2009 revolutions review

As I have done the past few years, I've pledged some revolutions at the beginning of the year, and then re-visited the list to see what I've accomplished at the end of the year. Revolutions work better for me than resolutions because there is less "should" and more "want to."

So here we go:

fun stuff

take cello lessons

I started lessons this summer with a fun/fab/philosophical teacher. It's turned into far more than I bargained for, but in a good way. I've let myself be a beginner at something again. And I've started listening to music with a more attentive ear in the same way that as a writer, I read others' writing with an attentive eye - I notice pattern and structure more than I used to.

And you want to know what mindfulness really means? Learn to play the cello. You've got to pay attention to your posture, the looseness (or tightness) of your shoulders and arms, your bow grip, the angle of the bow across the strings, the position of your wrists over the bow and the fingerboard, which notes are played where on the fingerboard, the sound of the notes as you play them (cello is a fretless instrument, therefore, you only know if you're playing the note correctly by how it sounds), tempo and rhythm, loudness or softness, and a ton of other things all at the same time. It's an amazing form of meditation trying to keep all that in focus.

repaint and wallpaper the doll house

Poor neglected doll house. I've changed my mind on the color scheme for the outside of it so. many. times. Someone suggested getting paint samples that come in the little cans, which I think is a good idea. So this goes on the 2010 revolutions list.

join a knitting group

This was almost too easy. I had no idea there were so many knitting groups in the area (an Interwebtube search found them all for me). The one I picked has about 300 members and has three meetings each week to accommodate schedules. Not everyone goes to all the meetings, and some can only make an occasional meeting. I usually go to the Saturday session, which has about a dozen people usually. No formal structure. No dues or fees. Just show up, sit down, and knit. And I love this group of knitters! There's a lot of diversity in age range, family background, career background, and craft experience. The conversations are sometimes serious, sometimes hilarious, sometimes bizarre. And it's not a quiet or meek little group. We can get rowdy! It's definitely something I look forward to on Saturday mornings.

knit or crochet something different

I've gotten a lot braver with my projects this year. I made a cabled messenger bag (and lined it thankyouverymuch), a sleeveless top, and a cardigan. I'm now working on my second cardigan.

The challenge project was Angel's crocheted babette blanket. Making all the squares was easy, and I thought assembly would be easy too, since the pattern provides a diagram of what size square goes where. However, I've never sewn up a project this big before, and my artist's eye is (overly) conscious of evenly distributing the color scheme across the blanket. And it takes longer to sew up blocks than you might think, especially trying to get edges to match up nicely and making sure seams aren't lumpy. It's coming along though, just far more slowly than I had anticipated (sorry, Angel!). So this one goes on the 2010 list, too.

book indulgence (to make up for all the books I put off reading because of the last two years of grad school)

My reading has been all over the place this year, and I've revisited some books and series, like Margery Allingham's Albert Campion series (he and I have the same birthday! albeit 75 years apart), and the to-be-read stack gets pleasingly bigger all the time.

I'm about halfway through Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (thanks, Joe!), which I've been reading at night before bed, and on a couple of occasions, has provided me with odd dreams of a tentacle-faced Alan Rickman playing the cello (see him in S&S and Truly Madly Deeply, and you might understand this).

Then I've got Her Fearful Symmetry ('cause I liked The Time Traveler's Wife so much), and The Children's Book, and a couple more by Kate Mosse, and the Ted Hughes anthology and the book about Oscar Wilde's library (both of which I got while in London in October), and a bunch more that I can't remember right off. I have quite enough on the to-be-read list to keep me going well into 2010.

writing

write another novel

This turned out not to be a children's book, which is what I had anticipated doing and had an idea for. Instead, a contemporary fiction-style story came out, which is still a mystery to me. But I was able to work on regularly, and the first draft is nearly finished. I don't love or hate it. It was just there, and I wrote it down. I may revise it. I may just chalk it up to "writing experience."

