As aware as I am of what PTSD can entail, I sometimes forget how little most people know about the disorder, other than the stereotypical depictions of flashbacks, withdrawal, and violence.
That’s usually what I see in my crime drama binge-watching tendencies, although I’ve been surprised a time or two at how spot on some do manage. Perhaps, I’m not convinced because TV doesn’t allow for the same type of emersion that reading does.
I don’t want to seem like I’m an expert on the subject. I certainly am not, but I have lived with a multitude of my husband’s symptoms for the last twelve years: loud bangs inducing flashbacks, sleeping with his arm propped on his ear, violent nightmares, pacing the house from anxiety, complete shutdowns of emotion and personality, and coaxing him inside from his stakeout when the drug addicts down the street were stealing from the neighborhood cars.
The biggest thing I’ve learned—and relearned several times—is how unfair it is when people, including myself, expect him to behave like he doesn’t have a mental illness.
This is probably the most influential component to the overall dynamic of a character, like Ria. She can’t behave like everyone else because her pain is so new. The trauma from the first leg of her journey bleeds into the others: the girl she failed to save, being staked in the side, being staked in the heart, the human she got changed and had to kill to survive, the car crash, a child she had to let die, slicing the throat of an enemy, and so so much more.
I, too, lean toward that stereotypical flashback move. Hers overlap each other, too similar not to impact her when new trauma strikes. Unsure of how accurate I’m being, I never put her flashbacks in the way of her ability to fight. Instead, they seem to fuel her.
Some studies have found that the heightened awareness and constant adrenaline from a combat zone overpower the effects. After all, PTSD is predominately categorized as being unable to turn this feeling off when returning home to presumable safety.
With the Celampresian Camp—or Boot Camp for Vamps—there are enough lulls for the symptoms to pop up and retreat in cycles. Most of this manifests in anxiety for Ria, an never-ending feeling of doom. Granted, she’s not wrong. Being hunted can do that to a person. It can also lead to a lack of sleep and withdrawing from outside world.
Checking off as many boxes as I could in the first four books, book five will have a different pace, and PTSD will be more prominent for my main charrie.
Overall, I’m happy enough if Ria holds her own kinds of truth amongst the variables that come with something as immense as PTSD. Have you tried to tackle in-depth psychological trauma in your stories? Let me know in the comments below.
As a woman who lucked out, getting to take part in raising children without having to push them out of my body, the idea of motherhood for me is a bit skewed.
This creates a challenge for me as I begin writing my way toward motherhood for several characters. Luckily, I have plenty of friends and family to question about what pregnancy and child-rearing is like; plus, the internet has a buttload of information—both medically and anecdotally.
I got to learn about those super long needles used to test DNA, called an Amniocentesis Test, the stages of baby bump, what sonograms look like, what it’s like to establish a connection with the baby as it grows. Yup, lots of things that I’ll never experience.
That’s the fun thing about writing a wide range of characters, with enough research and imagination, I can nail motherhood. At least, fictionally. I’ve known Ria wanted kids throughout her entire series so far. Several of her past lives featured kids. Each of the books, so far, has put her in the position to instinctually save children, and she naturally wants to save people, especially the innocent. It’s in her nature to act motherly. Her mother, Tatiana, has to get used to and give up on being a mother in a matter of nine months. Kaia is barreling towards motherhood and step-motherhood with one last novel to wrap up her saga.
I’m hoping I can vary them enough to show a spectrum of mom experiences.
So, yeah, here comes the babies.
Wow, that’s so awkward of me to say.
Here’s to tapping into my own step-motherhood, auntiness, cat-motherhood, and teacheriness to pull these varying moms off in a realistic way.
Got any tips for handling the many moods of babies since I got my yahoos in the threes and fours? I’d love to know how you handle character experiences that drastically differ from your won. Leave me your advice in the comments below!
Grief has been long understood as the eventual progression of steps we walk through after a loss. Most think of it as a straight route through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, but the truth is that grief is a mess of loops and tangents and backtracking through these emotions without a specific or defined trajectory.
It also has more parts than we once knew, adding shock before denial and testing before acceptance. Let’s break down the steps to better understand real grief so that we can write about it with better accuracy.
First, every person—and therefore, every character—experiences grief differently, and we grieve over many types of losses: a loved one dying, the end of a relationship, losing a home or a job, amputation, terminal health diagnoses, and having to drop out of a program, etc.
Second, grief is cyclical and has no specific rhyme or reason. We can jump around, repeat, and remain stagnant in several stages before we make progress in dealing with our losses, and the process will take longer for some than others.
