The Holiday Gauntlet

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Every year I run the holiday gauntlet. I’m sure lots of people do it, but this isn’t about them; it’s about me.

The gauntlet starts with Thanksgiving. I attend dinner with my dad’s side of the family at my Aunt Jo’s. Some years I’m responsible for shuttling the nieces down, too. It’s a nice way to ease into the craziness that follows in the weeks to come.

From that point on, it’s a matter of wrangling presents, buying them if I can afford it or making them if I can’t, wrapping them, mailing them, piling them up with the rest of my Christmas paraphernalia in the corner of my room. This likely takes me until the week of the holiday because I’m lousy at coming up with gift ideas in a timely fashion, and if I do come up with something, then I tend to misjudge the amount of time I have to get it. Somehow, I always managed to squeak in under the wire.

My middle niece was cursed with having her birthday exactly a week before Christmas. My mom doesn’t put out any Christmas decorations until afterwards so she can have the day and of course, I’m there for it to give her present and enjoy some cupcakes. It’s like a warm-up.

The week of Chrstimas is probably my most dreaded week of the year. It’s the logistics of trying to squeeze in as many Christmases as necessary so everyone is satisfied (this happens when you have divorced parents, divorced grandparents, and traveling grandparents). One year, I ended up doing six Christmases in four days. It was a nightmare and I’ve resented Christmas ever since. Typically, though, I usually have no more than three. Last year, I only had two. This year I’m only having two. It’s like a vacation only having two.

Part of the headache of doing the Christmases is the traveling. A trip to my mom’s is usually no big deal, just a twenty minute drive. A trip to my Aunt Jo’s is about the same amount of time, but in the opposite direction. But there have been years in which I drove to my mom’s on the 23rd and 24th for Christmases and then on Christmas drove north to her house, picked up the nieces, drove south to my Aunt Jo’s, had Christmas, then drove north to take the girls home, then drove south to take myself home. The entire Christmas ping pong trip ends up being about 150 miles. It’s a lot of driving for a day full of food and presents and sometimes crappy weather.

Sure, other people drive that distance in a day. My grandparents pretty much have to in order to make their Christmas rounds. But, I think it’s more exhausting to drive it like a fish on speed trapped in a small bowl.

After the mania that is Christmas begins the slow cool down. New Year’s Eve is a raucous affair for a lot of people, but for me, it’s a quiet business of a marathon of some sort (last year it was Mystery Science Theater 3000) with some snacks, sparkling grape juice, and a friend or two. Nothing big, nothing drunken, nothing fancy. Just a quiet ringing in of the New Year.

My oldest niece’s birthday is January 11th and, you know it, I’m there for cupcakes (or cheesecake) and presents. It’s the last trip I have to make and by that point, I’m tired of driving 51 North.

The gauntlet ends on my birthday the next day, January 12th. My mom usually just lumps my birthday in with my niece’s, which has led to some interesting birthday cakes over the years. I can’t blame her. By that point, all of my friends and relatives are tired of celebrating things. Even if I had the energy to do anything special, I’d most likely be doing it alone. The last time I went out on my birthday, I was twenty-six and ended up puking at the bar, so maybe it’s just best I’m too tired to do anything anyway.

It then takes me until Thanksgiving to rest up for the next run.

This is why the people who love Christmas baffle me. I think of them like I think of people who enjoy running marathons; it’s hard for me to enjoy anything when I’m struggling so hard just to breathe.

Despite the craziness and my Grinch-like demeanor, I do enjoy the quiet, sweet moments with family and friends. And the food. And the free stuff.

Rob Whoville!

Five Gifts I Would Give (If I Could)

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Last week I listed five gifts I wanted from Santa. As much as I like getting, I like giving, too.

Here are five gifts that I would give if I could afford to give them and if it were practical to do so. Don’t look for anything of substance here. You won’t find it. It’s not one of the things on the list.

1. I’d give the Pittsburgh Pirates a winning season. I’m not talking championship; I’m saying finishing things out above .500. I’m no Pirates fan, but it’s got to be miserable as a fan and a player to running on two decades of losing seasons. No one deserves to go through that (though there are some people I think should; doesn’t mean they deserve it, though).

2. I’d give everyone a white Christmas. The snow would only last a day and wouldn’t be on the roads so there’d be no travel problems. I think people in the warmer climates are missing out.

