lunabee34

1. Fiona and I went to see the musical of the movie Waitress with a colleague, her daughter, and mother-in-law. It was really funny and surprisingly moving; I teared up multiple times. It was also surprisingly risque, and I might have hesitated on taking Fiona if I'd realized there would be so much simulated sex. LOL

2. sweettartheart sent me the most amazing Pride flag Star Trek communicator. It has gone on my work bag with all my other pins. I love it!

3. We are still really enjoying The Dragon Prince. ( don't spoil me please! )

4.
Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I enjoyed this whole collection, but I especially enjoyed the Rome + Dragons and the Pride and Prejudice + Dragons stories. My favorite story of all is a kind of Vandermeer/Atwood/Bacigalupi mashup that is just fantatsic.



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System Collapse by Martha Wells

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I will never get tired of reading about the ongoing adventures of Murderbot, ART, and their humans.



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1. I got a wonderful birthday card from lyr, a box of books (including The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which I am very excited to read) from executrix, and a regular card from 020104isme. Quite the postal haul!

2. This morning the hawk was screeching its head off non-stop. It finally landed right on top of the bird feeder and perched there; I let it sit for awhile so we could admire it and then had Fiona shoo it off. I do not want it to start thinking of the bird feeder as its drive-through. It's beautiful and so big; at first it tried to perch on one of the curved hooks and kept wobbling comically until it perched right on the top finial where all the hooks converge. I can't tell if it's a juvenile or adult or what. It needs to shut up, though. So damn loud. LOL

3. We just watched Nanette, the comedy special on Netflix by Hannah Gadsby, and I cannot recommend it enough. I think it works best if you go into it unspoiled, but it definitely contains material that can be triggering for some people.

( spoilers )

4.

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I love Murderbot. I love Murderbot's humans. I love Murderbot acquiring additional humans.

:)



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5. And would this even be a post by Lorraine if it did not include some form of whining about health woes? This is a rhetorical question requiring no answer.

Josh got a bit better and then plateaued in this place where he just feels low-level wretched all the time. I guess I expected the meds to start making him feel better more quickly. :(

I dropped a full Yeti cup on my toe, and it hurts like a mother. It's not broken, but my toenail is a beautiful (truly) shade of blue.

6. Finally, might I recommend yoga nidra to any of you who have trouble sleeping? My foot hurt enough yesterday that I didn't want to do any of the actual yoga as it sometimes requires curling toes under and etc, so I did a yoga nidra meditation. Which was an enormous mistake because I did it in the middle of the day and it just about konked me out for the rest of the day. It was deeply, deeply effective at relaxation, like almost scarily so, and if I ever have trouble sleeping again, I am totally going to just find a session on youtube and do it in my bed. Wow.

I finally got around to finishing Murderbot!

( Murderbot series )

Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing by Robert Boice

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Boice knows his stuff. He has thoroughly researched writing blocks and writing anxiety and offers solutions from a clinical angle as a mental health clinician. He also has done significant research on automatic writing and free writing and their usefulness to the blocked writer.

This is an older book, but I think this book would be really helpful for anyone who is trying to develop good writing habits. It's geared toward academics, but I honestly think it could be helpful to anyone who's trying to do any kind of writing. It's very much process-oriented: lots of worksheets to fill out to figure out where you fall on the spectrum of X issue, lots of checklists for making writing productive, etc.

Boice's basic thesis is that in order to be a productive writer, you go through four stages. The first couple of stages are just focused on generating writing; so stage one is about automatic and generative writing (essentially a kind of targeted freewriting and outlining and note taking). The second stage is about stimulus control, creating external motivators to ensure that you write on a regular basis. The third is about cutting out the negative self-talk that inhibits writing, and the fourth is about making your writing public (in a support group, to a select reader, etc). I've read a lot of writing manuals at this point, and I think what Boice's has going for it that a lot of others don't is that number one, he credits Dorothea Brande instead of ripping her off (looking at you, Julia Cameron!); also despite being a psychologist or psychiatrist, he does not insist that writing blocks or writing anxiety come from trauma. Trauma can certainly be a factor, but it's not the only or even main reason that people have trouble writing, and The Artist's Way is off-puttingly full of that insistence. Finally, it's very pragmatic and concrete; nothing in this book is vague. Everything is broken down into a process with steps, and all the steps are evidence-based in Boice's research or the research of others.

This guy wrote tons of articles and books about writing (specifically anxiety and blocks), and I think his arguments are sound.



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