Category: Live It

  • 2019: Year in Review

    I haven’t done a Year in Review post for a lot of years, but since my areas of focus for 2020 is to get back in touch with my process (iterate and optimize!), be more positive about small, slow, incremental change, and to be more accountable to my writing, it seems like a good idea to look at the past couple of years before jumping forward into a bright shiny January.

    2018

    Since 2008, I’ve chosen a word to focus on each year. For 2018, the word was Metamorphosis. And boy, did it live up to that moniker.

    2018 was a year of transition. And change. And upheaval.

    2018 was the year I decided to start working on a YA. It was the year I changed jobs—twice. It was the year I parted ways with my first agent. The year my energy and overall health took a nosedive. The year I came to a deep understanding that fostering terminally ill cats didn’t only mean keeping them comfortable, but also letting them go; related: this is also the year I self-published a book to help pay for cat hospice.

    I walked out of 2018–like most people, I think–thankful and a little baffled that I had made it through the year intact. Looking back, there isn’t any one thing that stands out as being overwhelmingly awful. More like, every day, the world just seemed to get a little bit worse. A little bit darker. A little bit more lonely.

    As someone who was writing primarily romance, and still trying to find her voice again after a pretty major setback a couple of years prior, every day, every book, every word was an act of…not faith, but desperation. I felt as though I was rushing up the face of a crumbling crag and any moment I would lose my grip, my footing, my nerve, and plummet onto the sharp rocks below.

    There was a moment during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings where I spent my days listening to the men in my office joke about not making eye contact with the women lest they be accused of rape, then spent my nights at Starbucks openly weeping through the first draft of what I was sure would be the last book I would ever write.

    I forced myself to finish that draft in one mad weekend binge in December, hit save, and took the rest of the year off.

    2018 Stats:
    Words written: 65,004
    Books finished: 2
    Books published: 1
    # of days written: 55
    Longest writing streak: 12
    Ave. words per day: 1,153
    Ave. minutes per day: 48
    Ave. words per hour: 1,579
    Most productive days: Wednesdays and Saturdays
    Least productive day: Tuesday

    2019

    2018 left me defeated, demoralized, and hungry for more. So hungry I feared I could never get enough: Validation. Success. Achievement. Purpose. Joy.

    In her podcast leading up to the release of Big Magic, Liz Gilbert, in conversation with Brene Brown, talked about how creativity, if not used, has a tendency to metastasize into a bitter, toxic thing.

    This is the feeling that consumed me in the first half of 2019. For years, I had allowed myself to be vulnerable in service to my writing, and in doing so, had opened myself to a fragility that did not lend itself to the world at large. Months of going through the motions of the daily things, ignoring the steady hum of creativity, had allowed it to decay.

    I wanted so much more. But more felt…unattainable.

    Rotting from the inside out, though? That was unpardonable.

    Digging up the box where I had buried that part of myself was terrifying. I knew I couldn’t ease into it. There were no easy first steps. If I wanted more, I had to go after more. And I had to do so fearlessly. I had to change my thinking. My habits. My routine. I had to completely re-prioritize my life.

    And then I had to leap.

    So that’s what I did.

    I joined a healthy group at work. I restructured my social groups, limited my time spent around negative, toxic behavior, and became more intentional in my relationships. I wrapped one day a week in iron-clad solitude and turned all the alerts off of my phone. I stopped working overtime and installed boundaries where before there had been none.

    I pissed a lot of people off.

    I got over it.

    Years ago, I’d read on Jessica Lemmon’s blog about how she used a goal-setting system called PowerSheets to help her focus. Since it was mid-year, they were having a sale on the six-month undated version, so I thought, why not? It will be good practice for 2020.

    Working through the exercises was like peeling layers of skin away from a blister. All that armor that had protected me from that all-consuming want was gone. I couldn’t ignore it. And I couldn’t pretend my rather comfortable life and pretty good job were satisfying anymore.

