Month: March 2018

Running Kickstarters

Back in February I was on a panel at a convention titled How to Run a Killer Game Kickstarter. It is not the first Kickstarter related panel I’ve been on, nor will it be the last. I frequently get asked by friends and strangers for Kickstarter advice. None of which is to say that I’m an expert. There are so many people who are far more knowledgable than me. In fact it was comforting on that panel to hear some of my highly-successful co-panelists talk about the mistakes they’ve made and continue to make. It seems like each Kickstarter project has its own set of pitfalls and errors. We’re running a Kickstarter right now, and I haven’t found all the errors yet. This is the sixth time I’ve participated in running a Kickstarter project. It is the Fourth time where I’ve done the majority of (or all of) Kickstarter set up and management. That is such a small number, not nearly enough to claim expert status.

One of the things which I hadn’t recognized until this Kickstarter is that running one always impacts how much I blog. It shouldn’t surprise me that the focused, storytelling effort that goes into crafting Kickstarter updates would have an impact on how much mental energy I have for blog storytelling. Yet somehow I hadn’t quite connected that thought. Or if I did, I’d forgotten the previous connection. Our current Kickstarter runs for two more weeks. The blog may be a little sparse until it is done.

Scheduling Next Year

Planning the class schedule for my kids’ next year is always an exercise in anxiety. First there is the simple logistical difficulty of figuring out which classes my kid wants to take, when the school offers them, and how those two things fit together in a way which puts a class in every hour of the school day. The logistics are further made complicated by needing to figure out if the teacher of a class will be a good fit for my kid.

Once I’ve figured out a schedule I think will work, there comes the hunger-games of trying to sign up for classes. The system is turned on at a specific time on a specific day, and the popular classes can fill up in minutes. It is a high-stress afternoon.

Once everything is selected and registered, I will stare at the schedule and second guess the choices. I try not to, but I can’t tell from here what state my kid will be in when school starts in the fall. If they are happy and balanced, the schedule will likely be great. However some classes may trigger their issues. Or they may be struggling on a larger scale. So I stare at the list of classes and I wonder which of them my kid will fail. Which class will be the one we have to drop because it just isn’t working. What adjustment will be necessary to help my kid cope.

Along with that mental circle, I have the counter current of thinking about how maybe my kids only struggle so much because I’m enabling them. Maybe if I were just tougher, they would learn how to step up to classes instead of dropping out of them.

Then just for extra fun, one of my kids wants to take a class that requires an audition. I’ve known about this for months and have been watching school newsletters for any announcements about when/where auditions will be. Finally I called to ask and was told “Oh, they happened two days ago.” Which was news that made my child very upset. But then I got a note from the teacher saying that there is a make up session on Monday. So my kid does get to audition after all. But I have no idea what the chances are of her making the class because all her skills are self-taught and she’ll be up against others who have had lessons for years. So we get to watch her practice all weekend, and try out on Monday. Then we wait to see which flavor of emotional ride she goes on.

All of this for the kid who is already in high school. Then in two weeks I get to repeat the process for my other kid who will be starting in high school next year and whose particular issues manifest at school far more regularly.

Whee.

Tomorrow I need to sit down with my anxieties and carefully disconnect them and let them go.

Haiku and the Lives We Choose for Ourselves

Haiku is a poetic form with very strict rules about the structure of the poem. It is not the only poetic form with rules, but the very specific restraints on number of syllables per line and the ways that the lines must interact with each other produce a particular sort of beauty which can’t be achieved without those constraints. The defined limits of the form create the beauty of it. Because of these structural demands, some things can’t be said in haiku and some things can only be said in haiku.

My chosen religious tradition is one with strict rules and constraints. It asks me to not do some things and to go out of my way to do others. I’ve had friends baffled by some of the constraints that I live with. I’ve had periods of my life where some of it felt confining and others where the constraints provided safety for me in an otherwise hazardous experience, like the harness of a climber which can be simultaneously uncomfortable and life saving. I’m aware that the harness that cradles and supports me might cut off circulation and do harm to someone who is built differently.

I said “my chosen religious tradition” because even though I was born into this tradition and raised inside it, I have since chosen it for myself. I continue to make that choice regularly. I choose the structures and requirements of this form for my life, while being aware that my choice blocks me off from many things I see bringing joy to others. I am also aware of the joys that are only available to me because of the structures I dwell inside. And I know that some people born to these same structures must exit them in order to expand into the people they are. Other people must find their way into these structures to become who they might be.

The world would be a poorer place if the only poetry available were haiku. The world would be made poorer if all people were required to live the same life structures and traditions. God knows all of his children and will help us find the forms we need in order to become what we must be.

