author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

This weekend started out awesome. I celebrated being all caught up by taking myself out Saturday to the Bohemian Biergarten for beef stroganoff, beer, and several hours of uninterrupted and guilt-free Puzzle Pirates fun. It was excellent. After all the scrambling to get on top of things throughout the week, it was entirely what the doctor ordered.

But then after I got home that evening I started developing this cough, and a post-nasal-drip-type sore throat, and next morning the cough was worse and accompanied by that "cold inhale" feeling at the back of my throat that I associate with running a low-grade fever, and I had to admit I'd come down sick. I'd been looking forward to practice, but as it turned out, spending most of Sunday and Monday in bed were also what the doctor ordered.

However! I am feeling much better now. I put in a full work day today, consisting of the daily "gottas" and what remained of the end-of-month Friday Fictionette stuff. By the way, the Fictionette Freebie for January 2016 is "The Wine Cellar That Wished" (PDF | MP3). I personally think it's kind of funny, but I'll admit its humor is on the grim side. That's what makes it a good free sample, though. Anyone who decides to subscribe based on that will know what they're sometimes going to be in for. (See also "The Metamorphosis of Anita Chaplain", which I also maintain is funny. Yes, there is probably something wrong with me.) So, yeah, a full work day, up and at it before noon, and an actual change of shirt which is more than I managed all weekend I am sorry to tell you. And now I'm having that peculiar run of sneezes that's my body's way of getting the last of everything yucky out of its system.

A derby friend stopped by with chicken and dumplings, and herbal tea, and an orange. She was not the only derby friend to offer sustenance and comfort upon hearing I was sick. I kind of wanted to yell "It's just a cold, jeez y'all, I'll be fine," but that's because we are typically not trained to accept kindness well. Roller derby leagues are made of kindness. There's also a formal meal train going on to help out a teammate who just got out of surgery, and less formal gestures of love and support go on all the time. There are a lot of things we don't seem to get trained in, from accepting kindness to accepting our bodies, from viewing our geeky never-done-sports selves as athletes to viewing other women as potential friends. Roller derby counteracts these toxic omissions. At least, with the right league--but I've never yet encountered a league that was wrong for this. I'm sure there are some out there somewhere, because leagues are made of people and people sometimes fail. But in my limited experience, roller derby is remedial training in self-esteem for, and interpersonal support among, women.

[And now, a brief pause to make two-handed "heart" gestures and to mutter about how dusty it suddenly got in here.]

Meanwhile! Writing things I didn't get to today but certainly will tomorrow, assuming I feel this well or better: Figuring out where to resubmitting the handful of stories that came back from their latest outings with encouraging rejection letters. Figuring out which piece of potentially salable fiction will be my next afternoon shift project. Figuring out how to figure things out. ARGH DECISIONS

Oh look! Herbal tea with orange peel. It's going to be all right.

So January hasn't been going so well. Mentally and emotionally, I mean. Well, and also schedule-wise. Truth is, the stuff that went bad on Christmas Day, that stuck with me. It stuck with me hard. It struck resonances all up and down my family history, and that kind of thing is hard to shake. I've been doing a lot of sleeping late, either because the bad stuff's been keeping me up late, or because I'm so tired of having the bad stuff jangling around in my head that it's sometimes easier to just stay unconscious.

And then, as you know, I've been doing a reread and rework of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, which has exercises in it like "Describe three 'monsters' who had a detrimental effect on your creativity or self-esteem" and "Write a 'letter to the editor' in your defense regarding one of those monsters." Which dovetails a little too closely with the lingering bad stuff.

Now, sometimes writing the bad stuff down exorcises it, if only temporarily. But sometimes it just sticks a knife in the scar tissue and rips the old wound wide open again. I never know which way it's going to be until it's had its way with my brain, you know?

I've been trying to counter the re-wounding effect by following up the exercises with a ten-minute session of Headspace, an app for doing meditation. It's helping, but slowly, because slowly is how I learn new things. "Let the thoughts be there, but be at peace with them being there. Don't get caught up in either trying to stop them or chasing after them. Just let them be." That kind of stuff takes practice. Meanwhile, the bad stuff comes and goes in waves and sometimes I still go under.

