dear internet,
i am a ceo and now own my own company.
it’s true. i even have my own EIN and some fool gave me a business credit card.
i own 100% of a company which is (currently) worth $0. but that’s all about to change.
skaldic press, llc came into existence in the spring of 2014 when i started planning my year long writing sabbatical. i needed a business front for all of my writing activities and a way to track expenses related to research and other necessities. as most of you know, however, the last few months of 2014 have been unbelievably hellish and the concept was shelved.
now that I’m better equipped emotionally and rationally to handle all of this change, it was time to kick start skaldic press, llc back into existence AND i needed a way to make an income.
what exactly will skaldic press, llc be publishing?
easy.
me.
on a more specific scale, skaldic press, llc current projects on the table are the eBook front which will be volumes my online diary entries from the late ’90s and early ’00s bundled in eBook format, which i will be selling on amazon and ibook. the entries will always remain free on the website.
there is also a literary ‘zine, so glad is my heart. which i’ll be launching in the spring. plus i have a few other projects that will be coming to fruition in the next couple of months.
i’m pretty fucking excited, let me tell you, about this whole endeavor.
skaldic press social media presence is pretty bare bones at the moment, but you can follow us at:
will this be hard? yes.
will this be a eating bon-bons money maker? probably not.
but i’ve got IDEAS and a burning passion to make this succeed. i have no interest in turning this some sort of MLM with videos, podcasts, and other gewgaws; rather i want to just quietly publish my stuff while i write my books.
wish me luck.
xoxo,
lisa
Category: Writing
call for submissions: so glad is my heart
Dear Internet,
history
a million and half years ago (1999), a bunch of friends and i got together and put together a little ‘zine called called tripping on stars. the premise was simple: 500 words, creative fiction or not, specifically detailing the little moments in our lives that we often overlook. it was a the little ‘zine that could but sadly, did not. publication ceased after the first month. go here to get a taste of the type of content we were looking for
present
i like getting daily stories in my inbox, but the content and size tend to overwhelm me. some publishers will publish just about anything, in any size, and i end up deleting more than i read. i want bite sized pieces to cleanse my palette. stories or thoughts that provoke, challenge, entice, beguile, and speak to me. i didn’t care if it was something as mundane as the 30 seconds it takes to put on your socks in the morning.
sometimes i look at people and wondering what they are or doing a that exact moment in their lives. we all like the idea of random slices of interesting stuff in our lives, that are seemingly forgotten.
i want little snippets, either made up or real, about life.
the internet has come a long way in 15 years. it was time to bring back my little ‘zine.
so welcome. welcome. have a look around. we publish monday through friday. you can sign up to have the stories sent you via email, rss, tumblr, twitter, or facebook.
you can also submit an image or a story (and we’ll love you for it even more).
—
99% of the above is from the about page of my new ‘zine, so glad is my heart. When putting the old content from the lisa chronicles back online, I stumbled upon the old site that was long buried in my drive and discovered the gems that were there. some of the work was quite good and it was a shame that it had fallen to the wayside. i knew it was time to resurrect the ‘zine but with a new name. like magic, so glad is my heart was born.
i’m chuffed as chips as I’ve started reaching out to some talented writers to contribute and so far, everyone is on board. Now it’s time to reach to do a public call to get even more people participating! I hope to begin publishing sometime in september february 2015.
so glad is my heart
- about
- submission guidelines
- contact
xoxo,
lisa
P.S. the site has most of the infrastructure up, but there is a still tires to be kicked and what not. Please excuse the mess.
this day in lisa-universe:
WIP: July writing schedule summary / August writing goals
Dear Internet,
I’ve been up at Throbbing Cabin since Wednesday with some of my favorite ladies for a weekend retreat, which is turning out fabulously. There has been beach time, s’mores time, lots of reading and down time, not getting out of our jimjams time, and lots and lots of drinking time. Tomorrow we are going to photograph Val walking on water for GISWSHES before heading back to our respective households. It’s been a lovely break from the world and I’m feeling recharged and maybe, just maybe, reborn.