Retreat Progress Report 2

Finish draft of Herding Wild Horses
Didn’t touch this beyond a little bit of brainstorming
Write 1000 words of short story draft
Got 400 words
Write the haiku post
Done. Letting it settle before revising and posting
Walk outdoors
Done
Take some pictures
Done
Post some pictures
Done

And my son didn’t get his essay done so summer school is in his future. I have feelings about that.

I can feel myself starting to wear out in ways that I’m not accustomed to. I’m starting to look forward to getting home to my regular round of tasks, the same tasks I was glad to put down only two days ago. One more full day of retreat and then a travel day.

Sunday Morning Writing Thoughts

I was having a little bit of trouble motivating myself this morning. Not that I didn’t want to work, but I found myself wondering why I was spending effort on writing words that are unlikely to ever earn significant quantities of money. That voice doesn’t speak up when I’m writing blog posts or private journal entries. It seems to understand that the value of those words is in sorting my brain…or it has just given up arguing since I keep doing that writing anyway. But when I pick up words with the intent of publishing them via paths other than tossing them on the internet for free, the thoughts begin. The particular refrain this time around is that I really should be focusing on the work which will assist in my goals of paying down debt as fast as possible.

I have counter arguments of course. I know there is value in creative work even if the only one changed by it is me. I know that the people I’ve told about Herding Wild Horses have expressed interest in seeing it complete. I know that I can’t always tell what will grow from the planting of seeds that happens when I write outside of my comfort zones.

And I find myself thinking of a line that appeared in today’s Schlock Mercenary comic:
“If you look close enough at the present, you can find loose bits of the future just laying around.”

And I think of a thing I saw on the internet recently which spoke of how the butterfly effect is always cited in time travel stories, but that somehow people neglect to realize that this means we are all the butterfly. Every small change we make has the chance to dramatically affect the world we will eventually be carried into via the passage of time.

So the answer becomes: I write these things because any future that contains my words published and read, begins with a today where I write those words without any guarantee that they’ll go anywhere.

Retreat Progress Report 1

Go for a walk in the woods
Done
Take some photographs
Done
Maybe write up a post or two about thoughts related to the walk and photographs

Done
Pull out my files of picture book ideas and refresh my thoughts on them
There are two that feel like I should push them forward right now: Herding Wild Horses about Amy’s Mommy, and an unnamed book about a little boy with anxiety.
Write some words on one of those picture books
Herding Wild Horses is 50% drafted now. Much revision will happen after the first draft.

Look at the fragments of blog posts and essays that I never completed
Found notes for three blog posts in my paper journal.
Pick one thing to write up as a full essay
Got one about Haiku and life structure. Will put it on the list for tomorrow.
Generate ideas for a short story or two
Done. They are fragments, but more than I had before.
Read a book
Several short stories from The Sum of Us, a speculative fiction anthology focusing on caregivers.
Help my son with an essay over speaker phone because that is the one last home thing that I do need to allow to encroach into this retreat.
I tried, but not much to do if no one on that end answers the phone. Since I got communication from several sources that everyone at home is alive and well, I know this is a simple case of no one picking up the phone when it rings because they were all too involved in their own things. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Additional things done:
A nap
Wrote emails to a couple of friends
Did some work setting up store items in our new store software
Read some online things
Conversations with friends who are also present at the retreat

Goals for tomorrow:
Finish draft of Herding Wild Horses
Write 1000 words of short story draft
Write the haiku post
Walk outdoors
Take some pictures
Post some pictures

Welcomed Back

I had a moment of quiet delight when I opened my laptop to enter the Wifi password and I discovered that my computer (Calcifer) had already connected. Calcifer remembers this place. So do I. This is my third visit to Woodthrush Woods. Even on my first visit the house felt welcoming and familiar, as if I’d been here before and only forgotten. The exact quote from a blog post I wrote at the time was:

I used to dream about my grandma’s tiny house. In the dreams I went upstairs and through a door to discover that her house had extra rooms and floors. Stepping into Woodthrush Woods was like stepping into one of those dreams, my grandma’s house–only different and bigger.

This visit there is actual familiarity along with that welcoming feeling. My first visit to this house is chronicled in a series of posts starting here. And my second visit starting here. That first visit was five years ago, time slipped past while I was not measuring. The switch over to cruises for the Writing Excuses retreats was the right choice for everyone concerned, but it did mean there were fewer events to draw me to visit this house.