The other night, trying to go to sleep, I thought about a dream I've had on-and-off throughout my life. In it, I would find myself exploring the walk-in attics on the upper floor of my parents' house. As a child I was always forbidden to play in there, so of course I did. I loved exploring, I wasn't unaffected by the allure of the forbidden, and I loved also that I could hide away up there and no one could find me. I even outfitted a little room in one hard-to-reach corner, with pillows and blankets and a bead curtain and candles. I figured no one would ever find it. And no one did, not until I was in my 30s at least.

But here's the thing in the dream: Sometimes I would find a little slit or hole in the pink insulation, just a little tiny claustrophobic tunnel which, if I was brave, I could crawl through it (spun glass not being a problem in dreams) and follow it down to where it turned to the right and opened up into a tiny little cave, just my size. And I could hide there for as long as I needed to until I felt safe coming out. It was my mousehole and no one could hurt me there.

Thinking about this the other night, I thought, "No one actually wants to go 'back to the womb,' not really. What one wants is a womb of one's own."

That's not the epiphany. That's just a bad Virginia Woolf pun.

Besides, it's of limited usefulness. Because trying to envision myself crawling into my little imaginary mousehole, telling myself "the tunnel is so narrow, it scrapes your memories right off, so you can hide from them too," somehow it just put me ears-deep in the bad stuff again. The walk-in attics of my parents' house were too much associated with all things family and all the painful things that the bad stuff woke up. I didn't get to sleep for hours, and I hardly managed to stay asleep for more than a couple hours at a time. (The bad stuff was conspiring with my bladder on that one. I swear, my body seems to think its main function while I'm asleep is making pee. The late thirties appear to be one prolonged battle between waking up dehydrated in the morning or waking up to pee all night long.)

The next night is when the epiphany happened. I had just finished rereading Diane Duane's The Wizard's Dilemma. Like most of the Young Wizard books, it ends with a scene in what's known as Timeheart. That's kind of like a non-stagnant Heaven, or a version of Narnia's "further up and further in" without the nasty implications in the ending of The Last Battle. What's loved lives on there in cityscapes and natural vistas of perfection that go on and on as far as the eye can see and the heart desires to explore. In a lesser author's hands, this might have given rise to some sort of hokey Moral of the Story ending. Duane is not a lesser author. The scene provides emotional closure, but it doesn't pretend there are easy answers. It just reassures the characters (and the reader) that their sacrifices were worthwhile, and that there's hope.

And I closed the book and thought, "I want to walk out into a big bright new day like that. So much better than hiding away in my mousehole. I'm tired of making myself small."

And that's what the epiphany was. Unpacked, it goes something like this:

Pain makes us small. Pain makes us make ourselves small. We make ourselves small so we can hide away from the pain, hide away from the rest of the world when we're in pain. An animal in pain hides. It makes itself small.

But making yourself small doesn't make the pain go away. So now you're so much smaller than you were born to be, and still in pain on top of it all. That sucks.

Worse, pain makes our desires small. It makes us want small things. When we're in pain, we bargain: "Just take the pain away, that's all I ask."

But we're not born to want small! We're born to want everything--love and long life and happiness and fulfillment and friends and comfort and safety and meaningful work and the ability to change the world for the better. Wanting big isn't a glitch or vice or something to be ashamed of. It's our goddamned birthright!

So I'm not going to make myself small in my head anymore. In my head, I'm going to make myself too big for the pain. It might still be there, it might still hurt, but it's not going to be my world, because my world is so much bigger than that. And I'm allowed to want it all.

So that was my epiphany the other night. Cheesy, huh? But it helps me keep the mental bad stuff at bay while I'm trying to sleep, so that's something. And eventually this thing will run its course and I'll be fine again.

Oh, and the belated January 22 fictionette is coming along nicely. It has dragons in it. Puppy dragons. Three of them. They are the best.

