Grief, a personal narrative

I wrote this blog a few weeks ago and didn't publish it. I needed time to sit with it before hitting that button. So here is a personal essay for you. I hope if you're working through loss right now, you find comfort and some time to soften your focus.

All my love,
K. Steitz

...
This past week has been pretty intense in my personal life. I'm glad I had a few blog scheduled to go up over the weekend and this week, because my life has been a whirlwind of happenings and feelings, and posting was at the bottom of my list.

You know that feeling you get when you just wake up: the world is in soft focus, you're burrito-ed  in your blankets, maybe a small chihuahua mix who goes by the name of Chicken Nugget is nestled in the crook of your lower back. Everything is quiet and warm and soft.

I relish this moment. I want to live in this soft focus. I know it's not reasonable, but damn, does it feel good. Instead of relishing this moment, this weekend I lost two people. This was just mundane, daily moment of everything coming back into focus. Instead of dealing with this sharpening, I tried to maintain my break-neck speed. I didn't miss practice, I made meals for myself and my family, I went with my mother to her appointments and helped do some meal prep, I picked up my house and cleaned another, I prepared for another round of winter weather, I worked out. I didn't miss a day of work.

But I haven't processed it. I can feel the grief like a wet blanket on my chest. Grieving posts on social media slip through and I catch my breath at my dead friends' names.

I'm using this blog, right in the here and now, to process. I know it's a two sided coin, but in this moment, within the context of my here and now, it feels like life is about thriving through loss. I know there will be loss in my future, because that's just the nature of life. I expected a numbness to come with this loss, but instead I've felt like a raw nerve, exposed to the elements. I need to stop moving and be present with these feelings.

I acknowledge my grief.
I honor our time together.
I honor our imperfections and our light.

There is no craft talk in this post and no poetry. I hope that if you are also experiencing a loss like this (or if you are familiar with those who've passed, and you share this feeling), you have somebody dear to hold. That's my plan, tonight.

In the words of Michelle McNamara,
It's chaos. Be kind.

Rambling about Greek Myth Podcasts and other things...

Okay, so I've binged all of the Nightvale Presents that I can and I'm currently listening to a podcast called Let's Talk About Myths, Baby. This podcast is delightful. The podcaster, Liv, is hilarious and I love hearing interpretations of mythology that read into the very dudely narratives. I just listed to her mini myth about Daphne and rant about Theseus. Let me tell you, I was giggling over my salad, by myself, in a room filled with colleagues.

This was probably the least weird thing I did today.

During her retelling of Daphne, I made some connections that I'm sure I'm not the first to make. Current theory: The Goddess Diana? SUPES GAY. Her "virgin" followers? SUPES GAY. My next story perhaps based on her or Daphne? Possibly. Alternate interpretation? Supes Ace!

While I was thinking these thoughty thoughts, it sparked a memory. Long, long ago, when I was in JCL (that's Junior Classical League to you non-nerds), I did submitted a painting of Daphne for a contest. It did not win. I was really butt hurt about it. But apparently I really resonate with that myth, so I think that alone warrants more exploring.


So anyway, listen to that podcast. It rocks. Hope everybody is having a marvelous Monday! May inspiration strike you before the first cup of coffee!

A balancing act

Here is a list about why I haven't made my writing deadlines:

1. I didn't have time between derby
2. Family life was exploding
3. Relationships were exploding
4. The planet is exploding and I'm hella depressed about it
5. No inspiration
6. Tired
7. Sad
8. Hungry
9. Looking at a wall instead

Okay, I'm going to be real with you, this list could go on forever. I have ADHD and I do a lot of what I call "passion focus". This is a blessing and a curse. It means I can sometimes knuckle down for a month and knock out a whole lot of writing, but it also means that sometimes I hyperfocus on other things (like roller derby). A huge part of my 30s has been learning how to balance that. If I want to be a writer, how do I find ways to do it consistently? How do I do that and still find time to love and live? Because it was ingrained in me that if I couldn't handle my projects in a way that is consistent to the practices of other people without adhd, I just don't really like it, I'm not dedicated, I'm lazy, but the truth is that my brain works a little differently and it's better to learn to work with it rather than against it.

There is no right/write answer. Sometimes I can do it, sometimes I fail, but I like to think of those failures in a positive light. I may have planned to write 3 books last year and only finished 1, but holy hell, I finished an entire rough draft of a book. Shit, that's still big! 