3. I’d give people a break from being self-righteous. I imagine it’s exhausting and they could use a vacation.

4. I’d give my old high school some windows so it wouldn’t look so much like a prison. Or I’d give it some razor wire so the prison look would be complete. Whichever would be better for the current students.

5. I’d give everyone an extra tomorrow so they could catch up on their sleep today. Sometimes you just have to pause and take a nap so you have the energy to keep up with life.

That’s my giving list. What’s on yours?

Writing–Rejection Subjective

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

One of my biggest obstacles to changing my writing from hobby to job was the fear of rejection. I don’t do well with failure. Even as a kid it gave me serious anxiety. I’d be so afraid of failing or making a mistake that I’d just freeze and wouldn’t do anything. Then once I was forced to actually do it and found out that even if I did make a mistake or fail, it wasn’t the end of the world and then I had no troubles.

Writing was no different. The idea of being rejected (and therefore, not good enough) stopped me cold in my tracks. It was the combination of entering contests (because in my head that’s not being rejected, it’s just not winning, and I can handle not winning) and reading Stephen King‘s On Writing that helped me get past my rejection fear.

The first story that ever brought me any kind of validation that I might be good writing was “Such a Pretty Face”. It won 10th place in the Genre category of a Writer’s Digest story contest. It got me 25 bucks, but didn’t get the story published (I did get to see my name in print in a magazine, though, and that was pretty cool). I was really proud of the acoomplishment and proud of the story. I then decided to try to get “Such a Pretty Face” published.

And that’s when I learned a valuable lesson in rejection. It’s a subjective thing.

Despite placing in the contest, “Such a Pretty Face” has been rejected six times since then. SIX! You’d think that 10th place showing would count for something. It’s a GOOD story. Someone told me so. I’ve got a certificate to show for it.

It was very frustrating to have one person say the story was worthy of a ribbon, but everyone else not think it was worthy of being read.

Of all the rejections I’ve received for “Such a Pretty Face”, only one suggested I make any changes to it. The changes he suggested made me realize that he totally missed the point of the story. And that made me realize that I was forgetting the human element of the submission process.

Not every rejection I get is because the story was bad. Sure, I’ve sent out stories I shouldn’t have and they were rejected for very good reasons. But some rejections left me scratching my head. Now I realize that maybe those form looking rejections might not have all been form rejections and maybe they meant it when they said these weren’t the stories that they were looking for.

It seems silly, but up until that point it didn’t occur to me that someone just might not like my story. I never thought that maybe it might not what they were looking for or they’d already seen too many similar stories lately or they didn’ t think the story fit with the publication as well as I did. Yes, until that point, I didn’t realize that rejection might not have anything to do with the quality of the story.

If you’ve read any of my other blog posts, it should be no suprise that I am this slow on the uptake.

So  my attitude towards rejection has changed a bit. It’s still disappointing, but now that I know that it doesn’t automatically mean that my story is shit, the sting doesn’t linger quite as long. Getting back on that horse is quicker and easier.

And if it’s the last thing I do, I will see “Such a Pretty Face” published.

Stories By the Numbers

Ready: 3
Submitted: 3

Rob Whoville!

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Ah, December. The time of year when people talk about goodwill toward men and showing the love and giving and sharing and lots of other mushy, squishy feelings we’re only fine with showing one month out of twelve. There are a lot of holidays that occur during December and most of them run with the same kind of warm fuzzies. Christmas (Jesus’s birthday version, Santa Claus version, and the combo platter), Hanukkah, Kwanza, Ramadan, Yule, Solstice, Festivus, and probably several more that I’m either forgetting or not aware of. 

Though I celebrate Christmas (more of the Santa Claus version as I was raised by atheists and am now myself an agnostic of sorts), I no longer wish people a Merry Christmas. I don’t say Happy Holidays. I tell people to Rob Whoville.

Why?

Because people, while talking about the “true spirit of the season”, act out the actual spirit of the season which is, of course, MINE! These people who decry the commercialism, selfishness, and absolute material greed of the holiday season actually personify it all beautifully in a religious sense with their insistance that December only has room for one holiday and it’s theirs and theirs alone.

Love your fellow man, so long as he bids you the proper holiday greeting and celebrates the same holiday as you. Cry and plead to the masses about the lack of tolerance you’re getting, but not about the lack of tolerance you yourself are showing.