OK, so, I am behind in everything. Let's just get that out of the way right now. I'm behind on doing the books and paying the bills, I'm overdue several non-skating tasks for my roller derby league, I can't seem to get five hours of writing in during a work day, and I can't remember the last time I managed to spend quality time with my foam roller. I have been waking up with very stiff calf-muscles. I haven't read nearly as many books and stories that were published in 2015 as I'd have liked to have been able to consider for Hugo award nominations (I'll still cast a ballot - it just won't be as complete as I'd hoped). I'm even behind on my playtime. I've barely made a start on earning my January 2016 Seal o' Piracy, and I can't seem to get all seven daily jigsaw sudoku completed in a week.

Oh, and, hey, the Friday Fictionette for January 15 still isn't even fully drafted. Good news is, January 2016 is a month with five Fridays. Even if I'm not able to post the Jan. 22 fictionette on time, I have a whole 'nother week to get all caught up before the first fictionette in February is due.

So, much as it pains me, I'm letting Friday Fictionettes fall to a slightly lesser priority until some of the other stuff gets done. OK, well, not the Puzzle Pirates stuff. But the bill-paying and the league responsibilities and that sort of thing. Until they're done, fictionette catch-up will be happening at something less than a breakneck pace.

My problem was a weekend with not enough sleep, too much stress, and two back-to-back team practices on Sunday. I was exhausted. Whenever I didn't actually have to be anywhere, my system sort of just shut down all weekend long and yesterday too. Which meant I got behind on everything. More behind, I mean. Which meant I got stressed. (More stressed.) Which meant I went into self-defense shut-down again. It's sort of a feedback loop.

That I got anything done today was kind of a triumph. I did it by pretending that I had no deadlines at all, that nothing was overdue, and that I had all the time in the world to do things so long as I actually did them. I wonder if this is what that study is all about, the one that purports to demonstrate that people who lie to themselves a little are happier? Because "I have all the time in the world" and "there are no deadlines, nothing's over due" are totally bald-faced lies. But pretending to believe them lightened the stress enough to keep from wasting yet another day in oh-shit I-can't-handle-this shut-down mode.

So while nothing quite got finished today, progress was made on all fronts. More progress will be made tomorrow, assuming I'm able to drag myself out of bed on time.

Well. Sorry that all you get today is a navel-gazey introspective post. The actually writing blog is all about the writing process, and sometimes process ain't pretty. Sometimes the writing process depends on other processes. Well, it always does, right? The key to a productive writing life is structuring life so that there's room in it for writing. And, well, sometimes I manage to misplace that key. And then it's all, "Where did you last see it?" and "Retrace your steps," and "It's always in the last place you look..." And sometimes you just have to have a whole new key made because that first key, it's gone. You can't waste the rest of your week trying to find it. Just replace it and get on with your life.

That's about where I'm at.

Oh, for goodness's sake. Being four days late with each week's Friday Fictionette is not the way to woo new subscribers. Well, here's the nominal January 8 fictionette, anyway: "The Magpie's Big Heist." Everyone knows magpies will compulsively steal shiny things, right? Except, as it turns out, they don't. Well, there goes one more piece of cherished folklore. And of course I didn't fact-check the legend until after I'd written and published the fictionette. Too bad. If knowing this doesn't ruin that early plot point in Terry Pratchett's Carpe Jugulum for you, then you can suspend disbelief for this little story-like object too.

Also I released the Fictionette Freebie for December 2015. It's "The Thing With Feathers" from December 4. That's the link to the PDF; audio is here. Both formats are now free for anyone to download and read or listen. I chose that one because I just really like it. It felt good to write. I hope y'all like it too.

I was so sure I could have all the fictionette things done at least by Sunday evening. No big deal, right? I was taking the day off from derby anyway, right? Except the whole reason I needed the day off from roller derby was also the reason I couldn't get the fictionette done, nor yet anything else that would have been halfway useful: I was pretty much dead for the day. I am always pretty much dead the day after a bout. Why do I forget these things? Success at getting things done goes hand in hand with awareness of how things don't get done. My awareness is sometimes not so good.

