by Kai | Jan 16, 2014 | writing well, Featured, Language, linguistics, Other sites, Pen names, Personality, tapping the well, The Art of...., News, The Home Office, Mental health, writing habit, diet and lifestyle
I guess I’m going to get some funny looks for this post, but writing is an adorable, yet endless grind. I’ve been arguing with people today about it today, but we grow, and we learn. And writing is both pleasure and pain, or at least for me. And I’m still stretching my muscles and wearing them in again.
I set myself a goal of 100,000 words this year, and I’m already a fifth of the way there, just blogging, doing 750words.com and a tiny bit of fiction. I want the fiction to be much more of an element in it, but seriously, it’s easy to write 100,000 words, just by blogging and doing 750words.com. I may need a bigger goal!
In the interim though, I thought I’d introduce my new readers to a few things that they might have missed:
My main Facebook page.
My main G+ page.
My twitter
My writing Blog
My PR blog (which I share with Kriss Morton)
I’ll stop there – I’ve got pen names too, but y’know, it’d be great if you’re following the main stuff…it’ll cut down on your clutter too.
We (Kriss and I) are sorting out some other stuff to launch too – a horror blog and a couple of other things besides.
But yeah, that’s where we are right now. I’m back to looking for a job, which is really fun, and really tiring. We’ve temporarily stopped trying for a baby, while I settle into everything. We’re coming up with new and interesting ways to amuse the now not so kitten-sized kittens. Life is as it is.
Kai is a writer, author and avid reader. A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She’s the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.
by Kai | Jan 8, 2014 | Uncategorized
(this blog post goes with another on Author Interrupted called ‘the Brand Reboot – I am what I am’. You might wanna read this one before reading that one though ;))
I’ve been pretty much at a dead stop since…well, before Kushie died, but since the beginning of the year. And I know why – finally facing the fact that we’re probably dealing with secondary infertility, when previously, getting pregnant and having kids was one of the few things I had on my ‘I’m good at this list’ was really tough. I’ve had to process a lot of anger – anger at him for making us wait this long. Anger at myself for being angry at him, for letting him down, for not getting my life together in a way that would have let us have a baby earlier. About how unfair it all is, in general.
And let’s face it – life hasn’t been exactly fair or nice for the last year few years or so.
The difference between wallowing and productivity
See, the thing is, i haven’t been at a complete stop. I’m still outlining novels, and I’m still working full-time , most recently, out of the house. I’m just not writing, and that’s not fair in many ways. It’s difficult to say WHEN things changed, because I know I wasn’t writing before all of this happened – well…again that’s not true. I know what stopped me writing – it was mostly copywriting full-time that did it. And then, being burned out just a little bit, ring that tiny bit more tired than I cared to admit… and then? It just got easier to stay still and ignore my books. And easier. And easier. And I know it’s stupid because some books are finished – all it takes is a bit of a push and they’re on their way, in the world. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to release books till I have my foundations right again.
The personal brand and rebrand is going to take, at a guess a year. And it’s not a lot of changes really – it’s just going to be a bit long and drawn out. I’ve got another project to worry about too – two really. One is a sekret-squirell experiment, and the other is PR. As I’ve seen, more and more, I’m spending time on The Finishing Fairies, and working with companies to see if I can’t help them with their PR and SEO needs.
But I’m still going to write. It might not be as much as I thought my world would contain, but I get to choose. I get to rebrand. I’m free to do so.
Kai is a writer, author and avid reader. A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She’s the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.
by Kai | Jan 7, 2014 | Mental health, A day in the life, diet and lifestyle, Featured, Non-fiction
It was 2001. November 2001, just after they’d decided that I’d damaged my pancreas with a few missed gallstones. I’d spent a month in and out of hospital, unable to eat, unable to deal with most of the pain that had consumed me. I dropped from a svelte mother of two who had been merrily breastfeeding and healthily curvy (12 stones or so) to 8 stones and skeletal. I went from breastfeeding to not and still producing milk, even though I wasn’t feeding. The doctors and nurses looking after me watched me sleep most of the day away, full of morphine and on drips, barely eating. At one point, they spoke of putting in a central line.
I got home and got pregnant again. It was stupid, but still a miracle. It was 2001 – my baby daughter was six months old, my son was just over two years old. By my birthday, after arguing and discussing and going through all of the options, we decided we could manage with a third child, as long as my body would let me. That was a question in and of itself – one that we finally got to the bottom of. I’d be ok, as long as I was careful.
And then, the worst happened. My blood tests showed that actually, I might not be ok. That my liver and my pancreas were struggling – and my relationship was breaking down and things just weren’t working. I’d been making plans by that point to go it alone with the three of my children, as their father was…not whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Our relationship had gone south long before I’d gotten pregnant again, but I thought I could cope.
