What I Did at Camp

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

No, this is not about the time I went to Girl Scout Camp when I was in junior high (I think? Memory is a fuzzy thing) and ended up being put in charge of showing the younger girls how to make bracelets and then later in the week had to show them how to make “fishing poles” out of string and paperclips.

This is about my first time participating in Camp NaNoWriMo.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then the concept of NaNoWriMo is familiar to you. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I’ve done it 19 years in a row (damn) and by now I’ve won more often than not.

Camp NaNo is a similar concept except it takes place a couple of times a year (I think April and July) and you set the goal. It’s not just for new projects; it can be used to add on to existing projects. Though the input is still words written, there are ways to approximate if your goal for the month is revising a project.

I decided to use Camp NaNo as a way to make significant progress on That’s Punk, which has been my Sunday story for like a year now. As much as I’ve enjoyed the leisurely, no pressure pace I’ve been taking with the story –a real departure from the way I normally write longer manuscripts- I was ready to put some real time and words into it. I felt that setting a reasonable Camp NaNo goal would be the perfect way to make that happen. After all, I’m terribly competitive with myself and I don’t like to lose.

Going into July, I had about 30,000 words in on That’s Punk, so I decided that a good goal was to hit 50,000 words total. After years of writing 50,000-60,000 words in a month, a little over 20,000 would be easy. The daily bar was set at about 655 words. Perfect. This was what I needed.

One thing I wondered about was how this would affect the way I’d been writing That’s Punk, going slowly and revising as I went. I was concerned that I might fall back into old NaNo habits and just try to get my words down as fast as I could and worry about it all later. As it turns out, with the lower daily goal, I gave myself time to look over what I’d written before and revise it before moving on to my new words for the day. I feel like this is a habit that I’d like to try to keep even for NaNo. It might be more of a challenge with a higher word count, but I’m willing to try.

I admit that my schedule also helped me tackle this goal in the way that I wanted to. Because I work ahead on Book ’em, Danno, I’m able to take July off from my podcast. However, this year, after months of working on a video project for work, I ended up taking July off from all of my non-writing projects, putting Here, Watch This on hold for the month. Camp NaNo was the only thing going for the entire month of July and I’ll be honest, after months of juggling multiple projects, it was glorious. But I admit that the singular focus probably aided in my ability to not only achieve my goal, but also exceed it, all while revising as I went along like I wanted, and not stressing myself out to get it done. I won’t have this luxury during NaNo in November. Podcast things will be happening while I’m trying to hit my daily word count goal of easily over 1,000 more words a day.

If anything, Camp NaNo reminded me how much I like writing, a joy I thought I’d lost for a long time before being revived in the last couple of years, and how much I want to spend my time doing just that. It’s not that I don’t enjoy podcasting. I do. But writing is clearly my first love and I need to find a way to spend more time doing that.

Something else I learned at Camp.

A little writing a day keeps the blues away.

Read This If–Book Recs You Never Asked For

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

We have this thing at the library called Reader’s Advisory. Basically, it means that one of our solemnly sworn duties as library workers is to recommend books, movies, TV shows, whatever to patrons based on what they’re looking for.

I’ve worked really hard at getting better at this because what most people ask for -like mysteries, thrillers, or “something like James Patterson” (ugh)- I don’t read much of. And may the library gods spare me from anyone asking for young adult recs because YA is still my weakest link goodbye. But I have made significant progress in getting more comfortable and adept at recommending books for patrons.

I did this not only because I like to be somewhat competent at my job, but also because my tastes are so random that it’s very rare that someone is going to ask for a rec that’s in my wheelhouse. In fact, I think the patron asking for something morbid the other night is the first time I was confidently able to say, “I got this.”

So as a means to satisfy my own ego and maybe put some books into the awareness of someone who might be looking for just the thing, I’m going to attempt a new blog series called “Read This If…” and it will feature two or three (maybe four; why limit myself?) books that fit a kind of theme. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do this once a month and maybe you’ll find something unexpected to fill your eyeballs with.

These recs will be coming from a place of pure enjoyment. I liked this, maybe you will, too. I make no claim that I know what’s “good”. I’m not doing full on reviews or book reports. Hell, giving stars on Goodreads gets me uptight half the time. This is just going to be loose and informal. A chat amongst friends.

So, let’s have fun with it.

I know. You didn’t ask for this.

You don’t have to thank me.

My Eyeliner Determines My Day

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

There is a wisdom that some people share about setting the tone of your day. That it’s important to create good vibes when you get up so that you can ride those vibes all the way until bedtime.