Reading back over the posts I wrote five years ago, during that first retreat, I can see how far I have come. Back then I barely even had the word Anxiety to describe what I was wrestling with. It is so obvious now that anxiety was the issue, but in 2012 I didn’t know that. That trip was six months before the kids began hitting mental health crises. It was before all the diagnoses, tears, grief, and depression. It was back when my whole life was shaped by my anxieties and I couldn’t even see it. That trip dragged it out into the light and demonstrated why it was a problem. Since that trip I’ve traveled a long and winding emotional road. Coming back into this place shows me how far I have come. I am stronger and more fully myself that I was five years ago. My family has a nuanced lexicon of ways to self-assess and manage the now-acknowledged mental health issues that each of us deals with daily.

Pausing to acknowledge the road I’ve traveled these past five years is apparently the first work of this writer’s retreat morning. Time for the next thing.

At the Onset of a Writing Retreat

I am here at the house of my friend, far away from the house that is my home. I’ve come for a writer’s retreat in the company of multiple people that I don’t get to see nearly often enough. I’ll be here for five days and for every single one of them I am outside the context of my regular life. And that is the point. I am here to be outside my usual patterns and responsibilities. I am here to rest the organizational, task-responsible portion of myself while allowing a different portion of myself room to expand.

I’ve done retreats before. Anxiety always gets loud while I am at them. Less so as I’ve repeated going on them, because I have demonstrable proof that me “abandoning” my home responsibilities does not inevitably end in disaster. My first retreat was about seeing the extent of my anxiety and not allowing it to send me home early. Just staying was a triumph that I didn’t fully recognize until months later. Follow on retreats were about learning the shapes of that anxiety and seeing the ways that my home life made me tired so that I had the chance to go home and alter my at-home patterns.
This time I’m in a place I’ve been before with people who I’ve known for years both online and in person. I am outside my comfort zone, but I’ve come to a place that is also comfortable. I’m curious to see whether this retreat will finally focus on writing rather than anxiety and emotional processing.

I spent the weeks prior to this trip scrambling to get things done before going. The one thing I did not do was figure out what creative project I plan to focus on during this trip. What will I write? I have several possible answers. There are creative projects in my brain that are waiting patiently for me to pick them up again.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe how differently I view projects-in-waiting than I used to do. There were large portions of my creative life where I was frustrated and grieving over the time that I spent on things that were not me creating fiction in my own worlds. I don’t feel that way any more. The work I put into setting up our new online store is largely tedious data entry, but every minute I spend there improves our ability to sell items, which supplies income, which means I can pay bills, which means I have a house/heat/electricity, so that I can write words. Administrivia is in direct support of any creative work that I do. From January until May of this year is going to be administrivia heavy because I’m doing some foundational work (store infrastructure changes) that will create more breathing room for creative work than I’ve had. The admin and organizational work is important and it is satisfying in a way that is different from writing. I’m not certain I would be fully happy as a creative person if I had endless time for writing. I think I need to organize and administer as much as I need to write.

But these next five days are a small space that I’ve deliberately created to allow myself to explore those on hold projects. I’m always reluctant to state goals out loud. I’m not sure why. I always have them, but I self motivate rather than using friendly help from peers. However this is a retreat for stepping outside my usual habits. So, tomorrow I will:
Go for a walk in the woods
Take some photographs
Maybe write up a post or two about thoughts related to the walk and photographs
Pull out my files of picture book ideas and refresh my thoughts on them
Write some words on one of those picture books
Look at the fragments of blog posts and essays that I never completed
Pick one thing to write up as a full essay
Generate ideas for a short story or two
Read a book
Help my son with an essay over speaker phone because that is the one last home thing that I do need to allow to encroach into this retreat.

That is a list of ten things. If I do six of them, I get a reward in the evening.

Describing Anxiety

I struggle with how to describe my children’s mental issues to the professionals (teachers, doctors, therapists) who are supposed to help them. Saying “anxiety disorder” is easy, and for some professionals it is sufficient. They instantly understand the adaptations my son needs in order to function in their space. In fact, I’ve had some teachers who adapt so automatically that I don’t even have to have the anxiety conversation at all, they automatically create an environment where my son feels safe and can function. But if the words “anxiety disorder” don’t instantly garner comprehension, I’m left trying to describe how this nebulous thing impacts every minute of my son’s life. Sometimes I’m required to demonstrate the level of disorder, how far outside the norm my son is, and why “all teens have some anxiety” doesn’t cover my son’s experiences. I hate having to prove disorder because it forces me to confront the extent of the impact anxiety has on my son’s life. It rips away the illusion of normality. It requires me to re-process my guilt and insecurity about how I handle his anxiety. It makes me grieve again.