I was then faced with the worst decision I could ever make. I could die carrying this child. And it’s something I don’t talk about much – there’s the more immediate ‘trying for this family’ always to deal with, but this was different. I really was on my own in many ways.
So, we went to talk about my options, and discovered the little boy I was carrying was dead.
By then, though, he had a name.
His name was Connor. He’d have been born around August 2002, and would be 11 now.
I have a godson, not much younger than my Connor would have been, and I left the father of my children a year after. We’d grown apart by then. And my life moved on. It always does. I don’t think the things that came after would have happened with three children as young as they were, and I know that losing him was the fork in the path that led me, perhaps, to where I am now. And logic suggests that we’ll never know – you can’t go back and change it. You can’t remove a scar – not easily. And there are some we just don’t want to remove.
But around now, every year, I miss the little boy I didn’t really get to know. We talk about stillbirth and miscarriages in hushed tones, and though I know it’s not the same as losing him at 30 weeks, or earlier or later, he still had a name, and I had hopes for him. He has no grave, but he has a tree in the place I spent some of my teen years. There is no marker, nor other people to remember him, aside from the people that lived it with me, thousands of miles away. And those that got to know me after, while I was still dealing with all of it. But I was the only one that knew him really. I wish, more than anything else, that everything I’d hoped, and all thing things I couldn’t have predicted for him came true, and there was a smiling boy on this post instead of an empty space where his happy face should be.
Kai is a writer, author and avid reader. A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She’s the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.
by Kai | Jan 6, 2014 | writing habit, writing well, living with bipolar, News, Mental health, A day in the life, Announcements, diet and lifestyle, Mental wellness, Organisation
Yeah, I know, its six days into the New Year and I still haven’t done the promised blog here about how this coming year might look. And that’s because I’m still not sure. I was working out of the house between September and November (should have been December but I fell in work and gave myself the most impressive concussion I’ve ever had, therefore finished up a bit early). I’m now back out of work, and looking for a new job because it was only temp and I was good with that.
Plans for my writing
The New year didn’t make it any easier to make plans for what I wanted to do with my writing – to be fair, all I do right now is sleep (still very depressed and tired, even though I’m six weeks post-concussion), and do some work on 750words, but I do have a plan. It does mean I’m going to be secret-squireling for about six months, but that’s ok. It’s not as if it’ll take me away from writing already in the works/complete.
Writing plans are, as always, contingent on what happens with my work, because making an income for my family has to come top of the pile. Even for another year until we get out from under the pile of bills left with me after I finished freelancing and clients refused to pay. I estimate that’ll take until the summer, then we can start saving for our wedding etc. but y’know, hope springs eternal that I’ll find a (well-paid) job that lets me write too.
Plans for other stuff
I know I’ve talked on here about grief and miscarrying, and all of the other stuff that went with that. We’re still no further forward and after another ‘event’ over my birthday, David and I have decided, for now, to call time on the whole trying to get pregnant cycle. It probably doesn’t help that we’re both stressed to the eyeballs over what to do about the youngest, various sick members of both families, living so far away from everyone and basically having no real time to work out or grieve properly, but I really feel like there are parts of my life that need sorted out before I look to the future. It’s not even fixing the past – can’t be done, so I’m just going to get myself to a point where I’m at peace with it, it’s more…having a routine and working and doing stuff that’s good for me instead of what’s good for everyone else. I did it when I sat my degree, and I’m very proud of that, but there are other things I can do too. I just have to find my way out from under the grey clouds first for some of it. My brain isn’t dealing with happiness the way it should, and more than anything, that’s something I need to fix, and it’s all internal.
New books
When all’s said and done, there will be new books this year. I promise. I’m just not sure when. Given the secret squirrel project is taking away half of my time, it’s a bit difficult to say ‘this is what I’m going for’. It’d be nice to have five novels out by the end of the year, time permitting, but I’ll be satisfied if I just get three or four. Again, it’s all down to whether I get a nice job or if I can stay home and PR to cover the bills, and write for the rest of my time. Even shaving down our outgoings and what I pay for, I still need to work about 20 solid hours a week to make anywhere near what I’d need to cover bills, which is why anything extra goes straight to said bills
That said…there’s going to be a weekly ‘state of the writing’ on Author, Interrupted, with pretty pie charts and metrics and other fun stuff ;).
Blog schedule
And finally, the blog schedule. It’ll appear here before the 15th, so you know where I’m writing, when and what for.
Kai is a writer, author and avid reader. A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She’s the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.
That sounds like so much fun! I love games, especially RPG. Haven't played with a group in a few years.…