Category Archives: Spirituality

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 15,600
New words today: 2,161

Better. Much better. This was all done by transcribing some notes I made in bed the other night, and running away with ideas (ha, I originally typed ‘ides’) that needed to be explained or explored. If I can manage to do one or two longhand pages of notes before each writing day, things should stay this good. It was nice to sit down and work out things I’d thought up two nights ago; it felt like I’d already done the work, although a couple of pages of longhand notes do not directly equal eight pages of writing, of course. It’s more like I laid the groundwork.

Just looking at how parts of the manuscript are expanding, I can see that I’m going to end up cutting or reducing other areas that were going to be entire chapters. Them’s the breaks. The good thing is I can cut a handful of sections that I was including for the sake of completion. Instead, I can point to them and say, “This is worthy of exploration but outside the current scope of this book. I recommend researching it to further support your own work.”

2007 In Review

Things I Did In 2007 That I Have Never Done Before:

– bleached my hair (slipped that one in under the wire, on Dec 31!)
– signed a contract for my fifth book (there is only one number five, after all)
– played a gig on a real stage in a real bar (I am such a rock star)
– worked as a writer/editor on not one but two video games
– made a counter-offer on a contract instead of just accepting what was offered
– introduced my son to his great-gran in person
– bought a fretless electric bass
– submitted unsolicited fiction to a publisher

Things I Did in 2007 That I Am Proud Of:

All of the above, plus:
– stood up for myself in two very uncomfortable and potentially self-damaging situations
– said goodbye to one bad situation (although this ostensibly happened in January, it dragged for me through till mid-November when I privately took the final step, admitting to myself that it was over. Now I need to stick to this, and it’s going to be hard because it involves other people.)
– accomplished a specific wish I made for 2007: spending more time with two specific individuals. Interestingly enough, this was accomplished through two separate writing jam commitments.
– reviewing my writing records, I’m surprised at and proud of the amount of novel and short story writing I did in 2007
– sitting second chair in the celli at orchestra
– finding even more ways to ecologically streamline our lives, and reducing our impact on the environment
– less posting, more living

Good Things About 2007:

– discovering Dorothy L. Sayers’ detective novels
– acquiring a Nintendo DS and beginning to play video games
– making it out to see the Once Upon a Time Disney exhibit at the Beaux-Arts museum
– an awesome and excellent Vernal Equinox ritual, led by t!
– fabulous spiritual retreat at the Autumn Equinox
– cooking an entire meal over an open fire outdoors
– indirectly working with t!, lunching with the gang
– meeting Fearsclave and Carolyn
– HRH’s new job
– the existence of the credit line (thank all the gods)
– resolution of financial challenges (now, to pay off that credit line!)

There’s more, of course; a lot of this year was good. But these are what surface in my memory.

Not-So-Good Things About 2007:

– Knick-Knack going to the Summerlands
– contract negotiations
– the financial challenges (and that debt we incurred on the credit line)
– the ongoing tension with the downstairs neighbour

(I am very happy that I had to actually look for bad things to list here.)

How Did I Do With My 2007 Wishes?

– Less self-inflicted head trauma for Liam.

Yes! Yay!

-To regain some sort of interest in food.

This hasn’t been wholly successful, but in general I have become more interested in food again.

– The re-initialising of enjoying being with people.

Not bad. At least I didn’t hate being around others this year, which is an improvement.

– Spending more time with certain people.

A complete success.

– For the emotional burnout to stop.

I handled this a lot better this year than I have in the past. Quite simply, I cut down on the time spent with people who drain me.

– Rediscover the joy in music in general, and classical music in particular.

Hmm… not as much of a success as I wanted it to be. I wanted to rediscover my CD collection, and I haven’t. My music-purchasing has dropped to almost nil as well. This is a wish to carry over to 2008.

– Rediscovering the joy in playing the cello.

The better I get, the more fun it is. But I’m still not at a place where I can just play for the enjoyment of it (although the Resident Fan Club may argue with me). I am still lazy and don’t practice enough (you could almost leave the latter word off and have it be true).

Look at that; no wishes about writing and/or career. Things are pretty okay there. Sure, I wish my fiction would take off the way my non-fic has, but there’s time aplenty for all that.

Submitting the unsolicited young adult novel to a publisher has certainly been a huge, huge step towards this not-a-wish.

Wishes for 2008:

– Rediscover my CD collection
– Make time for practising my spirituality in a more aware fashion
– Make a stronger commitment to practising the cello
– Let up on the second-guessing of the decisions I make, and the self-doubt I feel about my work
– Remember frequently that I am a wonderful, kind, talented person
– Focus my time so that I don’t waste as much of it
– Take up formal study of another spiritual path to complement the ones I already practise
– Take care of my body so that the chronic pain thing doesn’t negatively impact my life, as it’s beginning to once again (I’m hoping it’s the damp and the cold that’s made it increasingly bad over the past month)

If I had to assign a value to 2007, I’d say that overall it was a good year, even though there were moments where it was not good at all. And the end of the year has seen us in a better place than we began it. That’s one of the best things to work out in a year-review, and something for which I am very, very thankful.

May 2008 be even better!

Whee!

This is one of the best parts about publishing books: seeing the confirmed cover for the first time.

