I have a dear friend who, for a time, officially offered reviews. This is coming to an end as she is YAY focusing more on her own in-various-stages-of-production works YAY. She maintained a firm policy of refusing to give bad reviews, so if there was a book she wound up not liking, for whatever reason, instead of talking about why, she simply would not review it.

I’ve been on the fence about that. I think that one needs to at least think about why it doesn’t work — is the writing bad? Does the story not make sense? Is it just a subject you don’t care for? I have given not great reviews in the past; there are some writers whose works just do not work for me. A great example is Guy Gavriel Kay’s work. I’ve tried a bunch. His Fionavar Tapestry series should have been right up my ally. I loved the lushness of his writing, I loved the premises, and I could not progress very far into the series. I also tried three others of his books, to the same end. There’s no flaw in his writing that I can find, I just didn’t care about the stories. So, I wouldn’t give them a bad review (because I never finished) because the a fault in making a connection isn’t the sole province of the author.

I try to separate, too, the writing from what could be editoral and/or formatting issues and annoyances. Often, I’ll include that in my review and stress that I understand it happens, and it doesn’t usually impact my rating, if I’m using a rating system.

And then there are books that just come across rushed and, well, bad. We’re allowed to write bad books, right? They can’t all be amazing.

So, what do we do? Do we ignore them? Do we review them? Especially when the book in question is written by a writer’s whose work you typically enjoy? When the whole thing comes across as completely rushed, when you can see, as a writer, that if it had been given a little more time it could have been great . . . do we point that out, do we walk about it, or do we pretend it never happened?

Where do you stand on this issue, as a writer, as a reader, as one who looks for reviews?

There is no wasted writing. I now know one way for sure that chapter wasn’t supposed to happen. Is this what we tell ourselves in order to keep writing without going (too) nuts? “It’s all practice, it all counts!” Practice, I guess, in letting ourselves be wrong, in being humble enough to keep serving the story and following it, despite its sidetracks and dead-ends.

I go to bed thinking about this project. I wake up thinking about it. I wish I was able to dream about it on command. I keep writing it because I want to read the darn thing and no one else will write it!

I still owe (to whom, exactly?) a number of reviews. This weekend (YAY FRIDAY!!!) I’m roasting chicken, making a Reuben pie, and I may very well tackle that sock…

What are your plans for the weekend?

Today I still haven’t decided. A history of food preservation? Post-apocolyptic zombies from a zombie’s pov? The first Brenda Strange book? What to read, what to read? At least the (gorgeous!) Human Evolution book is too large to tote around with me all day, so that narrows it down. . .

Off to work, two hours earlier than scheduled, and really I just want to stay home and fix the 1k plus words that need to be changed from yesterday and continue on . . .

A little backstory before we continue. Home is a difficult thing. Any child of an acoholic can tell you this. I’m not going to get in to the knitty nitty-gritty of life growing up in that sort of a situation. If you know what I’m talking about you don’t need me to tell you and if you don’t know what I’m talking about no words will ever be able to make you know. It’s ingrained. It becomes a part of you. Growing up, we had shelter. My parents (and the bank, but I didn’t know that then; I was a kid!) owned the house we lived in. Yes, there were financial troubles, but we never did end up on the streets. I’m not sure that matters. If you grow up with an alcoholic parent, you grow up with a sort of love-hate relationship with the concept of stability.

When I moved out into my first apartment, it never did seem to take on the feel of sanctuary I thought “home” should have. It was clean, it was uncluttered, it had the requisite dog, it had relatively quiet people with relatively quiet interests, but I still wasn’t able to feel completely comfortable. Years later when I moved in with Beth, it was a bit like moving back to my childhood home (that is, back into the most unstable times in my childhood home) only worse, because it wasn’t my dysfunctional family I had to contend with. At least with my dysfunctional family there was love and shared history. My belongings were packed away and until we emptied out the basement and created our temple room I pretty much had no breathing room for some time. I was thrown back into survival mode — and I don’t begrudge the time spent there, because Beth needed the support of someone who cared about her for her and her alone, to help her get out of that abusive place.

Three years ago, we moved into our first place together with just us, and it was great! And exhausting. The house wasn’t in good shape, but they let us rent it with our horde. We were exhausted from the move, and then there were health problems, and then, well, you know, the economy tanked and we were barely making ends meet . . .

