Light

•  I got a book contract! Yes, in 2012 (or 2013, depending on the polishing it takes) Divorcing a Real Witch will see print. There’s a lot more to it that has my stomach turning in knots – marketing, workshop planning, showing up at bookstores if they’ll let me – and for that, I will be asking for help. There is stuff you yourself can do; if you want to help, comment here or join the mailing list posted in the sidebar. Most of what I will ask will involve you, say, posting a link to your Facebook wall and saying “I know who wrote this!” (or I read her blog, etc. etc.) If you yourself are a published Pagan author, let me know if you’d be open to doing an endorsement – I will of course have you read a copy first to ensure it’s something you would in fact endorse. It helps is you’re NOT opposed to divorce.
• I went to Paris! It was awesome, and most of the French wait staff were lovely.
• I self-published a book to get a feel for the new publishing industry. It proved informative on many levels, and has sold about 50 copies. It’s one of those things that gets no in-between reactions – it’s either “brilliant” or “heinous.” Reactions reveal far more about the viewer than it does about the book. I broke the taboo that things must be “good” and “perfect” and went with “real” and “flawed” instead. Some people are eager to break that taboo, while others responded as though threatened, or as though I were a naughty school child for daring to produce such a document. Somewhere creativity and academia need to come together; in the process we really need to clear out both the willful ignorance and the condescending elitist pedantry that have both prevented intellectual growth in Paganism. I have no illusions that I am any good as an artist or illustrator – this was more of a “yes, I have this limitation to, but do it anyway for the goal that lies beyond it and beyond the pettiness of complaining about crooked lines.”
• My Facebook fan page has grown from 50 something to 80 something. I really would like to see it hit 100 by the end of this year.
• Fat Chic got a mention in People Style Watch, which has led to not only a readership boom, but has helped renew my enthusiasm for the project. I have a good sense of what’s possible with the blog, how to make it unique, and how I can make it kick ass.
• I got in a retreat at Spring Green, Wisconsin. For some bizarre reason this town has always been a source of spiritual renewal for me.
• I finished a complete novel, now left to age in my “drawer” for at least six months. I now know what it takes to get a book written at a reasonable rate, and this has made me feel confident that I can get other works done while doing the marketing and promotion for the Divorcing a Real Witch (tentatively titled) book.
• I successfully established a 4 hour a week minimum gym habit. Mostly I do treadmill, water aerobics and Pilates. In the summer I try to squeeze in a yoga class, too. I have to consider what’s best for mind/body/spirit all together – on the one hand, I’d like to go back to bellydance classes. On the other hand, it’s an added expense, and there’s always a costumery and “special workshop” push that’s beyond my sewing ability and far beyond what my wallet can handle. I just like to DANCE, yo.
• I learned crochet. I hope to keep learning more, as long as my friends are willing to teach me.
• I also learned origami. I can do owls and a few other things that require a bird base, and make cootie catchers and crowns. I’m on the market for a decent paper cutter – I’ve been slicing down old magazines for practice paper.
• I think at this point I may have the healthiest/most conscious (self-aware) group of friends that I have had in the course of my life. Related both directly and indirectly, I’m wondering if I would benefit from getting more involved with some of the feminist organizations in town.
• I’m moving into year 4 of working through Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way book series. Really and truly, it has made a difference. An interesting side note is that, just as it mentioned in occult practice manuals, some people have found the changes in my attitude about art and creativity offensive despite these changes offering no threat to themselves.  What’s interesting are those that are the most threatened are the ones that talk the most about goals and projects they have – and that they never move forward on (or take a step and then self-sabotage.)  Other acquaintances, however, have taken note of the changes the work has brought about in me and have elected to come a bit closer: notably these people are all producing creative work, but not saying much about it until they’re done – or are talking about doing it, because that’s how they spend the bulk of their time, even when in day jobs they don’t like.

Middle ground

• I’m neglecting Magickal Realism and for the time being letting it close/expire by attrition. As some of you will know or even see, I’m still making things, but between the vagaries of Etsy, an upsurge in customer entitlement behavior and my writing career growth, I am relegating it back to hobby/private service. People keep comparing it to Black Phoenix Alchemy, and since I have no interest in doing what they’re doing, it’s annoying that I have to expend energy fighting that perception. I love perfume and bath product design, but my creative impulses in that area are leading me more towards studying hoodoo, learning to sew and lots of interesting upcycled/trashion applications that are occult practice friendly. The business never really recovered after the time I had to take off when my father died, and it seems like all paths are leading me to writing now, anyway.
• I’m having to bend on my rules about science fiction conventions and the like. It’s really about my dislike of crowds, and my impulse to get combative when someone assumes I think/perceive the same way they do (happens more at conventions, for some reason. I like Tenant – NOT A FANGIRL!) With the five year anniversary for the Doctor Who meetup coming up, I’m going to have to work hard on improving my tolerance for people inside my space.

Shadow

What follows is the negative things, most of which happened during the extended winter. I share these things for reasons both self-serving and audience serving. First, I believe silence is the most poisonous substance the soul contains. Attempts to shut me up, make me disappear or silence me are typical of those who slide by on negative energy only (instead of a proper balance of light and shadow.) Attempts to shut me down tend to be harsher than what most people experience in US culture, because I am large bodied, outspoken when I see reason to be, and female. I also call attention to things that we’d all like to ignore, like the weird thread of misogyny in gay culture (not all gay men have this, but I’ve heard enough opinions about women’s public hair from parties that have no reason to see it to know that there is SOMETHING VERY WRONG), or that so many Pagans are still screaming “misandry” when in fact misandry and misogyny have become equally prevalent and equally serious problems in our subculture. Also, the insistence upon trying to stay “in the fringe” while complaining about the decisions of overculture that affect us all anyway is neither healthy nor useful.