And maybe it's not failure. In roller derby, we talk  A LOT about how important it is to fall. We fall all the time. Falling is not failure, because everybody falls. We expect you to get hit and take a fall, that's why it's so important to learn how to get back up and get back to the game. 

So I try not to view it as failure. When I fall, it's because I didn't manage my balance. No skin off my back, I assess the situation, get back up, and do my best. 

The other fabulous thing bout learning to get back up is that you learn how to assess the situation. Do I need to sit out for a few minutes so I can come back better than ever? If I can't scrimmage today, maybe I can learn more about reffing or NSOing? If I can't work on my novel today, maybe I can work on my blog, or a poem? Maybe I can listen to a podcast about the craft and up my knowledge. Maybe I just need to step away for a day or a week and live my messy life, so that I can get it out of my system and come back to my keyboard with renewed dedication.

So if you're like me, know you're not alone. It's not about writing everyday or following a bunch of prescriptive rules, it's about finding what works best for you. Mess around with different types of schedules, try different things, and never give up. That's the real key: adapt and keep on keeping on. 

A poem about mountains

After sunrise

Our tongues burn
from the Christmas sauce
in the best
breakfast burritos Española 
has to offer.

We four traveled
Past the black mesa,
peaks stretch across
the bright horizon,
a mountain range
like a heartbeat,
or waves of music
dipping into the
next bow stroke.

Snow, punctuated by
trails of hoof prints,
a herd of elks
trekking across the
Valles Caldera.

Back in Columbia,
I found hatch peppers
in the grocers,
And we made
enchilada bowls and
we remembered
Sledding in the
Mountains.

Little blue lock box

I wanted to write a little about the moment that sparked my love for writing and reading, but the truth is that it was a million moments in time. Gabriela Pereira describes everybody as having a zero moment, that moment when began to be a writer, but I don't have a single moment. I was raised in a family that valued and nurtured my love of reading and writing. My childhood was filled with books from story books to American Girl novels. Even though it surrounded me, there were a few moments that stand out as meaningful in my early development.

I wrote my first novel in Mrs. Parker's second grade class. It was 24 pages of paper stapled together, each page was half lines and half blank, so that we could illustrate our story. I scrawled out the story of a young dolphin in big loopy children's letters, the sentences pitching over and under the blue lines. I chose a dolphin not because it was the best story, but because I felt I could draw a dolphin without embarrassing myself. Regardless, when I finished the story, I felt a swell of pride I'd never felt before. It was the first time I realized I could create a story. A BIG story. One that other people would want to read.

Over the summer, I began writing short stories for fun. When I finished writing these short stories, I carefully rolled them up and secured them with a piece of yarn, then I put them in my little blue lock box. I tried to show one of the neighborhood kids, but she made fun of me, so I locked the box and decided to never speak to her again. I don't know what happened to that little blue lock box, or the short stories inside it, but it's probably best they were lost in time.

This all coincided with discovering chapter books. I found Nancy Drew, the Box Car Kids, Babysitter's Club, and Sweet Valley High. Oh, readers, I really, really loved Sweet Valley High. When I was in 3rd grade, my parent's best friend gave me a collection of abridged classics: Black Beauty, Around the World in 80 Days, Little Women, you get the idea. I read Black Beauty and realized, Wow! I can read grown-up stuff! After that, it was open season. I read everything I could get my hands on. I tried to read some of my mom's romance novels, but I got bored, so I picked up my dad's novels and lo-and-behold, I found my genre. Giant worms, sword fighting, adventure, love! Holy crap, sci-fi & fantasy! SO GOOD.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I can't wait to get back to my dragons.
Have an adventuresome Friday, friends!

How to Receive Edits

A few days ago, a friend approached me for advice. She's working on implementing edits for her book and found it difficult to approach them without an emotional response. I was happy to help because dang, receiving edits is hard! I've heard a few people describe editing as harder than writing the first draft, and that makes sense. You pour out your heart and soul writing that rough draft and now somebody just comes in with their red pen and rips through it? How else can you react?

Now, I'm not a professional editor, although I did co-edit our college lit zine with a friend, I've also attended and lead editing workshops since I was a junior in High School, so I have a lot of thoughts on the subject. I wanted to share what works for me, in hopes it works for you as well!

