He ushered me in hastily. “Let’s go, let’s go,” he said, turning towards a stack of loose papers and thick folders. “I leave soon and need to make sure you know everything I’ve taught you. Mother Repetition and all that.”

I let the door close behind me. “Mother Repetition?”

He shot me an impatient look as he handed me a hide-bound scroll. “Repetition is the mother of learning,” he said. “Surely you’ve heard that before.”

“That’s a human saying,” I gently pointed out, stepping over a spilled pile of small books to take the scroll.

“Yes, well, what are you doing interacting with humans at all if you haven’t studied us enough?” His brows lowered and he looked almost hurt.

“Have you studied my people before interacting with me?” I asked mildly, rerolling the scroll and securing its cord to my shoulder strap.

He flung up a loose-fingered hand, the other reaching for a sheet of paper yellowed with age. “Of course not. I don’t have time for such things. What does that have to do with anything?”

I just looked at him.

(Forgive me if this blog isn’t 100% about writing anymore. I’ve never been that purely striated anyways; my life leaks color, and the shades blur into one another like ink in the ocean.)

Once upon a time, autumn came, and all the trees turned to dying colors. Rain fell; the skies faded to marbled grey. The leaves fell; the trees were naked with only their shadows for cloaks. The ground drowned as the sunlight waned, and the frost came to drape everything in shining blankness. All the color, the movement, the life had slipped away to hibernate until the warmth could return.

Happens every year. And every year, my heart slides down into dormancy, eyes heavy-lidded with weary darkness.

And every year, after the longest night right before Christmas, I say hello to the sun and welcome it home.

And every year, it isn’t until early February or thereabouts that I manage to rekindle the fire in my own spirit.

Doing anything of worth requires fire. Passion. Some form of love, some form of desire, some driving force that animates and fuels you. Even if your motivation is only survival, it is still your passion for life that keeps your heart beating and your hands working. If you didn’t care about life, you wouldn’t bother prolonging and improving it.

If you didn’t care about anything, you’d do nothing. It’s called apathy.

Passion enflames; passion propels. Writers write because they’re passionate about their stories and their characters. Artists paint or draw or sculpt because they’re passionate; musicians create and play music; athletes move their bodies; craftsmen create; everyone breathes. Nothing worth doing lacks passion from the doer.

When the sunlight is brief and the outside world is cold and bleak, it’s easy to lose sight of passion, of our reasons for doing things, of the source of our fuel. It’s cyclical, and not necessarily in such a large arc as the wheel of the year. It can happen in a month, or a week, or a day, or a lifetime.

But losing passion is only one part of the cycle. Shove through it and reach the next stage to recover yourself and reignite your heart. However many times you do it, it’s always necessary, and always worth the effort.

How do you keep the passion flowing in your life?

Image Credit: Crestock Creative Photos.

You. Yes, you. No, not the spectre behind you. You.

You’re important.

I’ve been taking these first few weeks of the new year to let go of the old and breathe the new. I’m finding out I’ve let go of a few too many things, like my beloved sources of inspiration, and now I get to reconnect.

I’ve been reading things – sites, blogs, stories, journals. Trying to remember what got me stirred up. Figuring out why I came here and started building this house. I forget very easily – I live in the moment – and I had to go back, through written words, to re-realize a lot of my driving forces.

Most of those written words weren’t my own. They were yours. Your dreams, hopes, goals, ambitions. I draw strength and inspiration from the people who dare to follow their hearts, who push through the hard times to make better ones, who try to manifest their desires, whether those desires parallel my own or not.

Don’t ever doubt your own importance, even to people you’ve never personally spoken with. The internet lets us connect, but even when we don’t connect one-on-one, you influence people. You inspire them.

You inspire me. And for that, I thank you. I’ll try to return the favor as best I can, and I won’t waste the hope grown by your words.

February 2nd has long been a Day of Fire for me – to melt down the old in order to forge the new. It’s almost here, and I think I’ll be ready for it, now that I’ve remembered all I have to recycle and cultivate.

Happy New Year, folks! Mine has just begun, and with it comes a recommitment to this blog and what it represents – my efforts at authorship.

My last post was over a month ago and talked about my need to unplug. Well, true to personal form, I hit one extreme after the other and completely abandoned Twitter, instant messaging, most of my email, and this blog in order to get myself together. I focused on things outside of the computer and things inside of my head. I worldbuilt a lot, even finishing the Gurhai starmap. I spent the holidays with J’s family for the first time, enjoyed it, and missed my own people in Colorado and West Virginia.

