as you can in one area in that time. No perfection required. Repeat as needed.

A problem I have is indecision about things I don't have to do at all. I just want to do more things than I have time to do. If there's no external reason why one is more important than another, I can end up ruining my own fun by wasting time on not being able to choose. It can be helpful to decide that this week (or other arbitrary amount of time) in my free time I'll focus on one area. Like only reading fiction, only drawing pictures, only making crafts, or whatever. Or I can pick a few projects I really want to get done by a certain date, and be somewhat spontaneous about when to fit in time for them. The point is to decide I will NOT be doing anything about all those other projects until after this amount of time passes, or after these particular projects are finished. 

Another mind-clearing thing is to set a timer for maybe thirty minutes and do some free-writing. You can start with a phrase like "I don't know what to do today because" or "I feel stuck because," and go from there. Maybe you're feeling conflicted between what you want to do and what you think you should do, or something else is bothering you. I always find it helpful to start writing things down without trying to make my sentences perfect or edit anything. No one else has to see what you write; you can burn it afterward if you want. It can be a relief to just get your thoughts out.

I think that's all the advice I have for myself and for you today! I'm going to go and apply it to myself. Be good!

Post-Midterm Election: Feeling the Feel Outta Some FEELINGS

(This is a little glimpse of my Facebook page this morning)

(I do not apologize)

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It's been a rough time for me politically for the last two years. I'm a Democratic Socialist who votes for Democrats for pragmatic reasons, until such time as there are better voting options that will get more refined results. Conservatives won't change the voting system, but Democrats might, in my opinion. Anyway, I was extremely unhappy about the results of the 2016 election, and I've been increasingly both angered and saddened by the cynical way the Republicans in Congress have taken advantage of their majorities to push through their agenda, even to the point of changing rules to favor themselves. 

It's your right to disagree with me, of course, but don't expect me to be comfortable with you as a person if you're invested in taking health care away from people who are sick, oppressing minority or LGBTQ citizens, or allowing the environment to be damaged for the sake of profit. The same goes for voting for people who are invested in any of the above, even if you personally don't enact those decisions. You're supporting bad, harmful actions either way. 

Given that this is my worldview, I'm pleased with the results of many of the elections we had yesterday, and I'm also freaking exhausted from the process of getting there. "Political fatigue" doesn't even begin to cover the way I'm wiped out and so sick of it all. I accept that there's way more to do in the next two years, especially in the area of keeping the voting numbers up. We need the current sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds to get involved and vote in 2020. But I'm going to give myself a little time to relax for a couple of months, just to enjoy some holiday time and conserve some energy for the investigations and revelations that will surely be happening in 2019.

You can expect NO POLITICS from me tomorrow. Until I'm ready to get back at it. Or sooner, if I have to get back at it whether I'm ready or not.

Ten Answers to Ten Questions from a Book of Questions - Episode One

(Annabelle is not 100% sold on this blog post concept)

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Today, friends, my mind keeps trying to circle around the election, so I'm a bit distracted. I already voted, and there's nothing to do but wait to find out how it's going to go. Because of this, I'm going to do the first of theoretically four hundred question-answering posts. You see, I have this book called 4,000 Questions for Getting to Know Anyone and Everyone, by Barbara Ann Kipfer. The book has ten topic sections, each containing a lot of questions. Instead of picking a single topic, I'm going to answer the first question from each of the sections. SUPER RANDOM FUN. I cannot be held responsible for the quality of the questions. Ready? Here we go!

Topic: The Latest Scoop

Do you like working with a tablet computer? Do you like it better than a laptop or desktop computer?

I like using a tablet. It's definitely my preferred thing to use for making digital drawings, and I like using apps. I haven't looked into this recently, but last time I checked I was disappointed in the options for using the tablet for writing, even with a keyboard attached. I like using Open Office for writing on my desktop computer, and I'm sure I'd like that on a laptop, too, if I had one. 

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Topic: Childhood and School

Where did you grow up?

A few places. Without getting too specific for my comfort level:  I was born in Indiana, and lived in a small town there until I was six. Then we moved to a larger small town in Ontario, Canada, and stayed until I was twelve. The next move was to a near southwest suburb of Chicago, like right up against the border between Chicago and not-Chicago. I lived there until I was twenty-one. 

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Topic: Family and Friends

If you could only make one phone call, who would you call?

At the moment, based on phone calls and visits I've had recently, I would call my brother. I'm not much of a phone-caller, so I'm more likely to email or text someone.

