Time to Breathe Yet?

Nope, not quite. I participated in an on-line conference this year: MuseOnline and am still catching up, even though the conference officially ended yesterday. Was it only yesterday? Geez, my mind is still spinning. I don't remember who told me about the conference to begin with. It happened last year, but I did not sign up. Too many things to do--besides, it was an on-line thing, and free. How many things have you ever gotten for free that were worth the price you paid? Exactly. FREE was not something I was willing to pay for last year. And I had my doubts about it this year, too. But another friend told me she would be giving a workshop on non-verbal communications, so I decided that I'd give it a shot. Besides, free means I can back out any time I want. FREE means free. No obligations, right?


HA! Let me tell you, this conference was the best thing I've done for my writing in ages--besides actually writing, that is. And there is NaNo, too. NaNo's free, and it's fun. Maybe the Muse Conference would be, at least, fun. I didn't end up wanting to back out of anything I'd signed up for, though I was disappointed that two of the workshops didn't actually happen. However, there were more than enough to choose from to keep me up to my literarily-aspiring eyeballs in busy. I signed up for [cough cough] way too many workshops, since I was probably thinking free also equals easy. Well, I was wrong. The workshops I took and the ones I didn't have time to take are chock-full of....work. Handouts, assignments, exchanges and sharing. It was a very full week. Oh, did I forget to mention the Conference  is a week long? Sorry. It was a week packed with much reading and writing and information gathering. I learned so much and felt empowered by some of the things I learned: how to brand myself as an author, how to set up a good website, how to use social networking sites to get my books marketed, etc. Not to mention: how to write power sentences, how to keep my 'viewpoint' from wandering as I write, how to 'write tight' and keep it that way, plotting, planning, organizing, OH, MY! All this for free.


I've gone to one other conference that I paid for and physically attended, to the tune of a couple hundred dollars. That's why I wasn't sold on this free on-line thing. I remember my experience at the paid event I attended. Disappointment. Didn't feel like I had gotten much out of it besides the privilege of sitting and listening to published writers toot their horns. Not that it wasn't fun, but why pay to hear hour long advertising segments? Really? These folks that put on the Muse Conference are pros--they write, and yeah, they told me where I could buy their books. But that was more along the lines of "Hi, my name is I. Writebooks, and here's my info. Check it out."  Then they got down to business and gave away a lot of deep information--including .pdf handout books on how to do what they were getting ready to teach you how to do. They interacted with the participants, giving helpful advice and suggestions.  They encouraged and cajoled and cheered us on. It was fun! It was a richly rewarding experience. And it was free. So, here's to sometimes getting WAY MORE than you pay for! Thanks to you all at the Muse Conference. You've restored my faith that sometimes there are people who believe in paying it forward and helping others out in a craft that isn't always kind. Here's to many more wonderful years!  

Accomplishment...of sorts

Rambling. That is what I feel like I am doing. Rambling through books, pages,  e-mail, blogs, the Internet. Collecting things to paper the walls of my mind. I'm supposed to be writing and, in a sense, maybe I am. Working things out somewhere around the edges until something clicks into place. I'm not sure what I am looking for. Maybe a distraction from pain. Maybe a secret to life. The secret. But I don't think there are really any secrets to life. It's pretty much all out there in the open, if you really look for it.

But. But what? I'm not sure. My brain has turned off, more or less. I read through books, learning. Slurping it up, hoping to know things that someone else has known a lot longer than I have. Or they've known it more surely than I have. I feel like I have a Teflon brain. Nothing sticks these days. Is it the pain, causing things to slide off before they have a chance to take root? I am getting some work done. Edited a short story manuscript, sent it off to my editor, gotten some cover graphics done for the same person for his book. I started editing one of my novels and worked through several chapters in two books (by the same author) on how to outline a novel. Got all the worksheets and checklists and such from the books loaded into files on the computer for easier use. Lots of typing there, but it did not make my fingers itch to type my own words. Where is this going? I'm not sure.

