Author: Kiki Writes

Rumored to be a writer. Never hip. Land of Lincoln Cleavage Queen three years running.

I Wear Body Armor

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I know I just wrote about using fashion to boost my serotonin, but did you know that I also dress for protection?

Allow me to explain.

A couple of weeks ago at the library I work at, I presented a program on 22 murders that occurred in my county. I’ve not done any public speaking of this kind since my third go round of community college in speech class, which was close to fifteen years ago now. I did well in the class, of course, because I’m one of those people who insists on excelling academically, but this program wasn’t for a grade. Speaking in front of twenty people, even about something I’m interested in and excited about (like murder) is daunting. Throw some anxiety in there and the entire week leading up to the program I was regretting my decision to do this. I felt like there was no way I was going to remember everything, that people were going to be bored, that it was going to be a dud of a program, and I was going to let down our program director, whom I adore.

Knowing that anxiety and doubt were going to plague me, I decided my best course of action would be to put on my body armor.

I meticulously picked out my outfit down to the socks, panties, jewelry, mask, and eye shadow colors to make me feel as fierce and badass as possible, while still meeting dress code. And it worked. I still had to deal with my anxiety and I still had some doubts until I started talking, but damn I felt good about my look.

I felt bulletproof.

(For the record, I wore a pink button down shirt, white criss-cross tanktop, boyfriend cut jeans, pink socks, my custom chaos Vans, pink mask, and black and pink jewelry.)

Like playing with my fashion to help boost my mood, sometimes I use it as armor, too. Armor against the world and armor against myself.

Facing a crappy day? Sometimes all I need is the sexiest pair of panties I own. It’s like wearing kevlar. My secret defense against the world.

Not in the mood to be fucked with at work? I have found that people do not argue with me if I wear excessive amounts of pink. No, I don’t know why, but it has yet to fail.

Needing a little extra insulation from my anxiety? That’s why I have an ungodly amount of novelty socks.

It’s something that I can do even on the days when I’m not going full fashion. Maybe I’m just having a meh day that calls for soft clothes, but I’ve got glittery slippers to cap off that legging and sweatshirt combo.

Like any armor, it has its weaknesses. It’s not foolproof. Some days, no amount of armor can protect me. Some days the world is too harsh. Or I’m too harsh. Sometimes, the anxiety finds the gaps in my kevlar. Sometimes, the world does.

And like any armor, I don’t always need it. I’m not constantly walking around in my stylish chain mail anticipating a lance. Sometimes it’s all in the name of serotonin, all just to have fun.

And sometimes, they’re just clothes, something I put on because I live in a society that has decency laws and/or I’m feeling a bit chilly.

That’s what’s so great about fashion.

It’s so versatile.

“That’s None of My Business”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Prince Harry released his memoir detailing his life and relationship with his family. The bits and pieces that leaked out were all the talk of my Twitter timeline and my anglophile roommate. Everybody had their opinions and assessments and evaluations and snarky comments and that’s terrific. But everything I’ve ever learned about the British Royal Family, particularly recently, has been against my will. I simply do not care about them or their family drama. Feel free to take your Jerry Springer shenanigans elsewhere because it is none of my business.

“Well, what about…”

There are plenty of people who care about this sort of thing. I do not need or wish to be one of them, thank you.

Keep calm and gossip on.

One bit of wisdom that has come to me with age is the gloriousness of minding my own business. I don’t have to care about everything. I don’t have to have an opinion about everything. Things that do not impact my existence directly are often best not considered. They do not concern me.

It’s none of my business.

Yes, I’m obviously not talking about important things. I wouldn’t mind my business if I saw someone being assaulted or thought one of my friends was being abused by their partner. But whether or not Prince Harry’s daddy loves him or if his wife is manipulating him for her own gain is none of my concern. That’s someone else’s responsibility.

That is none of my business.