And then the owners announced they wanted to sell the place. This brings us to here and now.

Here and now, Beth and I are living in our most favorite place ever. Yes, it came with heartache and sacrifice, but we know that the cats we re-homed are in great places and are utterly adored, we discovered that our remaining cats are insane and prefer less space rather than more space, and the dog is happy to be further away from the bear raccoons of our older neighborhood (we won’t mention the wild turkey sightings).

Downsizing wasn’t hard; we’d carved out the unnecessary stuff from our lives when we moved cross country, and our first place out here was rented furnished, so, we don’t even have that much by way of furniture: bookcases, a desk chair, a desk, a mattress, a feather-topper that serves as my bed (mattresses are too soft!) four folding tables, and two camp chairs. We had plans for a futon, but since the Corbie’s injury we’ve been on the fence with regards to that. We do want a flopping-and-reading place for the small living room, so those of us who are up late or get up early have a comfortable option for reading. We go back and forth between a low to the ground twin sized futon or throw pillows. The biggest ouch to downsizing was giving up shrine space for those we care about but who are not central to our daily lives. Photos and small shelves on the wall help with that.

Our plans for the furnishing of the house include: a free standing pantry. There are amble cabinets in this place, but between Beth’s herbal work and jewellery making, I’m already down to one three foot long shelf for food storage. The goal is to get her herbal supplies in easy-to-reach areas that will free up cabinet space so I can start exploring canning. We’re back and forth about living room seating, and I do want some sort of table in the kitchen. Not for eating meals, but rather for an additional writing space and, when the time comes, loom space!

Our home isn’t like most peoples homes. We don’t own a TV. We have shrines. Our bedroom has two mattresses, two spinning wheels and a dog crate. Our cabinets are over-run with herbs. We have one closet you can’t even get into for the veritable wall of fiber that will fall upon you. I can’t decide if I’d rather a second desk in the living room or that futon . . . and it’s my favorite living space by far. It is the one that says, “You are home.”

What is this series going to be about? Home-making. Reclaiming forgotten arts that I want to have not forgotten. The joys of cooking. The struggles of cooking. The joys of being home and finding sanctuary from the world at large. How important it is for you to define for you what your sanctuary space should be like — because it is. It’s your home; you decide what’s important. Period. I don’t really have any set goals for this beyond: I want to talk about it. That’s all.

So, for Yule, my longest and beyond-dear friend . . . we’ll call her FiberandSheepNut-S (as opposed to FiberandSheepNut-B) sent along some sock yarn, a pattern, and teeny needles, to support my Year of Socks. See, I’ve been knitting rectangles and squares for some time, happily happy in my “intermediate beginner” phase for too long. I like security. I’m having fun exploring ribbing, with nary an increase or a decrease to be had. But, the reason I started knitting in the first place (aside from having an excuse to go into yarn shops and throw myself face first into piles of skeins, anyway) was so that I could make myself socks.

I’ve discovered, in my knitting adventures, that I’m more of a process than a product knitter (except for socks!!) and that I’d much rather household goods — wash cloths, scatter rugs, blankets (in theory? I’ve done wash cloths, and bags, and scarves, and mug cozies) than sweaters and stuff. And, I like small pieces, so that I can knit comfortably on the bus. In fact, this is why I have so many wash cloths: they are small, they allow for small needles to avoid poking my neighbors on the bus, and they allow for pattern practice. I quite love them.

Socks would also be immensely practical and small and portable. I clearly need to knit socks.

Originally I was going to partake of the Rockin’ Sock Club except I’d also decided I was going to learn weaving this year, and get the book written (and a second book, at that!) and then suddenly it was too overwhelming to finish socks in two months, for a whole year, so I decided no, I’d do it on my own at my own pace. FiberandSheepNut-S, because she is beyond awesome and amazing, sent along my first project. And then I opted for bigger/different/less scary yarn and needles with the promise that after I got the hang of them down, I’d knit a finer sock in the same style.