Because I know people would like to jump on both of these, let me make this understood: I have a journalism degree. I know the ins and outs of libel law. I will NOT EVER post something libelous on my blog. I am quick to distinguish fact from opinion, and if I am printing/publishing these statements, it is a)because I believe them to be true and b)I have written and voice records to back up what facts I do assert. There’s been a lot of good old fashioned backbiting and backstabbing, and not one person directly involved has made an effort to deal with me honestly. While I suspect that in at least two, possibly three cases, any word against me would actually make me look really good to a lot of people (and this has happened before), there is some distinct narcissism going on that makes it impossible for these people to recognize that a)I am not an extension of themselves b)I only think about them when they’re annoying me while I’m trying to do other things and otherwise, they’re not really part of my consciousness and c)I do not have proof, but I do have carefully documented behavior, that suggests there’s a thread of disorders running through this group that were turned on me. If I had not been coming out of grief and some problems with Mike, I would have registered the issue and disengaged sooner. There is a third party involved who had nothing to do with any of this bullshit, and I am sorry for any betrayal he feels about it, but I still assert that I am not the person who betrayed his trust. I tell the truth even when I really WANT to lie.

Lost some people from my life, only two of whom I really consider a loss. (It’s not the ones you think.) They think I’m crazy. I think they’re crazy, and they played this situation  extremely dirty, accusing me of things I never said and exaggerating actual small actions that happened under duress into what they want others to believe is a pattern of criminal behavior. Given the severity of false accusations leveled against me, I can’t really bring myself to wish them well.  I responded in the anger of any person would when presented with a pack of lies; I did not in the course of my response utter or print a single threat. What disturbs me is how two people lateral to this situation who were incredibly poor guests in my home have remain fixated on me despite only passing contact with me since then.

But one more phone call from the lateral crazy people, and I will be getting a restraining order. I think six months of silence from me does not merit a harassing phone call over what was either a)an honest mistake on my part since I wasn’t exactly filing away every detail I was ever told by these people or b)a hallucination on their part. Also, I have Google Voice. ALL my voice mail records are retained and publishable – FOREVER.

I also had to make some final decisions about my remaining family that were not pleasant, and that, had I felt there were any other options, I would have taken instead. It broke my heart to do it, and it broke a deathbed promise to my dad, but I had to cut them off. To stay in that relationship would mean I had to live under the pall of abuse for the rest of my life, and I hope my father did NOT truly want me to remain in an abusive relationship for the rest of my life “just because they’re family.”

They are in the habit of assuming I think and feel things without ever talking to me to determine what I do in fact think and feel, and when they are wrong, they get all upset at me not sharing their assumptions and go off complaining about what they consider my distorted values.  In addition to this problem with assumptions about my interests and a persistent push to make me more like them (rather than accepting me as-is in the manner that they demand I accept them, or asking and actually listening to what I say, instead of interpreting it to their own mentality) they have an obnoxious habit of making plans for me, again without discussing said plans or whether I would be willing to cooperate, and enlisting their friends and extended family into pressuring me to go along with those plans.

After my mother’s BFF gave me a manipulative guilt trip for “not visiting enough” at my father’s funeral, and this was followed by the openly contemptuous behavior of my mother’s family – highlights included one cousin asking “What’s he like?” about Mike in that tone where she was clearly expecting tattoos and a meth habit (despite not asking me a single question about my own life, or even trying to contact me to know anything about me) and my aunt-in-law trying to get me to talk about my wedding plans at a fucking funeral (I really think she wasn’t being mean, she’s just really THAT STUPID and insensitive. Points to her husband for mostly shutting up and staying away from me – I know that asshole made plans for me, without my consent, but at least he treats me with a modicum of respect now that I’m happy to give him in return, even if it’s the respect of courtesy-based avoidance.) Since it was visibly clear to me at the funeral that my mother and sister had carefully cultivated an attitude of contempt towards me, and the only person that asked me about my life was a guy who had wanted to sleep with my sister for years and who was not the least bit interested in what I might say, I recognized immediately that there was nothing left worth building on with my father gone.

I kept my promise to my dad I would follow through on the wedding, and I did, and there was relationship fallout from that, along with mother and sister immediately trotting out abusive behavior, and deliberately not communicating, or communicating on assumed beliefs and not on anything I actually said. Then, of course, backpedaling, lying (I caught them both in several) and pouting  when I got angry at their completely unwarranted behavior.

Conversations after led to exchanges where I would say something about my life, it would be greeted with silence, and then the subject changed to something about their own lives. My sister would actually, two minutes or less into a conversation, IMMEDIATELY just have to talk to someone not on the phone, leaving me listening to her one-sided conversations. It was rude, and an obvious tack to avoid conversation with me (while lying to me and claiming that she considered my calls a priority, when her behavior made it clear she saw them as an intrusion.) The only contact she initiated was around her birthday, probably because she hoped I’d feel guilty enough to get her a birthday present.

…the manipulative overture actually pissed me off enough that I canceled the one I was going to send to her.

[Gifts received from my family are always a point of dread. They’re never about what I like or enjoy, they’re about who they want me to be, and they’re almost universally godawful. Just knowing these women has caused me to hate my own birthday and Christmas.I don’t want to see who they’re wishing I was this year.]