revise and send off novel/thesis to agents

Still querying, still getting rejections or silence. Not much else to say about it.

participate in NaNoWriMo in November

See above re: contemporary fiction story. I felt rusty after not having done this for two years, and perhaps that's why the story isn't doing much for me; rather, it was just practice. I managed to get to 50,000 words with a couple of days to spare. The story wasn't finished though, so I kept working on it through December, a little bit every morning. It's closer to 90,000 words now.

health

get off Lexapro

This was the hardest thing I did this year - not just dealing with the physical withdrawal symptoms, but also facing my mental dependence on a pill to keep The Monster away. It was more painful and discouraging than I could have imagined, especially the 3-month headache that no amount of Advil could take care of. That I managed to keep myself functional enough to work is a miracle. There were days were the goal was to just get through the day without crying and running back to the pills again. But I'm free of it finally, and so much more clear-headed and energetic, and I've only had a few panicky blips now and again. Blood tests showed I was severely low on a few minerals and vitamins, deficiencies that are probably due to the Lexapro and which can cause panic attacks, ironically. I take a cocktail of supplements every morning now, but they're not interfering with my sleep or my energy levels or my thinking ability (quite the reverse, actually), so I don't mind.

For the record, I think short-term use of pharmaceuticals under a doctor's supervision is fine to get one functioning again. Dependence on them to keep you going without making any effort to find better solutions and healthier coping mechanisms is not fine. I was on Lexapro for two years because I fell into the dependence trap, and it was frustration with lack of energy and lack of creativity that forced me to do something about it. The pills did keep the panic attacks away, but I still didn't feel good. I was only not panicking. That's not a fair swap.

lose Lexapro weight

One doctor told me that the reason people gain weight while taking SSRIs is because of the way the pill makes the body pull on minerals, particularly from the thyroid, which explains the deficiencies that showed up in the blood tests. A bit of weight has come off, which I attribute to having more energy to get outside and walk and the lack of severe carb cravings that I had while on the wretched pills. I'm trying to be reasonable about this - I'm not asking to be a size zero, just a size smaller than I am now. This also goes on the 2010 list.

follow Karen-the-acupuncturist's protein and greens advice

Karen suggested this to help ease the withdrawal symptoms as well as to help the weight loss - better body and brain food than the empty carbs I was addicted to. I have done pretty well with this, especially when I started my Sunday afternoon ritual of making kale and chickpea soup (I use spicy chicken sausage instead of the chorizo) as well as salmon and vegetables in the slow cooker. This will continue into 2010. I just need to find more recipes.

try EMDR therapy to prevent the panic attacks

I didn't get to this, mostly due to its expense (and lack of reimbursement from the health insurance) and the nearest practitioner is in Towson, which is a hike from where I am. If you want to know more about EMDR, try here. I haven't decided if I want to carry this over into 2010 or not.

money

save money for London trip

The money I saved up went toward the plane tickets, hotel, meals, and a Tube pass. I'm not big on souvenirs, so other than a couple of boxes of tea and toffee and a few books, my souvenirs were more photographic in nature. I had a fabulous time in London, and will be passing through it again on my way to Paris in May. So the 2010 version will be saving money for that.

replenish savings account

I had a lot of reimbursement checks this year, so those went into the savings account along with the monthly auto deduction from my checking account.

pay extra on mortgage

I made one extra payment this year. I would have liked to have made more payments, but there it is.

Not a bad showing for the year. I also added less news watching/reading because it just got more and more depressing as the year trudged on.

My 2010 revolutions list is small, but the goals are broader. More on that in another post.

the muse oddly delivers; the internal editor is puzzled

(Hmm, that headline reads like one of the subtitles of the later Steed-and-Peel Avengers episodes.)

Anyway. I made it to 50,000 words on November 27th, and I didn't even do it perfectly.