True to my promise, here is this months writing roundup.
Italicized is the original list. Regular text is add-ons. Bold is completion and totals.
Projects for July:
- Launch lisarabey.com finally – Completed July 8
- TheHusband got the website up and running pretty early on in the month, so yay! I spent some time adding more back content and moving the Ephemera and other fiction-y sections over to lisarabey.com. There are a few bits and pieces that still need to be done, but the biggest chunk of the project is completed.
- Plow through current library loans and ARCs from NetGalley and get reviews written
- Was not as productive on this as I had hoped, but it is the beginning of August and I’ve already surpassed last year’s totals on books read, so I’m calling this a win.
- Collate notes on the Edwardian mystery, continue with research, and get most of the structure sorted
- Words written: 2500
- I knocked out the first draft of the first chapter while at my retreat a week ago and started chapter two, but then LIFE happened and things have kind of stalled. I will be kickstarting this this week.
- Start fleshing out 45th parallel story
- Took a research trip up to The Headlands International Dark Sky Park.
- Finish or shelve in-progress short stories and submit completed ones
- Did not accomplish. Will work on next month
- Get Vol 1 of secret Kindle project completed and online
- This is turning out into a bigger project than I had originally envisioned. About the 1/4 of the way through and that’s already at 50 pages in the proper Kindle formatting. As I started, I realized that I was missing a lot of content to be added to the project, thus I went back and started on the back fill again. Going to shoot for end of August to have most of Vol 1 completed and edited.
- Continue note carding ideas / quotes / etc for future projects
- My note card box grows!
- Get LLC sorted out – Completed July 25
- LLC was finalized and I still need to do an entry on that process. I have secured a CPA; business checking and savings accounts opened, business credit card obtained, receipts kept, and domain has been purchased and is currently pointing to lisarabey.com. There are some minor work to be done, but the process is complete!
- Query/submit at least half a dozen pieces
- Two completed on July 11
- Status: Both rejected, boo.
- Blog writing count for July
- Words written: 22,097
- Number of posts: 36
August projects:
- Plow through current library loans and ARCs from NetGalley and get reviews written
- Collate notes on the Edwardian mystery, continue with research, and get most of the structure sorted
- Collate notes on the 45th parallel project and continue with research
- Research (aka read) stream of consciousness novels
- Finish or shelve in-progress short stories and submit completed ones; submit at least one a week
- Get most of Vol 1 of secret Kindle project formatted and edited
- Continue note carding ideas / quotes / etc for future projects
- Query/submit non-fiction pieces
- Blog writing count for July
xoxo,
Lisa
This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2012, 2012, 2012, 2012, 2008, 1998
gilded tongues and pretty words
Dear Internet,
It’s been a hellauva week.
There are two things I cannot discuss just yet, but many of you are aware of at least one of them. So let us trip up instead on good news instead of navel gazing on the bad.
Earlier this week, I posted on various social spheres that a present arrived on my doorstep, courtesy of TheBassist:
And when I mentioned in the posting the book took 8 years to get to me, questions were raised about why and how. It’s simple: TheBassist and I dated. We broke up. He had gotten the book signed for me at some point. The book had been lost, and then refound. So against his promise to never get in touch with me again, he did reach out because a promise made to me superseded a promise made to himself.
(Yes, the same person I mentioned almost a year ago about finding his coded messages to me on various Internet places and he clarified as to why he did it. The promise he made to himself to never get in touch was because he knew he had hurt me so badly, he didn’t think anything he could ever say would ever help ease the hurt of what he did.)
Complicated? Absolutely. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
After our stilted feeling out dance around each other, we became Facebook friends, laid down some boundaries, and started to get reaquainted with the other. In a very strange way, it is not like eight years has passed between us as conversation picked as if we had only spoken last week. You have to understand when we were dating, we used to text, talk, and email the other all day long. Literally, from the time we woke up to the time we went to bed.