You can, ah, see my own pace. That’s Sock Number 1. It’s a very basic pattern — ribbing and then nothing but knit stitch for the rest of the sock! I was knitting it when Beth’s daughter was out, but then stopped because I got scared. I wrote down where I left off. Did I save the paper? Ha! (Well, I didn’t exactly not save it. I did not, however, put it somewhere safe from the myriad of beasties in our house, apparently)

I am about 97.8% confident that when I sit down with the pattern and the sock and some amount of time and my brain turned on (not this weekend) I’ll be able to figure out where I was and pick it up again. I’m also pretty sure that even if I mess it up it’s okay, because I gave myself permission to make this sock not exactly wearable. It’s my first sock, darn it! (heehee, darn it, get it??)

I haven’t picked knitting up again since I put this sock down. I miss knitting. I need to find a new project . . .

Except, there are some things I can’t just suck up. There are some things that don’t require pulling on my big girl breeches so much as they require me just weathering until the storm (real or imagined) passes and equilibrium can be re-established.

It’s been that sort of week. And even then I’ve managed to get 2k words done on the new novel, write a few posts for the Pagan Blog Project over at the other blog, and make progress on my editing job. YAY!

Today we went to the local library. Instead of telling you about the books in my TBR pile, I figured I’d show you.

Food and home-making books I'm reading or in the TBR pile

And this is the whole stack, minus the e-books:

And this, dear readers, is the dog:

basking in the two seconds of sunlight we receive during winter . . .

These are good things. Happy things. I will look at these things and ignore the evil voice in my head that says all is for naught and I will continue with what I love doing.

Haven’t posted in a few days. Have been writing. Still crazy excited tickled over the new book. I’m also starting a new editing project (we’ll call it Jbook#2) and am enjoying that a *ton*. I’m honored of course to be a first reader, but mostly I’m excited to be able to get to see it now rather than having to wait.

Currently reading: Radical Homemakers and am looking forward to devouring it. I only got it yesterday, and I’m only on the introduction, and so far that’s covering a lot of what I already know, but . . . I can skip prefaces and acknowledgements, but I can’t seem to skip introductions. I’ve also got Winter Moon because I’m tryin go read the Walker Papers stories in order, and I’m just finishing up (today, hopefully, though Radical Homemakers may bump it) Susan Krinard’s Bride of the Wolf. Now that I’m thinking of it, Susan may get her own post at some point. I love her work.

Just finished Womens Work the other day. I owe reviews for about three books now; look for them in the future.

And, 5am is still wrong.

I default into wanting hard absolutes. I don’t know if that’s the Libra influence or the Virgo influence (yay cusps!). I say things like, “I’m going to do XXX words a night,” and I leave myself no leeway. I tried to battle that by instead setting monthly goals rather than weekly ones, except doing that allowed me the freedom to write a huge bulk of my work on 3-4 days out of a three week period (Yes. around 18k in 3-4 days. Are we surprised I burned out?) while also allowing me to trick myself into thinking I’d been slacking off the whole time and accomplishing nothing. When I look at the numbers words, I’m actually on track.

I can’t work at the day job full time and then come home and write full time and not go insane. I have other interests. I want cuddle time with the critters, I want time to walk the dog. Nice long leisurely walks while the sun is shining (for that whole second) and while it’s not raining (oh, wait). I want to have the freedom to knit and to gorge on my reading stack and to work on letters (yes, I do correspond on paper. I have lots of paper) and study and meditate. I can’t do it all every day, but treating my writing as a second full time job isn’t working. It worked for a month (20k!) but now it’s a week later and I’m only starting to get excited about the project again. Three weeks on one week off is not my idea of sustainable.

The new attempt is: 300 to 1500 words a day, 4-5 days a week. Huge, huge number range there, and the cap is so that I can’t spend a few days churning out 4k plus and then render my arms and hands useless. Also, the flow depends a bit on . . . well. It’s like making sourdough. I need to leave some starter behind, for the next bit. If I write all I know about that particular bit, it can’t brew and steep and germinate. And so. Three hundred measely words means that even when I’ve got a pounding migraine I can trick my mind into accepting that I accomplished something.

Mind games. It’s all about mind games.

If you go for nothing else, go lookit Corbie!

. . . . only he made it boring. How can human sacrifice be boring???

I’ve set it down and moved on to Womens Work instead.