Here are the stages:
Shock | Initial shutdown at receiving the bad news. This typically comes with numbness, fogginess, or disbelief. This is when we run on autopilot, protecting us from that early pain.
Denial | Avoiding the inescapable. Although psychology has deemed denial as a negative symptom, in grief, denial is healthy in moderate quantities. It’s the brains way of making itself feel better until it can fully face the loss. Easing into the difficult reality is denial’s job, ensuring that we don’t face it all at once.
Anger | Aggravated outburst of bottled-up emotion. This may be anger at the source of our loss—the person who died or left or fired us, etc. Sarcasm or increased irritation from minor problems is caused by the energy needed to move on. Anger can happen at any period of grief, and it often cycles.
Bargaining | Futile pursuit of getting back what was lost. This is when people beg god or the universe to reverse the tragedy, promising to live better, do better, and end bad habits in exchange. These can generate uncomfortable conversations that lead nowhere.
Depression | The final comprehension of the unavoidable. This is accompanied by sadness and crying, loss of appetite or disrupted sleep patterns, unexplained aches and pains, and it seems like this could be the end of our life. And it is the end of an old normal.
Testing | Pursuing genuine paths forward. While in that dark pit of depression, we recognize that we can’t stay there forever. Thus, we start experimenting for ways out, doing things to relieve the despair, crawling out of the dark hole toward acceptance.
Acceptance | Finally establishing a new normal. Recognizing the importance of the person or thing lost, we lack the anger once harbored for it or the need to barter for its return. Instead, we begin building our new lives. This comes with absolute peace, but the stage is so hard won that most never fully reach acceptance.
Managing each of these states accurately within a character’s story arc takes careful planning. Or, at least, that’s what I like to think. I planned each bit for my new diary story where a mom realizes she will die to give birth to her baby. I’m sure they’ll change slightly for organic developments.
We also naturally understand these steps when we cause grief to our characters, leading them through their own loops without planning, but there’s something to be said for a little structure, even if it comes afterwards, in revision.
The most important thing to note is that reality comes in variety—not just excessive crying or vowing revenge. Some process internally and others externally. We all cope differently, so this means creating distinct reactions that don’t simply end, no matter if the world needs saving. This is why reactions sprinkle through a person’s life instead of stopping it.
My point is, if you’re going to tackle grief with your characters, be sure to keep it in sight as your creations interact with the world.
Have you tackled grief in your stories or plan to? Tell me about how you’re tackling it in the comments below.
It’s done. Oh my shit, it’s done. Camp. The book. All of it.
But believe me, the book did not want to end. I kept plugging and plugging and plugging, and the book got longer and longer and longer. It finally wrapped itself up at 94,500 words, and fifty-three chapters.
I sat for a day in disbelief that I’d finished it and rewarded myself with a few chapters of reading for pleasure.
Want to see me try and talk my way through the ending? Check out my Camp writing vlog below.
In my last four days of camp—because my week starts on Sunday, not Monday, fight me about it—I racked up close to five-thousand words and all of my remaining minutes. Actually, with the last day, I got an extra five hours in because I wouldn’t let myself plug in those last ten minutes until the book was done.
Okay, let’s be honest, I would have by midnight because I like checking off the box that says I’d complete something, but the prolonging of button-clicking gratification pushed me to find that ending.
So, here are my number so the week:
Minutes Completed: 585/480
Words Written: 4,989
Total Minutes Completed: 3,720/3,720
Total Words Written: 27,964/20,000
Final note: I WON!
It feels nice to win Camp NaNoWriMo again. It’s been a while. In fact, this year has reminded me just how important writing is to my life. And now that I’ve made it a focus, I’m certainly not letting go of it again if I can help it.
Well, I’ll be back next week with a project update and an editing vlog, where I dive back into INFERNO to take a full look at it. In the meantime, let me know how you celebrate when you finish a project in the comments below.
Holy shit, y’all. I got close to another 7k on my word count this week. Who is this person Camp has turned me into?
And I’m hovering 500 words shy of 90k in my manuscript. This isn’t including parts that I have to go back and add to, and I have another two and a half chapters left!
Okay. Wait. Breathe. Yeah, I’m almost done. Which is what I wanted. But when I get here, nerves and excitement and the end-of-the-draft crazies descend upon me.
Want to see me freak a little about having to kill one of my main characters? Check out my Camp writing vlog below.
I hope in the next two days that I can hammer out the last few chapters. The end has thrown a few obstacles at me, and some new plot points that I didn’t think of in the plotting of this. Fun thing about my outlines is that they’re usually vague enough for me to squeeze other things in there if I need to, or condense a whole bunch of shit I thought was important but, really, wasn’t.