The weeks are broken up with various activities; Tuesday is friend day, Wednesday a study circle is supposed to happen, Thursday evening a writing group. These things all break my week apart and make it hard for me to focus. I know something is coming up, so I know I will be interrupted and my thought processes disrupted. Getting down to work, sticking with it, is hard to do if I know that something is coming up. My mind jitters around, never landing on one thing. Unfocused because there is that thing waiting around the next hour. Taking two hours at a time to work is not something my mind seems bent on doing. It wants large chunks of time. Huge blocks of non-disturbance to look forward to. Ah, a straight path to the goal. Hours and hours of unbroken stillness in which to frolic and create. Time that spans great distances between now and then, until my mind comes back to the present--emptied and satisfied with an accomplishment of some sort. I don't find that easily, but will not give up my scheduled events--they are important! I need to learn to work between those times and get things done. 

So I play at getting organized. Okay, so it isn't really play, because it does bring organization to the chaos. That's a good thing. 

Voice from the Ether

Weird? Scary? Okay, let's just go with weird. Scary, not so much. Irritating, definitely.

As I was meandering through my on-line writing group, reading and enjoying what has been written in the past few days, a voice pops up and starts yammering at me about Arm&Hammar laundry detergent. Now, that's not unusual--or wouldn't have been had I been using IE8, since IE8 had started allowing all sorts of pop-ups to adjust themselves to my browsing choices (yeah, I clicked on the "block popups" and it doesn't always work these days...).  With voice feeds. So, I switched to Chrome--and no more annoying pop-ups at all! Chrome is (was?) working well. Until this morning. A few minutes ago, to be exact.

The voice, all chirpy and nice, starts talking about cleaning aids. I look down at my toolbar and taskbar and there is nothing open that is not supposed to be there. No pop-up taking up valuable desktop real estate. I check the tabs across Chrome, nothing extra there. There is no visual to match the voice that is yammering away. Then it stops. Hmmmm....strange. Then it chirps out "Hey! Have you gotten any coupons yet?" Every few seconds. Annoying. Weird. I turned off my speakers, end of problem. Speakers off for five minutes. I turned them back on, thinking the voice in the machine would have given up. Not so. Immediately "Hey! Have you gotten any coupons yet?" blares out, followed quickly by: "Looking for solutions? We've got more!" Now I'm ticked!

This is *MY* space! I paid for this computer. I pay for the right to access the Internet. I pay for the electricity to keep it all humming. I'll be damned if I will ever pay to buy products that show up, unannounced, in my life. I did not invite this chirpy female voice to high jack my air-, brain-, or any other-space I might occupy at any given moment. I have my writing group tab open, I have my gmail account tab open. There is nothing else going on or open on my computer except for non-connected programs like PageFour and OpenOffice. Is one of them the culprit? I don't think so. Has Chrome decided to allow pop-up voices rather than pop-up visuals into the mix? If so, I will be shopping elsewhere for a browser. One that does not allow for such a blatant invasion of my privacy.

The thought crosses my mind: How am I ever going to be able to listen to music on my computer again? The thing is, if I am on the Internet doing research for one of my WIPs, I might like to have on Celtic Drums, or some country tunes, or heavy metal--depending on what I am researching for. I've had the experience of having my music going and clicking on something I wanted to listen to on-line. I figured one would cancel out the other, see? Nope. Didn't work that way. I got to hear them both. Not an easy feat to separate out the noise from the news. So, does this mean I won't be able to enjoy my music while I'm on the Internet without having to listen to whatever is hammering away at me to buy this or that? It has been fifteen minutes, I've turned my speakers back on again--sound check--and she's still at it. It isn't right. It is another insidious evil perpetrated by the mega-industrial complexes vying for our cash, our laundry, and our lives. Invasion of my privacy is not an acceptable way to get me to buy into your product line. You have just lost a once valued customer. Although, now that I think about it, it could be a little on the scary side. They, meaning corporations, already track our spending through our bank cards, credit cards, and any other means they can. Now they want our private minutes, too? There are so many other, more important things going on in the world. And while those things are going on, while our attention is drawn away for a moment, advertisers and corporations creep into our veins. It's just wrong.

Social Networking

First, let me see if this works. Yes, it does.