I’ve taken to saying that to people when they try to talk to me about things that I don’t wish to engage with. And the response is interesting. It makes people stutter over their words because they’re not expecting that response. They’re not expecting someone not to engage with them, even politely, on the topic. They’re not expecting someone to say “That’s none of my business,” and then have to debate themselves on whether or not to defend themselves for making whatever it is their business.

For the record, that’s none of my business either. Whatever you choose to make your business is your concern, not mine. All I ask is that when I say it’s none of my business, you respect that.

I have found something very freeing in saying “That’s none of my business.” It’s like a dismissal of obligations. I don’t have to take on any weight associated with this. I don’t have to expend energy thinking about it or knowing about it. I don’t have to waste time talking about it or keeping up with it. It’s none of my business.

I realize that doesn’t sound like a lot. But think of all of the little things that are none of your business. Or my business. They add up. All that energy adds up. All those minutes add up. It’s time and energy better spent on something that actually is my business.

And I’ve got plenty of that.

Fashion in the Name of Serotonin

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

It was during my birthday week when I was puzzling over what my birthday outfit would be (see pics; warning! I’m much fatter in person), I realized that lately I had been deriving a lot of my serotonin from having fun with my fashion choices.

I have gone through spells in which I’ve played with my style and fashion. In my late teens/early twenties, I tended toward punk/freak ensembles. In my late twenties, after losing forty pounds, I put a little more effort into my style, trying to look a little more fashionable and put together. In my mid-thirties, I did this again, though I experimented a little more, putting vintage vibes into my outfits.

And now here I am in my early forties doing it again.

When I’m not getting my fashion on, it’s usually because of mental illness and/or funds. I don’t have the money to invest in my wardrobe, nor do I have the energy to invest in myself. But let me rebound with some cash and some good brain chemicals, and I’m ready for a shopping spree and the runway.

This latest round started when I started working at the library. I needed work clothes. Old Navy to the rescue. I ended up investing in Pixie pants, of which I already had a few pairs, one of which no longer fit. I got the standard black, but I also ended up getting some patterns. I paired them with different colored t-shirts and a black cardigan. Boom! A uniform was born.

And so was my Old Navy Cash, which I’ve used to continue to invest in my wardrobe.

The pandemic convinced me that I needed to acquire more soft clothes. I had no lounge pants, no leggings, no sweatshirts. And so, I started to build my soft clothes wardrobe, which I wear before I get dressed to go to work. I see no sense in taking a shower in the morning and putting on my work clothes when I’m not going to the library until the afternoon, especially when I’d be eating lunch in the meantime. That’s an invitation to disaster.

In the last year, my library look has evolved away from the t-shirts and cardigans to long-sleeved t-shirts, sweaters, and button down shirts with tank tops underneath. We can also wear jeans to work now, so they’ve been included, but I still wear my Pixie pants most of the time. My collection now includes a variety of fun prints: mermaid (it’s a shiny, blue pattern; everyone calls them my mermaid pants), jungle, flower, dizzy, pinstripe, plaid, tan houndstooth, black and white houndstooth, black and white gingham, windowpane, and hot pink cheetah print. I also acquired quite the collection of slip on canvas shoes in fun prints (glitter! I have glitter shoes!) for some extra pizzazz.

When I got my tax refund this past year, I set aside some of it to buy whatever I wanted. This included a pair of Vans, something I’ve wanted since high school, but never had the money or could justify spending the money if I did have it, some clothes from Torrid (which began my Torrid cash and loyalty points), and some tights from Snag Tights.

You see, by this time, I’d been on TikTok for a bit and one of my favorite people there, Aunty Pinky, has a magnificent punk style that includes Vans, Snag Tights, and some really funky threads, much of which is thrifted. I dig it. But more than that, I wanted the freedom to have fun with my look the way she does hers.

So I bought the Vans, I bought the tights, I bought the threads, and I started to have fun. I started taking joy in putting together work outfits and that joy spread to putting together outfits for my days off, too.

Then I saw a video somewhere in which a woman said that you should dress the way you wanted to when you were a teenager, but didn’t because you didn’t have the money and/or couldn’t find clothes that fit. This further encouraged me to have a good time.