Now, the year has that just-unpackaged crisp smell to it, and I’m ready to return. While I can’t promise I will immediately swing back into my every-odd-day posting schedule, I will be guiding myself back in that direction and writing here more often. I’ve written out my goals (not resolutions) for the year, and being right here is one of them.It’s going to be a better year than the one we’ve left behind. May everyone have a wonderful 2010!

Image Credit: Crestock Creative Photos.

Oh, I have neglected this blog. Friends and readers, I apologize.

I have really enjoyed keeping this blog for the past few months, tossing up a variety of fiction, worldbuilding/critterbuilding, meta-writing, and slice-of-life posts. I have no intention of letting myself linger into infinite idleness. I confess, however, I have a bit of a quandary. You may have even tackled this one before, or you might be in the process of doing so now.

As a totally unknown author who’s trying to build a community of readers and creative folk, I can’t afford to walk away from the computer for weeks at a time. Networking via blogs, forums, Twitter, and other virtual gathering-places is vital to getting my name out and meeting great people. I’m a certified internet marketer, to boot – I know the ins and outs of self-marketing and social media, even if I happen to shun certain venues (like MySpace). If I want any kind of online community, I need to be interactive, dynamic, genuine, and present.

However, I want to unplug.

I’m finding myself feeling a little ungrounded these days. I’d love little more than to acquire an old electric typewriter – the new ones are too computer-like for my tastes – and an mp3 player that can hold some 20,000 songs, and simply turn the computers off for a week. The typewriter will let me continue to write, journal, and worldbuild, and the mp3 player will let me have all my music outside of my overloaded harddrives. My cell phone can keep me in touch with my good friends and family. I want, and need, a break from the overwhelming virtual side of my life.

I want to go outside, bundled up, and walk through the falling snow at dusk. I want to pick up the training sword that’s leaning against my bo in the corner of the room and practice until my arms want to fall off. I want to have hard copy of my creative works, and I want to hear the solid click-click-thud of a typewriter again. (I started on a manual typewriter, later got an electric, and got my first computer in 2000.) I want to play my guitar until my calluses are tough again. I want to sprawl in a pile of sleeping cats and read new books.

Ultimately, I just want to feel a little more real.

I’m not sure how to balance my authorly, internet-based goals with this desire to unplug and step away. This blog will not be abandoned, and I’ll return to my neglected Twitter account soon. But I need to live in order to write about living, and if I feel like I’m drifting, that’s only going to handicap my ability to create.

A healthy compromise must be found.

How have you managed to balance your internet activity with the rest of your hobbies and responsibilities? I’d be happy to hear about any tips or tricks you’ve found to be helpful.

I have a confession: my brain has been scattered to the sixteen winds lately.

I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo, which has been a blast, but I am unbelievably far behind. This is actually rather typical. I can recall at least two years where I had 20k left in the last week and still managed to finish before midnight on the last day. This month is looking to be similar.

I have been privately attempting to strengthen my flabby, fragile poetry muscle by taking on a friend’s challenge: 100 poems in 100 days. I even raised the bar a notch and found specific prompts to use for each poem. I am far behind on this, as well, but – like NaNoWriMo – I will probably get a surge of inspiration (or just stubbornness) towards the end and finish reasonably on time.

I have been moving. Oh, glorious moving! J and I are the proud new renters of half a duplex – two bedrooms, one bathroom, and one hefty kitchen with enough room for a for-two dining room table. I alone have enough junk to populate a two-bedroom apartment, and J has enough for half a small house, so getting all of our collective stuff moved and unpacked has been an adventure. To my shock, I am actually just about done, barring some pictures that need put up and some knicknacks that need distributed among the places where cats don’t go. I even got all our furniture, books, and DVDs arranged. J, on the other hand, has laid waste to a large portion of the living room and Spare Oom with stuff he has yet to sort and settle. But he put up light-killing curtains, so I forgive him. Still, moving and unpacking have been an enormous time-sink.

(It’s been truly wonderful to have a kitchen to ourselves again, though. I am no chef, but I like being able to have some homemade meals on occasion. I made mediterranean shrimp pasta! J made seafood pizza! There will be chicken stirfry soon!)

