From my desk to yours …
Happy Monday! We woke up to a skiff of snow here this morning, so my daffodils have now been snowed on twice, but they seem to be thriving otherwise. I’m still waiting for the tulips to open, hopefully this week if it stays sunny!
This last week has been a bit of an adventure in learning how to be gentle with myself. I keep forgetting that I’m sick, so I keep trying to do things, and then being exhausted afterwards, but I am so much better today than I was even last Monday. We’ve both tested negative, and so now it’s just the wait for our bodies to clear out the last of the virus. I’m still coughing occasionally, and still sound like I’m ill, but that’s about it.
I’ve done a lot of having naps with the cat this week, which has been restorative in a huge way. He’s warm and soft and purrs even when he’s sleeping, and seems to really enjoy just sprawling out on top of either of us when the opportunity arises. We bought him in in November of last year, after he spent the bulk of the previous several months living under my partner’s mom’s porch, just up the road from us here, and he’s adapted quite well to being an inside only cat.
We think he’s about a year old now, and is my very good boy. Max can absolutely be a pest, and he has a tendency to be a little bite-y as well as swiping at our ankles when he’s in a playful mood and we’re not being sufficiently engaging, but it’s so nice to have a cat again. Nothing better than waking up with a mouthful of fur because he’s decided to lie on your face at 4am.
This past weekend is the first one we’ve had in a couple of weeks where we both felt up to doing things, and we went out for breakfast on Saturday before I drove into the city for the day. It’s always jarring for me, when I get back into the heart of the city, and remember how much more traffic there is. Sometimes, I can’t believe I used to drive in that every day, and it’s not even as bad as it is in bigger cities. Still, though, so many cars and so many of them driving like they are the only vehicle on the road.
I had an appointment and then met a friend for lunch, which was delightful. We had Thai, and then went to the thrift store around the corner from her place and I said, in that way you say things you know are lies, that I wouldn’t buy any books.
I left with three.
I’m excited to read each of these for different reasons. It’s been a while since I got stuck into a novel, and I’m hoping to devote an hour in my evening to reading time this week. I’m going to actually start with a book I borrowed from a friend, Legends and Lattes, because I’m seeing her in a couple of weeks and I need to return it when I do, and also because I want something easy to ease back into the reading grind with. I used to read so many books, but the last couple of years have really ruined my ability to do that.
Hopefully, I can relearn the habit.
I continue to watch Disco Trek, and I am now far enough into season two that I’m into episodes that I’ve never seen before and I remain fascinated by the directions the plot is taking and what sorts of things they’re doing with it.
Trek is one of those ubiquitous sort of shows for me in that it never seems to matter what iteration of it I’m watching, I will always find something to enjoy. There’s just something deeply compelling about humanity exploring the stars in cooperation with other species to the benefit of everyone.
It’s good, man.
Writing (or the lack thereof)
Last week proved difficult again for writing, which I need to let go of the guilt about, because I’m recovering from COVID, which does, in fact, take a lot out of a person.
However, I did work on the piece I have due at the end of April, and will continue to work on it again this week. I’m running into the problem where I’ve already drafted it once, so why do I have to draft it again?
(I have to draft it again because the first draft is very rough and not at all the kind of thing that I would consider a finished product that is ready for my editor’s hands.)
This is, I’m lead to understand, a pretty common problem among writers. I also encounter a similar problem when I’ve sat down and talked through an entire idea with a friend, where my brain goes “Okay, so we wrote that, now we can go write something else,” except that we haven’t actually written it at all.
So, we continue to hack away at this draft, and I think it will come together fairly quickly in the end.
Something else I’ve been doing is spending a lot of time re-reading older WIPs for various fandoms that I’ve been involved in, and I keep re-discovering good stuff that I put down for various reasons, which are not always immediately obvious. There’s probably three in my one folder that I could actually finish in the next couple of months if I dedicate the time to them, and I do aspire to actively working on them in some kind of order.
I’ve also had a series of illuminating conversations with some writer friends about various things that I’ve got bubbling under the surface of my creative mind, and that always helps me to refine and re-prioritize my ideas and what I want to do with the things that I’m writing.
I really do think that writing, while being a solo activity for a large part of the process, benefits in a huge way from having a community of people to talk to about the craft and the art and how to do things narratively. I also think it really helps to listen to each other’s gripes, and help each other problem solve, constructively. At the end of it all, the piece is the thing that I have written, but it also brings with it all the input from everyone in my writing community that has helped me grow into the writer that I am, and continue growing into the writer that I will be.
Miscellany
The Northern Lights were really visible all over the place last night and it was cloudy here so I am very jealous.
SFP published another one of our stories on Amazon Kindle this week, pick up a copy of Augusta Connor’s historical romance, Whoever Brought Me Here. I’m a big fan of this one, deeply excellent vibes.
There is no Nextdoor out here in the middle of nowhere, but I approve of this tactic and will be integrating it into my own neighbourhood walks.
Why are millennials such homebodies?
See you next week, friends!
You deserve more comments, Jess.
Some of my old friends were queer - No kidding!
Over focused on one's personal arrangements, though?
On post-modernist societal decay, step into another paradigm . . . https://les7eb.substack.com