I’m a grandma

Middlest and his wife gave birth to a baby boy last night at 6:28p California time. 8 lbs 9 oz, named Jonah Dashiel (Dashiell? Didn’t think to ask about spelling.). Mother, baby, and dad are all doing fine.

MGR: February – Dream writing retreat

Why yes, I dream of having a writing retreat some day. Somewhere. Somehow. I’ve been dreaming about it for years.

I used to think it was difficult to impossible to get away when the kids were in school. There were always gymnastics/dance performance/big tests/band performance/etc. that required both parents. I did manage to get away for a couple of writing seminars or a long weekend alone. For those, I just booked a room at the Sheraton in nearby Portsmouth NH where I could go down for a meal if I needed a break or order room service for minimal interruption. Or go out and wander around the downtown if I was temporarily stuck.

I always thought it would be easier after the kids left home and we retired. No obligations, no kids to take priority, no…

No money.

Well, not exactly no money. But not a lot, either. And would I rather spend it on a week away somewhere to write, or on going to visit the kids and the pending grandbaby? If I have to choose between a week-long canoe trip in the Canadian wilderness with spouse, or a week in a cabin alone with my thoughts and my notebook? What about two weeks in China? Writing is important, but it’s chugging along. Do I really need a retreat? Do I even want it?

Even though the answer has been no so far, I still dream of spending weeks or months in Italy soaking up the sun and alternating painting, writing, and hiking or biking. Maybe a villa in Umbria, maybe an apartment in Rome. But I know myself well enough to know that I’d most likely spend all the time doing things, seeing art galleries, finding new trattorias and gelato stands, going to concerts, and generally being more of a tourist than a writer.

Which makes me think that the way things are working out is just fine :)

Today’s post was inspired by the prompt in the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour, an ongoing tour where you, the reader, travel around the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. We have all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s something for everyone to enjoy.

If you want to get to know nearly twenty other writers and find out what’s on their nightstand, check out the rest of the tour!.

I think I’ll just leave this to stand on its own

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/tulpamancy-internet-subculture-892

Though I may have some thoughts later.

Merry-Go-Round Blog: new year, new me?

Better late than never? Here’s my Merry-Go-Round blog post for January :)

I’ve been struggling all month to write this post, not because the post itself is so difficult but because the goals I wanted to write about refused to stay put. I knew I was going to need to be flexible what with the first grandbaby arriving in February and the usual family obligations and impromptu weekends in the mountains, but the lists I came up with were more than flexible. It didn’t seem to matter what order I put things in, or whether I changed one project for another. They were all equally arbitrary and equally impossible to believe in.

The truth is, writing isn’t my only priority right now. I’m still recovering from losing my father and now worrying about my mother, I’m about to be a grandmother for the first time, I’m making progress in my painting, and it’s all contributing to huge changes inside, changes I’m only beginning to recognize. It’s like sitting on a volcano waiting for it to erupt.

I don’t know what’s going to happen when it does. Maybe nothing. Maybe just renewed energy to the things I’ve always loved. Or maybe I’m getting ready to head in an exciting new direction. But until I figure it out, I need to just keep on keeping on, while being aware that I might need to change directions.

So for the first part of the year, I’ll be working on background research for the steampunk series I started last November, mostly studying US history, especially the history of slavery. I’ll also be finishing the genie novella and possibly working on the next pass of Crows. Target date for the genie story is before grandbaby. I don’t expect to get anything done while we’re visiting; when we come back, I’ll pick up Crows.

Today’s post was inspired by the topic “New Beginnings” in the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour–an ongoing tour where you, the reader, travel around the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. We have all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s something for everyone to enjoy. If you want to get to know nearly twenty other writers and find out their thoughts on crossing genre lines, check out the group site at the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour. You can find links to all of the posts on the tour there. Read and enjoy!

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour soon.

I’ll be resuming my participation in the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour (http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com/) this month. I stopped writing it while my father was ill a couple of years ago, and it took this long for me to break through enough to resume.

I was supposed to post a couple of days ago, so I’m late (probably not for the last time :p ) but my post will be up soon, I promise.

What is the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour, you ask? From the web site:

An on-going blog tour of members of the writing forum Forward Motion Writers.

In most blog tours, a single author appears on a variety of blogs, moving around the Internet and allowing the readers of those blogs get to know the author.

In the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour, the authors stay on their blogs and it’s you, the reader, who takes the tour.

Each month, our participating authors from around the world agree to blog on a single topic throughout the month. By following the links in each month’s post, you’ll discover a whole bunch of new authors in a variety of genres, levels of experience, and styles of writing.

We hope you enjoy the trip and come back each month for a new spin around the globe.

2014 in review

2014 was kind of an up and down year, but all in all significantly better than the last couple of years. I was fighting depression off and on–still am, for that matter–and because depression lies, I had trouble remembering all the good parts even though I enjoyed them as they happened. I’m thinking maybe it would help if I did a review like this more often, just to remind myself how blessed and lucky I am.

Some of the highlights:

Neil treated me to a blowout 60th birthday, with tickets to the Celtics and the Bruins on the same day :D

Middle kid and his fiancee got married at Disney World in September. Lovely time was had by all. They’re expecting our first grandchild now. That will be a distraction for sure.

Lots of travel — big trips to Wisconsin/Michigan to visit youngest, Florida to help middlest get married, Montana to visit my family, as well as shorter trips like a weekend on Block Island for bicycling, a three-day canoe trip on the Connecticut River, and three days at Tanglewood for hiking and music.

Golf league, concerts, art classes, learning to canoe, getting back on a bike for the first time in many years.

Writing: edited Overamped one more time, cutting 20K words, and sent it to the Amazon contest, where it did not do well. Wrote the second draft of Crows, preliminary draft of Lace, and the start of a steampunk work that is at least a trilogy and possibly a series, plus a few short stories and poems.

Looking forward to an even better 2015.

National Novel Writing Month

I got my 50K words on the new steampunk story around noon. I think the story probably has 20K-30K words left to wrap it up and fill in the gaps, so I’ll be pressing on in December.