I have been job-hunting. Having come to the frustrating and saddening conclusion that communication between myself and my bosses was no longer salvageable, and my abilities did not mesh with their expectations and needs, I cut the cord. I took a few days to busy myself with moving stuff and NaNoWriMo, then leapt into job-hunting again with what might resemble fervor if you tilt your head, close one eye, and squint the other. I’m still incredibly tempted to get a job at the local Trader Joe’s, but I’m being responsible^TM and looking for something with a higher salary first. (Even though our lovely duplex is so affordable that I could pay all my bills and my part of the rent and utilities with a minimum-wage job. I’m trying to forget that fact…)

See, I am not a person who lives to work. I work to live; I spend my energy and time doing what I love. If I can do something I enjoy at work, great! I’ll throw all my passion and enthusiasm into it and happily so – I’ve been known to voluntarily work unpaid overtime just to do right by a company. If I can’t find a passion at my job, I don’t really mind – I’ll find happiness wherever it sprouts, including at a “base-level” job. I surprise people with company loyalty because, unless things are really unpleasant on an interpersonal level, I’m happy to stay at one place and do what I can. And, as a jack-of-all-trades, I don’t mind working outside of my “field,” if one considers professional geekery web and graphic work my field. Honestly, the more I can enjoy myself and have energy for my own pursuits – like this crazy writing gig – the happier I am at any given job, whether I’m the marketing director or a cashier.

And, lastly, I have been doing some personal digging – self-observation and constructive analysis to work towards improving who I am, what I’m doing, and where I’m going. This time of year, during the sun’s descent before the longest night at winter solstice, is always a period of introspection and truths for me. While this is hardly the place to detail such personal work, it deserves mention as something I’ve given my energy and time to and one of the major things occupying my life.

This has been a lengthy and somewhat rambling explanation for why I’ve not been posting regularly. I will probably cook up some posts and back-date them later, just to fill in the gaps, but for now, bear with me – November is a scarce month for more than one reason!

You’ve heard about the daze of my life – what have you been up to recently?

I have a confession, my friends. I… I have been remiss in reading for the past few years.

Please, don’t judge me. I’ve been busy! I’ve lived in two hundred places! (Okay, maybe just seven. Wait, no, eight!) I’ve… I’ve… um…

Okay, so there’s no good excuse for a writer to not read. I hang my head in shame.

That’s why I’m here today. I need your help.

Please, take thirty seconds and comment with one long series (5+ books), two short series (2-5 books), or five stand-alone books that you consider must-reads. Fiction only, please! Make sure to include the author, and if you could summarize them in a sentence, that would be excellent. (Also, please read the comments above yours so you don’t recommend something already mentioned. Just assume I’ve read absolutely nothing; if I’ve already read it, I’ll let you know, and you can recommend something else.)

Thanks so much in advance, folks – I need to increase my awesome quotient broaden my literary horizons!

Image Credit: Yuri Arcurs.

Today, boys and girls, I’m here to talk to you about drugs.

–wait, don’t hit the X. I said talk, not lecture. This is a blog about fiction! C’mon.

For the purpose of this post, I’m going to define ‘drug’ as any ingestible substance with physiological and/or psychological effects. Medicine, alcohol, and marijuana all fall under the drug heading here.

Almost every single person has an opinion about at least one drug. Drug A should be illegal, or Drug B should be legalized. Doing or distributing Drug C should put someone on death row, while doing or distributing Drug D should be considered saint’s work. Drug E should be used carefully; Drug F can be used willy-nilly. Drug G isn’t all that bad, but Drug H is hardcore. People who do Drug I are just looking to relax, but people who do Drug J are dangerous addicts. It’s socially acceptable to partake of Drug K at an event, but someone imbibing Drug L in public should get arrested. Drug M should always be done around people to be safe, while Drug N should only be done alone. Keep Drug O in the house, but Drug P can go on the streets, and Drug Q can even be done in the car without anyone dying.

You get my point.

Nearly every human culture has found a way to make alcohol, medicine, and narcotics. There’s a rich and fascinating history on drug production and use. My question to you is not a moral one, but a creative one: How do fictional cultures treat drugs? Not only fictional human cultures, but humanoid and non-human ones as well?

Is drug use so honed a science that the entire culture takes a variety of drugs for their every need, every day? Is drug use so horrifying a concept – loss of self-control a phobia – that the culture won’t even use medicine when it’s desperately needed? Which drugs are acceptable, and in what ways? Which drugs are unacceptable, and how is illegal use of them treated? What’s considered medicinal, and what’s considered recreational? Are drugs used for religious or spiritual purposes? Does military training include developing a high tolerance to certain common drugs, or even poisons?