Well, I’ve got news for you, kids. Just because you don’t celebrate it, doesn’t mean it’s wrong and it doesn’t exist. That goes for EVERYBODY. If you’re going to preach the meaning of the season outside of Black Friday and door buster sales, then you need to be willing to practice it, too.

As I said before, there are a lot of holidays that are celebrated in December. There’s nothing wrong with wishing people Happy Holidays, just like there’s nothing wrong with saying Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah, or any of the rest of them. ALL OF THOSE ARE CORRECT. Even if you don’t celebrate the particular holiday, somebody does and it’s okay to politely acknowledge that. Your face will not melt, you will not spontaneously combust, and Santa will not skip your house.

It’s unfortunate that for all the talk about kindness and giving during the season, it ends up being only talk because to be truly selfless and kind would mean giving up being “right”. And laws knows we can’t be having with that.

So if simply expressing a season’s greeting is offensive, then I’m going for broke with my December motto. Why pick sides in this holiday “war” when I can create my own side and offend everyone? Sure, my motto might take some explaining, but I don’t mind that. Some things are worth explaining.

Remember, it wasn’t until the Grinch robbed Whoville that he learned the TRUE spirit of the holiday. Maybe people need to experience a little kind of larceny to really get it. Maybe they need someone to steal their pride.

Rob Whoville.

Five (Unreasonable and Frivolous) Things I Want From Santa

~ Kiki Writes ~ 3 Comments

To get into the holiday mood, I figured I’d start where my childhood left off…with Santa. He hasn’t been to my house in years, but if he did, I’d ask him for some serious loot. Here are five things I want from Santa this year (don’t bother looking for world peace or anything too sentimental on this list; it’s all about me and it’s all about extreme):

1. A red 2008 Dodge Charger. Instead of decorating it with a bow, I’d rather the insurance on it be paid for five years.

2. An all expenses paid vacation to Hawaii and the money to spend to make it worth my while. I’d totally buy Santa a cool thank you gift while I was on the Big Island.

3. The various missing pieces to my Monkees music collection and tickets to their next reunion tour. Santa should encourage my Monkee love.

4. Every Vincent Price movie on DVD. Speaking of love, Vincent IS my Valentine every year. I should have every movie he’s been in at my disposal for February 14th.

5. Ted Lilly to play for the Cubs again. I miss him. Other people miss him. Santa wouldn’t even have to bring him to my house. Just deposit him at Wrigley Field on Opening Day.

It’s a list like this that really makes me sad that Santa doesn’t visit my house anymore. Oh, I doubt he’d bring me these five things, but he would bring me free stuff. And I love me some free stuff.

What outrageous, purely selfish things would you ask Santa for?

Writing–You Like Me! You Really Like Me!

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Having a story accepted is as rare to me as being asked out on a date, but it’s pretty much a given that I’m more excited to have my story accepted than to be asked out, usually because the person asking me out isn’t someone that I want to date in the first place (but that’s another post for another day).

Toiling away, such that I do, pretty much in isolation because I’m terrible at networking and I’ve only got a few friends that are writers, selling a story becomes the bottom line for validation. Rejection is the rule of the day and I know I’ll see more of it than anything else. But, to open that email (or letter; I still do some snail mail subs that call for SASE) and read the words that I long to read, especially when I’m expecting rejection, is one of the most victorious moments in my short career. We’re talking fist pumping and saying, “Yes!” over and over like I just hit the walkoff home run to win the World Series. It’s the sign that I’m always looking for, the one that says that this isn’t just a hobby, that I’m good at this and I can make money doing this and most importantly, people want to read what I write. It’s that last one that boosts my ego the most.

The best part is that the feeling of jubilation and absolute victory hasn’t changed. Oh, maybe I’m a little more sophisticated in expressing those feelings (read: I don’t yell as loudly as I used to), but that warm, bubbly, my-day-has-been-made feeling is still the same. And I love it. And I can’t wait to put that feeling to the test with more acceptances to see if the feeling will ever fade or if it will only get better.

I look forward to doing this experiment.

Stories by the Numbers

Ready: 3
Submitted: 3
Accepted: 1! “Sentries” will be published in the Library of Horror anthology Fearology 3: Planting the Seeds of Horror

Late Bloomer Blues II

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I wrote my first word at three and my first story at six, but I was twenty-eight before I fully committed myself to being a writer.

