author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

W00t! My first eleven cents from eHow.com! Go me!

...that's all.

To my fellow United States citizens and residents, and to my fellow citizens of the global community: Happy Inauguration Day! The U.S. has a new President as of yesterday, and his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and I can't stop grinning.

I will put my exuberance here, for the record. Should I have occasion to regret it, as supporters of the previous President eventually did, I'll own up to it. But right now I can't imagine being disappointed because I don't expect miracles--I expect a continuation of the hard work and competence I saw during his campaign.

What the heck does this have to with a writing blog? Just this: I pledge to work as hard, in my own life, in my own career aspirations, in my craft and art, as I see our new President working for his own ideals. I admit that sounds cheesy. But watching him during his candidacy, watching his constant activity since the election (really, since when have we seriously paid attention to the Office of the President-Elect?), and watching him get to work on Day 1 (I am actually tuning in to CNN to find out what's up to--I've never done that before, and I actually avoided coverage of the previous President because he made me angry and nauseated), is nothing short of an inspiration. And it makes me feel like a bum. And I don't want to feel like a bum.

We find our role models where we can. I pledge to work as hard as I can see my role models have and do--because that's what "role model" means. We model our behavior--hopefully--after the inspirational examples set before us. So. Add another name to my list of role models.

It's kind of like a New Year's Resolution, except made on Inauguration Day rather than New Year's Day. I think that's fairly appropriate.

In other news, "Lambing Season" is in the slush again; I wish it well. And on the freelance non-fiction side, I'm working on some articles for upload to Constant Content. I was mildly excited to learn that one of my existing CC articles was recently purchased, and to find that this customer, unlike some previous ones, honored the Usage License requirement of including my by-line. (Read it here.) Apparently CC has also lowered their payment threshold from $50 to $5, which effectively removes the disconnect between selling an article and getting paid. All of which makes seeding that particular cloud look more worthwhile. So I will.

I form habits.

I think this is just one of those things that some people are more prone to than others. We're all habit-forming beasts to some extent, but I think some of us form them more easily than others. It may be related to the concept of "an addictive personality"--you know, the tendency to become addicted to chemicals or experiences that others can easily partake of in moderation? Right. I think I form habits just a little bit too readily.

Did you know stress can be a habit? I don't think I'd quite realized it myself.

Today I'm sitting here feeling guilty for not working hard on the project I finished and turned in yesterday. (THUNK.) I've been working on it long enough and stressing out about it long enough that I'm in the habit of stress. It's bizarre.

Clearly, I need to go sit at the spinning wheel and make yarn for an hour. Or play more Puzzle Pirates.

Tomorrow: FICTION! Woot! Or maybe some long-delayed WorldCon blogging. Or maybe both! Crazy talk, that is. CRAZY talk.

From the Department of Putting Folk Wisdom and Traditional Aphorisms to Real World Tests, March has officially come in like a lamb. Saturday the 1st was short-sleeves warm; I got sunburned biking home from work. (I had to work. Long story. Emergency involving a Juliet Brailler and a bunch of pie charts.) Most of able-bodied Boulder were out wearing Spandex and clogging the bike paths. Or clinging to mountainsides; I had the rock climbing gym practically all to myself due to all the real climbers being out climbing real rocks. It was a beautiful day.

And Sunday it snowed. That's Colorado for you. John and I looked out the window around 8:00 at all the frozen precipitation, and he said, "It's opaque outside."

So it's March. You'll notice the whole "Thing-a-Day" thing sort of trailed off around here mid-February. I was in the middle of another couple of last-minute deadline cycles--only, due to some extreme suckiness on my part, the cycle consisted of my saying "I'll have it finished in a couple of days," spending the next couple days beating myself up over about 2,500 per day, and then saying "but I'll have it finished the next couple of days for sure." Thus the eleventh hour mentality stretched itself out over most of the month. Most of my meals included a side of stomach lining with adrenaline dressing.

I do not recommend spending one's February this way.

So, partially because I'm swearing never to do that to myself again (and I really mean it this time) but mostly because my editor has said that the next project really truly does have to be turned in on time, I've logged said next project in the database. I can't say much about it, since my contract includes a confidentiality agreement, but I can say I've got a project and am up to this many words. 25,000 of them are due on March 15. It's like NaNoWriMo, but with research. And instead of saying vague things like "Oh, it's coming along" when anyone asks, I can point here and say, "X amount of words! With X days left to go!"

I'm slightly behind because of not really starting the writing part until March 1 and then taking yesterday off. But yesterday was sort of full of weekend things. (Long story involving a lot of friends, several Torchwood episodes, Vietnamese take-out, and a game of "Munchkin.") Now it is Monday, and Mondays are for working.

