Love Among the Fauna

"Some days I am yellow and warm-hearted, living in tune to place and people, eyes opened, soul stirring, skin pricked, attached to nothing and everything." — MJ

(Personal Note: Today it's Spring and I am so grateful. Winters are always unkind to me. I do not like the cold and as I have aged, I like it less and less. Mentally, I sink under the weight of a gray sky and frosty temps that chill me to my bones. I can't ever get warm, never fully relaxed, and to distract myself, I usually over read or write until I can no longer see straight. I tried not to do that this year. But there were days of failures. I also tend to get a little gloomy and worry over my work and this year I exiled myself from my writing desk around the middle of February. I just could not go on any longer and knew it was destructive. This week I began again. I did allow myself to make notes. But only by handwriting. The only writing I allowed myself was free writing that would not be used in the WIP Fantasy. This decreased the tension I was experiencing, a success story if there ever was one. I learned this from writer Laini Taylor who talks a lot about process, free writing that is not used, day dreaming, keeping notebooks, and learning to love how you work on a novel. Working on a novel for me is extremely messy. I don't simply do all these drafts people talk about. I do things as I go. I write a chapter or section of the book until I feel it is something I might keep, until I like it, then I move on. This latest project has been more complex. I changed ships (who is the hero and love interest subplot) on my novel in December and then in January, I decided I wanted to write it in a new tense and use lots of vignettes. This meant I would literally have to revise the entire novel at some point. The decision to do this was so complicated, so resisted even by me that I wrote little in January and wondered if I had lost my mind. Part of my reasoning for this is a long story and I shall explain one day, but not today. I am motivated. It's spring. The sun is shining, flowers are budding and some are about to bloom. I can't complain. I made it through another winter. I survived and I am still in love with my story.)