My mother’s conversations were especially bad about the one-way, especially after she got herself a boyfriend. I understand that the boyfriend died unexpectedly – but not until I was treated to the horror of my mother listing her relationship as “it’s complicated” on Facebook (a status best reserved for those who are bi, poly, or have a situation with a spouse still living) and more than one screed about how my sister should get herself a boyfriend. Before the death, I refused to talk to her without having her on speaker so Mike could hear – this way he was reassured I was in fact not crazy, especially as she was fond of dropping some “tidbit” my father had said while alive, and tell me “not to tell Mike.” She had no concept that Dad and I used to have complete conversations when no one was allowed to disrupt us: there’s once when he was in the hospital and he actually said, “Oh good, your mother is gone, I can actually talk to you.” My father was never an emotional withholder – if he knew he’d be heard, he’d say lots, and he went out of his way to make sure he did to me.

After the boyfriend’s death – and I do feel for her, especially with her finding him, but there’s nothing I could possibly say to palliate THAT experience – she had completely ignored my feelings from the moment my father died forward, tipped off when she made a point of asking me how I was with the pastor watching. (Kris, Alice,  the overimportance they both place on men, it was irritating – Mike got thanked for a lot of work I actually did.)  The last straw for me came when she COMPLETELY IGNORED me getting a New York Times mention. She posted on my Facebook wall (instead of her own, as was appropriate) about my niece’s stupid theater competition (way to encourage her to peak in high school, it’s turned out so well for my sister –sarcasm), but a New York Times mention, she didn’t even acknowledge. That was the last straw as far as she went.

My first boyfriend died when I was 14, and my mother’s response was to inform me I wasn’t allowed to be “too dramatic about it.” I still can’t forgive her, and while I sent a sympathy card as custom dictates, I can’t bring myself to do any more for her. I’ve been treated to her screaming on the floor when my aunt died (the fat shaming bitch one), her “all about me” bedside scene with her shrieking “my love” as Dad lay conscious enough for me to sense he was as disgusted as I was (trust me, my mother is NOT an affectionate woman. She and my sister only express affection when they’re angling for something), and long, dramatic, self-indulgent speeches about how she “reached her crisis” in whatever loss she’d experienced lately, with no consideration for the fact that I had lost that person, too. That it wasn’t just HER who loses anyone.

But I was never allowed to be “too dramatic” despite losing someone who meant the world to me on an annual basis from ages 14-33.

So any sympathy I can extend her about this latest loss is about as flat as the cardboard it’s printed on. After all, this is the least of her manipulative non-communications. I was furious when she decided I “wouldn’t want to know” about my dad’s quadruple bypass (this was her being petty after I called her out for bullying me on one of my rare visits, that were rare because of her persistent bullying) and when a neighbor who had been part of my life since elementary school died, she mentioned it only in a self-pitying post on Facebook, instead of actually telling me. Of course, my sister did tell me about my father’s bypass back then – mostly because it gave her an opportunity to be dramatic and emotionally manipulative.

All of their behavior is based on convincing me I can’t win. If I continue to try to engage with them, I can’t. I can be miserable, and say I’m still in touch with my family, or I can be sad for a little while and end my relationship.

I choose to end my relationship with them. I’m seeing a therapist to help me with this transition, and to make sure I am doing this from a place of health and not disorder. (My views are consistent. I am a totally sane abuse survivor, and like most survivors, the people who know the abusers in a social context are the least likely to believe or recognize that they are in fact abusive.)  Previous therapists I have had as I could afford it have proposed the idea, but usually we opted to try to find another way of relating. At this point in my life, I can honestly say I have tried everything and nothing has worked. I can only have a healthy relationship with a person who wants a healthy, honest, open relationship with me, and this is not something I will have. Since these people do nothing to benefit me in any other way, I have no reason to keep them in my life, and I will be happier with them gone.

I don’t know entirely the role of my father in the abuse dynamic that played out in my home. He was a survivor of abuse himself, and it was so severe that the violent atmosphere my mother created for me seemed tame, even calm and disciplined, by comparison. This does not negate what I experienced. It was still abuse. My mother’s refusal to recognize and own her behavior is very typical of abusive people – while non-abusive people do sometimes have bad moments, most when confronted respond with questions and not denials. That my mother would “counter-attack” when I did confront her only when there were no witnesses, especially not my father, suggests to me that she has been fully conscious all along of what she does.

Family does not need to be perfect. Sometimes they yell, or mutter, or flush the toilet when you’re taking a shower. Stuff happens. What happened to me was far over the line of the friendly hostility of the functioning American family, and it wasn’t just because I was fat. I don’t know who my mother sees when she looks at me, but it sure as hell isn’t me. I’m pretty sure she hates herself, and her attempts to force me to become her over the years has made that spectacularly upsetting.

So it’s a hard road, but there are generational damages that are not mine to fix.

That’s the shadow side. I feel like these specific fall aways have happened for my benefit; certainly there’s movement towards things that are newer, better, and about my goals rather than about my talent being co-opted into someone else’s agenda. (Collaboration is a very different thing than the stuff I was being asked for.)

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I won Nanowrimo. My prizes? A victory lap, a funky digital badge, and a manuscript I need to leave I in a drawer for six months. It’s a good thing I have lots of other projects on deck, so much that I’m feeling all kinds of pressure lately. I’m OK with that, too – really.

The big lesson I learned from doing this work is as follows:

• I can totally write 1700 words a day.
• The principles of nanowrimo is true of all creative commitment: just keep showing up. You don’t need to feel it every day, you just need to be there. Needing the mood, inspiration, or ambience really is just an excuse to avoid doing the work part of true creative work. Creativity shows up on its own schedule, but by setting patterns you can get it to show up when you’re there, too.
• Thank heavens for the rewrite process.