Meanwhile, you might be asking, what about fiction and poetry and stuff? What about the writing with actual soul? What about the writing I meant when I was seven years old and said "I want to be a writer when I grow up?" (You mean you weren't asking? Huh. Shows how much you care. I was asking.) Well, this great thing happens when I only owe my paying, deadlined project some 2,000 words a day. I have time to spare. And it's not all going to be spend on Puzzle Pirates. Promise!

As I might have mentioned, I'm going to the World Horror Convention at the end of this month. (John's coming with! Yay!) So are a significant handful of my fellow '06 Borderlands Boot Camp alumni. I can't bear the thought of showing up in front of them and not being able to tell them that I've finally sent off a beautifully rewritten "Seeds of Our Future" (ne… "Putting Down Roots") as one of our instructors notoriously told me I ought to do. That's my fiction project this month. And you can hold me to it, too.

Yay! Back to using this blog as a public flogging place! Just like old times!

Some mornings are obviously not meant to be productive.

I unwisely saved the tidying up of my article for today during work. This isn't as unethical as it sounds; some days I'm mainly just covering the phones and making myself available for random desk clerk and computer sub-guru tasks. Given where I left off Wednesday, I thought today would be one of those days. Today was not one of those days. Today was non-stop.

Which means that I actually managed to let the June 15 deadline on the bikini top article slip by me. Granted, I had no idea "June 15" meant "June 15 at 2:00 PM MDT," but I should have just finished the dang thing and emailed it last night. My own fault, this. I emailed it in anyway to give the editor the option of slipping it in under the wire or holding onto it for next month.

The moral of this story, folks, is this: When you set your alarm clock for 6:00 AM, mean it. Sometimes those two hours before you have to be in the office are all the day you get to call your own.

So that's my wake-up call for the week. Also, I've been working my way through Becoming A Writer again (read all about it at BurnzPost!), which means "wake to write" is a debt of honor. Another debt of honor is "schedule your writing." Yesterday I was very good about both these things. I overslept, but I spent my first half hour awake typing away on the Compaq Contura Aero. Over the course of that half hour--mainly a spate of journaling--I decided that I'd schedule further writing for 2:30 PM.

Now, recently I've pledged my housewifely services unto my husband, which is to say, he said "I wish this house were cleaner," and I said, "Me too. You know what? I'm home three days a week, thanks to your excellence and generosity. How about I get back on a cleaning schedule?" It's not a hard cleaning schedule. It's two rooms a week until I run out of rooms, starting over again each first week of the month. There are six rooms. This is no hardship.

However, I'm not exactly fond of cleaning.

What "I will write at 2:30" did was give me a light at the end of the long dark tunnel of cleaning the bathroom. (And if you don't believe that's a long dark tunnel, you haven't seen the mildew and soap scum all over the bathtub.) At 2:30 PM, I would be done. I would have put the cleaning supplies away and scarpered off to Korea House for a writing date with kim chee chi gae.

It's true that us writers do things like totally sanitize the kitchen rather than write. But by making a date with myself, and not allowing myself to write until the time arrived, I managed to reverse my mental perspective on the two tasks. I was--yes!--looking forward to writing.

Bottle that up and sell it, ma'am, and that's the end to writer's block as we know it! Or at least as I know it.

So, more of the same tomorrow, only on a different project. Maybe a short story re-write. *Gasp!* Just maybe.

Sometimes what you get is a blog post.

Which is to say, the answer to "how do you get a bikini top knit pattern down to 600 words" is the same as the answer to "how do you write a pattern for something as custom-fit as a bikini top?" The answer is, you don't. You turn back to your favorite sock knitting book and you write a mathematical method.

Gee I'm clever. I knit the dang thing with Gibson-Roberts' "C"s and "L"s in mind, and it takes me until two days before deadline to realize that's the way I'll have to approach writing about it.

But once I figured that out (which epiphany occurred over a scrumptious fish dinner at Pappadeaux, the relation of which to Highway 36 is a blog post all on its own), it got much easier. I realized what I was really writing was a blog post about how I overcame the challenges inherent in knitting functional swim wear. And I can do blog posts. Only, I usually get to break them up into two blog posts if they get too long. This one I can't, not really. If there's going to be a second article, it'll have to be accepted separately by the editor, and it's going to have to be about knitting the bikini bottom.

...which I haven't knit yet.

Well, we all know what I'm going to be doing in July!

Why yes, I've been lolcatting around lately. How can you tell? It's gotten really bad around here, to the point that, at Water World Saturday, stuff like "Can we has go faster, plz?" and "We can has acceleration!" started coming out of my mouth whenever John 'n me 'n Taylor got stuck and came loose again in one of the tube slide rides. "We're in ur tube slide, causin bottlenecks" was another favorite. As was the observation that we must have somehow gotten onto the internet because this ride was obviously a series of tubes.