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Topic: Fun and Sport

Anything can be fun if you want it to be: agree or disagree?

Literally anything?! Disagree with a vengeance. I'm not going to put you through the list of never ever fun things my mind immediately started to generate upon reading that question. However, I'll concede that many things can become more fun than you'd think if you do them with a good attitude and the intention to generate as much fun as possible.

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Topic: Habits

What things can you do with your eyes closed?

Are these questions for real? Is this post a bad idea? I'm going to keep going, but damn. To answer your question, o book of in-depth investigative journalism, I can do the standard eyes-closed things like sleeping and meditation with my eyes closed. Maybe brush my teeth. Listen to music. You know. I'm not even sure why this question is about habits. Even if I do something all the time, that doesn't necessarily mean I can do it with my eyes closed.

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Topic: Love and Sex

How often have you fallen in love?

It's kind of nice that this doesn't ask "how many times." Because fuck you, book, none of your business and I'm taking your wording literally. How often? Less than once per year over the course of forty-six years. That's right, math wizards, I have fallen in love fewer than forty-six times. 

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Topic: Outlook

Do you like a peaceful or hectic life?

If I had to choose one or the other, I would not want a guaranteed hectic life, so I'd go with peaceful. But then I'd get bored and start to add in activities to get to a middle ground of neither too hectic nor too peaceful. I like mental stimulation, but not constant activity.

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Topic: Politics

Do you question "conventional wisdom" and authority?

OH HELL YES. ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. Sometimes "conventional wisdom" is useful, but it's important to update your ideas. Question whether they're still useful or not. Sometimes ideas that were established in the past were based on less information than we have now. Authority isn't something to value for its own sake. Just because someone's in charge, or a certain law is in effect right now, doesn't mean either one is perfect and never to be challenged.

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Topic: Spirituality

What is sacred?

I'm not religious, so I'm going to think of something sacred as something that deserves veneration. I feel that kind of reverence for the natural world, and for goodness that comes from the wish to do good, rather than the fear of punishment or the hope of reward. 

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Topic: Work

Do you believe that people are basically lazy or hardworking and why?

I think it's way more complicated than this either-or thing we have going on in this question. I think that people show a wide range of behavior, from lazy to hardworking, and that generally most people are somewhere in the middle. I think that each person probably is also lazier about some kinds of tasks, and more hardworking about others. I don't necessarily think of "hardworking" as a virtue in itself. I feel that the word "lazy" is fairly judgmental, so I don't use it much. Like, if something is not important to a person, are they being lazy if they're not strongly motivated to do it? I don't think so. I think that most people will put in effort on work that's important to them.

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That does it for the questions for today! I'm... not completely thrilled with the book, I guess, but that was a sample of ten questions out of four thousand, so maybe the next round will suit me better. Or maybe I'll do the next round when I'm in a better mood. Or something. I'll spread these out and give the concept a few rounds before I judge, I think. 

I Got a Plant!

(This is the plant. It is Tabitha-approved.)

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I've been wanting more indoor plants - many more, like kind of an indoor jungle? - for a long time, but I've always been nervous about what the cats would do to them, and what they in turn might do to the cats. After researching and dithering for literally years, I finally reached a new stage in my deliberations and went looking for a Boston Fern and/or a Reed Palm. I chose them because neither kind is toxic to cats according to the ASPCA website, and they can both live with indirect light. I ended up with this lovely big Reed Palm. The cats have all sniffed it and taken turns sitting beside it, but they're being surprisingly chill about the situation.

It's going to take some thought and modifications to add more. I have a lot of space, but I don't have many good places for plants at the moment. There are two spider plants hanging from the two ceiling hooks I have available, but only one of them is really thriving. I want to figure out how to add little grow lights to the spots I have where there's not even indirect natural light, or install more ceiling hooks that are sturdy enough to be useful, or add little shelves that the cats can't access. I don't mind the thought of moving or getting rid of stuff to make space for more tall plants, after testing how well they grow and the cats behave with them. I guess that the more plants I end up with, the less cat-based peril there will be for each of them. There are only so many hours in a day for plant-shredding when one needs a certain number of naps.

I'm all psyched up about having more indoor plants because:

• I like the way they look, especially in the winter when there's not much green outside
• They smell good
• They absorb carbon dioxide and pollution
• They create oxygen
• I don't think I really need more reasons than this, do you you? Thanks for understanding.

So YAY PLANT. Gotta go, more blog tomorrow, votey-vote-vote!