I do want to say that a year ago, I probably could not do 1700 words a day on a single piece that large. Now I easily can. I believe that sticking to the Artist’s Way series really did help me build those skills, by rearranging and removing those mental blocks and by showing me how to go about establishing the discipline I needed to do the work. This did not happen overnight. Just as building a 4 day a week gym habit has taken time, practice, and perseverance, writing 1700 words a day has taken practice, repetition, and making sure I gave myself absolutely no shit whatsoever when I “only” managed to write 500 words a day.

My experience writing this novel was brain-breaking, in part because I typically do take days off from writing on the weekends, and this time I had to skip that. The 50K goal in 30 days is a tough one. I don’t know if I will do this to myself next year, it all depends on what story speaks to me at that time. I’m not sure I would regularly do 50K words in a month – but I would totally do 1700 words per day. That I can do.

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I’m 30K into nanowrimo as I write this – I take days off here and there, and I did come down with a cold that mostly sucked my energy. I’m one of those writers that can’t write when I’m sick, or can only write minimally. That creative energy needs to go to healing work, after all.

The process has been enlightening. I can totally do 1700 words a day; it’s taken me a few years to build up to that, but now in terms of writing-fitness that many “reps” on a single project  is pretty reasonable. I’ve also come to deeply appreciate that the “writing 24/7″ idea is impossible – I need to feed my head. By that I does not mean acid-rock style head feeding. It means I need to get out and interact with humanity from time to time, and go see the artistic creations of others, and the creations of nature. It builds the place within that leaves me free to write. It fills a well. It matters, a lot.

So, in coming to understand the true value of #nanowrimo, I have also come to this epiphany about writing, and redrafts. It’s helping me understand my entire process.

Draft 1: I write for myself, and myself only.
Draft 2: I write for my intended audience.
Draft 3: I write for any editors, publishers, or beta readers/workshop feedback givers.
Draft 4: I write for my audience again.
Draft 5: I write for myself again.

Ideally, the end product packages and expresses my core vision in a way that people are able to well-receive it. That first draft is crucial, and it is also crucial that I not share it with anyone until I’m done. It’s about my time, and what I want to say. I will worry about what other people can receive in later drafts.

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Minneapolis Indie Expo 2011

The entire concept of permission in the creation of art brings out some … controversy. It also is a litmus test for who is a good person to work with, and who is not. The people that believe they should give you permission to create what you do are really about preventing creativity as much as possible – usually out of the incorrect belief that by quelling the work of others they can give themselves a competitive edge. While the creative arts is highly competitive, stunting others pretty much never does a damn thing for you. Yet when you encourage others, and point out not what a person does “wrong” but what you believe will make a work strong- you actually give yourself a competitive edge. How? By building allies, and by making yourself an ally. If you set aside the belief that your aesthetic is a stick by which to judge the work of others (it’s not, ever) you can suddenly find your world opening wide to a broad variety of delights. It’s OK to take pleasure in crude drawings, photocopied sheets and handcrafted stories. It’s OK that it’s not “professional.” The low-brow movement is how art in North America keeps its soul; without it, art would be as trapped and disastrous as the Vatican.

drawings and water color by RK Milholland of Something Positive

print from Paul Taylor of Wapsi Square

Today, I went to the Minneapolis Indie Expo and I absolutely loved it. It consisted of web comic artists and zine makers, all of whom work independently. Some make a living at it, some don’t. It became clear to me that quite a few people had traveled some ways to participate in the expo. I went because the artist for my favorite web comic – Something Positive – went. I got some drawings (squee!) including a robot watercolor that made Mike squeal with happy. I also got a kick-ass Dia de los Muertos print from Wapsi Square and got to thank Paul in person for the Fat Chic shout out he gave me yesterday.

Goodies obtained at the indie expo

While there, I discovered the danger and the wonder of such events: lots of super-affordable and accessible art and zines, leading to spending lots of money without really intending to. It was kind of awesome, and I came back with some awesome stuff.

The entire concept of indie art and comics is that you do NOT need to wait for approval. Nobody gave anyone present at the expo permission; each person just went ahead and did what they do. It allowed such wonders into the world as a crocheted UFO complete with a ladder it could let down, a deck of cards with surreal designs printed on each one (I proposed a few meanings, to the amusement of the creator) and some really badass plus-positive art.

It was cool. I would have stayed longer, but I was freezing my tuckus off. I did find myself tweaked that while it was roughly 50/50 in terms of the gender of the artists present, on the panels I attended each had one token female. On one of them, said female openly admitted she elbowed her way onto the panel. That was uncool – not that she had to use chutzpah, that’s normal, but that it was necessary to draw upon it at all. Then again, it was a perfect example of an artist not needing or seeking permission.

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The coffee shop had writers in it. Perhaps not wall-to-wall writers, but enough that it became clear that something literary lay in the unpolished wood floor, reaching upwards, calling out to those that create while questioning creation. At one table, a group of women discussed Nanowrimo, and talked about what it meant to be a “real writer.” It sounded like a couple of them had it wrong, what it meant, but it was obvious they were writing and not stopping each other from writing, so I turned my attention to my laptop. This was the second location that day where my tiny Lenovo refused to play nice with the wireless. At this point, I’d even veered off from Minneapolis into Saint Paul, down into one of the deeper byways beyond Harriet Island. I liked this place. I wanted to work here. While never married to atmosphere – I’ve written in moving cars and airplanes, on park benches, in grocery lines – I liked this place. It had the same seeding quality of Hard Times Café in Seward, minus the people in obvious drug withdrawal common to the place late at night. I had gone far out of my way to find this place, and I wanted to make a second home here. I wanted it to work.