    I poured as much of myself into writing as I could, but with a new rule: I wouldn’t be an asshole to myself this time. I would try for the sake of trying, not in the hopes of success, and I wouldn’t let failure stop me.

    This is still a daily struggle. I’m not perfect and I never will be. There are going to be days when I let myself down, or things don’t go my way, or someone gets something I want and I react poorly to it. But I hope every day I get a little bit better at letting go of the outcome and letting myself write because there are stories to tell.

    <!– WINS!!!
    January – March

    • Writing hiatus

    April – June

    • PowerSheets! 💖
    • Submitted Max & Mila to open call ❤️

    July – September

    October – December

    • Edits on Max & Mila 🖍
    • Sick leave due to previously undiagnosed heart condition–hey friends, if your “anxiety” doesn’t feel like anxiety, SEE A CARDIOLOGIST! You could just be dying! 🚑
    • More edits! 💅🏻
    • Planning meeting and further development of YA horror project 🔮
    • I wrote a short story! Apparently I do that now!

    –>

    2019 Stats:
    Words written: 150,598
    Books finished: 3
    Books published: 0
    # of days written: 141
    Longest writing streak: 20
    Ave. words per day: 1,076
    Ave. minutes per day: 63
    Ave. words per hour: 1,121
    Most productive days: Sundays and Fridays
    Least productive day: Thursday

  • Same Liz, New Books

    Many (many, many) years ago, when I was a college student writing my first book, I started a writing blog as a way to help me stay focused. The logic went: if I was blogging, then I was writing, and if I was writing, then something would eventually get done. And if something got done, then I had something to edit. And on and on.

    Really, it wasn’t a bad plan. It got me through two majors and five (5!!) books. I learned a lot (from other writers and trial and error) and I shared a lot and then…man, I just got tired. I got a job. I co-founded a non-profit. I started doing some ghostwriting. I developed a stress-related auto-immune disorder that causes my immune system to eat my organs whenever I get really excited or really scared or when it’s Tuesday or I have to pee… Basically, I finish a book and go into liver failure. Eat a bagel, go into kidney failure. Wake up five minutes late, have no hemoglobin. It’s fine. Totally fine. Everything is OK.

    Point is, after a ten year hiatus, I miss blogging. Not so much for the accountability, because I don’t need that anymore. But because I miss connecting with other writers on a more-than-120-characters level. And because, more than anything, I miss getting in touch with my process, that writer part of me that is always evolving, that doesn’t get a proper check-in often enough.

    (Sorry, writer me. You’re important! You matter! It just doesn’t always feel like you matter when there are other less important but more pressing responsibilities breathing down my neck! We’re going to do better, you and I. I promise!)

    Today I started a new book, which I love and think is great, except that right now the writer part of me is struggling with finding balance and being OK with not writing ALL THE THINGS! ALL THE TIME! The past few months have been the most creatively fulfilling months I’ve had in years, and it’s been a fight to share my time with other responsibilities. Like, you know, work. And sleep. And self-care.

    Twenty-two-year-old writer Liz would not have let those things get in the way of the words. She would have found a more accommodating job, loaded herself full of cigarettes and Red Bull, and powered through. This is probably why thirty-six-year-old writer Liz has no hemoglobin. 🙂

    I just have to keep repeating to myself that small chunks of time are just as important as larger ones, small word counts add up just as quickly as big ones, and books that get continuous work will always eventually get finished.

    That’s the only way I have ever finished a book and the only way I ever will.

    Do the work. Every day. Beginning with day one.

    And all you have to do on day one?

    Just start.

  • Q&A: What were you like in high school?

    What were you like in high school?