Hello from Slobsville - AKA Let Me Tell You about My Home Office

(I never said I was perfect)

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Before you get worried, let me just say that I'm about to launch into decluttering. My office is the messy room in my house. I mean, the other rooms are lived-in for sure, but the office is that one room where I put things I'm going to do something with later. It's like... not really a junk room, but it contains a lot of things that currently have more potential than realization. You know? You know. I know you know. 

It's gotten to the point where it's harder to declutter and tidy up because there are no free surfaces to sort things on. It's a roughly 10' x 14' room that contains a computer desk, printer stand, two tall cabinets that are about 3 feet wide each, and also the intended-for-art table pictured above, a couple of smaller freestanding storage furnishings, a couple of to-be-painted small furniture items (an end table and a narrow cabinet, if you must know). It has a built-in closet and drawers that are pretty full of things to make things with, and upper cabinets that are too high for regular use (one of which has a half-broken door that hangs crookedly if I open it. Not to mention all the stuff on, in, and around the aforementioned furniture and cabinets and the floor. 

I SUCK *begins to hyperventilate*

Drama? Where?!

I swear to you that I do have plenty of reasonable, functional other rooms in which there are clear and usable surfaces. One might even be forgiven for thinking of my office as sort of an enabler of a room, lacking the boundaries to stop taking on the other rooms' messes, so that they might function while the office chokes. With the possible objection that it is I, the sentient human, who is in fact responsible and conveniently anthropomorphizing rooms like a crazy person, in this scenario.

The plan, then, is that I'll choose a section of the mess at a time, and do the whole hoarder-show "keep, toss, or donate" routine until that bit is dealt with, and then I'll pick another section, and so on. Maybe I'll even do a follow-up post during this month of thirty or more blog posts. 

Speaking of more blog posts... At EcoAnxiety Club I've added a post for patrons who support my dealing-with-climate-change project at the level of $1 per month. It's about how I accidentally stopped using air conditioning in my house four years ago, and why I eventually continued with that on purpose, and how that's been working out for me. Plus links to interesting related information, and ideas for dealing with humidity! So if you're into that kind of thing, that will be the first of many you'll get for one single dollar per month. I promise I won't be cranking up the sales pitch in every single blog post, by the way. I'm not like that.

Have a great day, you! 

Bookposting, because YES TO BOOKS

(A few of the books I'm reading, as of today)

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I don't think the premise of this post requires much explanation! So here are the books I'm reading, or in one case about to read, and why, and what I think of them so far. Alphabetically by author/editor, because that's how I like it.

The Witch Elm, by Tana French 

Earlier this year, I read the six books of Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series. The first one basically turned me into the sort of person who's going to stop everything to read any new book by this author, so when my pre-order of this new, standalone novel arrived at my house, you know it was a struggle for me to finish writing my short story instead of putting aside all responsibilities to make more reading time. It's not a spoiler to say that this book - unlike the ones in the series - is a murder mystery that is not about the police investigation side of things. The main character is a young man from a fairly privileged background, experiencing some significant difficulties for the first time in his previously easy life, and the book is also about his extended family and his friends. I'm not quite halfway through it, because I want to take my time and enjoy the words instead of tearing through to see what happens. As with every one of French's other books I've read, I feel confident that the whole experience will be satisfying.

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken

I haven't started to read this one yet, but I'm looking forward to it because I need an optimism boost. The content is divided into categories: Energy, Food, Women and Girls, Buildings and Cities, Land Use, Transport, Materials, and Coming Attractions. In each category, there are articles of one to several pages that cover specific approaches, with a summary at the end of each to describe its potential impact. It's the sort of book I can envision reading in small bites, maybe one or two of the approaches daily. I hope to learn a lot of general ideas, and then look for more detailed information on the ones I want to prioritize. The truth is that we need to be working on a lot of things at once, but no single person is likely to be able to get involved in all of them, so it will be important to find the ways I can be the most useful.

The People's Republic of Everything, by Nick Mamatas

Nick is a writing convention buddy of mine, and I also enjoy his fiction; it's pretty rare to get both of those things with an author, so thanks, Nick! I go in and out of wanting to read short fiction, so it can take me a while to finish a collection of short stories even when I'm enjoying the stories. I'm maybe two-thirds of the way through this one, and definitely enjoying both the stories and Nick's commentary about how he came to write each of them. If you're bored with predictable plots and mainstream ideas, check this out.

Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Joseph Romm

This is a highly-rated overview of how climate change works, what's going on, and what's likely to happen in the future. I'm reading the 2018 second edition in ebook format, so I can read a section on my phone here and there. The truth is that even the introduction of this book made me cry, although to be completely transparent I was already feeling fragile that day and I had no business reading that material. I just thought an introduction should be pretty safe. NOPE. Don't get the wrong impression. The author isn't going out of his way to make it sad. The information itself is sad. We still need to know it if we're going to have any kind of chance to do something about it. That's why the other climate change book, above, seems like a good way to balance myself out, since it focuses on what we can do to improve the situation. I'll be writing about what I learn from these books, eventually, in my EcoAnxiety Club project, which you can follow for the free posts, and get notifications if you want them. There's even a free Patreon app you can use!

That's my book load for now! I may do another bookpost later this month if I start any others, but I want to finish some of these before I do that.

Effective Voting, Instead of the Other Kind

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Hey! Howdy. Since you're on the internet, I'm sure you're painfully aware that there's an American election coming up. This post is for the Americans who will be voting in the election, which ideally would be every American who is old enough and not currently prohibited from voting for felony reasons, or comas, or other stuff I'd rather you weren't involved in.

More specifically, it's for the people who intend to vote for - or are considering voting for - someone other than a Democrat or Republican for a high-level position (say, Governor or above) at any point before we get ourselves an instant-runoff voting system. That's when you get to rank the candidates in order on the ballot, and your vote will go to your favorite candidate, but if they're in last place, they're eliminated; in that case, your vote goes to your second choice of candidate. Depending on how many candidates there are, your second choice might get eliminated, too, so your vote would go to your third choice. More details are at the link, above. That's a good system for giving any candidate from any party a chance to win. I would be thrilled forever if we could have that system. BUT WE DO NOT HAVE THAT SYSTEM.

Sadly, what we have is a situation where your well-intentioned vote for, say, the Green Party candidate (just giving an example here!) will permanently take your vote away from the Democrat who is sympathetic to green issues, and will give an advantage to the Republican who is really a lot less likely to ever help you with green issues. So I'm here to advocate for choosing a likely-to-win candidate from one of the two major parties, the one who will be generally sympathetic to the more intense values you may have. After you help them win, you can and should follow up by writing to that candidate on a regular basis to let them know what you want them to work on while in office. Voting for a candidate who can't possibly win is not an effective way to enact your preferences. Communicating directly with a sympathetic major-party candidate WHO HAS WON is much more effective. 

However, while we're stuck with our current voting system, it can still make a big difference to vote for alternative-party candidates at the local level, if that's what you want to do. Fewer people bother to show up to vote in local elections, so your vote can have a lot of impact on the results. As they get experience and become more well-known, they'll have more opportunities to move upward in politics, and maybe work to promote the instant-runoff voting system that might propel them to the top one day! 

Anyway, please vote in this election! As effectively as possible.

Sorry, What? I Was Thinking About Flowers: Gardening Therapy

(These are "Cut and Come Again" zinnias that I grew in pots on my deck.)

For the last few years, I've been increasingly into decorative gardening and landscaping, especially in the late spring and early summer. This year, however, I've become really fanatical about it. Although it's a great hobby just on its own merits, it's serving another purpose for me, too: a partial antidote to feeling dejected about politics and worried about the future of our environment. I can go outside, get absorbed in the work of planting pretty things, and then be able to watch them expand over time. 

I'm trying to make my yards really wildlife-friendly, so I don't get the "perfect" results one might expect from using pesticides and weed-killers. I don't really think of that weed-free, bug-free effect as perfect, though. I like a more casual, natural look, and apparently so do the birds, because every morning there's a chorus of I don't even know how many kinds of birds, and I love it. I've seen a monarch butterfly in my back yard twice, recently, and a hummingbird once, even though I don't have a hummingbird feeder. There are at least two rabbits that hop around toward the overgrown back of my back yard, and eat the dandelions. I also see three chipmunks that get on my nerves a bit, but they have as much right to live as I do, so I'm working on scent-based strategies to keep them from digging up certain spots. 

I'm also not in any way a fan of grass lawns. Look, if you want to spend hours every week out there with loud machines that make noise and fumes, and fight the never-ending and expensive battle to keep out every last weed, that's your business - although others also get to hear the noise and smell the fumes, fyi. I'm putting my effort into gradually replacing my grass with low ground-cover plants like mini-clover, which only grows four to six inches tall and also pulls nitrogen into the soil, or creeping jenny, which likes shade and also brightens up shady spots with its green-yellow color and pretty foliage. This process is definitely a lot of work for now, but over time it will lead to less work, and (in my opinion) look more interesting than big, flat expanses of grass. I am also breaking up the flat expanses with perennial flower beds and shrubs arranged so that there are curving, flowing paths through the back yard, with something different to look at from every angle. And, since I'm aware that this is not the favored type of landscaping in my neighborhood, I'm also trying to plant things to close off the yard pleasantly - not a solid wall, but a soft and nice-looking enclosure. 

