lunabee34

1.

When a Writer Can't Write: Studies in Writer's Block and Other Composing Problems by Mike Rose

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is a compilation of essays from the 8os that includes the usual suspects I've been encountering in my research into writing anxiety (such as Boice, Daly, Larson, etc). The essays are moderately interesting but nothing I'd urge someone who wasn't researching this topic to seek out. Boice's essay is probably the most interesting to me; he's a psychologist, and he talks about psychotherapies that he uses in his practice to treat blocked writers. He has them conduct automatic writing (which is more hardcore than just freewriting; it's in the spiritualist and Surrealist vein where they aren't looking at the paper they're writing on and they're being distracted by being read to so that everything they're writing is supposedly coming directly from the subconscious). I also liked the essays that have sample student essays and specific interventions that instructors used to help those students.



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2. I'm really looking forward to Yuletide. It's one of the only times of the year that I truly feel like a fan again.

3. Y'all, I am so exhausted. All the time. It sucks so hard. I'm going to bed at 8:45, 9:30 and waking up exhausted and staying exhausted all day. About 2 every day, I could just fall out and sleep until the next morning. I just went to my endo, so clearly there's Nothing Wrong with Me. It's just sapping my motivation to do anything. I'm still exercising every day, but it is so hard to make myself. Ditto work. *sigh*

4. Emma's sink is now leaking. Plumber coming today. At this rate, we'll have had to repair every damn sink in this house by Christmas. I'm fully expecting the AC to go next week followed by the eruption of a sinkhole in the living room floor.

5. Josh got a new phone, and Emma got her first phone this past weekend. Damn, have phones gotten expensive since the last time we bought them. Sheesh at the price gouging. I'm intending to keep my current phone until it is a brick. Dang.

1. Check out the beautiful icons made by misbegotten of houses and other images associated with homes: HERE. <3

2. Thursday was a day. We picked up Emma's bed and bedframe. Turns out the bedframe is not functional without a headboard. We had intended to wait until we get paid to buy her one but drove into town (45 min drive) to get the headboard. We get the headboard home, and there's a defect in the way they drilled the holes; the bolts provided won't fit. Josh went to the hardware store and attempted to find bolts to fit with no luck. He took it back to town; the store let him open another one to see if it was functional; it also had the defect, so we returned it. By this time, the local store that sold us the bedframe is closed. Emma slept on the boxsprings and mattress. Fortunately, yesterday, they exchanged the bedframe they sold us for one that functions without a headboard. During the whole headboard debacle, Josh's phone went wonky, and it looked like we'd have to buy a new one before we even finished paying for this one. *headdesk* But once it ran out of power, he was able to turn it back on, and it seemed fine. So, extremely trying day in which everything worked out in the end. LOL

So the takeaway here is gratitude on my part (thank you, universe) and also, don't buy headboards at At Home.

3. Been reading: ( Joe Abercrombie + Mark Fisher )

4. *Fiona is old enough to now be emotionally affected by what she watches; this is her description of what happens when a movie moves her to tears.

1. Finally got a plumber to come out. It's an ordeal, naturally. The plumbers seem professional and on-the-up-and-up (unlike the first set I tried to get to come out here who wouldn't give me the time of day). They have to order a faucet because everything in this house is custom made and wack-a-doo. So, sink will be fixed next week with a much heftier price tag than I had anticipated.

2. But! We bought a bed and spent about 1200 less than I had budgeted, so it'll all come out in the wash.

3. Got our first energy bill for the new place, and I am ecstatic. This place is so much bigger with so many more windows. I was really worried our energy bills would be out of control. But! It's comparable to/a little less than what we were paying at the rental! Yay! Now I just need to get the water/gas/trash combo bill and see what the damage is there. I am very optimistic.

4. And now for a little plagiarism in the world of writing manuals:

Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is not the edition of the book I read; I think the one I read is from the original 1934 printing of the book.

So, I've fallen down the rabbit-hole of reading lots of writing manuals and books about writing while researching my project on writing anxiety/the writing marathon.

Like some of the other books I've read, this one is a little off the beaten path and might prove useful to someone who's read a lot of writing manuals and is looking for something a little different to jump start her writing or for novel ways to get over blocks or for new approaches to developing a writerly life. Brande has some very interesting and specific exercises that writers at any stage might find helpful. It's also a very short book and not a huge time commitment to read.