And the problem with lateness is, it begets lateness. I am now also running up hard against this Friday's deadline to submit "Down Wind" where I want it to go; prioritizing it might impact my chances of getting the January 15 fictionette out on time.

Well, my friends, I shall do my best.

Today I'm also starting my 2016 re-read and work-through of The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron's 12-week course in creativity. It's not for everyone, but it helps me. I work through it every few years as a sort of wellness check-up. I'm not in the same place that I was in the first time I read the book, nor even the fifth time, so I'm getting new insights out of the exercises. Revisiting the chapter on Basic Tools helped me re-focus my daily Morning Pages practice--why I do it, how best to do it, what I can hope to get out of it. And the Week 1 emphasis on converting nasty, discouraging, near-involuntary brain-blurts ("There's no way I'll get through all the stuff I have to do, I'll let everyone down, it's hopeless") into positive affirmations ("I am capable. I am reliable. I am relaxed and confident. I have all the time I need to accomplish all my goals") is really useful right now. I have a lot of brain-blurts that need converting.

Perhaps later on this week I'll have more coherent thoughts to share about the process. For now I'm just trying to find time to do the process.

The blood pressure thing is going well. Like, super-well. The bottle my meds came in is labeled Nifedipine, fancy specialized terminology that basically translates to miracle juice and magic powder. I started taking it Saturday, and every day since then my morning readings have gotten lower and lower, and today they were downright normal. A normal blood pressure reading for the first time in more than a year! Modern medical science, y'all. It works. Also I got my echocardiogram scheduled at last, so that's nice.

Really, the week's off to a great start. It's just been a slow start and I don't like slow.

Now it is time to once more put myself to bed and hope the derby aches and pains go away enough to do more derby tomorrow. I'm told one eventually adjusts. Wouldn't that be nice?

The January 8 Friday Fictionette will be late for NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER. There. I admitted it. But I have every reason to anticipate getting it posted on Sunday. FOR REALS.

The reason I can be so darn sure of that is, I'm taking that day off from roller derby practice. Why? Because I'll be skating in our mix-up tournament on Saturday, leading Phase 1on Monday, practicing with the All Stars on Tuesday and the Bombshells on Wednesday, and going to scrimmage on Thursday. I am only human and I will need a break. Therefore I decree Sunday to be "I'm on break" day. Therefore I will have the time and energy to finish up and post the January 8 fictionette on that day.

Today's continuation of the "my new life with controlled hypertension" saga saw me succeed at obtaining a blood pressure monitor and also my new meds. Yay, meds. They come in a bottle that says DO NOT EAT GRAPEFRUIT OR GRAPEFRUIT JUICE! because there is some chemical in grapefruits that reduces the efficacy of the medication. Honestly, I can't remember when I last consumed grapefruit or its byproducts in any amount greater than what you find in a bottle of Abita Grapefruit Harvest (one of the few IPAs I will willingly drink) or, more frequently, a can of La Croix Pamplemousse--but I totally resent the intrusion on my happy-go-lucky eat-what-I-want lifestyle anyway. Also I'm told Tylenol is to be preferred over ibuprofen while on these meds. Which means when I come home from derby all stiff and sore, I can take a pain reliever OR drink a beer BUT NOT BOTH because the combination of Tylenol and alcohol is potentially deadly.

What's that? Is that a baby cricket playing playing a sad, sad song on the tiniest violin in the world for my terrible woe? That is a very talented cricket, y'all.

Meanwhile, I was supposed to make an appointment with the heart department for an echocardiogram. Unfortunately, yesterday was not a very good day for small details. First off, my physician gave me that department's fax number by mistake. Then, once I tracked down the number that would be answered by a human being rather than a screeching modem, it transpired that my physician had made an additional goof and sent over an order for an electrocardiogram instead. The mix-up should be corrected by Monday.

After all the running around in the car in the snow and on the phone playing phone tag, I rewarded myself with a late lunch at My Ramen & Izakaya. This place is the best place ever. They serve ramen noodles in a variety of broths and presentation styles, including vegetarian and gluten free; also donburi, fried rice, and a whole page of small plates (izakaya) that are without exception delicious. I got the grilled heart of romaine and a big bowl of the sesame-based tantanmen. Also a glass of red wine, because red wine is good for your heart, right?

