the journal and I

I've kept online journals for seven years now, more or less. Under a pseudonym, there's a journal that started out as a fandom and writing journal and sort of sprawled all over the place. I have a Twitter account and a Tumblr account under the same name, although I don't use either very much.

Under my own name, there's a journal for family that recounts stories of the kids growing up. (And yes, I am on the dreaded Facebook. I don't like it, either.)

It's my aim, by and large, to use this as a "creating" journal.

I want to hold myself accountable as a creative person, and to have a place to discuss and record the creative things I do. I am a writer, a crafter (in various mediums; currently it's mostly textile arts), and I think those creative acts feed each other. I want to document that interconnection and also my progress.

I also want to slowly phase out the pseudonym. I am who I am. The pseudonym does me no favors (especially because, as online and offline circles draw closer, I have to cop to both -- and searching on my name leads you to the pseudonym anyway). And it wasn't really protecting much anyway, other than the fact that I used to write some fan fiction and every so often I still do.

So, that said, let's get into it.

I like to make things up.

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I'm currently working on two novels.

The first, Spinning Jenny, is a YA contemporary ghost story set in and around an abandoned textile mill. Its major themes are the influence of the past on the present and the difficulties of navigating love in the teen years. SJ is currently in a hardcore rewrite to make it a first-person POV, which is vastly improving it.

The second, Just Divine, is a YA fantasy set among the gods of Mount Olympus in ancient Greece. Its major themes are the meaning of divinity and the relationships between mortals and immortals, as well as finding one's own way in an adult world. JD is actually still being written, and my task at the moment is fleshing out the outline so that I can be more focused when I write.

That's kind of an experiment. I tend to be a make-it-up-as-you-go-along kind of writer, the sort of person who writes one draft to get to know the characters and then pummels the novel into shape through vicious rewrites. But that is a slow, painful process, and I'm hoping that, because I have a decent chunk of JD written, I have enough knowledge of the characters to project the remaining story arc accurately. Of course, the characters could always throw me some curveballs. Wouldn't be the first time.

There are two other novels that are in the planning/researching/musing about phase. They are historical and not YA -- not because I'm tossing YA aside, but because the shapes of the stories aren't YA. (Although, of course, that's not to say they couldn't end up being marketed that way should they ever sell.)

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I like to make things with my hands.

I was in the SCA for several years and got into weaving, but found it to be less portable than I would like. (And you can only use inkle trim for so much.) I also really got into historical cooking, and I still like to nose around in old cookbooks to find "new" recipes.

Since leaving the SCA, I've done ceramics and Sculpey, and I've recently gotten into embroidery and knitting. I fought against knitting, because I live in Florida and it's not like we need sweaters and mittens and so forth here. Plus, I have seen how quickly the innocent hobby spirals into yarn addiction, and I have no storage. But I succumbed, and knitting has turned out to be ideal. I can do small projects and finish them relatively quickly; I can knit for charity; I can learn new techniques at a steady pace to keep me interested; I can pick it up and put it down (a lot) to take care of the kids.

Mostly, though, it means I can make usable, attractive things, and that is amazing and cool. Writing can't deliver the same material kick (unless, I assume, you're holding your own published book in your hands -- but I'm not there yet). And I've discovered that it's valuable to my sanity to have some kind of hands-on creative outlet.

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The intersection of hands and mind -- that's proving to be helpful to me. Knitting is meditative, in its way (well, when you aren't tearing your hair out over a dropped stitch) and while I'm knitting I can let my mind drift happily over the vagaries of plot and characterization. This may explain my affection for extremely simple patterns.

Anyway, it's working for me, right now. And I'll be writing about it here.