John tells me I owe him a dollar for the bad joke jar for that last one, and I don't even work at the office where the bad joke jar resides. Funny, that.

That aside, my current-most writing project, aside from keeping up with the blogzes, is to somehow usefully describe the knitting of my bikini top in 600 words or less. This may or may not work. We Shall See.

I've also finished re-reading Dorothea Brande's 1934 classic, Becoming A Writer, which is oodles more useful than I remembered. Somehow all I recalled from last read-through was the "wake to write" and "schedule writing dates with yourself" advice, and I'd forgotten all about the story incubation meditation techniques. And it's been fun speculating on whether Ms. Brande would have adored laptops or despised them, based on what she says about the importance of typing and having a travel typewriter but doing nothing other than writing at the typewriter. I think she would have recommended using the laptop only for writing and acquiring a desktop computer for things like email and video games.

But that's enough of that for now. I don't want to steal the thunder from a series of blog posts on the subject of that book which I'm planning on uploading to Burnzpost.

Of late, most of my writing has been unpublishable journal entries and, like I said, keeping up with the blogging gigs. But this is in keeping with my temporary solution for the single project form of the Block. If a have a particular project I have to work on, one short story rewrite or freelance deadline that gets top priority over everything else, and inability to get started on that project causes a total writing bottleneck--then write something else. Every day. Reliably. It's the daily act of writing and not the daily product that's important in breaking through the Block.

Of course, that in and of itself won't get deadlines met. But I find that the journaling can help me ease into the high-priority project, especially if my journal entry segues into a bout of talking to myself about that project. And if something that happened the day before keeps me from concentrating on the serious work, journaling about the event or fictionalizing it into a new story draft can sometimes satisfy whatever annoying part of my brain insists on chewing on it.

In the interest of not increasing this post's category count, I'll put off talking about the ongoing behind-the-scenes website redesign (still in progress) or my new flying lessons schedule (i r gonna b legal pilot agin lolz) for another post. And maybe I'll rethink the current category list, 'cause I don't have one for flying or for The Block or... right. Later.

More later, then.

Hey yeah, that's right: Not much bloggage for awhile here. And look! No manuscript association. That must mean I've been a lazy ass.

In discussing that much maligned and possibly mythical creature Writer's Block, I'm not making excuses. No no-no no no no! I am having a philosophical discussion.

Go on. Believe it. And meanwhile, I've got this bridge... no. Had this bridge. It is tragically off the market at current.

So. Writer's block. The forms it takes. Let's start with Impending Deadlines of Doom.

Impending Deadlines of Doom cause this writer to go, "Oh no! I have Umpteen Thousand words to write by Tomorrow! I'd better work on that project first. But when I'm done today's allotment of Wordage, I shall reward myself by enhancing my body of fictional work!"

This sounds well and good, and it is--when The Block is not in play. I should note that The Block is oftentimes more cynically known as Total Lack of Self-Discipline. However, it is not useful for the Blocked Writer to call it this, because such terminology leads to Self-Loathing, which is another form that The Block takes.

At this point I should quote a bit from Victoria Nelson's fantastic book On Writer's Block. My copy has sadly gone missing, however. This essay quotes a most appropriate bit: "If you beat yourself because you procrastinate, your problem is not that you procrastinate. Your problem is you beat yourself." My point exactly.

So as soon as I make the work-and-reward proclamation I find myself making exactly Zero Headway on the Umpteen Thousand Word Project. Why?

Firstly, because The Block isn't particular about which writing it blocks. I find myself totally unable to start that project for the same mysterious reason I find myself totally unable to write new fiction or edit existing drafts.

Secondly, because if I never produce today's allotment of Wordage, I will not have to write or edit fiction. Procrastination on the Deadline of Doom now has the "value" of aiding procrastination on the fiction.

I'm not 100% sure how to get out of that loop. My Type-A personality says, "Well, you just have to do it, dummy! Stop whining and get to work!" However, see above about Self-Loathing and beating oneself for procrastinating. My Type-A personality is not always my friend.

More on this subject to further cogitation and researching ideas.

On to The Block, Form the Second: Being Sick As The Dog.

I just happen to be enduring a round of the weekend flu-bug. It starts with a sore throat and post-nasal drip, the latter exacerbating the former. It continues with thermometers swearing that one's temperature is normal or even slightly below normal, and this despite whole-body muscle aches and chills. I have been treating myself with plenty bed rest, hot honey-and-vinegar drinks (I don't have any lemon juice in the house and I quite like apple cider vinegar), hot tea, and hot scotch toddies. And long baths.

Which I point out not to elicit e-mail of sympathy, but to demonstrate a reason why I haven't been writing.