After that I pretty much crashed for the day. I am only just barely functional now to post this. And now that I have posted this, I am done.

Do come watch the bout tomorrow if you can! And say hi! I will be skating on the black team, coached by BCB's own Jude E. Boom and Downtown Stabbey. Cheer for us! Cheer for everybody! Derby is fun!

I've finally realized: On roller derby evenings, my afternoon shift is really fragile. Yesterday I lost it because of a sudden attack of the sleepies that, honestly, I should have just pushed through--writing, like skating, makes me feel better, if only I can exert myself to beat the inertia. Today? Doctor's appointment. Which always takes longer than expected on both sides of the scheduled appointment time, especially if you're chasing down a prescription and some equipment afterwards that turn out to be out of stock. So then you go make groceries instead. And then it's already 4:00 and you planned to leave for derby at 5:30 and you really, really need some downtime in between...

The doctor's appointment was interesting. Seems around this time last year, out of seemingly nowhere, I started exhibiting freakishly high blood pressure on a consistent basis. Like, Stage 2 Hypertension high. I kept hoping it was just a hiccup and things would return to normal, but after Tuesday morning's dentist appointment got me a reading of something-or-other over 104, I made an appointment to discuss it with a doctor.

The long and the short of it is, I'm going to have to start taking blood pressure medication at the ripe old age of 39. Seriously. Despite my exceedingly active, moderate-drinking, non-smoking lifestyle, my perfectly acceptable blood cholesterol and thyroid numbers, and goodness knows I've never really had cause to worry about my weight despite what the BMI says ("Top 10 Reasons Why the BMI Is Bogus," NPR.org)--well, just goes to show, you can do most everything right and still draw an unlucky lottery ticket. But that's a lesson I should already have learned from my experience with leukemia at age 11, right?

But there's a silver lining here! When I mentioned "self-diagnosed Raynuad's Disease" to the doctor (and we discussed that a little bit, like how often does it happen, how severe is it, etc.), she brightened up and said, "One of the blood pressure medications I could prescribe you also happen to treat Raynaud's! What do you think?" I think it's a low priority, but if it's that easy to roll the two issues into a single solution, hey, let's do it. I could sure do with fewer 7-finger days in the winter, that's for sure.

Anyway, after some deep conversation with the doctor, an EKG reading (also perfectly normal), instructions to make an appointment for an echocardiogram just to make sure, I left the doctor's office at about 2:45 and pointed my car toward my usual pharmacy. Only to find the medication wasn't actually in stock yet--"Come back tomorrow after 1:00 PM"--and neither was an automatic arm-band style blood pressure monitor of an approved brand--"You might just have to try the Safeways and the Walgreens and that"--and so I lost another 45 minutes of afternoon shift to futile attempts to run these doctor's-orders errands. And then, like I said, I went to the grocery.

I'm glad I decided to rest and eat dinner rather than work and snack, though, because roller derby practice consisted of a special clinic led by a D1-level skater and then a scrimmage that beat us all up some good. Also last night's squat workout came back to haunt me. I'm sore and tired and this hot bath with epsom salts plus optional beer is really awesome.

Again, I'll get a little bit of work in on the short story. Just not the two hours I wanted to log. Last night, after posting to the blog, I spent about a half hour just reading through it--which means I didn't just read through it, but instead tweaked sentences here and there. Weird thing about my revision avoidance issues: if I can only convince myself to open up the manuscript and "just start reading," I'll find myself unable to resist doing at least a little revision. So tonight I suppose I'll pick up where I left off.

And tomorrow I have nowhere to be in the evening, except maybe in a holiday party on Puzzle Pirates.

It's cold out there. It's a 7-finger day. By that, I mean that it's so cold that by the time I got where was driving to, seven of my fingertips had turned pale and numb thanks to something called Raynaud's Disease or, colloquially, "being allergic to the cold." Calling it a "disease" makes it sound worse than it is; it's mostly just annoying. Main problem tonight was, with so many fingertips affected, I couldn't start typing comfortably until I'd clutched my Irish coffee long enough to warm up again.