(TheHusband and I have a similar relationship, which is one of the reasons why I married him.)
Really, what is kind of awesome about this new forged friendship between TheBassist and I is that he’s given me carte blanche on getting the answers about what happened between us, what has happened to him, and what is going to happen to his future. It’s intoxicating and overwhelming at the same time.
It is a heady power, one I will not use for ill will either.
(Plus he states on the reasoning on why we broke up, he says in honesty yet it will come out sounding cliched, it really was him and not me.)
Last year, I said
- He splintered my heart the first time that when he came sniffing around the second time, about six months after our first tussle, I showed him my partially fixed heart which he took a sledgehammer to. Again.
- While the connection between us when we were together was insane, he routinely lied to me on just about everything
- I could never trust him again, even in a platonic manner
1 is absolutely true. 2, he clarified and filled in the missing details, which were easily verifiable. So a lot of his actions are much clearer now on what happened and why, so it was not so much as lying as things were withheld. 3, perhaps is not wholly true because unlike some people from my past, I don’t feel like he’s creeping on me for the sake of creeping nor do I feel he has ulterior motives. (We’re both happily partnered up and I don’t think I would ever leave TheHusband for even Alexander Skarsgard. Maybeee James McAvoy.)
In my long storied history, TheBassist is one of my top five exes. And I’m really thrilled we were able to get closure on a lot of things that happened in the past, which apparently has freed up some unintentional emotional baggage because TheHusband said I’ve been really happy these last few days. (But I think the happiness has more to do we had really good shawarma for dinner, which precluded to me making happy noises while we ate.)
(When I broke this all down for my therapist last week, Dr. P. said this was not going to end well. When I asked why, Dr. P. seemed to be of the mindset that men and women can’t be friends once they have a romantic relationship because doing so brings up all the old feelings which can only lead to no good. I vehemently disagree with this because I am still in contact with many of my exes, the bad and the good, and some I’m quite close to. Just because we’ve seen each other naked and inserted things into orifices does not eradicate the bond we shared long after the romance was over.)
Time to switch gears and talk about a project I’ve been working on for the last few days as part of my writing schedule for July which is the get Vol 1 of secret Kindle project completed and online. The purpose of this project was to test out the ease and flexibility of selling stories via Amazon’s Kindle publishing platform. I don’t wholly expect to make millions off this, but it’s nice to figure out a new tech and make it work for me.
This project is turning out to be much bigger than I planned. I was originally anticipating that about a years worth of content would roughly translate into 200 pages after being formatted for the Kindle, but I’m four months in and already at 50 pages with the formating. So this may turn out to be one big, glorious mess. Hooray!
As part of the project also coincides with getting more of my old content on the websites, I’ve spent the last two days curating, uploading, mildly editing, and publishing stuff from the mid-late 90s and up to mid-00s. All of the existing prose pieces that used to reside here at EPbaB were moved over to my author site. About 50% of what’s on that page is “new.”
If you follow the weekly round up I do every Saturday, I typically list out these “new” entries that I put up for that week, but I often don’t give them summaries. I was pretty pleased with few of the pieces I found today, and was passing them around various social spheres, so here they are:
- sassy skirt seeks alliterative ally
This is my personal ad I put on match.com circa 2006. I’m pretty sure if I were single today and looking for fresh meat, I’d use this same ad with some minor edits. - rock*star
I wrote this piece in my undergrad for a creative writing class and I’m pretty proud of it. I blend together The Afghan Whigs lyrics, the time before a concert begins, and finding my high school love after nearly a decade. - popular suicide
I wrote this in 2004, documenting my 1989 suicide attempt and the advice my mother gave me after it happened. - Tripping on Stars
This was a lit ‘zine project some of my friend and I did in the summer of 1999 that lasted for an entire month! The few pieces I created for the project are not half bad.