I became chatty with the barista as she did her best to reset the router for me; I rarely speak so much to strangers on the first meeting, but I’d had a lot of coffee already, and I could already tell that this atmosphere influenced me. Something within the building, in its 19th century yellow ceiling and radiator-heated walls wanted me to come back, too. So it was urging me to talk, urging me to show the chit-chatty Diana some people never see in a decade.

“I’m just really frustrated,” I shared. “I’ve been tooling along on this nonfiction book, and so now I’m trying my hand at fiction, and it seems like one thing after another has gotten in its way.”

The barista looked back at me. “Maybe you’re only meant to write nonfiction.” It hangs in the air; she believes this, but I can see the lie of it, whispered in her ear. Writers frequent this place, and yes, so do their demons and bullshit.

“No, that’s not it,” I tell her. “This is just the crap and bugs that fly out whenever you make a change.”

She nods, and I discover that miraculously, my Dropbox program synced up before I left the house that day. While I did waste time trying to hop online, I could still work, and I made the most of what I could, closing my manuscript on Day 2 of Nanowrimo with a solid 4020 words, and a sense that yes, I am hearing this story more than I am telling it.

I could have taken the excuse she gave me, but instead I stayed true to my truth. I did not absorb the limitation she offered, although five years ago I would have gripped onto it tight.

Writers do this. Artists do this. People do this.

There’s a tendency to propose limitations for others; this differs from pointing them out. This is the idea of creating and instilling limits – it is artificial, a creativity blocking behavior, and is harm under the guise of support. We all have limits, and it’s part of our lives to discover them, test them, experiment with our ability to overcome them – or to incorporate them and make them boundaries that help structure the work we do. It is not our job to propose limits to one another, and yet this is what we do all too often.

We have this “there can be only one” mentality that has spread from religious outlook to this idea that every person has one identity, one ability, one true role in life. We face  aging with bitterness, under the assumptions that the roles fade, and then so do we, into nothingness at all. So many assume that there’s nothing that comes after, no new avenue to try, and there’s no use exploring the world again as we’ve seen what we’re going to see of it.

This is absolute crap.

photo by Diana Rajchel

I was asked once, when participating in a writer’s panel, “which one I would choose,” when I explained the multiple projects I had only recently seeded at the time. I countered, “Why do I have to choose one?”

No real answer came. There is no positive argument for monogamy when it comes to creative endeavors.

The show Boardwalk Empire, directed by Martin Scorcese and produced by Mark Wahlberg thrills me. It shows me my favorite era in history – the 1920s – with gritty realism and brilliance, made all the better by the presence of Steve Buscemi.  I share this show with friends eagerly; I consider it the best period drama on television right now, and I want to share in the delight and awe that the characters bring forth from within me.

One man I shared this with balked at the appearance of Mark Wahlberg in the production credits. “Marky Mark?” he spluttered. “The guy with the underwear?”

“He’s got some good production credits and is a decent actor,” I answered.

“But he’s Marky Mark!”

“So what, he can do only one thing with his life?”

“Yes!” he snapped back.

He ignored me when I asked, “Why?”

It seemed obvious to me that Mark Wahlberg’s lack of limits triggered some upset concerning this young man and the limits he had chosen for himself.

Authentic limits are boundaries that shape us. They give us guidelines, a framework to work within. They help us get things down. Deadlines are limits. Personal dislikes and disinterests are limits. Those things that we just don’t want to do are limits. We find them as we progress, as we write, as we explore. Those limits come from us, and only ourselves. Those limits are only true if discovered in discourse between our inner selves and our creative drive.

Anything coming from outside – other writers, teachers, baristas – those are manufactured limits. Certainly you can agree to cooperate with them. I for one wholeheartedly agree with the social process that establishes traffic safety. But they are not within me, and they do not define my capabilities or yours.

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I’ve decided I am doing Nanowrimo this year. Yes, this will be in addition to blogging and all the other stuff I do. I’m going to train myself to get up at 5 am again, even if it means taking melatonin at 6 pm. If anyone has a symbiotic kink that involves sleeping on my living room floor and making me coffee for around thirty days – awesome. I’ll have to clear it with my partner, of course, but I’m sure he could be persuaded if you threw in laundry duty.

The point of Nanowrimo is to get you writing a first draft – the idea being that 50,000 words gives you something you can then shape into a novel. The work happens in the rewriting, at least, it does for me.

I certainly have ideas piled up, and now, I need to pick one. Here are some possible novels I’m looking at:

1. (Most recently) A semi-shamanic tale involving animals in a zoo; I’m leaning away from this because the story in my head reads like an American Indian folktale, and while I don’t judge what I receive, I can’t completely escape how that would be received. I “heard” it so I’ll write it, sure, but that story may be a private circulation only deal.

2. The Scorpio Jones detective series – I’m thinking paranormal mystery/romance, with all kinds of fringe people. I think I mentioned the character Rawr and the 17 boyfriends, and Mike responds with enough chagrin that I almost have to write it.

3. Fuck it, let’s be jewel thieves! In college I tried following a soap opera to see what the hype was about, and got rather annoyed when the “reformed” thief led his girlfriend on a thief-style adventure. She gushed about how hard it must have been to reform, and I was completely disgusted that the writers did not see a great opportunity for her to say “Let’s do this together!”

4. Eminent Domain. Typical adult slacker, still lives at home with parents attached, and all of a sudden the home is going to be demolished. How much effort does he want to put into being lazy?

5. Zeus falls out of the sky, and it’s the job of the protagonist to get him back up there.

I have a start on #2 that doesn’t really grab me, and a start on #5 that reads like some of my moodier short fiction pieces.
I also have a novel I had socked back that’s about 25K words in, but I’m setting it aside because I’m still untangling it a bit. I know how I want it to end, but the trip there? I’m not sure what needs to happen along the way.