Okay, now that we have gotten that out of the way--that being the ability to copy and paste from my PageFour application directly into my blog here. The question arises because I can't copy/paste from my OpenOffice application into my blog. And while I can use MS Word and actually publish directly from that application, I am using a sadly outdate version that is, to say the least, not doing a lot of the things I need it to do; such as cooperate with others who have much newer versions. Backwards compatibility, it seems, is a thing of the past. Updating is too expensive. Hence, OpenOffice. PageFour is a whole other app--that I have learned to use and really like! And then there's the question of security issues that MS does not cover with such an outdated program. Ah, the vicissitudes of life...

[False alarm: It will only copy/past one sentence at a time. Drat! The workaround: copy from here, paste to a Word doc, copy from Word, paste to blog. Life should not be so complicated.]

At any rate, today's subject will tackle, for me, social networking sites. There are many! A few of the ones I belong to: Ning, MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook. Not to mention all the other places I've joined where there are group forums, such as Goodreads, NaNoWriMo, Duotrope, Sampa, Flickr, etc. (That's just a drop in the bucket!) Are we humans joiners by nature?

Each of these applications seems to have its own jargon, though many of them share commonalities. It's hard to keep up these days. My experience has been: First, there was Myspace, which everyone invited me to. Then, Twitter, Ning, and Facebook. I'm not sure if that was the order in which they came into being. I am only sure that it is the order in which I was invited to join (according to my best recollection).

So, am I getting tweets from twits? Not so much, these days. Nor am I getting much action from Myspace. Not since Facebook, at any rate. As for the twitters; as I said, those are pretty sparse. I mean, the tweets from the twits. Is that actually what people who use Twitter are called? It seems like it should be, since it is easier than calling someone a Twitterer. That sounds like a stutter. Come to think of it, if someone sends you the same tweet a dozen times in a row, would that be a twutter? And I don't think my friends on Twitter are twits, though they may think that of me from time to time. And when do you actually capitalize these words? Is it Twits or twits? Should it be Tweets or tweets? Is it Twick or Tweat? No, wait! That's still several weeks away.

According to WordWeb, another very handy application, though not social, a twit is: a noun; 1. Someone who is regarded as contemptible, or 2. Aggravation by deriding or mocking or criticizing. Then we have the verb usage: twit (twitted, twitting) meaning to harass with persistent criticism or carping.

Back in the olden days, before twitter/Twitter, a friend who was also a twit would have been annoying indeed. I mean, we've all had the experience, right? The constant harassment, criticism, and carping away at us until we wanted to punch them one? But I don't currently see my friends who twit me as being annoying or harassing in any way. The occasional "B rite bak, gotta use the potty!" or the "I've had my 3rd cuppa 2day and am now ready 4 action." did get a bit lame at times. Sort of in the category of TMI (Too Much Information!), if you know what I mean. But most of my friends are pretty level-headed folks not given to info-overload. So I don't consider them to be twits in the least, even though they do twitter.

We've turned google into a verb these days: "I'm going to google that and see what I find." or "I'm googling that review even as we speak." come to mind. Does that mean that when I interact on Facebook or Myspace that I am facebooking? myspacing? Does that make Ning, ninging? And what if you get stuck with that one, like a broken record??? You could be ninginginginging.... all the day long.

And why do we join so many groups? It's like jumping ship these days. First one app comes along. We like it! We send invites to every person who has ever come through our e-mail inbox--whether we remember them or not. A revolution starts. People come pouring in to this new and shiny site in droves. Ah, we have established contact. We have lift off! The site hits the airwaves, television and radio pick it up and talk about "the latest social networking trend" and we all, if we haven't already been invited by at least a dozen or more contacts, decide to give it a look. We join, we make connections, we love it! Pretty soon we aren't seeing much action on our other social networking sites. Everyone has abandoned ship and taken up with the life raft. So be it. Another day, another trend. Is there no loyalty in the world? And trying to keep up with all those networks we've joined will be interesting, to say the least.

Let me tell you--it can be done. If you are willing to put the rest of your life on hold. If you are willing to quit your job, ignore your family... But, hey!, they are all twitterfacebookmyspaceninging, too. No problem. Just add them to my ever-growing list of friends/contacts and I can tell them when dinner is happening. "We r dinnering 2nite @ approx 7pm after I get dun w/my tweets." Since I am using all apps at all times, then I am not being disloyal in the least. And the apps nowadays are almost all interlinked in some mysterious fashion so, when you post to one, it may broadcast to the others. At least, that's the way I think it works. I really don't keep up with all the others much of the time. Like most others, I tend to go where my peeps are.

