costa rica

Down to our last week here! We leave next Thursday and head to Miami where we’ll spend a day and then (yay!) hop on a cruise ship to take advantage of a last-minute opportunity. I’ve never been on one, so I’ve been reading up on the experience and am looking forward to it. We’ll be spending seven days on the boat and seeing a little of the Caribbean (which I cannot envision without thinking of the Sid Meier Pirates! game, which consumed a great deal of my time at one point. After that we’re headed up to the NYC/PA area for early October, where I think I’ll be around the time of the SFWA reception there, but I’m still figuring that out.

I’ve not gotten much writing this week, but for good reasons. First we visited the Sloth Sanctuary here and spent the night in the Buttercup Room of their B&B. We got to go for an early morning canoe ride along a placid salt-water river, seeing bats, birds, and beautiful vegetation, then spent a couple of hours touring and seeing sloths, including the babies, which are the essence of cuteness. Here’s a video from the baby sloth nursery.

What I worked on:

Sent out a story to an audio market.

More on Circus In the Bloodwarm Rain (novel): 574

Prairie Dog Town (working title)(story): 715 words. I’ve rounded the 3k mark on this, and think I’m in the home stretch. I want to finish it soon, so I have a few days to lay it aside and let it cool before I pick it up to polish as the next Patreon story.

Letters to My Father (story): 474 words, which finished it off, and sent it back to my charming collaborator/spouse.

Carpe Glitter (story): 457  words, still a long way to go.

Total wordcount: 2220. As always I may try to get in a little more tonight, but probably not.

New Spanish vocabulary: a la parilla (grilled), la acera (the sidewalk), el barro (the mud), el largato (the lizard), la libreria (the bookstore)

Today’s been gorgeous and sunny, though very hot. We walked to Taco Bar for lunch, and found the food both delicious and a pretty good bargain. Then past the super mercado for dinner supplies and the trudge back home.

As noted on Twitter, I’ve been reading The Wheel of Time series since embarking on this trip, and I’ve finally hit the Brandon Sanderson part. Between that and spending so much time in travel, I haven’t had much time to read anything else, but I did finish up the first two books of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, Authority and Annihilation, which I highly recommend. The final volume, Acceptance, comes out September 2.

Tried the balcony out for writing last night. Here’s a blog post that emerged.

For a long time I listen to the ocean, a background of some chirping insect, shrill arcs of sound going out against that massive, constant grumble. That is what life is like, singing out against that gray and empty grind, not caring what it sounds like, because singing is the only thing you can do.

I can feel my shoulders relaxing as I type, the guilt of several weeks (over a month, really) of getting little done, not just because of the traveling or the distractions but because I let myself get lazy and forget that what a writer does is write. If you want to call yourself one, that’s what is necessary and while that’s a hard standard to maintain consistently sometimes in the face of a multitude of crises of the mind or body or world or family, it’s one I hold myself to, first and foremost.

A confession: I am not one of those writers who “have to” write, the ones seized with such a fervid muse that they cannot exist without words spilling out of them. I envy them, and sometimes in my heart, get irritated by a smugness that is really an interpretation imposed by my own insecurities.

But I have always defined myself as a writer, even in the days when I wasn’t writing so much and was pouring all that energy into writing for an online game or technical documentation or some combination of the two. So when I don’t do it, it’s not so much that it’s the writing building up. In fact, some days I’m digging the words out, and they’re obdurately clinging to the inside of my skull so I have to wrestle them onto the keyboard. Even now, I want them to flow and they’re halting, the flow coming in fits and spurts while all the time the ocean softly roars, as though it can’t help itself at times, perhaps getting just a little too excited, a little too enthusiastic in its mutterings.

Here’s the thing. When I’m not writing consistently, when I’m not hitting solid word count on at least most of the days of the week, I feel unmoored, adrift, unsure of my center. What good is a writer who isn’t writing?

There’s also an awareness of time creeping up on me. Often I wish I’d done more with those early years “” though who would have known in all that young adult thrashing about? While I don’t want to let guilt consume me, it’s not a bad goad. I believe it was John McPhee that said any motive for writing is valid, even spite and malice.

And it’s a goal that I know is doable, to hit two thousand words “” and more when I’m being motivated, which often coincides with felicities of mind or body. I don’t worry about whether they’re bad or good, all that matters is that they’re words that actually make it from my mind to the page. Right now I’m adding these words into the count, even though I don’t usually count nonfiction, because right now the focus is warming up, priming the pump, getting myself back into that productive groove.

It’s the days when I get no word count, not even a page written in a notebook, that really bug me, so when the words are flowing, there’s a point where all is well, when I can feel myself assembling words to express what I want to say and they’re falling into place quickly, one at a time but in a constant patter, like raindrops falling on the keyboard.

So tonight is swell and good. We’re here for a month, then probably onward to another country to try a few weeks there. I can get into a routine that feels productive and which includes some of the things that help ensure my mood is good and I’m undistracted by feeling unwell, such as good solid walking bouts and not eating junk food and getting enough sleep.

So what will I work on this month?

First and foremost is finishing up the YA novel I’ve been working on, along with several stories, two for anthologies and a couple for the Patreon campaign. While the stories will be fun and I do want to get them finished, the novel is what I want to be spending most of my time doing. I’ll be posting snippets and word counts as I go, keeping myself accountable. Because that’s another thing for a writer — you have to hold yourself accountable, because there’s nothing out there, really, to do it for you.

Good writing to you all. I hope you’ll get some words today as well.

Day Three here, so I thought I’d describe what it’s like. We’re renting a condo that overlooks the beach, towards the northwest end. The place is great, and there’s a balcony that is literally bigger than our living room back home. We share it with a tiny lizard that is living in the drapes in the living room.

It’s rainy season, so it’s Humid and warm, but there’s usually a nice breeze coming in from the ocean. Rainy season doesn’t mean the same thing that it does in Seattle. Here sometimes it’s nice and sunny and then suddenly OMG THERE ARE BUCKETS OF WATER FALLING FROM THE SKY. I kinda like it, myself. And I’m sure it doesn’t hurt me to be forced inside in order to write. 😉

We’re a little outside the main drag, so we’re within walking distance of grocery store, restaurants, etc, but it’s a bit of a slog in this heat. People are friendly if you address them, but it doesn’t feel as though most of them are interested in interacting. (Not that they should, just that it feels a lot less chatty than back in Seattle.) My Spanish is improving in leaps and bounds, though, so I’m feeling pretty comfortable in terms of being able to communicate. We’ve also found they show Big Bang Theory with Spanish subtitles every evening, which is a nice way to supplement the geekier part of my vocababulary.

The vegetation, the birds, etc, are wonderfully new. Lots and lots of flowers, plenty of lizards (in a wide range of sizes), and birds I don’t know, aside from the pair of macaws we saw on our first evening, which seemed a lovely omen. We believe they were getting very friendly with each other — not sure what that does to the omen’s significance.

We can see the hills and mountains, which usually have clouds slumbering on them, lovely vistas that remind me a little of the Blue Mountain greeting cards we used to sell at Waldenbooks, a ragged line trailing into softer fog, but without all the platitudes written underneath.