Yup. Even with all the moving around, I keep racking up the words. I also got to catch up on quite a few minutes, too. Far less behind than last week, and I’m confident in hitting my Camp Nano goal of 3,720 minutes written.
So, here are my number so far:
Minutes Completed: 995/840
Minutes Behind: 105
Words Written: 6,830
With four days left of writing, I have to up my daily goal from 120 minutes to 150. Easy peasy.
Time to win. You with me?
Well, I’ll be back next week with another update and another writing vlog. In the meantime, let me know if you’d ever try NaNoWriMo in the comments below.
This week I got so many words! I careening towards the end, but it’s taking a little longer than I thought it would. My original goal was 75,000, but as I’m closing in on 85,000, I have to wonder if I’m looking at 90,000 or 95,000 words. What??
Want to watch me dance around after reading my initial goal? Check out my Camp writing vlog below.
I got rolling, and learned a few new things about my world and characters. Ria’s even sympathizing with the enemy! It makes killing the character I need to feel off. Here’s hoping that as I run into that necessary scene, I can get the details right.
But while my words are ranking up like crazy, my minutes are still way behind, and my math from last week was off by a hundred. Oh well, if I can reach the end of this book by the end of July, I will be one happy camper.
Get it? Okay, it was a bad pun. Sue me.
So, here are my number so far:
Minutes Completed: 810/840
Words Written: 7,932
So, I’m behind by 200 minutes, which is roughly three and a half hours. Still banking on making those minutes up, even if I have to get 140 minutes each day. I’ve got this.
I’ve totally got this. Right?
Well, I’ll be back next week with another update and another writing vlog. In the meantime, let me know what you’re working on or what you’re reading in the comments below.
Obscenity is reductive, which reduces men to equality and humbles the mighty. The fool becomes the king, the whore a preacher, and rigid hierarchy is muddled. Everyone’s place evens out to the same level through the removal of rank and wealth. This is used to strip men bare, removing their robes and crowns, and leaving them naked and too similar.
Through obscenity, a satirist can push further and drop us into our true animalistic conditions, where claims to social and divine powers makes a character seem more ridiculous. We have no heroes, no leaders, no one better than anyone else. It mocks what we often hold as more important than individual thoughts and feelings.
Some may confuse obscenity with simply using foul language or pornography, but it more closely shows the treatment of a subject by pushing boundaries against taboos and puritanical thought. Those very things that restrict us from our most basic natures and limit society’s progression through the folly of righteousness.
Obscenity preceded satire and comedy in Greek and Roman festivals where phallic songs and rude verses were sung. But the most famous use of it in satire was Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” and his ability to horrify his audience with the idea of using the poor as a means of producing more affordable meat through eating their young. The suggestion was not a serious one, but an extreme to make a point—something must be done to keep people from starving, and he was sick of having his genuine ideas ignored, so he relied on the atrocity of the idea to gain attention for the problem.
More modernly, South Park is the front-runner for pushing the bounds of societal commentary through vulgar speech and offensive material. The use of obscenity as a vehicle to create deep, analytical thought is often lost on audiences who cling to the puritanical rules placed within our varying cultures. But pushing past their use of shit and fart jokes, they open us to create dialogues on wider issues concerning censorship, as with their episodes surrounding the use of swearing or images of Muhammad on television. Check out this video if you’d like a more in-depth explanation about how South Park addresses these issues.
Censorship has always been a big deal for me as an individual and a writer, and may be one of the bigger reasons why I love to read and write satire. I’ve been punished for my foul language by authorities my entire life—I was that kid that got written up for saying fuck on the bus in kindergarten, and first grade, and second, third, fourth, and fifth. I learned to keep it to myself by sixth. Yeah, I was slow on the uptake there, or maybe, I rebelled against people telling me that I had no right to control what came out of my own mouth.
Man, I sound like Ria.
This links more heavily to my on-going battle with conformity, both in my novels and in my life. As someone who has been bullied for my hair, my weight, my opinions, and my ideas, I cling to obscenity like a demented twin sister who loves to get me in trouble. My foul language does not make my intelligence or my arguments any less sound. Although it certainly makes them more colorful.
Again, Ria is the same, dropping f-bombs to make her uptight mentor flinch. Got to fight the man in any way she’s allotted, and she’s unapologetic for being herself. I wish I was more like her, but fiction allows a wider line than reality does since I can get fired for saying certain things in my classroom—or people might rebel if I expressed my every opinion in public.
Essentially, the use of obscenity allows us to create a visceral reaction in others in hopes that they will examine not only the ideas placed before them, but their reactions, their cultures, and their own behaviors in hopes of progressing thought and reducing us all to the same base note: that we’re all simply human.