And look at all these people I haven't heard from in years! Everyone of them here--together at last. Sighing in bliss, we tweet to our heart's content. Until we remember that the class bully whom we just 'friended' was not our friend. And our exes found us through friends of friends of friends. And it really bites to have a BFF paint all your secrets on their walls! Yeah, there are down-sides to all this social networking. I won't even go into all the political gaffs out there. Must exercise caution, perhaps?

Gotta jam, my twits are waiting!

Making Confusion Out of Chaos

Spending time learning what you thought you already knew can be, in a word, frustrating. Instead of simply being able to just do something, there are all sorts of other steps involved. It's not a matter of knowing what you know. It's not that easy. Today, I feel decidedly disorganized. I put two photo books together. Then I read the forums on all sorts of "issues" having to do with the physical printing of these books. Soft-proofing came up several times. So, I learned about that. Found out my current software program does not allow for soft-proofing. There is no work-around for it, either. After spending hours and hours reading, tracking down other areas to study up on, downloading an ICC file and installing it where it needs to be in said software, then finding it can't be used...frustrating. Learning should be fun--and lead to something tangible. A headache is tangible, I suppose.

Which leads me to the Chaos. I have too many files on my computer, which clogs it up and makes it slow. I can't run more than two apps without the machine getting slow and crashing. Can't listen to music while working on graphics, which is something I love to do, as it gets my mind out of the way for the creative rush of images. But, music software and graphics software do not run smoothly together. Break out the CD player/boom box and use that. But, where are the CDs I like to listen to? The ones I've created for my own listening muse? Moved about here and there. Chaos. Nothing is really where it is supposed to be. So disorganized feelings and more frustration.

Change fonts every time I start a new paragraph. Why? This program doesn't hold the font setting. Weird. Another level of confusion to toss onto the pile marked Chaos. If I could simply start at the beginning and move things to where they need to be, where they belong, then I'd be left with simple confusion. Better, by far, than full out Chaos, I'd imagine. Could it be that easy? No. Because I want to work on my projects, not sort and separate life into neatly organized bins and boxes. My office is a mess! I have sorted through so many files and such, and come to the conclusion that they multiply when my back is turned. Insidiously. Just when I think I am getting a handle on things, things move around. Time to toss the dead leaves and old files. Start over. Oh, but this and that and the other might come in handy some day! Can't toss them. It's almost like a birthday or Christmas or 'Ayyam'i'Ha, finding all these old things. They feel new. Bright and shiny. Keep them! Toss them! A brain at war with itself. Not a pretty picture and not an easy environment in which to create. And I'm just looking for one silly note, one reference that might put all this chaos into a more malleable structure.

Instead, there's a frozen feeling to each minute. Should I do this first, or that? Organize my physical files or my computer files? Both? A little at a time? So I drink gallons of ice water and sit in my sweltering office and hack away at the story, the image, the learning. Jumping around and not getting anywhere.

I felt productive the last month or so. Not so much now. Fidgety and flighty now. It's not that bad. It's not that good. It's a matter of figuring out how to get it all under control. Mine. My control. I need a plan and a schedule--and a bit of meditation wherein concrete ideas can float across my mind and a sense of "I can do this!" behind the whole organizational process. Bring Chaos down to the level of Confusion, where it might become more manageable. Enough rambling. Time to sort the stacks.

Discovery

Discovery is a great thing. This past week, I have done a lot of refreshing of my memory at Lulu.com, as well as doing research on other POD sites. I have found another, Blurb, that looks interesting—and with their BookSmart software download, which is free, a lot of excitement surrounding putting together photo books for publication. Maybe I will actually do something with my art photos and graphics that I also generate with them. I spent hours and hours using BookSmart, and enjoyed it. So, now, I have Lulu and Blurb to work with. No excuses for not getting things done!