And then there are some people –like me- who judge the tone of their day by how it starts off. If you spill your coffee, slop your cereal, and/or have to change your clothes due to unfortunate circumstances, all the good vibes you can muster aren’t going to clear away all of those clouds.

For me, my eyeliner determines the kind of day I can expect.

Back in the long, long ago of my high school years and just beyond into my twenties, on the occasions I wore eyeliner, I only wore it on my lower lids. I simply could not work an eyeliner pencil on my top lids for love or money, so I never bothered with it. As my make-up look evolved, I actually stopped wearing eyeliner for the most part in my late twenties and into my thirties.

And then I decided to go as Batgirl’s mild-mannered librarian alter ego Barbara Gordon for Halloween.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the ’60s Batman show, or the ’60s in general, but the make-up look at the time involved winged eyeliner. And because I am dedicated to my Halloween costumes, I was determined to learn how to work it. Thanks to YouTube tutorials and the advancement in eyeliner technology that led to the development of liquid liner pens, I was able to nail the look.

And I just kept on wearing eyeliner.

I decided that I liked it. It was fun. And with some practice, I cut down the time it took me to apply it from ten minutes to something more reasonable. Usually less than five. I do a basic winged look, but it varies from day-to-day because despite the nearly daily practice, I’m still not exactly consistent with my skills.

This is why eyeliner has become the barometer of my life.

The difficulty I have getting my eyeliner on typically predicts the difficulty level of my day. The days in which my eyeliner goes on smooth and clean and my right eye looks similar to my left eye are certain to be easy days. They are few and far between.

Most days, I must deploy a Q-tip to clean things up. It’s usually just a matter of fixing the wings or thinning out the lid lines because they went from sleek to Goth in a couple of strokes or doing a little extra work to make sure my eyes at least sort of match. I consider this to be an average difficulty day. Things will go mostly smoothly, but I’ll have a couple of hitches in the ol’ giddyup.

And then there are the multiple-Q-Tip, Judas-Priest, I’m-calling-in-because-I-can’t-get-my-eyeliner-to-work days.

These are the days that I just automatically write off. Nothing good will come of them and if anything does, I won’t read too much into it. These are the days that I leave the house knowing I’m going to be fighting for my life my entire shift at the library. And probably on the way there and home, too. Everything is going to aggravate me and be harder than necessary.

I write off those days and hope for better eyeliner tomorrow.

I admit that there are exceptions to the rule. There are days when my eyeliner goes on perfectly and it turns out to be the only easy part of my day. Likewise, there are days in which I can’t get my eyeliner to go on right if everybody’s lives depended on it and then end up coasting until bedtime.

After all, nothing in life is absolute.

Especially eyeliner.

There Are Some Lessons I Won’t Learn

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I am one of those people that frequently gets an idea, decides to do said idea, and then completely overestimates my ability to accomplish the idea while simultaneously underestimating how difficult it will be for me to accomplish said idea.

I am an absolute menace to myself in this respect and it is a lesson that I am apparently unable to learn.

My latest escapade in this ridiculousness happened in regards to a work project.

Long story short, in researching a local history episode of the library’s podcast (the one on Mayor Pugh; give it a listen…he was fantastic), I came across an article listing 22 murders that had occurred in my county between 1855 and 1913. A few of them I had already covered on the podcast, but my brilliant self decided to research the other murders listed for both podcast purposes and because presenting a program talking about this bit of sordid local history would satisfy a couple of my work goals.

The research portion took months. For some of the murders listed, there wasn’t a lot of information (names, dates, etc.), which made finding them in the old papers difficult. You would think a scythe murder would be easy to find, but no.

I put together the program, made up handouts with some information for people to take with them, and scheduled it with our program coordinator, capping the event at 20 or 25 people for the sake of my anxiety, but thinking I’d only get a handful of people to actually sign up.

Yeah. So many people around here are interested in murder that I ended up doing two encore programs (I have since done another program for the local genealogical society) in addition to the original program.

It was after the second one that I decided it might be a good idea to do a video version and suggested it to my director, who readily agreed. I thought it would be no trouble to put it together.

That should have been my first warning, me thinking something wouldn’t be any trouble.

I actually wrote the script for the program video first. I had a little over an hour’s worth of material that I needed to streamline. Once that was done, I moved on to figuring out the look of my vid.

I quickly ruled out a simple video of me sitting in front of a camera and doing the program because I couldn’t think of anything more boring than to watch me talk. I thought that even when doing the programs. But I wasn’t exactly sure what I should do. I posited this question on the Twitters and a couple of friends with more experience in the video realm than I -shout out to Stan and Amanda- gave me some suggestions and guidance. I decided that it might be best to do a mix of audio slides and video intros to segments. It sounded easy enough.