    I was quiet and shy and late a lot. I missed a lot of school. Made mediocre grades. I had few friends, many of whom were teachers. I remember not fitting in anywhere. I had a couple of different groups of peripheral friends, and people moved in and out of those groups pretty regularly. I didn’t eat lunch, choosing instead to smoke cigarettes in the bathroom. I made a killing playing poker with my lunch money in the band room when I was supposed to be taking gym. I wasn’t a bad student so much as I was a rotten student. I didn’t actively cause trouble, but I also didn’t apply myself. Most of my teachers felt as though I did not strive to reach my potential. And looking back, they were right. I think this is because I gave absolutely zero fucks about high school.

  • Q&A: What are your sleeping arrangements?

    What are your sleeping arrangements?

    I don’t sleep. I go and go and go until I can’t go anymore. Like a phone when it runs out of battery.

  • Q&A: If you had a watchword what would it be?

    My mother is so prim and proper but whenever she gets angry, she says APPARENTLY and all bets are off. If you had a watchword what would it be?

    I don’t often yell and scream, and I throw around curse words like they’re confetti, whether I’m angry or not. So I guess the word to watch out for would be “OK.” 

    Because in the right context, “OK” from me means we are no longer having a conversation. The conversation is over. We are done. 

    On the flip side, if you’re ever greeted with the salutation, “Yo, dude,” we’re so totes BFF.

  • Wanting to dance isn’t enough to make you dancers. Get your head out of the clouds and start thinking critically. You have to face your physical limitation, not everyone is meant to be a dancer. Prepare yourself for a lifetime of hard-work, sacrifice and more often than not – disappointment.

    — Lucy Raine, Dance Academy (via quotingdanceacademy)

  • If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. -Vincent Van Gogh

    (via stunningpicture)

    LOVE this quote.

    (via clairelegrand)

  • I guess shortcuts come with strings attached. You might sell your soul to the devil without realizing it and miss out on all the trying and failing, clawing yourself out of the mud that’s supposed to make you who you are.

    Tara, Dance Academy Series 3

  • 2013, and What Happens Next

    In 2012, I chose a word that encapsulated what I wanted to focus on in 2013. That word was patience, and while I won’t say I mastered the crap out of it, I will say I got a full year’s worth of practice.

    I used to think patience was synonymous with waiting. As in, as long as you’re waiting, you’re being patient. Because you’re waiting instead of vague-blogging or passive-aggressively tweeting or stat-checking or internet-stalking or following-up every three days.

    And, by the way, none of those things are wise things to do. But also, waiting? Not necessarily being patient. 

    Toward the middle of the year, I realized waiting, patient or not, wasn’t helping all that much. Even though I had worked on and submitted new projects (which of course meant more waiting), I developed this hyper-critical view of my work. How good could it be, after all, if the agent/editor who requested it couldn’t even be bothered to respond?

    There were plenty of days when I wondered why I even bothered writing. No one else gave a shit. Why should I?

    2013 left me feeling like I got wasted at a frat party, passed around like a bong, and left to sleep it off on a park bench somewhere. And all I can think of to do is rest my head on a toilet and sob, wondering what did I do? why won’t he call?

    That’s an unhealthy way of thinking of it, but it’s the truth.

    So the last two months of the year, I slowed down while I tried to figure out what to do. And that’s why the blog is down. And why crickets are chirping on twitter. And why I no longer check my email. 

    I am so sick of not being good enough. And I refuse to go through another year hating myself because of it. 

    Which brings me to the word for 2014: Margin.

    Margin. Noun. The space between being OK and being Not OK.

    I went too far into Not OK last year, and not just with writing. I overspent. Overate. Ovescheduled. Overslept. Overwhined. Overwaited.

    I let other people cause me to feel about myself what no one should feel about anyone, ever. I got too involved in fixing other people’s problems. I allowed my priorities to be skewed into something that made me neither happy nor productive. And I took far too much shit off far too many people.

    If 2013 was the year of patiently waiting for nothing to happen, then I’m hoping 2014 will be the year of mutual respect, of no meaning no, of less being more, and of losing the losers, ditching the drama, and finding some motherfucking peace in this joint.

  • Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

    — Albert Einstein