I often look back on my year-and-a-half of chemotherapy (long story involving acute myelogenous leukemia, several fantastic oncologists, the wonderful staff of Children's Hospital of New Orleans, and Metairie Park Country Day School's willingness to accommodate all my absences) and wonder why I didn't get any writing done. Disregard that I was only 11 going on 12. I decided to be a writer at age 6. Disregard the lack of ubiquitous laptop computers in 1987. I knew how to write longhand. Why didn't I put any of that time to use, rather than spending it watching Bumper Stumpers on the hospital television?

Because I felt like crap, that's why. Even when I wasn't nauseated or fevered, I had absolutely no energy. Being in a hospital, being kept home from school, being unable to go outside--these things were depressing, and I don't mean my immune system. Thinking back to that time, I was either miserable or else celebrating short interims of not feeling miserable by, oddly enough, playing. Aside from getting my homework done so as not to fail 6th grade, I spent my up-and-about time goofing off.

Today, less sick now than then but sick enough, I find myself indulging in lot of mindless, escapist pastimes to avoid having to be aware of living in my own skin. Because living in my own skin hurts right now, thanks. Reading myself asleep helps me escape that.

This makes perfect sense, but these days I really, truly have stuff I need to get done. Thankfully, I do have some preliminary workarounds:

• Apply any and all symptomatic relief remedies so as to reduce abject misery (I am in fact sitting in the tub and sipping a hot toddy as I write this)
• Assign oneself small tasks (such as short blogging stints and non-contact brainstorming)
• Reward oneself for completing small tasks (Good for you! You blogged! You get more hot water in the tub and an hour's reading!)

My next small task coming up will be to start WordPerfect 5.1 and jot down what I brainstormed over the past few days. Nothing full-fledged or publishable. Just some short snippets of prose that might, some day, accrue substance. It's only a very little bit of writing, true, but any overtures in that direction deserve positive reenforcement

Thunk - the sound of a 15,000-word RTF attachment hitting my editor's inbox at 8:00 AM on the morning of a much-extended (for reasons mostly to do with scheduling interviews) deadline morning.

Zzzzz - the sounds emanating from the bedroom shortly thereafter and for most of the day. Week, in fact. Most of the week. When I crash, I crash hard.

Whizz - the sound of the February 28 deadline for Shimmer's "Pirate" issue approaching with great velocity, in flagrant disregard for my state of crashiness.

Vroom! - Me, shifting into high-speed productivity mode with regard to that and everything else I'd temporaily shelved during the freelance project (a prospective freelance web design assignment, a continuing novel critique, and all sorts of fictioneering in addition to the short story.

...Better late than never, right?

Bonus terminology: Damn you, wench! And I mean that in the nicest possible way... - Me, discovering exactly what my friend had done when she said, "You know what? You should totally check out PuzzlePirates.com." Do not, as you value your own real-world productivity, go and do likewise.

OK, well, but if you do, drop me and email and tell me what handle you play on which ocean. I'll invite you to be one of me hearties. Arrr!

Signed,

Ninnybird (Cobalt)
Teshka (Midnight)
Millefleur (Viridian)

Hullo. Not dead. The short story's on hold for a few days, though--dangit--so I can meet a paying deadline. So I'm going to unload a few links on you. Look sharp, here they come--

Charles Stross on the writer's lifestyle (Via By The Way)

Firstly, forget the romance of the writer's lifestyle and the aesthetic beauty of having a Vocation that calls you to create High Art and lends you total creative control. That's all guff. Any depiction of the way novelists live and work that you see in the popular media is wrong. It's romanticized clap-trap. Here's the skinny:

You are a self-employed business-person. Occasionally you may be half of a partnership — I know a few husband-and-wife teams — but in general novelists are solitary creatures. You work in a service industry where output is proportional to hours spent working per person, and where it is very difficult to subcontract work out to hirelings unless you are rich, famous, and have had thirty years of seniority in which to build up a loyal customer base. So you eat or starve on the basis of your ability to put your bum in a chair and write. BIC or die, that's the first rule.

The Tightrope Walker blog on writing what you love (via retterson)

But I've seen other writers, just as excellent, back away because -- although they're clearly packed taut with talent -- they think there's some bar there, some Berlin Wall of the mind -- basically, a big sign at the end of a nowhere road that says, "Anything you try to write will be lifeless. Boring. A canteen of sand in the desert. Don't even try."

To them I say: potato chips.

Hmm. I may have linked that latter one before. It feels familiar. ...Oh, well. Enjoy.

Also, for those of y'all subscribed to my RSS feed via LiveJournal (you would do that by adding nicolejleboeuf to your Friends list) yes, yes I know that there's something fishy about the timestamps coming off my Metroblogging posts. There's a six- or seven-hour diff between the time on the post itself to the time on the post summary that shows up on LJ. At some point, probably after Monday, I'll look into that. 'Til then, pretend it's an exciting adventure in time travel. Yay!