One more step towards it being real! Yes, I’ve gone through this three times. No, this step never gets any less exciting.

Seven months to go before it hits bookstore shelves!

Yule

Solstice was lovely, except for the nap-related hiccough in the middle of Saturday. Friday night we did a mini-ritual with Liam, talking about how it was the longest night of the year, so we would use the candle to help the sun find its way back through the dark. He tried to blow out the candle. Perhaps I reinforced the birthday candle-extinguishing a bit too much.

We also gave him his ornament to hang on the tree, which in retrospect was a mistake. I’d chosen a Lightning McQueen ornament, and he certainly loved it. He loved it so much that he cried to hold it and play with it once it was up, despite being reminded that he had other McQueen cars among his toys.

After he was in bed, HRH and I ordered sushi from a new place (and will do so again and again and again, it was excellent!) and decorated the tree. By the end of the evening we knew we’d created a new tradition: decorate the tree Solstice eve, with sushi afterwards. The moment we get the 2008 calendar, it will be written in.

The boy got up the next morning and gasped and clapped at the tree, saying “It so pretty!”. Then we went out and did a humongous grocery order. Usually HRH and I hate grocery shopping because of all the oblivious people, but this experience was calm, relaxed, and even fun. Everyone around us seemed to be in a good mood for once. Not counting the pennies as we filled the basket was certainly a factor as well.

Once home, we put everything away and made lunch for Liam… who caught sight of his ornament on the tree and had a fit when we told him yet again that he couldn’t play with it. We struggled with the crying and thrashing until he calmed enough to read pre-nap books, but then he cried again when I left the room. This left us an hour behind schedule, as I had a main dish to make for our co-coven Yule gathering that afternoon, and we realised that the boy’s monitor was unplugged in his room, so we needed to wait till he was asleep to slip in and switch it on. We ended up joining the others upstairs forty-five minutes late, which wasn’t as bad as we’d feared because someone else was later than we were due to work issues. (Doing the math, that means the boy’s nap happened two hours late.) (And yes, we took the ornament off the tree and put it away. Out of sight, out of mind. The poor kid’s two and a half; leaving it there was cruel.)

We had a nice, relaxed, and cosy Yule gathering. The cookie and gift exchange was fun, and the food was terrific. The boy joined us around four and had his own present to open, drank tea, played cars on the floor with a very willing victim, was gentle with the cats, and said thank you a lot. The Yule ritual was simple and warming, and I’m sharing the central quote that was used. It’s from the tenth and final section of T.S. Eliot’s Choruses from ‘The Rock’.

O Light Invisible we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.
O Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less;
The eastern light our spires touch at morning.
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,
The twilight on silent pools at batflight,
Moonlight and starlight, owl and moth light;
O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!

We thank Thee for the lights that we have kindled,
The light of altar and sanctuary;
Small lights of those who meditate at night,
And lights directed through coloured panes of windows,
And light reflected from the polished stone,
The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco.
Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward
And see the light that fractures through unquiet water.
We see the light but see not whence it comes.
O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!

Later in the poem there’s another set of lines that I think are also important.

And when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we may set thereon the little lights for which our bodily vision is made.
And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.

Eliot is one of my favourite poets. It’s always a treat to unexpectedly hear his words.

HRH and the boy are out back shifting snow in the backyard. The plan is for HRH to clear a place for Liam to play, which was impossible as there was a metre of snow from fence to fence. Liam, however, waved cheerily at me and said, “Bye, Mama! I going to build a castle!”

When they come in, there will be Solstice stockings to open with the upstairs neighbours, and brunch. Then I’m heading out to pick up two or three last-minute things (why can we not find Liam’s stocking anywhere?), and HRH is taking his turn out while the boy naps, to get a variety of frozen nibbly things at M&Ms and drinkables at the liquor store.

And then, I think we will be set, apart from a complete house-cleaning on Monday morning. Then my parents arrive in town, and the next stage of the seasonal festivities begin.

Five Things

1. The scent of fresh pine in the house.

2. Making homemade bread.

3. Surprise money in the mail. (The gods provide.)

4. The MS currently printing out, in prep for submission. I love you, little YA novel. (Also: no printing foul-ups so far!)

5. Waking up at oh-gods o’clock last night to pull the notebook into bed and write the final scene of the Pandora book. (Now I just need to write the missing climax of the novel. Details, details…)

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 12,398
New words today: 2,129

Potpourri, potpourri, potpourri. Who knew I’d have so much to say about it. Well, all right, I made point-form observations about household gods and spinning, too.

I’m going to go simmer a cinnamon stick, a few cloves, and some orange peel now. It ought to smell a lot more like Christmas in here.

ETA: Bah! No cinnamon sticks! I used powdered cardamom instead because I thought it would smell good and be a decent alternative to the powdered cinnamon.

Hearthcraft Book Update

Total word count, hearthcraft book: 10,269
New words today: 1,468

Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane really is quite illuminating for a neo-pagan who creates a temporary formal sacred space as necessary for worship and/or spiritual work, as it examines the definition, concept, and construction of sacred space quite thoroughly. Anyone who does this should read it; they’d likely go ‘hmm’.

The more I throw into the document, the more I move around. It evolves more in form and flow every time. Each day it’s a little closer to something coherent.

One-sixth complete!