Eventually. 

Have you ever heard the expression "if you want to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs?" This applies to my efforts in so many ways. I could actually spend a couple of days each week going around and dealing with weeds and volunteer trees and even nice plants that are overgrown, and then by the time I got all the way back around to the beginning, it would be almost as bad as when I started. That would be soul-crushing, and the yard wouldn't end up looking prettier. So I've been trying to alternate between types of project: plant some pretty things in a bare spot; cut the "lawn" (which could in some places be more accurately described as a "weed farm"); get a life and some rest for a couple days; work on harder and less-fun projects like cutting down small trees and (soon) pulling out the bricks from a super-ugly old patio remnant; and then reward myself with getting to plant some new things again, next time the budget allows. Oh, and sometimes I actually sit on the shady patio for a while in the morning and just enjoy being outside.

If this sounds to you like my new full-time job, you're not entirely wrong, but it's more of a part-time job. It's time-sensitive. The more I can get done in the warm months this year, the better the situation will be next year, and - more importantly - the less time I will spend fretting about what deeply unpleasant actions might come blasting out of the current government next. I'm still Doing the Thing I mentioned in my last post, but I'm taking advantage of the good weather to do this additional gardening thing outside when I can.

I'm DOING the THING. Here's What It Is and Why I Took so Long to Do It.

("A Colorful Cat #2," by Nayad Monroe, in the extra-fancy embellished version.)

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For years, I've been vaguely saying that I should post my art online somewhere, to make it available for people to buy. I've sold my art before - to complete strangers, even! That was back when I painted in acrylic, on canvases. I had several coffee shop and restaurant-level shows, where people bought paintings every time. Then I had babies, and felt a combination of less time and interest in painting, and worries about having paints with not-so-healthy pigments around where toddlers might get the notion to eat them. I also had the ambition to write fiction and get it published, and I did THAT thing repeatedly for a decade. I expect to continue writing short stories once in a while, but it won't be my main thing. I like it, sometimes a lot, but I don't get absorbed in it the way I do with art-making. 

My problem with art was that I couldn't decide on how to approach it. Return to painting? Draw on paper? Make upcycled garden ornaments from thrift-store materials? Learn how to do tile mosaics? (I still want to learn how to do tile mosaics.) Make digital art? AHA. Yes. Digital art! And I made bunches of abstract digital art a few years ago. If you scroll down a bit on my Instagram page, you can see it. But I also got involved in editing my anthologies, What Fates Impose and Not Our Kind, back around then, and I was still writing fiction.

Then I went through a big ol' creative slump for a long time, after a certain election here in the United States. You know the one. I dragged some fiction out of myself, but only a tiny bit. The thing that turned me around was participating in the Inktober challenge in October of 2017. I drew my daily ink drawing every single day of that month, and I posted each drawing online. They were in a new medium for me, alcohol marker, and I enjoyed the process. A few people commented that they'd be interested in buying some of the drawings (which were mostly creepy, Halloween-inspired images). Since they were small drawings in a casual sketchbook, I decided I should do some digital work on them and offer them as prints somehow. 

BUT HOW??? That was the final problem. I wanted to find a way to not have to produce, package, and ship things out myself. I'm willing to do that on a limited basis for friends, but I didn't want that to be a big feature of my life. So I glanced at a bunch of print-on-demand sites, and decided that I would start with just one for now: Zazzle. Since I was working on it, I started to look at other artwork of mine that I could post, and I ended up making two Zazzle shops for the very different styles of art I was posting.

As it turns out, the brightly-colored, whimsical art like the cat above is now my main focus, in my shop called "by Nayad Monroe," and I've been drawing lots of new images for it! Every time I draw one thing, I get ideas for approximately seven new things to draw, so my to-draw list is huge. The smaller selection of Inktober art is in "Nightmares by Nayad." I still like those drawings, and I may do another round of Inktober this year to add to them.