And that’s what I’ve been doing. I own more dresses now than I have in my life, but that’s only because I own more funky tights than I’ve ever owned in my life. My wardrobe has exploded to the extent that I’ve had to acquire space in another closet in the house. As of right now, I need to buy more hangers.

My style definitely has included more punk elements. I’ve been working some vintage vibes, too. And for the first time since the ’90s, I own a bodysuit -the strappy, lacy, sexy one that I wore unapologetically on my birthday. I’m putting a little more sexy in my style, too.

The fun thing about all of this is that I’m about fifteen pounds down from my highest weight and still ten to fifteen pounds heavier from the last time I had a real style run. I’m at an age and a weight when both nobody and everyone cares what I look like. So long as I’m dressing my age and blending in with the wallpaper because of my weight, nobody cares. But I start dressing “younger” and showing off my body, everybody cares.

Too bad for them that I don’t care.

I’m too busy having fun.

The Slow Down

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

I live by my To Do Lists. I’ve got a project board hanging on my closet door. I’ve got multiple pages in my OneNote with all of my projects, writing, audio, library, and other. I cannot organize everything in my brain, so I organize it on the outside. It works very well for me because I’m able to see everything. Seeing it all laid out helps me keep everything straight.

However, sometimes seeing it all laid out like that with the deadlines and everything triggers my anxiety. It’s a very specific reaction, too.

Do All The Things Right Now.

The fun part about this anxiety and resulting response is that I don’t even need to have a lot of things on the To Do List to trigger it. The deadline doesn’t even have to be that dire. Sometimes, my anxiety decides to make it dire. It’s not ideal. Sure, in the past it’s forced a high-level of productivity because I would indeed try to do all the things right now, but the panic-flail nature of it would take a serious toll on my sanity.

In the past few years, I’ve made major strides with this particular anxiety issue with a simple bit of advice.

What do you need to do when you’re in a hurry? Slow down.

I’ve taken that approach when my anxiety tells me that I need to Do All The Things Right Now. I slow down. I lay out the schedule of what needs to get done and then I only do those things. Yes, I could probably do more, but I don’t let myself. If I do, then I’ll fall into the trap of doing all the things at the expense of myself. This doesn’t always make the itchy, dire feeling go away, but it will eventually. It might take a night’s sleep to feel better. But the point is that I’m able to get to that sleep because I’m not making myself do all of the things to try to make the itchy, dire feeling go away.

For example, Grinchmas almost always triggers the Do All The Things Right Now response. The combination of whatever projects I’m working on and the need to make and mail gifts and cards and to do all of my baking makes it nearly unavoidable. The only way I’ve found to cope and not feel like I’m failing is to schedule everything. Yes, I write down in my planner what day I’m baking sugar cookies and what day I’m mailing cards along with what project I’m working on that day and what I need to do during my library shift that day. To fight the urge to do all of the things right now, I have to show myself that all of the things will get done in time.

To get everything done, I have to slow down. One thing at a time until it’s all done. The slow progress guarantees I’ll get everything done without sacrificing my mental well-being to do it.

I”ll be honest. It’s been a game-changer for me.

Slow and steady really can win the race.

Turning 43

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

Once again I have defied the known Gods and Universe by continuing to exist for another year (she says as she writes this blog post before her birthday so it will post on time, duly noting that she’s inviting said known Gods and Universe to kick the chair right out from under her). 43 is a funky age. It’s a funky number. Not entirely sure how I feel about it, yet, but I figure that if it’s funky, then I should be funky, too.

I’ve finally decided that I should probably do something with my life. I mean, if I’m going to continue to exist on this mortal plane, I might as well. Gotta do something to kill the boredom and keep shit interesting.

To that end I asked for and received The Remarkable Life Deck: A Ten-Year Plan for Achieving Your Dreams by Debbie Millman for Christmas. See, I know nothing about getting my life together or being a somewhat functioning adult or really even what I specifically want for my life. This is supposed to help me do that. Which is good. I need all the help I can get.