Do you use obscenity in your writing? Let me know in the comments below.
This week I had a good time with my writing goals and with my family. I got spend a lot of time with my mom, dad, and step-dad, two days with my aunt and uncle in Rochester, some bonding time with my cousins, and a lot of laughter with my friend Donna—we made some silly jokes about Ernest Hemingway.
Want to watch me make a fool of myself? Check out my Camp writing vlog below.
I really picked up the steam this week, lots of words and extra minutes, and a ton of pecking away at this beast. My pantsing magic dropped some great details on me in the last few chapters. I never thought I’d say this, but torture has become mundane. I’ve had to issue a lot of it on my main charrie. I’ve condensed a few of the chapters to limit the redundancy, and I’m glad we’re closing in on the end of it, for Ria’s sake, mine, and my readers’.
As a side note, I got to meet the great candy makers at Hercules Candy, who I found on YouTube this past winter. They are some funny people, and I loved chatting with them while I was there. I knew they were my kind of people when I found out they were from my home town, even though I found them while I was all the way down in Oklahoma. Shout out to those good people!
So, here are my number so far:
Minutes Completed: 740/720
Words Written: 4,575
So, I’m behind by 110 minutes, and that’s a big step forward from last time. Since I go home tonight, I will be pecking away at those extra minutes over the next week.
But first, I’ll have to feed my husband and son, and spend some much needed time with them after a month away.
I’ll be back next week with another update and another writing vlog. In the meantime, let me know what you’re working on or what you’re reading in the comments below.
It’s been a long time since I successfully completed a NaNoWriMo project, but this year, I feel like I’ve got a better handle on it.
Want to see me talk about this in a video instead? Check it out on YouTube here:
I like how the goal options include minutes and hours instead of just word count. This has freed me up to work writing into my schedule this month due to traveling and family time. Usually, spending time with my family trumps my writing goals, but I’ve established a nice balance this year.
So, here are my goals: 3,720 minutes of writing this month. That’s equal to two hours a day, which means I can hammer out around five-hundred words on average. This connects well to what I’ve done for the last three months and allows me some wiggle room to catch up on writing minutes for those days that I simply won’t have time to sit down and create. Like when we go to the water park, which is my niece’s favorite trip because she’s a little fish.
Also, I’m going to be working on two projects, and since I’m not sure what my end word counts will be for them both, minutes makes this easier, too.
Now that we’ve got the goals down, let’s talk about the stories.
First and foremost, I plan to finish BLOOD PHOENIX: INFERNO. I’m currently hovering around 67,000 words, so the hope is between 13,000 and 20,000 more words will get me to the end of this bad boy. That word count is topping my normal goals, but as I reach the end of my stories, words tend to come faster. At least, until I hit those last few words. I struggle there because I know how important endings are.
Second, I am going to launch myself into TATIANA’S DIARY, which is a companion story to the BLOOD PHOENIX SAGA, and the diary style of it will be both a blessing and a curse as it means that I have a lot of freedom in formatting and the depth of scene I can sink into. I originally planned this to be 8,000-16,000 words, but my last short story came out 2,000 words less than intended, so I guess I will have to see where it takes me.
So, with the 3,720 minutes, I also want to write between 21,000 and 36,000 words during Camp NaNoWriMo.
I will also be documenting this process vlog style on YouTube with weekly check ups here, and I would love to know if you’re participating in July’s Camp NaNoWriMo? Whether you are or not, let me know what your creative goals are this month!
Round two of the quarterly review. Let’s see if I learned anything between the two quarters or if we find some trends.
If you’d like to see my process more fully, watch me plan here:
I stuck with the same basic set up and questions.
What I overestimated. Welp, my time, again. I got more edits done for Time, but they’re going slower because I’m trying to combine two steps into one to save time overall, and that’s to edit the stories I like before moving on to read another submission. It’s kind of working.
What I’m learning from this transition is that I can start editing a story to discover how much work it will take, which makes it easier for me to solidly say yes or no to a specific story instead of ending up with so many maybes at the end of an open reading session. For the last few anthologies, I racked up WAY too many maybes, which meant more time spent reading and trying to decide than was necessary. We’re moving in the right direction at least.
I’m also behind on marketing and advertising. To be honest, I can barely keep up with what I’m doing now, so it keeps slipping to the back burner. However, I am hosting a live launch party this weekend, so…maybe there’s a little progress there.
My finance tracker went by the wayside. I used it for a month, kind of. Set it up for two, and forgot about it on the third. A big signal that it’s not working for me in the form I’m trying. I think I need to sit with my parents and get some budgeting advice. They both have two very different systems, so I can mutate what works for me.