The drive tonight was from roller derby practice to Boulder's legendary late-night burger establishment, the Dark Horse. They serve delicious food, quite decent drinks, and--this was new to me--they now have wi-fi. So I thought I'd get the blogging done while it was still technically Wednesday.

Today didn't go quite as well as yesterday. For one thing, without something like that dentist appointment to get me out of bed early, I wasn't up and moving until about 9:30 AM. I rationalized that this was fine, I was a tired athlete who'd stayed up until 1:00 AM the night before and really needed her sleep. And it still would have been fine if--and this is the second thing--I had managed to get my afternoon shift done, rather than collapsing into an afternoon nap. I guess I needed it; my eyes started burning and squinting, and it began to be actively painful to remain upright.

I am not dismissing the possibility that this was a physical manifestation of avoidance. My next task was short story revision, and I have pathological avoidance issues around short story revision. But it's very likely that last night's roller derby practice was a factor, too. Tonight's as well. Both travel teams' coaches are serious about conditioning, which means lots of cardio and strength training and metabolic workouts and off-skates exercises and endurance til you puke. (Metaphorically. My body doesn't tend to do the puke reaction to extreme exertion. Instead it just decides to stop bothering with other functions, like swallowing and breathing.) And, lest you think being married to the All Stars coach is somehow an advantage--it's not. It just means he tries to get me to do conditioning workouts at home, too.

It's going to take me a few weeks to adjust to this level of activity, is what I'm saying. And there are things I'm going to have to change about the rest of my life--I can't both stay up until 1:00 AM and get up at 7:45 AM every day, for instance. At least I've got a solid scheduling plan for getting the daily writing done, even if some days I don't quite implement it.

Anyway, the result is I'm trying to get my "afternoon shift" done now, between 10 PM and 1 AM after practice. And because I know I have a tendency to just say "eff it, I'm going to bed" after roller derby practice, I took myself out where bed wouldn't be a temptation. Hence the trip to the Dark Horse. Besides, it was a convenient way to make sure I got some protein down me. Kind of important after the kind of workout I've had.

I don't know I'll get my full five hours in today, but I will get SOME work on the short story in after I post this. If all I do is reread it (for the first time in two weeks) and decide what the next concrete task is, that'll let me close down the day with a sense of accomplishment.

I have had a mixed-blessing sort of day. Well, I've had a mixed-blessing sort of visit thus far, though I don't do a lot of the complaining here that I do in more private spaces because, well, family is family. But today being Christmas, everything got turned up to eleven. As a result I've been kind of nonfunctional since returning home this afternoon.

Which is why the Friday Fictionette will be a weekend thing again, which is why I am bothering telling you so.

I did go for a brief outdoor skate at dusk between the Bonnabel Canal and the Suburban Canal. That was nice. Skates make everything better. They don't fix everything, but while they're on my feet, they make the things they can't fix feel much more distant.

I'm having a little bowl of yesterday's kimchi with a boiled egg. Comfort food is comforting. I'm not sure when kimchi became one of my comfort foods--goodness knows I didn't grow up eating it. But it indubitably has. How I know is, when I opened the container, the smell of it reached down into my chest and kind of loosened things up a little and made me smile.

Good night, everyone. See you tomorrow.

Today's revision session was all about making the story's first protagonist and her wife real, living, breathing characters, with interests and dreams and day jobs and food preferences and families. Not all of the above can appear in a story that's only some 1,500 to 2,000 words long, but even just a few sentences alluding to their full, richly detailed lives can make the difference between that and vague character-shaped variables in a story-shaped equation.

One of the biggest frustrations of story revision is the general free-floating sense that the story as it stands is crap and I don't know how to even begin to make it better. I don't always know that's what I'm feeling, is the weird thing. It is such an unpleasant feeling that I push it away, unwilling to admit or even to become aware that this is what I'm feeling. So it gets translated into an even more general sense--a sense that is yet one more step removed--of vague unhappiness and malaise and avoidance.