[Note: you will notice several grammatical errors in my writing. I'm not editing this post before publishing! I frequently don't edit my blog posts... (bad writer). I'm not looking for constructive criticism on my grammar- just sharing content, y'all. So please don't bug me about dangling participles. I will roll my eyes at you. I'm preemptively rolling my eyes at you.]  

Editing Advice from your friend, Kirstin

We are going to walk through this from first steps to last. Stick with me!


The very first thing I do after writing a first draft is put it in the proverbial drawer. I leave it alone for a week to a couple months (sometimes years, but that's normally because I forgot it. Woops!). This act helps me distance myself from the project and allows me to view it with fresh eyes, eyes not obfuscated by what I thought I was writing and what I actually wrote.


The second thing I do is edit myself. Before I send it out to others, I read my work out loud. This is a trick I learned in college. When we're reading silently, our clever brains will often skip or add words as we think they should be, not as they are. So we think our sentence says "Jane loved to read and has a tall to-read stack of books!" but what it actually says is something along the lines of "Jane loves to read and has  stack books!" This kind of thing happens. When we're working on that first draft and we're on a roll, often times our hands don't keep up with us. Reading out loud forces our brains to slow down and as an added bonus- it helps us hear the cadence of our language.


So you've done your first edit and you're ready to hand it off to another person. The act of handing off to an editor is, in itself, fearful. Now is the time you should work on re-framing what's about to happen. You are not handing your project over to criticism from somebody who wants to tear you down. Your editor cares enough about your project and writing to devote hours upon hours (days upon days) towards helping you strengthen it, to polish your project. That is an act of love.


Before you hand off your project, now you want to think about what you want your editor to focus on- this could be a number of things like:

• Grammar
• Plot cohesion
• Tone
• Character development
• Plot pacing
• Language choice (most applicable to poetry)
• Whateva doesn't spark joy #mariekondoediting #makingitathing

**When you do the big hand-off, have a conversation with your editor about what you want them to focus on. This helps them and you get the feedback that will help you the most!**

IMPORTANT: DO NOT GIVE YOUR EDITOR THE ONLY COPY YOU HAVE. I can't stress this enough! You need to be able to go through and decide what you want to accept and if they've already changed it, you may not know what it was before. Give them their own copy (digital or printed) to work on and keep the mother copy sacred. That copy is only for you.

Okay, so now we've handed off your project to your editor. We wait. If you editor is like me, they may need a deadline or a few pokes here and there. Don't be afraid to talk this out with them! It helps you have realistic expectations and it helps your editor stay on task. Editing is hard work!

Now is the time, now is the place. Prepare yourself to accept what is coming.

Okay, it's here. The manuscript is back in your hot little hands. Or cold big hands? Listen, if your hands are cold, they have these things called gloves. Har Har. 

A few tips for approaching the edits:

• Everything with a grain of salt.  This old adage is around because it's so dang true. You are allowed to accept or reject edits. It's difficult to edit without bias- sometimes editors will edit for preference of tone- so you can be technically accurate and concise, but they just don't like your word choice. If you're unsure, see if you can find somebody to lay eyes on it and get their feedback. It's okay (and expected) to reject edits which you feel do not add to your work, but if it's a coherence issue (or even if you're just unsure), make sure you get a second opinion. Learning what criticism to accept or to reject is 90% of the work.
• Framing it: They are helping you build up, not tear down. You want a leaner, meaner piece of prose or poetry, and your editor wants to help you get there!
• Bring in a second editor for another revision, if you'd like some additional eyes on the project. 

Finally, you're done implementing the edits that work for you. What next? It's over, right?

NO.

1) You still have to edit like a million more times. EDITING IS NEVER OVER. Hahaha, but true. You should put it away for a week or so then come back to it and do some more self-editing. One of my poems normally goes through 5 or 6 people and countless self-edits before I ever think about submitting it or publishing it (outside of the blog. All my poems here are rough drafts!)

2) Thank your editor!

• Pay them! 

Are they doing this for free? Holy shit, you have some good friends.

• Bake them some cookies
• Definitely mention them in your forward
• Buy them dinner or take them to brunch (and don't skimp on the mimosas!)
• Bring them the hollowed out skulls of their enemies

Okay friends, I hope this helped! Happy editing <3

A Cold Day in Misery

I love my home state, but Missouri's windchill has dropped down into negative numbers and my snot froze after 10 seconds outside. Needless to say (but I'm going to say it anyway) I am not down for these temps. I did not write a poem about frozen snot. Yet.