There we go again with that warning word -easy.

I divided up my script between video and audio and then further divided the audio into how many slides I thought I’d need to cover each case. It took me very little time to record and edit all of the audio for the slides. Thanks years of podcasting!

Using Powerpoint, I put together the slides first. I did all of the text, found the newspaper articles I wanted to use for each case and added them to the appropriate slide, and then put the audio on all of the slides. None of it was exceptionally hard, but it was incredibly time consuming. I did 42 slides. It took nearly 10 hours. But that’s fine. It was all comp time because at the library I was training new people and any off desk time I could get went to changing out displays.

Then came time for me to shoot the video portion of the video.

I admit to putting this off because I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to pull it off, let alone that I could pull it off. First I had to figure out how I was going to record myself. I decided that the laptop webcam was good enough and proceeded from there, experimenting with angles, lighting, and audio. I thought I had it all figured out.

Once again, I overestimated my skills and underestimated my ability to fuck shit up.

Long story short, the video portion of the video did not work out. I don’t want to go into details of my fuck up because I haven’t quite finished metaphorically banging my head against the desk over my dipshittery, but the point is that I did what I always did. I got pissed. I said fuck it. I gave up. And then I decided to do the whole thing as audio slides.

It was relatively quick work to record and edit the new audio and put together 12 more slides.

Then all I needed to do was the subtitles.

You see, I could have left it up to automation, but the damn thing couldn’t make it through the first two sentences without fucking up the title of the program and my name.

So, I had to do it all by hand.

Now, the good news was that I already had the script. It was just a matter of breaking it up into logical hunks to timestamp and upload and then tweak the timestamps.

Sounds easy. And for the most part it was easy, except for the time I fucked something up (because I will always find a way to fuck something up) and had to go back and redo a chunk of slides. But again. It was time consuming. A lot of time. Like over 14 hours to get it right. And that’s not counting the 2 1/2 hours of precious off-desk time I used to do part of it.

But once that was done, the video was done. All that I had to do was proof it, fix anything I fucked up, proof it again, fix it again, proof it again, and finally call it good. Well, not good. Good enough. It’s not much to look at and may actually be even more boring than just watching me talk, but it’s done and that’s all I care about.

All told, I put something like 40 hours into a 46 minute video. Just an embarrassing about of time invested for such a lackluster result.

Yet, it is a perfect example of my talent to over/under estimate myself.

I thought it would be no trouble to put together a video version of my program even though my experience in video making outside of doing uninspired Instagram stories is non-existent. I didn’t think it would necessarily be easy or not be any work or not take time. I just didn’t think it would be any trouble. Because I (mistakenly, as usual) thought that I’d figure everything out pretty quickly, get the hang of it no sweat, and be borderline good at it with no hang ups or issues or setbacks.

Because I am a fool.

Because I refuse to learn that I am not naturally adept at everything I want to do. Because I refuse to incorporate the lesson that things I’m doing for the first time are naturally going to takes longer and require more mistakes and baby steps and sometimes outright disasters. Because I refuse to grasp the concept that I need to expect new ventures to take three or four times longer than I think they will and not come out nearly as good as I think they should because these sorts of things take time, practice, and repetition to get there.

You would think as a writer I would know this, but I can assure you. I’ve learned nothing.

This is my version of Sisyphus.

I will continue to push this boulder up the hill and be the main source of my own frustration until the end of time.

What I Mean When I Say I’m Not Pretty

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I know that there are many who would not find me saying I’m not pretty to be a controversial statement. They will be more than happy to tell me that not only am I not pretty, but I’m also unattractive, ugly, and downright disgusting. And to them I say…takes one to know one.

However, this is a controversial statement for some folks, typically those who know me, like me, love me, are in some way fond of me, or have some kind of fetish.

I posted this picture of me on Instagram in honor of the 25th anniversary of me graduating high school. It’s the only diploma I have and we’re all going to be happy with that. Also this is one of my favorite pictures of myself ever because I believe it truly captures my essence. The caption I posted with the photo said, “I’ve never been pretty, but I’ve always been vaguely annoyed.” This of course caused people to reassure me that I was and am, in fact, pretty.

Except I’m really not and never really have been.

Yes, I know that I’ve written about a couple of moments in my life when I was actually pretty and the unlikely event was caught on camera. But overall, in general, I’ve never been pretty.

Pretty means something else to me.

Pretty is something sweet and delicate. I’ve occasionally been sweet, but I’ve never been delicate. There is nothing delicate about me. Since I’ve been able to grow, I’ve been growing into a person who was not built to be picked up and thrown into a pool. I don’t just mean fat. Even if I never gained all of the rolls and cottage cheese, I’d still be too big to be delicate. My shoulders and hips are too broad for that.