What I find so fascinating is that the concept of morning pages (Julia Cameron The Artist's Way) seems to have originated with Brande; I've never read The Artists's Way, so I've ILLed to see just how close the parallels are (I mean, Brande even calls them "the morning's pages"). Amazon's search inside a book feature lets me know that the word brande appears on page 196 of The Artist's Way, so maybe Cameron credits Brande for the idea, but, of course, that page is not one I can view. Additionally, Brande describes in 1934 something extremely close to freewriting, which Peter Elbow is going to popularize in Writing without Teachers; I have read Elbow before--in fact, I own a copy of that book, and he credits/cites absolutely nothing in the text. That's next on my reading list as it's been about 20 years since I've read it.

Tracing these ideas backwards is absolutely riveting.

Brande provides a list of writing manuals she's found formative (who knew so many of the Victorian authors wrote writing manuals?), and if I wanted I could easily start going down those rabbit holes to see whether morning pages and freewriting are concepts Brande borrowed from elsewhere (as Robert Boice says, in one antecedent--freewriting is an extrapolation of the automatic writing done by 19th century spiritualists who believed they were communicating with another world). But I will save that exploration for when this current project has concluded.



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We bought a couch and a loveseat for about a grand less than I thought we'd have to spend! We bought an area rug and throw pillows for the couches. We cleaned Kroger out of groceries (including some delectable sauces on close out prices!).

And! And! And! We got our entire deposit back on the rental. I mean, we have been good tenants; always paid our rent on time ($84,000 worth of rent *cries*) and we have taken good care of the property. But! We've lived in the house for ten years, so it needs to be repainted, and the carpet needs to be replaced (it was stained in places when we moved in), and I was afraid we would be denied or only given part of it. When I took the property manager around and showed her all the stuff we'd done (like installing bars and shelves in all the closets which had just been useless tiny rooms or installing towel racks in all bathrooms and installing medicine cabinets), she was very impressed and just immediately signed us the check. I thanked her for being such a good landlord, and then she told me that she really appreciated the kind words because she had to delete her Facebook recently because of the constant abuse from tenants; I'm honestly floored. This company has been amazing landlords, immediately responsive to any problems or things that break. I mean, the property manager gave me a Christmas present this year. That she made. This just reinforced my notion that having a Facebook as an educator is a horrible idea. All I need is some kiddo's mom blasting me for giving their kid's essay in which Poe's Israfel doth dwell in a clock tower in NJ a bad grade.

I want to buy all the furniture. It is starting to become a sickness. LOL I want like a chaise lounge for my bedroom and a fancy bench for the end of my bed and three or so end tables and a club chair and a linen chest and a china cabinet and a different cabinet for some other stuff and *takes a breath*. I will forbear but damn. I WANTS MY PRECIOUS!

We are almost done with the painting: just touch ups on both bathroom ceilings, touch-ups in the kitchen, and all of the laundry room. I have scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed all the rooms; tomorrow I can scrub and scrub the kitchen and laundry.

Then all that's left with the inside of the house is carting our shit over! By the end of this week, we'll be fully in our new home!

I made our first mortgage payment today. That was a chunk of change. LOL It's going to be surreal paying a bill that large every month. I didn't realize you could do this, but for my birthday, a friend went to our bank and paid like ten bucks on our mortgage; the card said she'd paid for a kitchen tile. It was a really sweet gesture.

Still on the hunt for a living room rug. What is up with all the washed out persian rugs? Like left out to bleach in the radiation-soaked apocalypse. So ugly. Thinking about Wayfair as a possibility. Anybody bought anything from there?

Fi turned five yesterday. She got a bike with training wheels. It was epic (even if it was just the four of us). LOL She has been so good this summer; she hasn't been whiny or bitchy at all about me and Josh being non-stop gone working on the house. Emma has been a saint. Not only has she kept her sister all day every day with no complaints; she looks for ways to help while we're gone. We'll get home, and she's washed and folded three loads of clothes or emptied the dishwasher or boxed up some books. I am so grateful for her.

I'm a lucky, lucky person, y'all. So much gratitude.

And the previous owner isn't completely out of it yet (technically he has until tomorrow at 5 to vacate), but I kinda strong armed him into letting us in already (and he was totally fine with it), and we spent from about 7:30 this morning until 5:30 working in the house and didn't even get to paint anything yet.

*cries*

It is such a good house. It's going to be so beautiful when we're done. I WANT IT TO BE DONE FASTER BY SOMEONE ELSE WHILE I DRINK A MIMOSA AND SUPERVISE!