Word to the wise: If you do decide to go down the Lisa of yore, be prepared for lots of angst, self-loathing, frank discussions about sex, and more.
xoxo,
Lisa
notes for cabinet particulier, part iv: draft of first chapter completed
Dear Internet,
It’s about 8:30PM and I’m sitting on the front deck, still in my jim jams from the night before. This is the second time today I have stepped foot out of the cabin, the first being this morning when after I woke and received a phone call from the Cedar postmaster telling me the post carrier had flagged where we can put our new mailbox and I had walked out to check to verify the location. After that, my butt was parked either at the island in the kitchen or in the chaise (so very chic) writing and researching.
My book takes place in 1907 London that revolves around an aging actress who is not terribly good but she is what matters most and that is she’s one of the most beautiful women of her age. I’m styling her looks after the famed American silent film actress from the same era, Maude Fealy.
As my character is an Edwardian London stage actress, I spent some time today gathering moar research on the theaters of the era and discovered a gem of a site that also had a handy Google map of theaters from the era, including play programs, photos, and loads more.
I also dipped into cosmetics and etiquette of the era, finding a boon of a book entitled Every Woman’s Encyclopedia, from 1910, which ran into a hefty 8 volumes and 6000 page. The book is intense. Here is a gem on how Edwardian lady should keep her eyes more becoming:
Yes, let us not weary our poor optic nerves, shall we ladies?
I had the idea of how I wanted the book to open and numerous first lines had already appeared, so instead of working out a vague outline of where I wanted the book to go, I just sat down and wrote instead. Several hours later, I had 2100 words in a pretty good first chapter under my belt with ideas of where I was going.
Tomorrow I was to go kayaking with Emili, but I just texted her to beg off since I’m in the zone and needed to continue plowing through with my work. Kristin is coming up tomorrow evening for the weekend and we’ll be busy and I’m heading back to Grand Rapids on Sunday (can’t miss my Sunday evening telly). Next week is going to be busy as John is coming into town on Tuesday evening to stay at Throbbing Manor and we are heading to the Code4Lib Midwest conference on Wednesday/Thursday. Since many of my favorite people are going to be at the conference as well, there will be lots of socializing. Friday I head to Mt. P to hang with Kristin for the weekend and we’re meeting up with some of our cmmrb pals and then it’s back to the grind on Monday when I head back to the cabin for MOAR writing for a week and then the cmmrb weekend will be here and then it will be August.
Jesus fucking Christ. In the four days I’ve been up here, between blog posts, writing the chapter, and research I’ve cranked out 10,000 words. I am a mutherfucking machine!
On that note, I’m getting off the laptop and calling it an early night. I’m going to brush the fuzz off my teeth, wash my filthy body, and make a bowl of popcorn. Yes, yes I did indeed bring my beloved hot air popper to the cabin with me. I’m then going to curl up around my ipad and watch Downton Abbey, for you know, research.
xoxo,
Lisa
Drunk Cabin Time
Dear Internet,
I decided to get drunk last night – because that is what writers do! They get drink and let it all fucking go and in that aspect of my career, I am sadly far, far behind.
TheHusband and I have a pretty well stocked bar at Throbbing Manor and we never, ever partake. Like ever. There are loads of reason for this, ranging from alcoholism in our individual family histories to my bipolar. Neither of us have cultivated a taste for alcohol “just because” we like the taste, it was always about getting drunk; this attitude ruled much of our 20s.
But I’m 42 now. Adult. Need to step up the game. Get serious about letting go and learning how to handle my alcohol much more responsibly than I did back then. That’s why I made sure to bring up some delights from home for my writing retreat.
So it was entirely in the realms of the possible I start mixing myself white russians while waiting for the 42 year old stove take 1023984102938 minutes to boil some goddamn pasta for my dinner.
(TheDrunk informed me last night via Facebook I made the amateur mistake of carbing up before drinking. One should only do that if they are planning on a day long binge, like beer fests.)
During all of this, I decided I really needed to hear Aphex Twin. Which turned into me mixing a 33 song set, while regaling people on the Internets of g-d nearly every song, lyric, and dance moves coupled with stories behind songs I was choosing. I even started ranting about TheEx for a bit with the thought if I ever saw him again, six years on now, I’d rip his testicles off and shove them down his throat.