My goal was to write 2000 words a day in November, in anticipation of the inevitable slumps that occur mid-novel and other Life stuff that often gets in the way. This meant there were days when it was a feat just to get 500 words written. Most of the time, I was able to keep up with this daily word count, mainly because I am a morning person, so I could get most of it done before going to the day job. Dr Wicked's Write or Die software helped immensely, too. The thought of being subjected to That Earworm-inducing Hanson Song if I stopped typing for more than a few seconds was enough to keep me, well, typing.

My best writing session occurred on November 21st, between 7 and 10 pm. I went to a cello concert at a local church. They have an amazing music program and regularly feature guest performers. This concert featured Steven Doane, who is a world-class cellist. He played Bach, Poulenc, and Brahms. I scribbled in the notebook I'd brought with me while he played, and when I went home and typed it, it was just over 1500 words!

Having participated in NaNoWriMo twice before, my internal editor was at least familiar with the process, even if he is still bewildered by it. Have I ever told you about him? He's slightly taller than me, and quite good-looking with very dark hair, almost black, and he usually wears a dark turtleneck and khaki pants. His shoes are always polished. He sits in a high-backed chair near a window with the sun coming through and making a nice pattern on the hardwood floor in an otherwise empty room. I'm not sure where he came from or why he picked me (or got stuck with me), and I still don't know his name. And although he's wary of this high-speed drafting process, even after witnessing it three times, he's at least willing to sit and read and wait in the corner because he knows there will be a substantial draft for him to pore over and fix soon. He loves that bit.

My muse, on the other hand, is a little girl. Sometimes she wears a dress; sometimes she's in a t-shirt and overalls and tennis shoes. She wears her hair up in pigtails with either outfit. She's always playing with something - dolls, train set, paints, legos, lincoln logs. I once found her attempting origami, but she was using construction paper, which wasn't working out too well. Her room is well-lit with plush carpet. Toys are scattered everywhere, and the shelves along the walls are all full of more fun stuff to fiddle with. I don't know her name either. I do know that if I show up on a regular basis, she's more willing to show up, and as long as there's something to play with, she'll feed me ideas. The internal editor looks on from his room next to hers, and I see him shake his head sometimes at what she comes up with. She doesn't think in terms of boundaries or plausibility. She just tosses out ideas and gives me a "take it or leave it" look.

This time, she gave me a realistic story. No fantasy. No ghosts. No magic. Just a this-could-really-happen story. The internal editor and I kept glancing at each other during the plotting process. This isn't the sort of thing I write. Jane Austen and a few other things aside, most of what I read has some sort of out-there twist on reality, hence its influence on my writing. Contemporary fiction just isn't my thing. But there was that "take-it-or-leave it" look, so what could we do?

I think the reason she did this was because I was out of practice with speed writing. I've spent the last two years writing from an academic, analytical point of view for my master's degree - even though it was a creative writing degree, there was a lot of scrutinizing how things were written - and a large part of that time was spent on my thesis, which was a big revision of my first NaNoWriMo novel. Rather a slow process all around.

I think she wanted to ease me back into the process. This real-life story is as basic as it gets - how things are, what causes them to change, struggle with the change, make decisions and take actions to deal with the change, what effect has it all had in the end. She wasn't having any of this layer of magical realism and whatnot.

Even though I had the whole thing plotted out ahead of time, I still started November doubting that I'd make it to 50,000 words by the end of the month with this story. Without that layer of twist, which perhaps I rely on too much, I worried that I'd run out of story too soon. But nearly every day, I managed 2000-ish words, and although I got to 50,000 words before November ran out, there was still a sizable chunk of story to tell. Since the average novel length is around 90,000 words, I'm not concerned that I didn't get it all down in 50,000 words. Amazed, yes. But not concerned.

So I'm spending December adding the other 40,000 words, which is only about 1300 words a day. I think I can comfortably finish the story in that amount of words and time, and it keeps my morning writing routine going anyway.

Weirded out by the whole experience, but we're managing.