The way Zazzle works is that you can make shops for free, and you have the option to add images and text to a staggering array of product types. You can actually design a product just for yourself and buy it, but you can also offer it for sale to other people. Then, if someone else buys it, you get a royalty. It's a well-established site where you can reach people worldwide, but it also takes work to get your stuff noticed among all the other stuff. I've been reading advice and watching tutorial videos, and I think I'm making progress, but I know there's more I can (and will) do. For whatever reason, I find this type of effort more appealing than having to fulfill orders myself. Things I post now can stay on the site and have the potential to sell for as long as the site exists. I want to expand to other sites, too, but I want to get a good start on this one first.

So what I'm going to do now, since I'm here, is post links to some items I've designed, since that's recommended by Zazzle as a way to make my shop more visible. PLEASE BEAR WITH ME. I promise this blog is not about to go all selly-sell 24/7. These WILL be affiliate links, fyi. Thanks for reading this far! 

Embellished Hopped-Up Hare #1 Illustration Metal Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

A Colorful Cat #3 Illustration with Swirly Lines Canvas Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

No Ordinary Owl #2, by Nayad Monroe Acrylic Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

The Dragonfly Key, by Nayad Monroe Acrylic Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

The Reach of Light, by Nayad Monroe Acrylic Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

Be Your Own Kind of Flower, by Nayad Monroe Acrylic Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

Hopped-Up Hare #3 Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

A Colorful Cat #3 Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

The Dragonfly Key, by Nayad Monroe Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

The Reach of Light, by Nayad Monroe Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

Be Your Own Kind of Flower Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

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Note: This post contains affiliate links to products that will earn me royalty money if you buy them. I hope you will, because I worked hard on them! But no pressure. :)

I've Been Making Some Art!

"The Dragonfly Key" by Nayad Monroe

"The Reach of Light" by Nayad Monroe

Sometimes I get absorbed in making pictures, and I forget to use my words! But here are some new-ish artworks I have made lately. 

About the "-ish" part: I actually drew and painted small, somewhat different versions of both of these compositions back in 2014. Those are 6" x 6" acrylic paintings on canvas, and I'm keeping them unless someone can figure out and fork over my "make me sell" price for the originals. I'm not actually sure what that would be, but I guess I would know it when I saw it! I tried to scan them and turn them into prints, but a combination of issues -  their size, square shape, and the texture of the canvas - made the results displease me.

For these new, print-worthy versions, I re-drew the images on larger paper, with some composition changes, and scanned them, and then did a lot of digital development to the color and texture of each until I got them looking the way that I wanted them to look. I have a couple more from the original group of little paintings, so I'll probably give those a similar treatment before moving on to adding completely new compositions. I'm working on building up a selection of images before choosing some online venues where I can make them available as various products: definitely prints, but I'd like to get into some other things, like t-shirts, coffee mugs, and other nifty swag like that. I've also been creating print versions of some of my creepy black and white drawings from Inktober 2017. I think it would probably work out best to create separate shops for the different styles, though... THERE IS MUCH WORK TO BE DONE.

Spring! Cleaning! Frenzy!

(When there are no real flowers: FAKE FLOWERS)

One thing I can count on every year is that I will get to a point when I sense spring coming, and at that point, I will need to not just clean my house as if my life depends upon it, but also CHANGE THINGS AROUND and GET RID OF THINGS and GET NEW THINGS. I behave almost as if I am a biological organism acting upon seasonally-triggered instincts. I need to basically clear my schedule for a while and do this thing with every available moment. Because of that, this post is going to be short! 

In the last week, I have rearranged the furniture in four rooms, moved furniture from one room to another, moved art from place to place, and cleaned out my walk-in hall closet (which had somehow been neglected by my efforts for the last three years). I have also created a different set-up for my yarn storage, chosen some furniture items to repaint, and ordered a bunch of seed trays and seeds so that I can start growing plants to put outside after the last average frost (which will not be until MID-MAY). And? I'm not even done. I have to get back to it and accomplish as much as possible within the next few days, because another thing I can count on every year is that I will lose steam after a couple weeks of this, and go back to doing my normal things. Except for planting things outside. I expect to dive into that for the last few weeks of May, and then be over that by mid-June at the latest.

It's a system? I guess? It keeps me from being bored with my environment and letting unused things pile up.

The Art of the Selfie: Natural to Supernatural

(WARNING: This post contains many selfies of me. 

If you don't like selfies - or me - you are in the WRONG PLACE.)

Here's what's happening. About a month into my process of growing out my very short hair that I am no longer dyeing various colors, I'm already SO BORED WITH MY HAIR. So I thought I'd fix that by doing some selfies with wigs, and now here I am with a post that may be self-indulgent, but may also be helpful for anyone else who wants to level up in selfotography.