I’ve totally grown up and gotten over my anger — I didn’t use the word “balls.”
[iframe src=”https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:user:quangola:playlist:32vfc6WvlldQnJqxU6Ze1N” width=”300″ height=”380″ frameborder=”0″ allowtransparency=”true”]
You will note Aphex Twin is not anywhere on the list.
I spent a lot of time “singing” and “dancing” around the cabin, with the blinds wide open on the and not giving two fucks. And I’m using quotes here because shit starts moving when in places you don’t expect when one dances. So I decided to tell the world that, and then this happened.
I sort of got clued in around 2AM that I was not the least bit tired, I was ready for yet another glass of my magic potion, and I could continue mixing my love song to the 90s tape for a few more hours.
So of course I was probably manic. Durr.
To wind the night down, I decided to make a Vine to prove the darkness of the night and in the background, you can hear the BZZZZZZZ of the cherry orchard equipment running at 2 goddamn in the AM. They are fertilizing and or picking cherries, according TheHusband.
(Sorry, the Vine autostarts!)
[iframe class=”vine-embed” src=”https://vine.co/v/MQ1udVrD3pT/embed/postcard” width=”600″ height=”600″ frameborder=”0″]
Hilarity: I had to google how to use Vine because I am old and forgetful.
There is something infinitely freeing about just letting it all the fuck go. Not getting sloppy drunk, or getting maudlin drunk (though that was close to happen there for a hot second, but I pulled out of it).
I woke up this morning with nary a trace of a hung over, while it was probably the carbs and the gallons of water I drunk before bed, I’m giving thanks to my Scottish ancestry for stepping up like woah, lassie.
Time for tea.
xoxo,
Lisa
notes for cabinet particulier, part iii: sorting the research
Dear Internet,
As planned, I got up early and headed into Traverse City to get Jeeves’ tires attended to. I called the local BMW dealership and was told, despite confirmation from MINI Grand Rapids and the TC BMW receptionist, they do NOT service MINIs. His suggestion? Take my car to MINI Grand Rapids. When I pointed out a 160 mile trek on possibly bad tires was not a wise move, he suggested I head to Discount Tire (as I had originally was leaning towards) and also gave me the name of a local TC shop that specialized in MINIs and other foreign cars.
Once you get off of M-72 and start heading into Cedar and then further on to Throbbing Cabin is some of the best driving roads around, barring M-22 of course. I love this part of the drive when we come up here as this is the kind of roads where Jeeves thrives and begs to be driven on. There is a stretch of about five miles after you leave Cedar that is hairpin straight and goes up some minor hills; when you hit the apex of each hill, you can see Lake Michigan beckoning in the distance.
Uncertain to the status of the my tires, I drove ever so slowly down to TC and who am I kidding here? I was probably white knuckling it the entire way, waiting for the supposedly bad tire to just fall off and planning in my head how I was going to handle each and every bad scenario that landed in my brain.
Discount Tire was busy for 10AM on a Wednesday morning — me and all the OAPs hanging out getting our tires issues sorted. The tires are fine and the TPMS is all normalized (again). Rationally, I knew this was going to be true, but anxiety eats away at all rationality. I spent time on the deck last night staring at Jeeves as if he was a monster because I could not stop thinking of worse case scenarios of having massive car issue 160 miles from home. THIS! Despite having insurance, an incredible maintenance and warranty plan, tow truck numbers programmed in my phone, and local numbers (now) for car repair, I could not let it go until the nice man at Discount Tire told me everything was going to be fine.
I got back to the cabin several hours later than intended as I ran a few errands since I was out and about. After having lunch, I started getting settled into doing research for the book around 4PM and here it is four hours later and fuck man, I am overwhelmed.
On Monday night I started culling all the random tidbits I had been collecting for the last 18 months and began to import them into Scrivener. I broke each thing down to its own category for easier sorting and updated the research page for the project in the process.