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The Spellcasting Picture Book has been getting some lovin’ this week –
PaganWriters.com gave it a blurb, and on the same day a book review for it came out on Online Pagans Magazine.

Did I mention the review on Magickal Media?
“They say the word “inspired” means God-Breathed and I think that’s what happened with Diana. She simply opened herself up to the universe and then drew the messages as they came to her.” …I think that means the reviewer liked it!

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In my case, I tend to expect too much. I then get mad at myself for thinking “too much” and proceed to yell at myself for coddling. I then get mad at myself for yelling at myself.

This happens most often after I look over project piles that somehow amassed in every room of of my home.

I once attributed this series of “incompletes” to some moral or character failure, especially when my whole house wasn’t magically polished, and bursting forth with high profits, finished books and magically made homemade decor at the end of every day.

Then the Artist’s Way changed the situation. I started paying close attention to the experiences of others struggling with the emotional, physical, mental and situational blocks to creativity. I realized something:

our ability to create is absolutely infinite. But most of us are only able to access a limited amount of that energy at a time.

Suddenly the real dangers and temptation of methamphetamines have become very clear to me.

I read one author – if I remember who it was, I hope to come back and link properly – who, upon her pregnancy, expected to have 9 months of creative orgy, or perhaps six, once the morning sickness passed. She planned elaborate gardens, a decorated house, finished books. Instead she needed lots of sleep. She expressed guilt at how flesh did not follow spirit.After giving birth, her creative energy returned. She figured out that it was because her creative energy was quite busy creating another human being. The garden could wait until mitosis finished, thank you.

While I have heard of women having the opposite experience -pregnancy leading to a mad “nesting,” I suspect that this woman’s experience is far more typical than people would like to admit.

Pregnancy is not the only way creative energy can face limits. Just as I have to build my capacity to conduct energy in magical practice, I have also had to build my capacity to be creative for extended periods of time – or to bank the material from those rare creative frenzies so that I can work even while uninspired. Even so, there’s only so much to go around before my soul needs the food that it pulls from so that I may create (or “shape” as those of the Reclaiming tradition prefer.)

As a writer who makes it a point to know other professional writers, I know that all of us committed to the craft learn how to work without inspiration. Inspiration, a neurological flash, is what starts the work, but to continue it takes the real muscle structure of commitment and consciously formed habit.¹

This is how I forgive myself for being more oriented to writing here, and for my books, rather than focusing on the plus-size fashion blog or my Etsy shop. I only have so much creative energy at a time. While I am doing what I can to increase that creative energy by going through the Artist’s Way, psychotherapy and re-establishing my meditation practice, as well as sticking to those artist’s dates, it is still something that I must steward, just as I am stewarding myself in creative physical endurance (and enhancing my creative output in the long run) by making sure I continue going to the gym 4 days a week.

This understanding that our ability to conduct creative energy is finite and can be increased over time lends further credence to Julia Cameron’s credo of one small thing. That “small thing” becomes a little bit larger every time, every day, as we build our skill and endurance over time, until we are accomplishing great things by the measured increase of our ability to conduct that creative energy.

But it’s perfectly OK that we can’t do everything. We can do anything, not everything, and sometimes the only way to get it done is in very small chunks with what energy we get for that day.

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1. note I do not use the guilt and complex-creating word discipline

The marriage rate has slowed as little girls break from the “plan your wedding for your entire life” programming and start looking at the relationship instead of the floor show. Boys are also being more conscious, up front, or not buying into it.

Still, marriages can indeed be shallow. Look at Britney Spears.

As to divorce – despite a selection of bitter and spiteful things I’ve heard over the years, I have to say… divorce ain’t shallow.

After talking to nearly 200 + individuals (with more to go) about divorce I know without a doubt that divorce is never requested on a whim, for a bad reason, or just because of boredom.

In the course of 200 authentic conversations, no one gave me what I would consider a frivolous reason for divorce. That 200 people have been so gracious as to answer my series of  questions on such an incredibly touchy subject has been to me a humbling miracle.

Yes, a few might be lying, but the Vegas odds on that are about 1%, which makes possibly to prevarications so far. While the reasons given are all very private (and that I will generalize to the point of non-identification later), I can tell you the common reasons the loud and bitter claim – and the reasons I am not hearing or seeing as I work on this book:

• Boredom. No one left his/her spouse because s/he got bored.
• Money. No one divorced anyone in order to get money. Pagans are not wealthy, and even amicable divorce gets expensive. When rearing children, forcing financial support outside the house decreases income – between alimony or the security of a present and accounted for spouse, staying married is the financially smarter option.²  If a married person with children wants a spouse out of the house now, it’s because there’s enough emotional (and in a third of cases physical) violence to endanger the children. No one divorces as a financial strategy. They do, however, divorce when marriage has failed them as a financial strategy. When spouses can’t hold jobs, refuse to discuss money, or can’t control spending or money hoarding behaviors, it can seriously damage a relationship.
• Sexual incompatibility. Yay for premarital sex and Viagra, you can’t marry a person without knowing this stuff first. I do not count “changes” in sexual orientation in this, because that’s so far from shallow as to live in a different universe on a different shelf of self-help books.
• Another man/woman. In less than 5 cases did someone marry the person that s/he committed infidelity with. In all cases of infidelity (polyamory being excluded) there was emotional abuse, and in half the cases, physical abuse preceding the infidelity.  I acknowledge that the emotional abuse is highly subjective and may need probing, as some personalities consider “No, this is what you agreed to,” as abuse. Right now, however, every respondent that has raised infidelity as a marriage-dissolving issue has reported it alongside an environment of emotional violence. Both the cheaters and the cheated on consistently report  these tensions. In cases of polyamorous infidelity, while so far there is less violence reported (admitted? understood? recognized as violence?) it literally has to be examined with each and every relationship contract established – it’s definitely possible to cheat/be unfaithful/do the dishonorable thing in polyamorous and polyfidelitious relationships, and from what I’m hearing and seeing as I ask these questions for my book is that there are more ways to do it.

