It's been awhile...

It's been awhile since I posted. My blog goes through this every now and then, but this time feels different. Everything stopped for me when mom passed. I've definitely read or heard somewhere that the cruelest part of grief is that the world keeps going, and I've just needed to stop, but it wouldn't. Apparently the theme of 2019 was grief. I lost my friend in a car accident in February, my mom passed 2 months later, then in October, another dear friend died.  This is the most grief I have experienced in such a small stretch of time and I'll admit, I've struggled. The anniversary of mom's birthday came around, I celebrated my first holidays without her, then without my friend/s... now spring is coming and I feel like I'm ready to step back into the moving world, but just a toe. Just a little spin. I still have days where I just want to curl up in a ball and cry, but those days don't outnumber the mostly-okay days, and I count that as a win.

I also came out as non binary this year, and I guess now in my invisible blog to the void. Some days I regret coming out. Some days, the level of ma'aming, girling, sheing, that goes on just buries me under. Some days I'm invisible. Some days being visible makes me a target. Some days are okay.

Also, did you notice?
The
world
is
on
fucking
fire.

I have no idea what to do about that whole fucking shit.

But I started writing again. I picked up my art again. I started skating again. I joined an orchestra and started playing my cello again. I don't just want to live in suspension until everything crumbles. I want to go into that void knowing I lived the best life I could, that I helped where I could and rested when I needed, and loved with all of my heart.

So this is me, now. My name is Kit. I'm non binary. I have lost, been lost, and now I think I'm okay with that.

So if you're following my journey, which is mostly just me not letting anybody read my writing, well, thanks. I swear I'll let folks read my work when it's ready.

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