Today’s work was much of the same as I found more locales where I had stored bits and bobs. I think in my head I always fancied myself to keep things neat and simple, but apparently I keep trying to find the best product for everything, test it out, and ultimately forget it and all the content I stored there. Today the culprit was Pinboard, which while it seems to prove useful for many, I need visualization to organize.
(Still sitting on Pinboard is a good chunk of research I found for my viking and medieval lady boners which still needs to be imported over to their respective Scrivener projects. Marginalia for the win!)
Granted Scrivener has a learning curve, but once you get in the groove it starts to really make sense. Best thing I’ve ever done? Put all my notes, ideas, and everything into a single Scrivener project.
I’ve also been reading contemporary stories while I’m up here based in the Edwardian era – of which there is surprisingly not many. I suspected with the rise of Downton Abbey that there would have been a huge influx of lit based in the Edwardian era, but no, there really isn’t. I know of less than half a dozen mystery series based in that era and handful of fiction books written in the last five years but that’s shockingly about it. Since I’m having a hard time finding contemporary books of that era, I’m going to create a bibliography over on my author site for read alikes. Because librarian, yolo.
I’m also collecting titles of works written in the era to read to get a better sense of the period. so watch it Lawrence, Forster, Galsworthy, and the whole lot of you. I am on to you. And lucky me, most of their work is available in the open domain.
(I finally finished Maugham’s Cakes & Ale, though written in 1930 much of the book takes place in the Edwardian era. Holy fuck, do I hate this book. It was just so awful for a large list of reasons I will be discussing later.)
Additionally, there is only a handful of sites dedicated to the Edwardian era and some of them are dubious in nature while others tuck that period in as very-late Victorian without giving the period its proper due. I was distressed to find that one of the sites that I had considered, due to the breadth of research and writing, to be a fabulous resource was passing on debunked knowledge as fact.
Case in point: I am supremely disappointed to discover Edwardian women did NOT pierce their nipples to make them more pert. This is repeated over and over again in many legitimate sites but apparently there is no reference other than to a correspondence page in the back of a publication from 1899 that was more of fetishism than actual fact.
I have a draft started for a blog post quaintly entitled, Who the fuck are the Edwardians and why should we care?, which I hope to write tomorrow. Because we should care, dammit.
The mosquitos are eating me alive out here and it grows late. My treat for getting work done will be a vegan white russian, dinner, and a not so terrible book.
xoxo,
Lisa
the gods ruffled their skirts
Dear Internet,
It’s late and I’ve just come back inside after hanging out on the front deck for a bit. It’s dark out; the kind of dark that is so deep and black, even the pin pricks made by the stars seem like interlopers to the night.
The kind of night made for Jason Voorhees.
(Last night was even spookier. The master bedroom is the in the loft of the cabin, I had the windows open and heard every movement by every beast in the area.)
I keep processing how geographically isolated I am right now. The nearest town is six miles down a straight road (or six miles in the other direction over a curvy road that hugs Lake Michigan) and while I have neighbors across the road who have lights on at their place, it could be for security rather than notification someone is at home. The only sounds I’ve heard all evening are the ticking of the clock in the main room of the cabin, the water heater and fridge kicking on and off, and the accordion sound of the plastic bag hung around the internal open exit of the metal chimney that used to connect to a gas stove.
(We discovered while the chimney is screened and capped outside, moths, rain, and other tiny creatures were still getting inside so TheHusband mcguyvered the bag to catch the detritus from the outside world. It works, but the downside is the bag moves when the wind moves so it blooms and closes with each movement. It’s alternately creepy to hear but also strangely soothing at the same time.)
I was feeling exhausted after my long day yesterday and put myself into bed at 8PM, with the laptop in tow. I started doing research for my book and when I eventually took a break, it was nearing 1AM. I took melatonin for the first time as I needed to get some relief to sleep without taking Klonopin, which when taken for consecutive periods, makes me feel drugged the following day. The melatonin worked as I was out within 10 minutes.
