Zoinks

and at the chime, the time is… one thirty seven am.

Yeah, I know, I’ve gone right past the witching hour. I’m not sure what you call this time of night, day, really, since I haven’t gotten to sleep yet. I was at work late tonight, and last night, and because I’m a loon, I have volunteered (ok, the whole lab was pretty much told ‘which day would you like to volunteer to come in next week?’) and I was told that yes, I’m included along with the salaried types. Mmm. Well, since I’m still juggling mortgage and rent along with utilities for three dwellings, working 50 hours next week sounds brutal but also a blessing.

I’ve been struggling with sleep. So this post is going to be more than a little rambling. Because it’s all part of writing. And why I write. And… I dunno. I haven’t been writing a lot since the Big Move. friends who love me and put up with me being a mope assure me that it will come back. I’ve been through worse, and it came back. It’s stress and fatigue and we’ve all been down this road before.

The writing prompt group is helping, a bit. I feel like I’m not doing as much as I was, in my responses, not like when I was writing The Case of the Perambulating Hatrack. I mean, I can’t really expect to put out a novel a year with the MOTE crew, but it was fun while it was happening. I’m just… tired. So tired, and juggling a bunch of other things. Which includes having decided I was going to be a Real Publisher in 2021. Now, when I decided that, I had no idea we were about to move halfway across the country, that I was going from a toxic but slow workplace to a high volume lab where I get hugged by teammates… Still, I’m not unhappy with the projects Sanderley Studios took on.

And I need your help with one of them. I need stories for an anthology that is near and dear to my heart, stories of PTSD, disconnection, healing from trauma, and most of all, hope. You can find the details here.

Earlier this year, I helped a friend and he helped me, a project that wound up becoming One Hungry Werewolf: And Other Monstrous Rhymes. We are working on another one, slowly. And here in a short time, there will be an anthology for young readers, meant to be filled with stories that are hard to find for kids these days. It’s natural to me to be working with children’s illustrations and stories, but also bittersweet as my kids are growing up and becoming more and more independent. Perhaps by the time I have a few children’s books, I’ll have grandchildren. I’m not ready for that yet. Not for a long time.

It’s two o’clock in the morning, and I’m sitting here drifting, staring at the screen and thinking about the passage of time. I’ve been thinking a lot about the future, maybe because I am actively engaged in recreating my future, and my family’s future. I don’t want to give up on writing. I don’t have the time to treat it like I want, but I can’t not write. I don’t have time to market, or promote, or run it like a business, but I’m going to have to make time.

But right now, I think I’d better make time for sleep. It’s going to be a challenging week ahead. I have a feeling by this time next week I’ll be walking dead on my feet. Hm. I should do a zombie story. Brainnsssss….

10 thoughts on “Zoinks”

  1. I hear ya. My writing brain has been in first since Day Job wrapped up for the year. I’ve been critiquing some stories, and writing Familiars short stories because that’s all my grey cells have the energy to do. (Cleaning, going to the range, doing house stuff that I’d ignored during May, and so on take up the rest of my brain.) I’m taking a few days and visiting with family. That should kick me back to where I need to be to finish a Merchant novel and then move to other long-neglected projects. I hope.

  4. I was quite excited to sent off my submission for the anthology, Cedar. My little writer’s heart was going dokidoki. ~:D

    Maybe sleep might be good too though. We can’t live on pure adrenaline, long term.

  5. Well, when I was a wee child, we called those hours “tomorrow.” As in “it’s tomorrow” if we staggered into home after midnight.

    “Wee hours” is more likely to be recognized.

    1. At one of my flying jobs, we sat around in the break room one day discussing what the border between early and late was (one pilot had teenaged sons). We settled on three AM. Two AM was still late, but three AM became early. It seemed like a reasonable separation point.

    2. We call that time of day Oh-Dark-Thirty, or Zero-Dark-Thirty. Unless you’re being precise like 0317hrs, everything after anybody should be awake, through dawn, is “I was up at Oh-Dark-Thirty.”

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