Also, my current collection of short stories is still in progress. It is with “my” editor, who is bogged down with a zillion projects that are also consuming vast amounts of time. Which gives me a bit of a breather in order to work out the cover design for the book, as well as a title, which it still sadly lacks. I may add more to this blog later on, but for right now, that's where I'm at. Besides having too many thoughts flying around inside my head to keep up with. I have an editing group going on today that I need to prepare for, sit that is why this is so short. Not enough time in a day...as usual.

But I do want to leave with one final thought: today is 11 September 09. It has been eight years since the Towers were destroyed. Hate is such an insidious thing. We get caught up in it at our own peril—and the peril of others. I have noticed, in recent months, how much hate and invective is spewing forth in our own country these days. Talk show hosts and television wags dump vitriol out there, one side bashing the other in a continuous stream of one-upsmanship and blame-gaming. Even, and especially, before gathering the facts and getting to the truth of the situation. Politics has become so divisive that there is talk of potential riots in the streets of this country. We came together, for a short time, as a nation—a world—after 9/11. We can do it again. Just leave all the jargon and hate-mongering aside. Put down the old and tired ranting, the outworn shibboleths of our ancestors, and join in this prayer:

“O Thou kind Lord! This gathering is turning to Thee. These hearts are radiant with Thy love. These minds and spirits are exhilarated by the message of Thy glad-tidings. O God! Let this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to material degrees, and render this just government victorious. Confirm this revered nation to upraise the standard of the oneness of humanity, to promulgate the Most Great Peace, to become thereby most glorious and praiseworthy among all the nations of the world. O God! This American nation is worthy of Thy favors and is deserving of Thy mercy. Make it precious and near to Thee through Thy bounty and bestowal.” - 'Abdu'l-Bahá

And when we are done praying for this Blessed country, let's not pick up hate and anger again, but, instead, educate ourselves—dig deep for the truth and let that be your guide. Then pray for the whole world. If we try, I believe we can discover love enough to circle the globe with our prayers. We all need prayers, right?

Another Day, Another…blog?

I didn't know that goodreads had a blog option. I didn't use goodreads for more than tracking the reading of friends as well as my own reading. (My "to read" list has gotten rather large!) This is something new to learn. Maybe I will keep up with it. At least, something to think about.

So, for my first entry (on goodreads), the good/bad news. I just sent my mostly formatted completely self-edited manuscript (meaning as clean as I could make it re: errors, story flow, etc.) off to my editor. Is it normal to come to the end of a project and decide, unreservedly, that you hate your work, you may never write again, and it's all a sham. Or, that I am a sham? The "mostly formatted" part comes from fighting with my word processing program--trying to get it to take my formatting over what *it* thinks is the best way to do things. Sigh. That, I can (almost?) deal with.

The other part, hating my work, is strange. I didn't want to edit my stories at all. Never really did more than talk about collecting them into an anthology to publish. When I did finally sit down (after getting fired up from editing my friend's THIRD collection) I was actually enjoying the process. Some of the stories were older--from several years ago. Fresh eyes on the work. Fresh ideas on making them better. Many of the stories were, to me, actually pretty well written and fun/interesting. Wow! Did I write that???

After hours and hours and hours...you get the point...of editing, then the formatting, I feel like I should forget it. I'm a fraud. I can't write. Failure. So, I'm going to take this as just a let down from the intensive editing marathon I've been on and believe it will pass. Move on to another project and take several deep breaths. I'm sure I'm not the only struggling writer who has hit this sort of wall. It just seems rather strange. Guess I was hoping for a very large sigh of relief and a sense of accomplishment. Maybe that will come later. Like, when my intrepid editor starts sending me glowing reviews of my work? Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Now that I have written this, I think I'll copy it to my website, since I have been neglecting that again. Kill two birds with one stone...

Well, this was fun!,/p>

Shadowlands

Time to do a little maintenance and see if I have any brain cells left… Nope, still empty. They ooze out with the heat. Projects: on hold, moving slowly. Making lists. Dealing with summer. That's always hard, summer. Schedules get knocked off track—okay, never was much of one to keep to a schedule, but if I had one, summer would sure dislocate it. That's more in keeping with reality, at any rate.