And my facial features aren’t delicate, either. They aren’t cute. There’s nothing soft and sweet about them. They’re sharp. I’ve got a pointy witch nose and cheekbones (one blessing) and an interesting chin going on. Also the freckles I’ve got on my nose and cheeks are too plentiful and insistent to be called cute. Overall, it’s not a pretty facial configuration happening.

Pretty is also something that’s more inline with societal standards. To be pretty means that you meet those standards -at least in part- and I’ve never come close to hitting those marks for a sustainable period of time. Brief moments, sure. A significant stretch? Nope. Maybe my commitment issues also pertain to my looks.

That’s not to say that’s I’m not attractive. I don’t consider myself ugly (pipe down, peanut gallery). I think I’m quite fetching in the right light and at the right angles. Beauty is subjective no matter how much society wants to dictate the requirements. And while I never call myself beautiful (and there are people who’d trip over themselves to make sure I didn’t), I do possess (like most people) a certain kind of beauty.

But pretty? No. Pretty is for someone else who is not me.

And that’s not a bad thing.

Summer Slow Down

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

You may have noticed in May that my post-a-week didn’t happen. Or you may not have. You may have just been thanking whatever deity you believe in for the reprieve.

The lack of posting was due to a combination of deadlines and health issues. Though the deadlines have been met, new ones have arisen and the health issues linger. As a result, priorities have shifted and blogging weekly can no longer be high on the list.

This does not mean I’m giving up blogging entirely. You couldn’t get so lucky. However, the weekly schedule is on hold. The new goal is at least one or two posts a month.

This new schedule will continue for the summer.

Hopefully by fall I’ll be back to blogging weekly again.

Until then…enjoy the slow down.

Objects in the Selfie Are Fatter Than They Appear

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’m sure that I’ve written about this before in various forms, but it’s always worth repeating. Like the meme that I repost on Instagram periodically. It’s always good to remind folks about my reality because it’s not adequately reflected in my selfies.

There’s a reason for that and it extends somewhat beyond just trying to present my best self, though I am absolutely trying to do that with the angles and the lighting.

So, in case you’re new or you need to be reminded, I’m fat. Not low self-esteem fat, not Hollywood fat, actually fat. Midwestern fat. I ballpark my weight at about 250. 100%, Grade A Fat.

However, I don’t carry weight in my face. Even at my heaviest (which was nearly 270), my face looked a little rounder than usual, but that was it. My face has never reflected how heavy the rest of me is. I do not have a fat face. I’m also gifted with some nice shoulders and a relatively slender neck.

And what parts of me are showing when I’m taking selfies? That’s right. Pretty much the cleavage up.

Now I do have fat arms. We’re talking bat wings for days and nights. But with the right twist and the right angle, you don’t really notice the arms. Especially if there’s cleavage in play and the stretchmarks/scars are hidden. Then you don’t even notice my face.

Likewise, when I’ve been taking pictures of my tights and/or fishnets, I do so with my legs propped up on my dresser. I do this because it’s a better lighting angle and you get a better view of my tights and/or fishnets. However, in doing this, it makes my legs look thinner than they actually are. It’s just the result of gravity pulling on my leg fat in a pleasing way rather than yanking on the bulk the way it does when I’m standing, or my thighs just squishing out to the county lines when I sit down.

It’s not a deliberate trick to make myself look thinner. It’s a consequence of the deliberate choice I make of how I show off my tights/fishnets.

What I need is a full-length mirror (and a place to put said mirror). Then I could show off all of my cute tights and fishnets and outfits and my fat as well. Because I don’t like the feeling I sometimes get that I’m hiding how fat I really am. No one has ever said anything to insinuate that I was trying to work any deception, but when I get comments (especially from het dudes) about how good I look, I feel like they’re not taking into account that -as I’ve repeatedly stated and sometimes provided photographic evidence of- there’s a whole lot more of me to look at that isn’t in the picture they’re looking at. See how many compliments they give me when the can see the totality of me.

And I’m not saying that I wouldn’t present my fat in its best light and angles. Of course I would. I’m vain.

But then I’d at least be able to show not tell when reminding folks I’m fat.

In Defense of Poetry

~ Kiki Writes ~ 6 Comments

Yes, I know. National Poetry Month is over and you’ve had all of my terrible poetry you can handle. That’s fair. But this isn’t about my poetry, nor will I subject you to any more of it (at least not until next April). This is about poetry in general and how I think that for the general public, it doesn’t get a fair evaluation.