It worked so well, I didn’t wake up until nearly 11:30AM, 9.5 hours later.
I planned my day around having dinner with my brother this evening, since I did not know how long that was going to take and I wanted to make sure I got a lot of work done before we went out.
That did not work out as well as I had hoped.
I was planning on doing more research and start working on the structure of the book when I realised tomorrow was the 16th anniversary of my online journal and I had planned on writing something to celebrate. The draft had been sitting for months as a reminder and I figured it would only take me a few hours to get it written, polished, and formatted and then I could continue with the rest of my plans.
I, regrettably, was horribly off on my time management.
I had the piece half done before my brother and his coworker showed up around 3PM and they were itching to have an early dinner. As the restaurant we were going to didn’t open until 4PM, that meant drinks until it was time to leave. On our way to the restaurant, the TPS was showing my front right tire was low on air, which was odd because I just had the tires checked on Monday before heading out of town.
After dinner, we drove to the village gas station/grocery store/pizza place/deli/butcher/movie rental place to check the pressure and all of the tires were registering at the right PSI. After picking up a few staples at the gas station/grocery store/pizza place/deli/butcher/movie rental place, I headed back to the cabin, parked, and read the owners manual to figure out what the fuck was going on. Apparently when the pressure of the tires is changed (and in this case, my tires were over inflated to 39 PSI instead of regulated 32 PSI), the TPS needs to be reset, which didn’t happen. I reset the TPS and the warning gauge finally cleared. However, my brother noted when following me into the village, my left rear driver’s tire was rotating at an odd angle, meaning it wasn’t rolling up and down but rather it looked like it was rolling more at an angle.
(The tire place I got my tires from has a store in Traverse City, so I’m going to be heading there tomorrow morning to have a check. If there is something majorly wrong, while there is no MINI dealer in the area there is a BMW one, so I should be fine.)
By the time I was done fucking with my car and getting back into the groove, it was coming on 6PM. I figured I had a good six more hours to work tonight, with maybe one MAYBE two hours geared towards finishing the anniversary piece.
That piece was finished at 10:30PM and came in at 2300 words. Then it was a break to sit outside for a bit, listen to the gods ruffle their skirts, and here we are.
Tomorrow I’m going to buckle down and start making progress on my large writing ToDo list. Right now the goal is to get up fairly early, get into town to have the tire looked at and dealt with and be back at the cabin no later than noon. Thursday, sans car issues, will be more of the same of writing. Friday I’m going kayaking with Emili, and Kristin is coming out to have bro time on Friday evening. On Saturday evening, Kristin and I are going to head up to the dark sky park to watch the stars with my telescope and camp out for the night. Sunday we head back to the cabin, and then we head to our respective homes.
xoxo,
Lisa
writerly influence
Dear Internet,
It has been a long day.
It’s not even 8PM and I’m ready to call it a night.
My day worked out something like this:
- Up at 7:15A
- Finish packing, shower
- Run first batch of errands (four stops including a drive through breakfast)
- Shrink at 10:30A
- Run second batch of errands (three stops)
- Back home around 12:30P, bathroom, load car
- Run third batch of errands (two stops)
- Drive ~3 hours to Throbbing Cabin, arrive about 4PM
- Unpack car, get cabin open, unpack packing
- Dinner
- More unpacking
- Prep breakfast for tomorrow
And now I’ve gotten ready for bed.
Tomorrow is going to be cold, rainy, and a high of 59F, which means my plans for beaching and other outdoor activities has been curtailed. It may mean I lay in bed reading all day and then getting to work on the reason why I’m up here: to write.
Speaking of which, just found out one of the pieces I submitted for publication has been rejected. I’ve got another pitch floating out there that has a definite timeline, ergo if I don’t hear from them within a set time limit, they thank me for their consideration and please try again at another time.
[iframe src=”//giphy.com/embed/sXv0vaA4331Ti” width=”600″ height=”312″ frameBorder=”0″ webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen]
It’s strange.