And finally, nothing of a surprise here. I’m not that great at compositing art. I’m learning, but man, I have a long, long, long way to go.
What I underestimated. Again, this shouldn’t surprise anyone, but my ability to admit when I need a day off and the benefits taking a break can offer my overall productivity. It’s funny because I preach to others about taking breaks when they’re stressed over their work or life, but I really like working… Man, that sounds crazy, but it’s true. I love what I do, so I tend to pile myself with all the things that I want to do and need to do. I’m in need of some prioritizing, and what a perfect opportunity to do that, right?
I think I’ve come up with a compromise for myself. And it’s one of the notes I made to myself in the spread, which is to slow down and take more time on projects, which offers more time for marketing and ads, and helps to keep mistakes to a minimum. Less rush and more buzz. Um, no brainer?
I’m pretty sure that last quarter I mentioned this as well, but my creative potential is so much more than I allow myself. This comes back to that prioritizing idea. I’ve made writing every day a priority, so it’s getting done, and I. Am. Loving. It. Oh my shit, y’all. As of today, I’ve written 77,680 words. And although I’m sure some writers might scoff at this, it’s MASSIVE for me. I’m almost done with my newest book. After three months? Are you kidding me? It usually takes me close to a full year to write a novel. Now, there’s a lot of changes that’s allowed me to progress so much, but man… Man, that’s a big stepping-stone to my dream of writing multiple books a year.
Next is actually YouTube. I stumbled into #authortube, and I am really enjoying consuming and creating videos. I have a way to go as far as growing comfortable talking and filming myself, but it’s a new way to move forward in my industry, which keeps me from wanting to jump into another one to cure wanderlust, and I’m all for it.
If you’ve been following any of my video updates, I’ve been working freelance on a cookbook, and I totally underestimated my joy for this type of thing. I love food, the recipes are super new for me, and the photography is amazing. YAS!
My last note is to carve out more time for family. Next month will have buttloads of this, but I need to make it a more regular part of my day. This goes back to overestimating my time. It’s an all-around problem, and it hasn’t changed much. I must change this.
My current vision. Simplify popped up again. Yup. It’s getting better, but we’re still not there yet. Simplify your life, Alisha. Get it together. Do the things. Be an adult.
I also listed consuming more books. I love books, obviously, I write and publish them. It means I read a lot, but it’s not the same as simply reading for fun. At least a chapter a night or a day, or something. Damn it. This is doable. I’m going to make it doable. I also made a Book Bingo Board in my bullet journal to help motivate me.
Freelance more. This was a surprise. I like it. I want to do more. That’s pretty much it.
Finally, I’ve listed to find joy. I’ve loved writing so much, working freelance, and building my business. That’s what I need to make happen on a more realistic and sustainable scale. Also, I’ve loved having a show to watch with my husband every day. We need another one. If you have a suggestion, by the way, make it in the comments below.
Current pain points. Other than what I’ve already outlined above, and frankly, I know can babble on about this stuff for far longer than necessary, but here we are. I need to step up and use focused power blocks to get through work more efficiently. Ahem. Simplify.
I’m trying to juggle too many projects at once. SIMPLIFY.
I really need someone to delegate to, which of course requires money. Maybe some day.
Oh my shit. We have a giant increase in submissions. Like I think we’re hovering around 200 since April. Much love to Authors Publish Magazine for that shout out. I’ve been subscribed to them for a long time. Helpful resource.
And yeah, I need to decide on whether to finish my complete revamp of my Blood Phoenix covers now, or wait until all five books are written. The problem here is that people who have already bought the first three books wouldn’t have complete sets if I shift gears now.
However, some of the big marketing pushes I would like to get into, like Bookbub, won’t be as effective, aka lower ROI, until I do the revamp. My current plan is to do both, but that’s going against my goal of simplifying my life. I don’t know. I could use some advice before I dive into the marketing part of my WIP.
Quarter Three plans. Anyways, here’s how this transformed into my quarter three goals and project plans. It’s still jammed pack with stuff. Probably too much stuff, but I’ve given myself some relief in not trying to push to publish this new anthology, TIME, by the end of 2019. If it happens, cool. If not, that’s okay, too. The fall semester is way too busy for me to push myself like that, and I need to learn to accept that.
The take away. Less is more. Haha. Less distractions. More focus. Less busy work. More productivity. Less worry. More progress.
My motivation to keep writing is on track.
Overall, a successful quarter. Bring on the next.
What are your goals this quarter? Did you get everything you wanted done last quarter? Tell me about them in the comments below!