How do the people in your stories deal with drugs? Get creative! Even human cultures have vastly different relationships with and opinions of mind-altering substances. You can drive home the alienness of a culture or race very easily by tweaking the place drugs have in that society.

Image Credit: Royalty Free Images.

[Author's Note: This is a longer short story, set in Gurhai, and one of few such things that I've actually finished. I'm notoriously bad about capturing an entire story arc in less than ten thousand words, but this one is only 6600-some. I wrote it in four parts, hence the sectioning-off. Also, the title is ... unofficial, but true to the story contents. . Enjoy!]

“Captain Exemplar!”

Arista Reenla opened her eyes and stared into the shadowed rafters, which were untouched by the light thrown from the open doorway. “Report,” she growled, propping herself up on one elbow and squinting as she tried to peer past the torch to identify the man who’d woken her.

“Milady,” the man said, his very tone begging for forgiveness for his intrusion, “we have sighted an unknown ship off the port bow. The ship’s captain requests an audience with you immediately.”

She tried not to sigh as she recognized the face of one of her newest men, a knight named Padryk Vessus. “Where is Captain Keng?”

“He’s– well, right now he’s up in the observation nest, but he said he’d meet you on first deck, milady.” Padryk hovered nervously in the doorway. “Shall I tell him…?”

“Yes, yes,” Arista muttered. “I’ll be up momentarily. Leave me be to dress.”

“Milady!” the knight acknowledged sharply, drawing his shoulders square in a bodily salute before stepping backwards and shutting the door, leaving her in welcome darkness.

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This is a writing blog, so this post doesn’t really belong.

But if it weren’t for the heart behind what I’m writing here, this blog wouldn’t exist.

Welcome to the roots of the tree giving you air.

In early October, I discovered the Freak Revolution, a change-the-world project headed by two self-professed freaks, Pace and Kyeli. They were trying to get a million people to read their Manifesto. I downloaded it, read it, and promptly spread it among my friends. You already know I’m not your normal writer – if such a thing even exists. I could identify with being a freak, especially with the term reclaimed in a more positive and dynamic light.

That site, along with Tiny Buddha, got my wheels spinning. What’s it worth to you to be yourself? What would you give? How hard would you work?

Do you even realize it’s possible?

It took me most of my life to realize that, if I wanted to be truly happy, I needed to stop trying to be some theoretical ideal and start being me. We’re all inherently imperfect – perfection is an impossibility in a dynamic universe – and it felt like defeat to no longer strive to be flawless. As though I should be able to be perfect, and the fact that I wasn’t made me worth less than some anonymous other person who had managed the feat.

Bull.

In truth, the choice to be me instead of trying to be perfect was not failure, but success. I had to acknowledge that who and what I am, with all my quirks and flaws, is not a bad person to be. Instead of going against my own grain, I could strive to be the best me I could be. I had to realize that I’m not responsible for other people’s expectations and perceptions; I’m only responsible for my own actions, words, path, and happiness.

Man, what a load off. I could stop trying to be interested in political history? I didn’t have to pretend to care about pop culture? Suddenly, I felt free. I could opt out of most things considered “the norm” in this society, since the majority of what’s me and mine isn’t in the general pool of common interests and characteristics. I could stop apologizing for being me, once I realized it wasn’t a bad thing to be so individualized. Acknowledging my imperfection, letting go of unrealistic expectation, and looking within to see where I wanted to go – not should go, but wanted to go – have made even the hard things possible.

I let myself believe that it’s not just okay to be me, but that I have a right to it, and I can step up to defend my right to be me, while letting myself be nebulous and transitory, mid-evolution between birth and death.

I’m still imperfect. I still fall back on old habits, outmoded assumptions. I still take the easy way out. I still forget the new and remember the old in its place.

But I surround myself with brilliant, creative people for a reason. I hear them talking, and I remember where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m going. I remember that I’ve already opted out of the negativity and stress and obligations plaguing me. I have more personal power than I’m laying claim to in this moment.

So I think free, and the burring noise of happiness (a hum, a purr) starts thrumming in my chest again.

And I keep writing, because I want to, because I can, and so I will.

Image Credit: Royalty Free Images.