Which brings me to a random thought. Do you remember that song by Greenday that came out "Misery" (I linked it so you can get re-acquainted). I spent a good portion of my senior year thinking that they were singing about Missouri. Now I sing it as Missouri because it makes me giggle.

Updates on the Writing Front:

• I goofed around, so not a lot of change.
• This weeks goals: work on novel, knock out a poem (maybe it will be about frozen snot).
• Blog some more. Oh, I had a great idea for a blog before I went to sleep last night. Maybe I will even remember it for later in the week!
• Do one of my LJ read-alongs and send it to my small audience. 
• Maybe I should do some YouTube videos for some of my poems? That would be fun. Must charge the tablet tonight.
• Tonight I'm building a blanket fort to write in and encouraging my writing workshop to do the same. Pics on the next blog! 

What I'm reading:

[The cover of Brene Brown's book, Daring Greatly]

I just picked up Brene Brown's Daring Greatly (I won it during Booksgiving). I already love the first chapter. She is a fabulous writer, and I think her work with vulnerability is so powerful. I know I deal with a lot of fear around my writing. Fear that I'm not good enough, that even if I was good enough, I don't have the social savvy to network and find a good agent. Fear to try, fear to try and fail, fear to try and succeed. I'm basically terrified of the things I love doing the most in the world.

[The cover of Deborah Harkness' book, Time's Convert]

I'm about halfway through Deborah Harkness' Time's Convert. I love her writing! It's been exciting to watch how it evolved through the All Souls trilogy, and this is crafted beautifully. Her details are lush, her characters are interesting. I'm definitely here for it. If you're a fan of vamps, history, and love stories, you should check it out too!

More snow poetry

Snow clouds wrap around the
horizon like a blanket you just
pulled from a cold linen closet
I long to see a the red splash of a
cardinal darting between snow
covered branches, diving for seeds,
before the next arctic storm
covers us in a fresh layer of snow,
gives me an excuse to join you
under the comforter and wrap
around each other.

Snow poem

I don't know if you've heard, but the Midwest had record levels of snow last weekend. I helped one of my partners dig out and I can tell you, I felt every 20 inches of those drifts. I started a poem over the snow day but was distracted by hot coco, so I never finished it.

Then I lost it! First poem I've written in 2 years and I lost it.

So I'm going to pull a Tenacious D moment and give you a poem about the greatest snow poem that ever was. It's not the poem, but a tribute.


Snow Poem
a tribute

It snowed 20" this weekend-
The Bradford Pear was laden
with the heavy weight of a
winter storm, boughs creaked
in the whip-cold wind, puffs of
white exploded and dropped heavy
to the drifts below until 20 inches
felt more like 30 inches and
the dog was lost beneath;
I know you were wishing
that the snow would finish off
that invasive tree, would snap it in
twain, but you didn't say it out loud.

Working on my night cheese...

I like cheese, y'all. Aw yes. Cheese and tea while I write? Perfect combo.

Thursday is all about diving back into my novel. I left my dragon in a precarious situation, perhaps even on the brink of death, and I need to find a way through it. The next scene is a big deal. The next scene is the last big scene, the climax, and then I only have to tie up some loose ends. Soon, very soon, my trilogy will be over.

Woah.

It's so weird to think I've almost finished the bones of the trilogy. I mean, I know I have a whole life of editing to do, but damn. I know it's too early to celebrate, but this is going to be a huge mile marker for me.

2019, I'm coming for you.

Big Dreams for the Year

Hello, readers!

Some big things are going on in my world. I'm finishing up some writing projects that I hope see the light of day sometime this glorious new year.

I also did a new thing! I created an author's page on Facebook. Be like the cool kids and go follow it, if you're so inclined.

Our writing collective had a productive meeting last night. I did some major goal setting for the new year and one of those goals is to start writing poetry again. It's time to put out a new chapbook, don't you think? So prepare yourself for some rough draft blog poems, again. Taking it back to the beginning of the blog, oh yes.



Speaking of chapbooks- haven't read my chapbook a record of night? Well you're just in time for a shameless plug. Check it out!

If you like what you read, please leave me a review at Amazon. This is a great way to support your local author-friend. Wink wink nudge nudge.