Our fridge was delivered this morning, and the water dispenser leaks, so they get to come out tomorrow and fix it or give me a new damn fridge. Which the manager on duty confirmed without the damn. So more fridgery tomorrow!

Y'all, beer me some strength. Josh and I are getting along fabulously, like nary a disagreement. He grilled me this aged beef steak for dinner tonight that made the baby Jesus weep. But tomorrow is another day! In which we might really get on each other's nerves. I hope we continue to get along, that we work like lightning, and that we can get everything that needs to be painted done before the children come back from my parents' next week.

So much good stuff is happening. It's like a dream. Josh and I both got raises (teeny ones, but raises!)! I got some money back on the insurance on both cars since we added a home insurance line. Josh had jury duty Monday that got cancelled. Ecore labelled me a high performing professor based on my performance last semester + student reviews (and they go into your class and check off a rubric of shit that you have to do). My Tony & Nebula story is getting so much positive attention; I had forgotten how freaking awesome it is to get feedback on fic. It is so freaking awesome. We are winning at life right now, my friends. I am so happy. Take that, fridge. You will not get me down. My hamstrings are getting me down and also my forearms, but you I will defeat!

/verbal diarrhea

1. We're closing on Thursday. I got the final closing statement yesterday, and closing costs are going to be 3100 dollars less than the original estimate they gave us at the beginning of the month. I am so relieved. That estimate made me all *wah*; this is much more in line with what I was expecting. I am just so grateful. This month has been high on the gratitude.

2. ( Review of Essex Serpent )

3. ( SPOILERS FOR LUKE CAGE )

4. ( SPOILERS FOR GOTHAM )

5. So, Abby's final episode of NCIS: I haven't watched NCIS in ages, but I tuned in for this one. I expected them to kill her, so her living was a bonus. I doubt I'll watch the show again; it started going downhill for me when Ziva left, and it really went downhill for me when they killed Bishop's boyfriend for no reason. After that I only watched intermittently; now so much of the original cast is gone that I really don't care as much. I do still dig Jimmy; even though it aired when I was barely paying attention to the show, one of my favorite episodes is the one where Jimmy talks the guy down from the ledge. They really do need to end this show, though. I mean, it's almost ready to graduate high school and go off to college. Enough is enough.

but I'm not. LOL

After going back and forth about four times, the seller finally accepted our offer. We are under contract!

I really hope we've made the right decision. I very much want our own house and property. I am very much looking forward to a better, bigger living space that suits our needs more than where we're living. Those feelings are outweighing the niggling feeling of being trapped that I can't help having. I'm certain that everyone who buys a house has some of these feelings; I'm just a little overwhelmed by how irrevocable it is.

I'm also a little overwhelmed by everything we have to do to make this happen.

One thing I've been very grateful for is that Josh and I are pretty good at limiting our belongings. More than once since we started seriously looking for a house, I've gone to a cabinet or drawer with the intent of clearing out unwanted items only to realize that I'd already done that. We've got some culling to do for sure but not nearly as much as we might.

Now to start collecting boxes!

1. I got the most amazing card from shaddyr. It's covered with gemstones! She says I remind her of jewels! *hearts in eyes* Thank you so much, sweetie.

2. The Undergraduate Conference was today, and my students rocked it! Hell, *I* rocked it. Our panel was based on the event/program from last week and our research, and OMG I LOVE THESE STUDENTS! I've been teaching college English for almost twenty years now, and this is the first time I've ever wanted to be friends with students. LOL They are graduating this month, so I hope they take me up on my offer to stay in contact. This has been the most professionally rewarding academic year I've had in a long time.

3. I've got a book review coming out in the September edition of TWC, so I'm excited about that.

4. We're making an offer on a house on Monday. So terrified. So exhilarated. Nausexcited. IDK Such a huge step. This house is perfect. I'm terrified we're not going to get it. I'm terrified we are going to get it and then somehow find ourselves in terrible financial straights. It's so scary. But also, I've felt like we've been in a holding pattern for a couple of years now, and I've been ready to grow and move to the next stage, and this is part of that. Expect more house posts to be forthcoming (either of the devastated variety or of the ecstatic OMG moving and nesting variety). I have no reason to believe it won't go through; it's been on the market for awhile now with no takers. When we went to get preapproved for a loan, we were told we could basically buy anything we wanted; the loan officer said we have old people credit. I mean, my FICO is 802. So, it's going to happen unless something super bizarre goes down. *squeal* I'm going to be relying on y'all for interior decorating advice liek whoa.

5. ( The Social Contract by Ardrey )