I’m not here to judge “shallow!” or “not shallow!” I’m here simply to understand, to look for patterns, to answer the problems at hand from my own place as a Wiccan divorcee’. The big pattern I’m seeing behind marital failures so far all leads back to a)not understanding at the outset of a relationship that emotional violence is real, and therefore not having the tools to avoid commitment to people who do this and b)a sense of “marriage” as status that makes marriage itself an entity that has little or nothing to do with the actual relationship of the people married to each other.

Those of us with Christian backgrounds still think of marriages as somehow “belonging to God,” and especially as Pagans, that somehow short-circuits a spiritual connection between the two people that worked beautifully until marriage set in.

Marriage used to be mainly a financial and property arrangement including sex; it lingers as an impersonal social status that we mistake for a personal relationship. Marriage is a contract, and while unromantic to westerners, it is very much about compatibility beyond romantic response. Just as businesses dissolve when they no longer profit their owners, marriages similarly fall away.

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1. If you need such acknowledgment, you’re probably not there yet.
2. It is not, however, what is better for the children.

The real problem was not what happened. It was how people thought what happened looked.  People get strangely territorial and competitive over conflicting local events, forgetting that a)no one can possibly serve EVERYONE and b)time is the most finite of all resources.

They also get really nervous around journalists. Like politicians, those of us who work as reporters have done a lot to earn mistrust. Also like politicians, journalists are often projection boards for the fears of those who see them. Fear has a loud voice. It can keep a person from hearing, reading, seeing or even smelling what you really want to communicate.

Because of the weird squabbling produced by competition-induced (and denial about being competitive) amnesia, it took some work to get people to talk to me. In the process, I had to acknowledge the feelings of others about the press and how they wished we would operate. Those wishes often violate the principles of journalism as it used to be, and the PNC is in my opinion a Reconstructionist movement. We’re using digital tools, but we’re trying to rebuild journalism from the old days.

Thankfully, the people that went on record willingly heard me out on how I saw the story and why I wanted to report it as I did. What happened was not the result of stupidity and poor planning. In fact, it demonstrated good planning. Being honest and open got me the story, although I’m sure I have more work to do to build long-term trust.

This was written before I was able to persuade everyone that did to go on record. It is a rumination on the important of self-honesty and transparency, and why we need to stop protecting ourselves from embarrassment. Embarrassment is a reaction of the ego, only. The highest self does not get embarrassed. It simply observes and learns from the experience.

Most Pagans go to festivals to escape “Mundania.” While I find less drastic breaks from life preferable, I have absolute empathy for the people involved. I sometimes find myself wishing for pagan-land as much as they do.

Being Pagan does nothing to remove the Minnesotan from the local Pagans. Most are being typically Minnesotan; they’re always mean to the new kid even as they slap slogans about how nice Minnesotans are onto their license plates. The new kid in this situation: the PNC. It’s going to be a few years before people “get it,” and now that mainstream news reporting media has disappeared into a void of Facebook drivel, an entire generation has no frame of reference for reliable journalism.

I’ve spent a lot of time and care trying to gather what facts I could about this recent festival happening. I understand that firsthand is always better, but because of the consuming participatory demands of festivals, it makes reporting on them objectively impossible. People may go in neutral, but most come out a member of a tribe. Tribes membership gives a euphoric sense of belonging; they also mean you behave, well, tribally, to tribes not your own. Somehow community creation also becomes divisive because of this approach.

I never attend these events. As people around me can attest, when I go camping, water tables rise and tornadoes look for me. I love nature, and I love that nature equals evolution: the sense to get my ass indoors.

This has the added benefit of making me a neutral party to all festival Pagan politics. After all, festival Pagans are only one kind of Pagan, one nation, one grouping of tribes. So I’m hoping for the best in reaction to my work.

allow me to explain...

My experience with this work thus far reiterates a theme that has recurred since I started writing for a college paper:

Somebody who has nothing to do with the work-end of the publication always wants to control the content. That individual is always convinced of the greater good, very concerned with how “things are represented,” and has no awareness whatsoever that trying to control the content makes the organization or person look much, much worse in the public eye than a “bad” report does. The way Communist and fascist regimes control media should be warning enough. The person attempting that control of content and refusal of oversight probably does have the best of intentions. The individuals practicing censorship in repressive governments also fully believe they are doing the write thing. It’s that first thought, that first insistence on good intention, that first disguising of the ego as high ideals that leads down the road to misinformation, or worse, propaganda.

Worse, often there’s a paranoia, a “reading between the lines” that has everything to do with a person’s internal wiring and nothing to do with what’s actually on the page. At worst, someone attempts to find libel without any understanding that they have to know without question that there’s a lie told with absolutely malicious intent. 99.9% of the time, even when the facts are wrong, there’s no malice. NONE. Most reporters really just don’t give a damn, and that’s actually what’s best for everyone. Most reporters will also pause and slow down in cases of violent crime, or where children’s lives will be drastically affected. (The Hollywood paparazzi are the most well known reporters, but they are not, by any means, representative of how real journalist behave.)

This struggle between information, protection of the innocent, and negotiating egos is a recurring theme throughout my life as a writer and reporter.