This post is not a tutorial on how to get any exact look, but it will include lots of general tips and ideas, plus information on products, devices, and apps I use. Plenty to experiment with! Also, the stuff about styling yourself is applicable to times when someone else will be taking your picture.

First of all, I take all of my pictures with my iPhone 6s, with the regular camera flipped so that I can see myself on the screen. I use some apps that are available for the iPhone, but I suspect that other types of smartphones have similar apps available. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of photography apps, and plenty of outstanding ones that are free.

So! I'll start with the relatively natural approach to selfies, for getting pictures that look like you at your best. You can obviously use your very own hair for them, but wigs are an option, too. Here's one of me with an auburn wig from Arda Wigs, in the style Vivien Classic. This is a great, shoulder-length wig I'd be comfortable wearing out in the world, and it's only $30! It arrives already styled, but you can use heat tools like a curling iron or straightener to style it differently. The top photo is completely unfiltered, but I'm wearing piles of makeup (more on that in a minute). For the second version, I used a pre-set "look" filter called Portrait, in the Snapseed app. I wanted to show you that even a perfectly good photo can be elevated to a more magical, glowy look without taking you too far from reality.

Tips for natural-looking photos:

• Get yourself some good, ideally full-spectrum, lighting. For nearly all of the photos in this post, I took the original picture in front of the one window in my house that lets in perfect daylight: nice and diffuse, but bright. You want to have enough light, but avoid harsh, direct sunlight - at least for the way I do it. There's one shot coming up where I used a full-spectrum light that's sold for helping with Seasonal Affective Disorder. The effect is the same as whitish light from outside.
• If you never wear makeup, because that's not part of your look, the lighting could be plenty for you, but you might like the effect of reducing shine on your face with some powder. If you're aiming for enhancing your prettiness, I recommend mascara and/or eyeliner, at least. Or continue on with the next level of makeup...
• Whether or not the camera adds 15 pounds, it definitely subtracts makeup. So if you look at the above "natural" pictures and think I'm hardly wearing any, what you need to know is that this look includes a layer of pore-filling primer, a thick layer of full-coverage foundation, another layer of full-coverage concealer under the eyes, translucent powder, heavy, dark eyeshadow, fairly dramatic false eyelashes, and a couple of layers of mascara on both my real and false eyelashes, plus lipstick and some eyebrow pencil. It actually looks kind of gross if you see it in person. So the guideline is that if you usually wear makeup to go out, try tripling the coverage for your selfie. 

Ready to go for more glam?

In the green-hair photos, I'm wearing the Candy-Striper style from Arda Wigs, in the color blend "Dryad." It's long, with a blend of three colors, great quality, and only $35! I LOVE THIS STORE. (I should mention that I do not have any connection to the company - I just like it.) I'm wearing even darker eye makeup in these - literally black eyeshadow all over the lids, black liquid eyeliner on the upper lids, false eyelashes of course. Oh, and on the bottom, I have white waterproof eyeliner on the waterline, which is the name for the bit of skin above the lower eyelashes. Using white or skin-toned eyeliner there makes your eyes look bigger and brighter. I think I also had some shimmery green eyeshadow beneath the lower lashes. Dark eyeliner under the eyes looks too harsh on me.

The bottom two photos in this set look filtered, but they are not! I just took advantage of how the camera responded to the light as I moved around in front of the window. That brings me to another few tips:

• Take lots and lots of photos, and pick the best ones to use.
• Move around and try different angles. If you have age-related developments happening around your eyes like I do (thinning and sagging skin, dark circles, puffiness, wrinkles), shadows can be a problem. It's easier to control that problem if you're open to holding your head at different angles, and/or let your hair hang down over one eye so you only have to manage the look of one eye instead of two!
• Make sure you crop your photos to bring the focus in to your face, and eliminate distractions from the background as much as possible.

On to creative filters!

In these photos, I'm wearing the Amber Classic style in Lavender. Each of the photos has gone through at least one filter, and this post is getting long already, so I think I'll have to take any discussion of filtering to another post. But this gives you a look at just a tiny bit of the range you can get from iPhone photo editing apps. My favorites, used in all of these, are Snapseed, Mextures, Union, and ImageBlender, 

And now for the supernatural!