It’s basically a deck of cards that asks you questions about your life ten years from now. What does it look like, where do you live, what are your relationships like, what is your career like, etc. The idea is that you go through and answer each card as thoroughly and honestly as possible. Dream big and write those dreams down. By doing this, you actively put those answers and ideas in your brain pan, which encourages you to live and work towards them. I’ve been answering the questions since I got the deck at Christmas and I’ve found that for most part, it’s not much trouble. I live 90% of my life in my head anyway.

What is a little surprising is how totally unhindered I am about writing all of it down. I am completely undeterred by the prospect that this might not work. Maybe it’s because I know me and know my potential for failure. Maybe I’m not actually too invested with the outcome, but more the process. Who knows? I’m having fun with this. No harm in that.

I have to admit that things are weird for me lately. I’m going into this new age much more upbeat and much lighter than usual. Dare I say I’m optimistic? For what, I don’t know. Maybe I left my last fuck in 2022 and now completely unburdened, I’m able to skip through life rather than trudge. Will that last? Will I biff it and fall? Will my mental illnesses tidal wave me when I least expect it? I don’t know. But I’m not going to worry about it in the meantime. I’m just going to enjoy this feeling as long as it lasts.

Like I said, 43 feels like a funky number and a funky age.

I’m looking forward to getting funky.

I’m Starting the New Year the Same Way I Ended the Old One–Softly

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I think it was my cousin Alex who posted a meme in her Instagram stories about why we go on about ending the year strong when we should be ending the year softly -resting, recuperating, relaxing. I’m paraphrasing it badly, but it still spoke to my soul.

When I saw this I was in the homestretch of a brutal marathon of projects. I was doing Book ’em, Danno, Here, Watch This with Shann, and covering three shows on Eventually Supertrain with Dan. I also had Five Minutes to do for Patreon. I was finishing up the prep for my program that I’ll be giving later this month at work. I was also working on a couple of library podcast episodes so I could have the comp time to cover my traditional birthday week vacation. And then there was NaNo, the page-a-day, the Sunday story, and blogging. Full disclosure: I did this to myself and I regret none of it. I could have said “no” to most of these things, but I chose to say “yes” and I’m glad I did. It’s just that I once again overestimated myself and as a result their were consequences.

I burned myself out. Oops.

By the time I saw this random message, I was more than ready to embrace it.

I decided to end 2022 as softly as I could.

Deadlines and schedules being what they were, there was only so much I could control. I made the executive decision not to do any blog posts for the month of December. That gave me a little less stress and a little more time to do other things. I also finished as much of my audio work as I could before December. Another thing that freed up some time and lowered the stress levels.

After that, it was all about scheduling, balancing work with rest, which to be honest, is something I suck at and should be doing anyway.

For my part, I think I did well. Even with the Grinchmas shopping, crafting, shipping, and baking, I did not end the year feeling frazzled, completely bereft of energy, patience, and will to live. I ended the year somewhat softly and it made a huge difference in how I entered 2023.

I chose to enter the new year softly as well.

I tend to ease into January anyway. After all, I’m usually exhausted and dragging myself into a new calendar. This year I’m purposely going in softly. I am continuing my practice of being mindful about my schedule. I’m taking it easy, but being productive. What are my deadlines? What is my schedule? What can I control? Where can I be soft?

After doing so much audio last year, I plan to scale back this year. I still have projects with deadlines that will get done, but it’s a matter of not letting my schedule become so overwhelmed with it. I need to pace myself better and this means saying “no” or “not right now” sometimes, even if it’s something I really want to do. I need to let myself be booked sometimes.

It was in the latter portion of 2022 that I realized how much I miss writing. After years of creativity and productivity issues, I hit a sweet spot last year that I haven’t experienced in a long time and my schedule was so crowded that I felt like I had no time to indulge in it.

This month, my birthday vacation is also going to be a writing vacation. No library work and no audio projects. Just me and writing words. No deadlines or productivity goals. Just me writing.