Obviously, there’s no harm if you don’t like poetry. It’s just that I don’t think people get a chance to like poetry.

Think about it. When are most people introduced to poetry? In school. Grade school, junior high, high school. And in that context, the agenda behind the introduction is to teach us the different kinds of poems and the various kinds of poetic devices, and the poetry we consume in the classroom is all for the purpose of learning these things. And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with learning the parts of the body that you’re looking at. Even if you never use that knowledge beyond the classroom, you’re still developing critical thinking skills and developing those important neural pathways that you will (hopefully) use later.

But at no point are you taught to experience and enjoy poetry (I could make this same argument about literature and reading for enjoyment). Instead, you’re trying to parse the implied meanings of a poet whose been dead for a hundred years for a grade. You’re not asked to understand what that poem means to you or explain how it makes you feel or how you experience. Yes, I’m coming from a very “I don’t know art, but I know what I like” kind of place.

Here’s kind of what I mean.

When I was a sophomore in high school, my honors English class was studying poetry and one of our assignments was to submit a poem to a poetry/art contest. So this was for a grade as well as for glory. The contest had a theme, I can’t remember exactly what it was. Something about robots taking people’s jobs or some such shit. Anyway, when I submitted the first draft of my poem, my teacher returned it with the critique that it didn’t have enough poetic devices.

Even as a 15 year old know-nothing, I thought to myself, “That’s not how poetry works.” Emily Dickinson never looked at one of her poems and said, “Needs more devices” like she was spiking a punch. And I’m not comparing myself to Emily Dickinson at all. It’s well established that she was brilliant and I’m terrible. I’m just saying that I don’t think that’s the thought process behind crafting a poem. I would think there’s more focus of the utilization of the poetic devices to help convey the meaning and feeling of the poem, not the number of devices used. Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe that’s why the greats are so great. They were carefully measuring the poetic devices that they put into their poems.

In my case, I capitalized the last line of the poem to satisfy my teacher’s poetic devices requirement and ended up winning second in both county and state.

Was it that capitalized line that pushed me onto the victory podium? Did the judges look at my poem and count the number of devices and decided I’d inserted a sufficient number of them to be worthy of a prize? I have no idea and I’ll never know. I don’t think I’ve capitalized an entire line in a poem since then, though. Maybe that’s why I’ve never won anything else.

I’ve always liked writing poetry even if I’m not very good at it and don’t use enough devices, but I wasn’t always fond of reading it. I liked some of it, but it seemed like the poetry I was supposed to read and like (much like the literature I was supposed to read and like) wasn’t my cup of tea and I struggled to get into it. I never gave up on reading it, but it took me a long time to finally find my groove. As it turns out, I like free verse best. It speaks to me, as it were. It also seems that I like current poets rather than poets of the past. José Olivarez, Britteney Black Rose Kapri, E’Mon Lauren, Aja Monet, and Kevin Coval are a few of the poets I’ve read recently and I dug their work.

Did I notice their use of poetic devices? Well, as a terrible poem writer always looking to learn how to be less terrible, yeah. I made note of things that they did that caught my attention. But mostly I read for the experience. Because for me, poetry is an experience. Is it supposed to be? I don’t know. That’s just how I prefer to process it. I just absorb the piece, the feeling, the emotion, the meaning and message, intentional and interpreted. I find the most enjoyment in poetry by letting the poem speak for itself.

What I’m saying is that I wasn’t ruined by learning the ins and outs of poetry, but I had to learn for myself how to enjoy it. I was never given that option when I was reading and writing for a grade. I guess you can’t score a good time. Which is a damn shame. Reading for enjoyment is a life skill.

And if after reading all of this you think you still wouldn’t or don’t like poetry, read Shel Silverstein.

If you still don’t like poetry after Where the Sidewalk Ends or A Light in the Attic, then yeah, you don’t like poetry.

The end.

Poem–“My Soul’s Meat Vehicle”

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

Hang in there. National Poetry Month and the terrible poetry is almost over. Just one more week after this.

My Soul’s Meat Vehicle

Sometimes I think I’m just stardust
With delusions of grandeur
Living a whole life
That I made no plan for

That I’m nothing more than mediocre
A dull, used old soul
Inhabiting a blob of skin
That does little to keep out the cold

Most times, though, I feel rather bold
And insist on my space
My spirit roars into the room
Scattering folks with haste

It’s true, I am not to everyone’s taste
The gallons I get to the mile
How I customized my ride
They can’t dig my outward style

Just like them, I here for a while
Stardust looking for a miracle
Cruising along with the top down
In my soul’s meat vehicle