I was worried once I got my first official rejection, I would say, “Fuck you!” and give up but that didn’t quite happen. Sure, I’m upset but I don’t feel defeated.
I’m still processing how this all works.
xoxo,
Lisa
P.S. Consolation: Eating a frozen whoopie pie as big as my head.
This Day in Lisa-Universe:
TheHusband came in and told me how much he appreciated me and is encouraging of my work. I am noting this as I am naturally suspicious.
Dear Internet,
In our household, neither TheHusband nor myself are one for blowing smoke up each other’s arses. Thus when he showed up in my office this morning to tell me how much he appreciates everything I do and asked how he could be more encouraging of my work, I was naturally suspicious.
TheHusband is a snugglesaurus par excellence, but expressing himself verbally is not his forte. Hence my suspicion when the outpouring comes because it is so unexpected that I am inclined to narrow my eyes a little and start probing him with questions.
When you think about it, I’m the one being the jerk here when he’s the one wearing his heart on his basketball shorts.
(And he is the only person alive who is allowed to call me “Pookie Bear” without irony or fear of losing an appendage.)
It has been documented we have a very complicated mating ritual.
««««»»»»
My brain is on fire. It is spinning so fast, I feel at any moment it is going to whiz out of my skull and splat against the wall.
Mania has beset me this week, which is why I’ve been negligent on the daily walks. When it gets to the point where I need to start taking Klonopin to bring me down to normal human speed, even a half dose in the middle of the day, on a near daily basis, productivity slows down to a crawl. If I take Klonopin more than a couple of days in a row, even if my head is buzzing a million miles an hour, I physically feel exhausted and barely able to function.
It becomes a delicate balance of what can I accomplish before needing to take the drugs so I can stop being in mental pain.
««««»»»»
This week was filled with Adult Responsibilities aka I had to wear pants and leave the house. I met with our new CPA on Wednesday and my lawyer on Thursday, both for the reason of completing a LLC on Pookie Bear Industries (not really the name though TheHusband was championing for it).
Why the LLC? Well, a couple of reasons with the main one being as that I’m in the process of lining up some freelance work, I need to be able to write off expenses related to the freelancing. I’m also planning on doing some self-publishing work that if I have a LLC, it will just look better professionally.
(There a metric fuck ton of homework that I need to do for both the CPA and the lawyer, so I’m trying to squeak that out when my head is not inflamed. Sometimes being an adult is hard.)
««««»»»»
I knew going into this I would not be writing every single day, at least not on a single project everyday, and I did know I needed to square out space for household activities to allow me to write uninterrupted. When I’m at home, I feel inclined to do all the domestic work needed and letting that overrun when I should be doing something related to this new adventure. But as I start to get a feel for my schedule and tackling much needed domestic things and Adult Responsibilities, it often comes to early evening before I even have that space to write. Coupled with the mania as of late, it’s all been a well managed chaos.
I will say I’m pretty pleased that even with how my brain is feeling, I set out a small goal todos every day and get those done without too much pain or stress. I’ve started documenting every single thing I’ve done for the day, no matter how minute, in DayOne so I can have better accountability and will making writing up my monthly summary easier.
Monday I’m heading up to Throbbing Cabin solo to work for a week without interruption. The goal is to get the bulk of the work I’ve outlined a few days ago started and in some sort of decent shape. This weekend will be spent doing work on the back end of the work. Without having a snugglesaurus TheHusband around or domesticity to tempt me out of my working lair, I will be able to buckle down and zone out in my worlds.
The kind of day I’m structuring will float something like this: Wake up, take a hike around the area (hence the daily walks will resume), get some writing done. Eat something. Get some more writing done. Eat some more. Do a bit of reading. Hang out at the beach with my telescope. Sleep.
If that does work, I am hoping to be travelling up to Throbbing Cabin as much as I can solo until the snows fall. And maybe, if TheHusband is very good, he can come visit.
xoxo,
Lisa