Oh, I’d thought about it over the years because I always wrote, stories, plays, and poems. But, I had a bit of ADD when it came to trying to figure out what I was going to spend the rest of my life doing because so many things have caught my interest over the years. Marine biology, meterology, acting, psychology, medicine, sociology. At one point, I considered them all. And I think the thing that frustrated my family the most was that I could have done all of them (though I don’t think I would have been the most successful actress because of my looks, or lack thereof) because I was smart enough to do any of it; I just didn’t have the attention span or the follow through.

My senior year of high school was the first time I actually made an attempt to be serious about my writing in the sense that I took a correspondence course on creative writing. It took a little over a year for me to complete and I got a nice shiny certificate in creative writing from it not long after I got my high school diploma, but I didn’t feel like I learned very much aside from the very important lesson that plot is a good thing and my stories could use it.

My first round of community college, I intended to major in English to work towards a degree in creative writing because that seemed logical. I’m a logical person and I think there must be logical steps to take to achieve goals and if I can find them, I’ll take them. Sometimes I’m terrible at finding them.

Majoring in English lasted one semester because instead of going back to school, I went to work. The next time I went to school, I was intending on majoring in sociology. The last time I went to school, I took every psyhcology course I could find.

It was the psychology courses that reawakened my desire to write (which had been squashed by a battle with depression and was slow to come back as I got my life back on track) because studying about these quirks of humanity made me want to write about them.

I started making time to write, started writing with the purpose to get published, started submitting my stories to contests and to publications. I got my first victory in 2008 when my story placed 10th in its category in a contest. That was the first time I really felt like maybe I had what it took to make a career out of writing.

And ever since then I’ve been kicking myself in the butt for not realizing it sooner. I feel like I’ve wasted time, especially when I see people much younger than I am land publishing deals or hear about some writers who’d been submitting their work since they were in their teens. I feel like starting my career at 28 puts me miles behind everyone else and miles behind where I should be.

Now every rejection feels like a setback that I should have suffered years ago and I’m too old to be dealing with it now. It’s like going through puberty years after all of my classmates. I feel so behind and I can’t catch up because in order for that to happen I’d need a DeLorien and a flux capacitor.

So until Santa brings me those things, I just keep plugging away, hoping to make up for lost time.

The late bloomer blues strike again.

Saying Goodbye to Ron Santo

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I woke up this morning, turned on the TV, and flipped through the channels like I ususally do after my alarm rudely intrudes on my sleep. I hit the Weather Channel and for some reason, they were talking about Ron Santo. I thought to myself how odd that was, so I turned up the sound.

It wasn’t until the very end when they showed his picture with 1940-2010 underneath it that I realized he had passed away.

The man had diabetes and battled bladder cancer. He wasn’t able to work the radio for several away games this year because of his poor health preventing him from traveling. But, it never crossed my mind that we were so close to losing him or that we’d be losing him anytime soon. It just didn’t seem possible. Ronnie was always there and I just couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t always be there.

Today, I and the rest of the Cubs world are faced with that reality.  Honestly, I’m sadder than I thought I’d be. I haven’t listened to games on the radio for years, but I already feel Ron’s absence. I loved him singing the 7th inning stretch and I loved seeing him in the radio booth during the games. Nobody loved the Cubs more than he did.

My condolences go out to his family and friends.

The game won’t be the same without you, Ron Santo. We’ll miss you.

Writing–A Change in Plans

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

Submitting my short stories is always a stressful activity to me. Not so much the actual submitting, but the finding of ezines, magazines, and anthologies to submit to is stressful for me. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now and I have concluded that I’m just terrible at it.

I don’t think I’m a very good judge of my own work in terms of establishing that it’s a good fit for a publication. I typically teeter on the fence of decision for a bit before finally falling to the side of NO. Rarely do I hit on a publication that just screams PERFECT at me so loudly that I cannot deny it (we’ll just never mind the inevitable rejection). It’s when I get to the end of my futile search empty-handed that I start to wonder if the story I’ve written is just impossible to publish because it doesn’t fit anywhere. And then I feel like I’m just spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere in my writing career. This torture has made researching publications my least favorite part of being a writer.

After my latest round of torture, I decided that I needed to change my plan.

My usual tactic was to hit up Duotrope as soon as I had a story (or two or three) ready to submit, paw through the listings looking for a fit, and get incredibly discouraged if I couldn’t find something so I could submit the story that day.