Look how creative you can be! These looks are not even that extreme (check Instagram and Pinterest under "Fantasy Makeup" and "Cosplay," if you have doubts). I used bolder colors, face gem stickers, and artificial flowers, plus a more lengthy, artistic filtering process for the mermaid one. The apps I use let me layer photos and erase bits of the foreground image to let the background through, or change the opacity of the foreground for a more transparent effect, or use other image-blending techniques to make colors brighter, more subdued, higher- or lower-contrast, or just about anything else I can think of.

I hope this post is giving you ideas about how to rock your next selfie! And I hope you have an excellent day.

Open Endings in Fiction: Terrible, or THE WORST?

(A sunset view from my house)

Nayad: Overly Dramatic, or INCORRIGIBLE?

There are good examples of open-ended stories. I'm sure I could definitely think of some. They're probably all by Kelly Link, now that I think about it. I do love a Kelly Link story.

However, I'm not a fan of completely open-ended fiction. Let me back up and explain what the hell I'm talking about.

What do I mean when I'm ranting about a story with a completely open ending? I mean a story where it's left to the reader to figure out the meaning of what just happened, and the clues given could be interpreted in a number of ways. It could be written as a series of vague hints and suggestions, or there's conflicting or missing information, or there may be an unreliable narrator. The story goes along, full of fascinating possibilities, and then leaves all the possibilities equally possible. 

The reason I'm writing about this is that I just finished reading The Grip of It, by Jac Jemc, It's a haunted house story. A young couple gets a suspiciously amazing deal on a beautiful Victorian house with some quirky features - lots of hidden compartments and passages - and then the weird stuff starts. I love the weird stuff. The weird stuff is not the problem. It's just that, in this book, the weird stuff is so abundant, and so escalating, that I could never develop an opinion about what's really going on. What I want is for the author to know what's going on, and to write a book full of weird stuff that allows me to guess what's going on. And if the author would be so kind as to set up two or three equally plausible ways to interpret the story, that would be the best thing. A not-completely open-ended story: one that allows for forming opinions that make sense, but then doesn't tell you which interpretation is the right one. 

To be fair, that's probably the hardest kind of book to write, so I will support you in your opinion that I am demanding and difficult. And I still think you should read The Grip of It, because I like the prose, and the possibilities. It starts very well, and you may very well have the kind of imagination that would appreciate being handed no answers but dozens of questions. It will give you lots to think about!

Frugal February

(The Tabitha of Judgment says I need to save my pennies! 

Kitty wants a new scratching post.)

Okay, I'm not broke, but... It's been a spendy few months. There was Christmas, and then new tires for my car, and then a trip that I didn't strictly need to take, and then property taxes, and then the quarterly water/sewer bill here in my town where the water apparently is MADE OF GOLD. I budgeted for these things, but this month still feels like a good time to let the majority of my dollars have a little staycation in the bank.

If there's one thing I know about how to deal with money, it's that having a budget is the most helpful thing. Here's the basic way to make one. If you have a regular monthly income, you figure out how much you actually must spend each month, in your current situation: bills, housing payments, etc. You make note of the expenses that are quarterly, annually, or whatever, so that you can divide them up and set aside an appropriate percentage of those each month, to be prepared for them in advance. Then you figure out what to do with what's left over, if anything is left over. Ideally, some of that goes to savings. If nothing is ever left over, that's the time to start thinking about how to change your current situation, but that's a topic for another post.

For me (and most Americans who are not absolutely broke), the most flexible category of required spending is groceries. You have to eat, but there may be ways to do it more cheaply than usual. Many people buy more drinks and snacks than they have to, or don't comparison-shop as hard as they could. There's nothing wrong with that, if you have money for it and that's what you want to do. However, in times when you're struggling with money, or you want to save up for something, this is a good category to examine for those areas where you can cut things out. 

Not everyone can do this, but I have enough of a grocery budget that if I find something on sale - if it's a thing I always use and it won't get wasted - I'll buy extras of it to stock up. I have a small extra freezer that doesn't jack up my energy bill, so I can keep things like extra bread, butter, shredded cheese, and much, much more. When I cook, I often make two batches of the same thing at once and stick the extra in the freezer, which saves time later. I do this enough that, sometimes, I can do a thing called "shelf cooking" for a month, mostly using the stocked-up food, and spending $25 or less each week to get produce, milk, and anything else that's better to get when it's fresh. In the long run, it's less expensive to do things this way because I'm getting better prices on a lot of the ingredients; when I cook double batches that's only one time that I fire up the oven or stove, instead of two, which I think more than offsets whatever extra I'm spending on running the freezer. 

Anyway, that's what I'm doing this February! I have other frugality-boosting methods I may post about this month, too. What are some of your money-saving methods?