And if it goes the way I think it will go, that is to say well, then I play to making writing vacations a thing for the year. Find those weeks were I can just write without expectation or interruption.

I’m hoping that ending the old year and beginning the new year softly will teach me something about how I approach my scheduling and my projects and maybe help me figure out a better work/rest balance.

Let this not be one of the times I insist on learning the hard way.

2022 NaNo Winner!

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Number 19 officially went into the books on November 23rd and that’s when the story was finished, too. I pushed a little to get it finished before Thanksgiving, but for the most part, kept a constant 2,000 words a day word count. I tended to make the most productive progress doing 500 word sprints in between playing rounds of a puzzle game. It just seemed easier to write that way when I was giving my brain little breaks rather than trying to push straight through. It’s not the first time I’ve used this distraction/sprinting technique. I do whatever I need to do in order to make the words happen.

Thanks to me being less than smart with my scheduling, I ended up writing most often after work. Or at work, in some cases. I’m a dedicated employee. Anyway. That was different from previous years as my goal was always to get as much, if not all, of my writing before my shift. But since I had a few other projects going on, I had to rearrange my priorities. I will readily admit that this was one of the more stressful Novembers I’ve had in a while. I got through it, but I’m in no hurry to do something like that again.

The final first draft of Leave Well Enough Alone is something of a mess, naturally. Maybe it wouldn’t be if I’d done a slightly more solid outline. And by slightly more, I mean anything better than the vague game plan I went in with. But that’s not how I live my life.

I realized about two-thirds of the way into the first draft that I borked my timeline. Not long afterwards, I realized that I probably should have written the story differently. As I mentioned, I wrote alternating timelines. I think I might have been better off writing the 1976 timeline first in its entirety and then tailored the present day timeline to better fit it. Also, neither timeline turned out the way I thought it would, but that tends to happen when I don’t have a more robust and solid outline.

It was also about the time I realized I borked my timeline that I realized that Trix and Miggy should have had different jobs and objectives, but whatever. That’s what revisions and rewrites are for.

And when I get around to them, there will be a lot. Most likely starting with writing the 1976 timeline out in full so I know better how to make the present day timeline work.

But that’s future me’s problem.

Right now, present me is savoring yet another NaNo victory.

The Muses

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I wrote ages ago about muses and how I didn’t have one. However, I recently realized that I do have a muse. I have several of them, in fact. It’s just they’re not what I thought they’d be.

A muse, according to the dictionary, is “a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist”. I have always interpreted this to be more of the figurative meaning, an imaginary being that sprinkles creative dust on my head, which infiltrates my brain and gives me ideas. And in that respect, I never had a muse. I was never blessed in such a fashion.

As it turns out, though, I have been blessed with multiple muses over the years. I just didn’t realize it at the time. I was looking for fairies when what I got was people, places, and things.

My muses are concrete nouns.

For example, there’s a tree across the street in my neighbor’s yard. I don’t know what kind it is. It’s just big and it’s been there for years and it’s very pretty in the fall, but the wind strips its leaves pretty quickly. It’s usually bare by Halloween.

That tree has been in several of my stories and at least two of those stories came from ideas I got from that tree, from wanting to write about it. It was a muse.

There are places that I’ve used the same way. The library I work at has popped up in my stories long before I started working there. I wouldn’t be writing Defending The L right now if the library hadn’t inspired the story. The local lake, the house across the street, the zombie car wash, all inspired stories. They were muses.

And, yes, there are people who’ve served as muses. People who I think would make excellent characters so I build stories around them. People I want to give starring roles. People who I will absolutely not name here nor will I name of any of the stories they inspired. But they were all muses.

The thing about these muses, the real thing that I think tripped me up in seeing them for what they were, is that I thought of muses as more of something permanent. The fairy that was always there, flitting about with their creativity dust. As it turns out, muses are more impermanent than I previously thought. I don’t think that they’re always supposed to stick around. They serve their creative purpose and then they return to being the nouns they’ve always been.