My revised plan will be a little less stressful, a little more laid back, but hopefully (in the long run, at least) be more productive. I’ll keep a list of stories that are ready to go. I’ll hit up Duotrope once a week. If I find something, great. If not, there’s always next week. Meanwhile, I can continue to add to my ready list and not feel entirely like I’m failing.

This less-pressure method might work for me. It might not. But I’ve got to try something new because the old method isn’t working for me. And I’ve got to be more willing to acccept that something isn’t working and come up with a new game plan.

I’m a bit of goat when it comes to insisting on doing things the hard way.

As NaNoWriMo is done for me for yet another year, I propose to introduce a new Writing Wednesday feature to help keep me publicly accountable for my short stories. It will account for the number of stories I have done, the stories I have out, and any acceptances or rejections I get for the week, on the occasion that I get them (those are few and far between most of the time, but rejections are more likely than acceptances).

Stories by the Numbers

Ready: 3
Submitted: 3
Rejections: 3 (no response)

Lost: Adventurous Spirit

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

According to science, your brain finishes developing in your late 20’s. That last little bit deals with rationality and impulse control and anticipating consequences to actions. It’s a good thing, in the long run.

Unfortunately for me, that final development seems to have just killed my spirit of adventure. The iron curtain came down and separated it from the rest of me.

In my early 20’s, when I was friends with people involved in the independent professional wrestling circuit in Chicago, it was nothing for me to get off of work at noon on Saturday (after getting up at five in the morning), drive to the Chicago suburbs for a show and not get home until two in the morning. There a few times when I’d find myself driving home as the sun rose after having spent several hours after the show wandering the streets of Chicago, being up a full twenty-four hours. I don’t recommend doing that.

I didn’t say that my adventures were necessarily smart. I once drove through a tornado to go to a bar to watch a group of friends put on a wrestling show that nobody came to see because there was a tornado. To be fair, I didn’t know I was driving through the tornado at the time. I heard the warnings as I was driving, but I wasn’t familiar with the counties in that area of the state, so I wasn’t sure exactly where they were warning. And those cars that pulled over to the side were wimps. Wimps!

Around that time, it was beyond me to drive eight hours to Arkansas to visit a friend for a weekend. Or fly to Philly to visit another friend for a weekend. Or drive to Arkansas, spend the night, drive to Memphis, catch a flight to Philly, spend the night in Delaware, spend another night in New Jersey, fly back to Memphis, drive back to Arkansas, spend the night, and then drive home.

Once, I took the train with one friend to Chicago, met two other friends up there. We spent two nights in a hostel. The bathroom was communal. The showers had curtains, but most of the bathroom stalls didn’t have doors. Our first night there, we spent three hours talking to a guy named Dylan whose entire side of the conversation amounted to a pick-up line. We spent an entire day at Six Flags. We went to Navy Pier. We got lost in Chicago and were mistaken for prostitutes (we weren’t directly solicited, but why else would the same car slowly pass us five times as we stood on the sidewalk trying to figure out how to get back to the hostel?). We missed our train home because we just had to go back to My PI for lunch and we tipped our waiter for being cute.

Did I mention that I did all of this in a three day weekend after working seven days straight, four of those days working twelve hours a day at a store in Indiana, and before going back to work for another ten day stretch?

I was crazy, but I was also fearless. I wouldn’t think twice. I lost quite a bit of that between twenty-five and thirty.

Oh, I’ve had adventures since then. I went to three Chicago Comicons (back in my day they were called Wizard Worlds) and two DragonCons. But those adventures were better planned out in comparison to my earlier trips. They reflected the growing awareness that not everything could be winged and some things were better with a little foresight.

But, I realized this past summer that my adventurous spirit was off in an old folks home somewhere. My mother surprised me with tickets to a Cubs game as an early Christmas present. My first thought after “YAY! CUBS GAME! THANKS, MOM!” was “Wow, I’m going to have to find someone to go with me who will drive because I don’t want to”. Now, I’ve never liked to drive, but ten years ago that wouldn’t have stopped me; I’d have just driven if I couldn’t have found someone else to do it.

I need to get some of that adventurous spirit back. Some of the fearlessness, not necessarily the stupidity. I’ve still got some stupidity to spare.  But, adventures are what make life fun and interesting and I need to get back into the habit of having those.

I need to raise that iron curtain in my brain and let a little of that spirit back out.

And I need to get some money to make having those adventures possible. But that’s a post for another day.