Once I figured out that was where my head was at, I gritted my teeth and forced myself to focus in. What made the story crap? What were its problems? List them. Be specific. Then pick one and make solving that problem the focus for today's revision session. Thus, today's goal of turning Malika and Cheryl into fully realized characters.

What makes this hard to do is the sense that time is slipping away from me. I only alloted two hours to work on the story today, and I only managed some 45 minutes instead. I got through my morning shift by noon or not much later than, but all my lunchtime tasks just streeeeeeetched ooouuuuuut until it seemed to take forever to get back to work. So my frustration changed from "there's so much wrong with the story and I don't know where to begin" to "there's so much wrong with the story and I'll never have time to fix it all."

But then it's not like this story is on a deadline right now. Well, it sort of is, in that the place I want to send it is only open to submissions until January 15. But I couldn't send this piece to them even if it was ready tomorrow because I already sent them something else last week. I can't send this one in until that one gets rejected. And, who knows, that one might not even get rejected, wouldn't that be nice?

So. No deadline. So no stress. That's what I keep telling myself. No stress. Just take your time and solve the one problem that's in front of you right now. Really, for the most part, that's all anyone can do ever. Do the one thing, then do the next thing. It's expecting ourselves to do all the things at once that causes all that unnecessarily stress.

I know this. Doesn't stop me stressing though.

Finally got around to revisions on "Down Wind" today, with the result that I'm confused and annoyed and in despair. Well, OK, it's not that bad, but--this is not simple fix territory. This is hard, frustrating, mind-boggling work territory. And the darn thing's only 1400 words long! Well, 1750 now. Good thing? Bad thing? Unknown at this time.

The story is very short and cycles between three different characters' points of view. Right there we have potential problems. I received feedback that the scene segues were a little confusing; the reader didn't easily clue in that we'd moved from one scene to another. This is probably because I'd tried to be "clever." I was trying to do this sort of pivot maneuver on a word or concept that two adjacent scenes had in common, like referring to the prospect of a character "leaving" somewhere or someone in both the last sentence of one scene and the first sentence of the next. But while I was busy doing this, I was failing, to some extent, to make clear that we had in fact moved on to another character.

Solution 1: White-space scene breaks! ...which, no, because some of these scenes are more like "scenelettes," barely two paragraphs long. Separating them by white space would be just awkward and annoying.

Solution 2: Some sort of "meanwhile, back at the ranch" lead-in to each scene! ...which, maybe, but runs the risk of sounding hokey if done badly. And even if done well, that lead-in would represent a significant percentage of the scene it's part of.

Solution 3: Eff it, that reader who gave me that feedback was just silly and wrong! ...which, well, NO. I'm often tempted to respond that way to negative feedback, and it's really not a good habit to get into. That way lies golden word syndrome and no one wanting to critique my stuff because of all the unhelpful push-back. Not going there, if I can help it! Besides, even if the reader is dead wrong, there's often useful revision pointers to be unearthed in trying to figure out how they got so wrong.

Solution 4: Still looking for one. Probably some combination of all of the above, though, even Solution 3 in careful moderation, in proportions to be determined on a case by case basis.

Also, on the reread I am spotting theme and character depth and other very ambitious things that I want to salt onto the stew, like the idea that the pigeon singularity really is all about keeping things and people together by infinitesimally slowing the expansion of the universe, and can I show that in each scene, and also these people have lives and background and history and can't I show that in each scene by just adding maybe one more sentence per, only it has to be the right sentence that also plays into the keep-people-together theme, and can I maybe do something meta with this, like right in the very structure of the story?

Argh.

Y'all, revision is hard. I do not understand people who enjoy the revision stage. I really wish I did. What I actually enjoy are those couple seconds right as the revision ends. That's the bit where I sit back, all pleased with myself, and say, "Yes, I have made it perfect. Or very nearly so, anyway. Damn I'm good at this." The long hours of brain-wringing work involved getting to those couple seconds, those are not nearly as enjoyable except in the sort of abstract "hard work that I know will be worth it" way.

Breakthroughs tomorrow? I sure as hell hope so.