Of course, muses, like inspiration and creativity and all of those other intangibles, are highly individual. I’m sure some people have muses that stick around forever. Maybe one day I’ll be lucky enough to have that happen.

And I’m sure there are some people who are lucky enough to have the fairy kind of muse, sprinkling creativity all over them. I know that I’ll never be lucky enough to have that.

I’ll have to settle for the nouns that happen to catch my attention.

Page-A-Day and Sunday

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

As I mentioned, I’m currently writing a page-a-day novel as well as something I’ve come to think of as my Sunday novel. I’ve been doing them both for a few months now, long enough that I’m ready to talk a little bit about each project, but more importantly talk about how different the processes have been for me, particularly in light of working on a NaNo novel at the same time.

NaNo, of course, is NaNo. I’ve finished it in 12 days, I’ve finished it in 30 days, I’ve totally failed it. My goal is to write 50,000-60,000 words in a month, about 2,000 words a day. After years of this, I’ve found a happy medium between outlining and pantsing, giving myself a basic blueprint of the story with room to wild out and surprise myself. It’s been a winning formula for quite some time (when I’m not cheating, obviously). The resulting first drafts vary from needing a lot of rewrites to just needing a few rounds of revisions.

Blasting out that first draft as fast as possible has been my way of writing for a majority of my writing career and it’s how I’ve done most of my projects.

Defending The L is not my first page-a-day project. A few years ago, I decided to shake up my creativity by writing one page a day every day for a year because as the adage goes, if you write a page a day, by the end of the year, you have a 365 page novel. At the time, I was looking for some kind of creative productivity boost. I had a general idea of the story, a few scenes I knew I was writing towards, and I just sort of let it unfold, day by day, page by page.

My current page-a-day is a little different. I started writing Defending The L this way because I wanted to write this story, but didn’t have time to devote to it to do it NaNo-style, nor did I want to wait until NaNo. I also don’t have the goal of writing a page a day for a year, just until the story is done. As of this post, it’s right around NaNo length of about 50,000 words and into the third act of the story, which takes a bit of a horror turn.

Defending The L also has the dual purpose of being a bit of a catharsis piece. It’s set in a library, so I’ve been able to vent some of my frustrations with the job through the story.

Like the previous page-a-day (which still doesn’t have a title and I haven’t looked at since I wrote it) and much of my NaNo work, this one is going to need some revising, but more than likely not any heavy re-writing. Of course, I’m not finished yet, so fingers crossed.

My Sunday story, That’s Punk, is an entirely different beast and honestly, it’s a little scary.

First of all, there’s nothing horror or fantasy or otherwise genre about it. It’s straight contemporary fiction, which for me is way out of my comfort zone.

Second of all, instead of writing this first draft as fast as I possibly can and getting it all out in one hunk I can shape through rewrites and/or revising, I’ve only been able to work on this story on Sundays. And when I do work on it, I go back and re-read what I wrote the previous week, revising anything I’ve decided needed changing while it’s simmered in my brain since the last time I looked at it, and then I add new material. There’s also no goal before I call my day on That’s Punk done. No word or page counts. Once I do my rewind and revise, I decide how much I want to get done that day. Usually, it’s a scene, or maybe not even that. I stop where it feels good. I’ve been working on this story since the end of August and I’ve only got about thirty pages written.

It’s so weird on so many levels for me. I’m writing something I don’t normally write in a way I don’t normally write. And you know what? I think I like it. There’s something indulgent about being able to take my time with a story, revise it as I go, and keep my goals fluid. There’s something luxurious about having this dedicated time to work on something on a day with no other expectations. I’m not rushing to get anything done because I have to go to work or I have errands to run or dinner to make. I don’t do anything on Sundays by design. Writing this story on my lazy day has turned into a form of relaxation for me, as strange as that sounds.

November has been an interesting writing month for me for years thanks to NaNo and the challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel around daily life. But this November, writing three different novels, three different ways…it’s been eye-opening.

One thing about being a writer…I never get bored exploring and developing my craft.