This morning I spent about three hours at a workshop on the concept of consecration. Consecration: solemn commitment of your life or your time to some cherished purpose (to a service or a goal). That's the definition that I'm going with for the purposes of this blog. It is a workshop being developed by friends—I was a beta-tester, along with two others. I'm looking forward to seeing how this all develops and being a participant. More important, I'm looking forward to shaking it out and seeing how I can get what I've just learned to fall into place in my life as it stands right now. I have things to do—that are not getting done. Why? Find the answers, move forward.

I feel energized today. Have not felt that way in ages. Maybe the veil is lifting and the past is shifting out of the way. It has been a long seven months of illness and testing. A few more tests to go, but so be it. Thus far, all tests come back normal/positive so I can stop worrying. Not that I was overly worried to begin with, but all that running from one specialist to another for this and that drains time, energy, resources. Makes me a bit jumpy. Maybe I can find a way to let all that "stuff" flow past me as I get on with other things? Let it happen around me but connect the core of myself elsewhere? An interesting concept. Abdu'l-Baha says: "Know thou that the Kingdom is the real world, and this nether place is only its shadow stretching out. A shadow hath no life of its own; its existence is only a fantasy, and nothing more; it is but images reflected in water, and seeming as pictures to the eye."

Whilst at the workshop this morning, I had a few wandering thoughts having to do with reality—or Reality. Mostly disjointed but leaving me feeling on the edge of a realization, giddy and ready to fly. First, the thought: Don't confuse me with the facts. Which lead to; The physical is NOT the fact of reality = it is the confusion of Reality = the "static" that surrounds us (physical reality) = is THE TEST we journey through to get to the Divine matrix = we actually live *within* that matrix (see quote above) but we forget it as we get caught up in the physicality of life. Anyway, it's a start. Something to give some thought to as I move forward.

Revisiting

I am in the midst of explaining how to set up a little website on blogger.com to a friend and check in at my own site just to refresh my memory. Duh! I have not been here since mid-November—the Nano days.

Nano went just fine. If you call getting the wordcount but no real novel fine. I can't even remember what I wrote this year. Oh, wait, it was some angsty thing about making life choices. Yeah, that's what it was. I will add it to the stack of other unfinshed works that I will "get back to later" just as soon as life allows me or I get organized enough or I hit my stride or blah blah blah. Still having a bit of trouble with that whole disciplined artist thing.

Which brings me to my next phase—I am actually working on organizing my over 25,000 photographs that reside in the hallowed inner workings of my computer. Yes, 25K is a bit excessive; especially when the VAST majority of them are not likely to ever see the light of day. Snapshot quality photos do not make for interesting subject material, except when you want to embarrass one child or another and show the latest (or earliest) clicks from Christmas or birthday parties or whatever. But, I do have some pretty good shots that have potential. I have actually polished a few up, as well as doing a bit of graphic work on them—then loaded them up at http://SMicheleSmith.imagekind.com/ which is a pretty good place to be. Though I have not spent a lot of time working on that, either. Need to get busy!

I guess I lost my stride completely after I had the heart attack. Yep, that was fun. First there was Nano, then the whole December holidays thing then BANG! have a bit of a heart attack. From that, I went into a really nasty depression—that I have since learned is "normal" after surviving a heart attack. Gee, wish they would have told me back several months ago. Maybe I could have done something more, I don't know, intelligent about it? Bet that as it may, I finally got bored with being depressed—than you God! But I still didn't get up a lot of steam for getting things done. And the RA seems to have flared even worse since the attack and I'm thinking some of the meds they put me on may be contributing to that whole mess. And having to pay through the nose and all other orifices for the medical bills has put me in a funk on top of all that. I am ever grateful that there was insurance to cover a lot of it, but these co-pays and the number of doctors and specialists and etc etc etc that have inserted their hands into the bank account is staggering. Hospitalists? Who's ever heard of those??? Well, now I have…and it's not good news for folks who don't have large incomes and endless resources. A five day stay in the hospital brings these hospitalists out of the woodwork and they charge hefty fees to spend a few minutes telling you nothing and scaring you silly. That's a whole other story. Suffice to say, I'm grateful to be here and now I'm hoping to actually get serious about my work and my life again. Or finally?