• In 1994, I had a dean of student life at Lakeland College tell me “sexual harassment and assault does not happen on this campus.” A personal  friend had just withdrawn from the school because she was sexually assaulted by a star athlete. The college administration did nothing. After I published the story, I was systematically driven off the campus. My parents refused to believe what I told them was happening to me and why. If confronted now, my mother would probably insist I never told her, although I told her several times. There is no college campus, not even single gender ones, anywhere, that does not have some incident with sexual harassment and assault. At the time I went to college the number of reports nationally had jumped almost 70%, not because more women were being assaulted but because more women were reporting them.
• In 1996, when I worked for a campus PR office, my boss routinely harassed me about stories I covered for the student paper. She walked right up to the border of threatening me  when I covered the unlawful and privacy-invading termination of a member of the housekeeping staff. No one on the paper was allowed to cover how the college almost lost accreditation. When I asked direct questions, I received evasions. Most of the time, administration only answered questions from parents and donating alumni, completely ignoring the legally adult students who were the ones running up debt in their own names to attend the institution.
• In 1996, I had an official at my next higher education institution point to discrepancies in student funding. It was serious, but he refused to go on the record. I could do nothing. He was disgusted with me, but the journalism standards of the time were quite serious, much more serious than they are now. While on paper discrepancies existed, nothing ever happened in my presence to suggest misuse of funds. Certainly academics were sacrificed to athletics, but I enjoyed fellowship with a much more self-motivated student body. Most students found ways to get the best from the system at hand even if they did not play sports.

I went into Pagan writing because that’s where my heart was at, and my life has conspired in such a way that unless I’m writing something, I’m falling apart. What I’ve encountered within the Pagan writing community are pockets of frustrated and gifted professionals. A lot of people have an imagining of how writing – especially news writing – works. Boy do those imagineers get upset when you tell them that they’re wrong, that imagination can create reality but imagination is NOT fact. Writing isn’t play. It isn’t politics. It’s a discipline, and it takes as much training, concentration and practice as a martial art. Anyone can do it well as long as that anyone puts in the time, suffers the humbling and repetitive experience of edits, and develops a broad perspective of what writing deserves protection and what needs to be let go.

A specific example of a writer creating from mythology rather than discipline comes from an editorial in a now-defunct local Pagan publication. The content read  “Shame, shame, shame on you for not supporting Pagan business, or writing for us!” While I think there were some other flaws in the thinking that led to the piece, I’m going to focus on the writing. The author did not mention any specifics – what store was going out of business? What were the reasons for the business failure (sometimes it’s more than simple customer support, such as rising supply costs.) What facts supported the opinion? What were the comments of the business owner, customers, and people who made a conscious choice to support other shops?

When I asked the writer about this, he said “It’s an editorial. I don’t have to use facts!”  That slapping noise you here are my pro-writer and journalist buddies smacking their foreheads. The dull thud comes from an old editor slamming her head into a wall.

Any good editorial ALWAYS cites facts. Editorials are subject to libel law. Feelings and opinions are something everyone has. If your opinion merits the attention of an editorial column, it should be because you have an informed opinion. Informed means … facts. Yes, facts  can and do change but since they do it slowly, most of the time, we still have to use them. Facts, NOT FEELINGS, build a strong editorial in support of a specific stance.

His refusal to investigate the facts of the closure made his editorial come off as self-righteous ranting. It stirred no action, and since the shop closed, there was no action to stir. When I mentioned my critique, the author didn’t want to examine his writing let alone consider his thought process or the thought process of the people at whom he wagged his finger.

Not only did he do a poor job in writing the editorial piece, he completely failed in his attempt to motivate action because he used the one motivator that does not work on Pagans: shame. Pagans, especially those who convert to a Pagan religion from Christianity, first break the power of shame in their conversion process. He ignored his own audience, an audience he knew and interacted with. He behaved as though he was entitled to their service, as though the shops were entitled to their support. Pagans, of all people, do not work that way. It’s why you should always thank people for doing their job. It’s why you should always offer some reward or gratitude for submissions made to your publication, and why “for the community” is never a compelling enough reason to demand public service.

He had editorial control, and he used it the wrong way. I opted not to write for that publication after that conversation. I had submitted before, and what responses I received to my submissions were consistently entitled and disrespectful.  Also, the writing that ran beside mine was generally awful.

Nowadays, I struggle with a different type of editorial control. Over on Fat Chic, there’s always some company that wants a text link ad, wants me to host a give away, wants me to write more about them. It’s frustrating. It’s irritating. It’s so nakedly advertorial that it actually disgusts me. Worse, some go so far as to try to bully me into running their content. I actually had one woman, when I said “No text link ads,” come back with “I’ll pay you [this very small fee] for it.” In a fit of wry humor, I told her it would be $500. She wrote back “I can pay $60. When does it go up?” From there, I sent her to my spam filter. No means no, even in blogging.

The crux of the problem between advertisers and myself is also the problem between  PNC and its communities: there’s a co-dependence, and somebody keeps thinking they have to “win.” The people who want their stories profiled want it their way or no way. I understand the fear that creates the attitude, but the insistence is  ultimately a disservice to themselves.

I don’t give a flying leap that there’s personal history between individuals across organizations – that’s just people giving in to their inner baboon pack.

It’s also a recurring theme. Someone will always want the whole world to speak glowingly of them, without even realizing that all that dripping sweetness is what really makes them all look untrustworthy.

Post Script:

Thankfully, everything on the article that inspired this post worked out well. I just had to put some work into it, and stop to really consider the feelings of everyone involved. While I am of the opinion that if people set aside competition by opting for co-celebration when they have conflicting events the community rifts would seal up nicely, I’m sure that it will take a paradigm shift for that to happen.

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