I am fortunate in that this son is my youngest. Most of the professionals I’m dealing with have already worked with me for one of my other children. These professionals have developed a level of trust in me, my competence, my assessment of what is needed. I don’t get nearly the push back that I used to get when making requests. However this has also created some disadvantage for my son that I’m now trying to rectify. I already knew about so many resources that I picked whichever was most convenient. His diagnosis was done at a university clinic. His medicine is managed by a primary care doctor. His therapy was done at a different university clinic. His schooling is partially done at home with heavy involvement from me. The diagnostic picture is scattered and, as we face high school next fall, it needs to be consolidated. He needs a psychiatrist who will use professional expertise to look at the whole picture and help us see what we need to do to help this young person navigate his way into adulthood.

So I called the psychiatrist who helped me with two other children. And I was halted by the gatekeepers at the front desk. “We’ve had such an influx of people who should really be seen by their General Practitioner, so now we require a referral from a GP first before we’ll make an appointment.” Sometimes I can talk my way past this sort of barrier when I’m certain it shouldn’t apply to me. Not this time. The receptionist was “happy to pass a message to the doctor (my ally) to see if he’s willing to waive the requirement.” Which leaves me making an appointment with the GP and hoping that the psychiatrist’s knowledge of me will cause him to knock the gates open from the inside.

And it leaves me worried that perhaps they’re right, perhaps I’m blowing this anxiety thing out of proportion, perhaps he behaves as he does because I enable it rather than getting strict to force him to overcome it. Then I remember his reaction to small life events like having a book confiscated in class or having an unexpected assignment, and I am reminded that it is not normal to react to such incidents by curling into a crying, shaking ball of stress.

My son and I have worked hard to untangle these behaviors. He’s gotten so much better at cooperating with me to analyze why his reactions happen. We hope that is a step toward making it not happen. Because when he can’t make himself face an assignment, when facing the assignment begins to trigger panic, he withdraws and begins reading in class, which looks like laziness or lack of engagement. Him reading in class creates challenges for teachers when they have to tell other kids to pay attention. And the work piles up because his brain represses it out of existence. I function as an outside check/enforcer to require him to face what made him anxious. But it can take us multiple days to dig down and figure out what is blocking him from doing an assignment. (Things that block an assignment: if it has creative writing in it, if it requires synthesis from reading instead of regurgitation, if it requires a group to complete, if it requires presentation in front of others, if it requires drawing rather than copying a diagram, if he is upset or anxious because of some other event, if he doesn’t feel well, if he is upset from forcing himself to confront a block on an assignment. Basically 3/4 of all assignments have some sort of block in them.) Given time to walk away from an assignment and come back to it, he can almost always overcome the block and do the work, but it means that assignments pile up. And I know some of the teachers get frustrated/baffled about why he won’t do them. (If he can do it after school today, why couldn’t he just do it in class yesterday?) Then we reach the last week of the term (this week) when he has to plow through work or he will fail classes. The pressure of the deadline helps him break through blocks. It also raises his ambient stress level so that any disruption to the “get the work done” plan results in full blown panic.

Which is why this week is the week I remembered that it is really time for a single professional to re-examine the entire diagnostic picture. And I make phone calls. Because I can’t run interference for him forever. And he while he could possibly build an adult life with no writing, drawing, or group work, he can’t build an adult life with no stress or unexpected events.

I don’t have answers. I wish I did. This kid of mine is so courageous every single day, in ways that look (from the outside) like he is being obstinant, disrespectful, or not trying. I know some of the people in his life get to glimpse the courage and humor inside him. Most just get to see the top of his head because he’s reading, not meeting their eyes, and not speaking. Today I go to our GP and have a conversation which will likely be short and end in a referral, but there is always the chance that a longer explanation and justification might be required to convince the GP that what I think is needed is actually needed. I have to remind myself that these outside checks are good, that having someone outside with a different perspective can be valuable. That’s why we go to professionals in the first place. But I hope that the conversation will be short, and that I won’t spend the next few days spinning in self doubt over how I’m trying to help my son.

Focused on Deadlines

It turns out that upgrading all the things simultaneously takes up quite a bit of brain space. Add in a sprinkling of deadlines both business and family. Then throw a couple of birthdays on top for good measure. All of it combined means that I haven’t had much brain for thinking the sorts of thoughts that lead to interesting blog posts.

Part of the deadline focus is that this coming Friday is the end of term and one of my children needs to do significant work so that he won’t fail. It is also the day that I depart for a writing retreat, so there is a pile of things I want to get done before I go. Mostly because I don’t want to have to think about them during the retreat.

I’ve yet to determine what my creative focus will be while I’m at the retreat. I know I intend to spend time walking in the woods and thinking slow thoughts. I also intend to connect with friends. And I want to write some words that don’t have deadlines, just a story to tell.

Until I get to Friday, I’m prepping a Kickstarter, prepping two books, tracking deadlines, learning new software, communicating with teachers, and running errands.