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You thought I was going to say Internal Editor, didn’t you? We know that guy–the one that shouts mean thoughts at us from the sidelines. The one that tells us we can’t write, this is a stupid idea (or possibly 30 stupid ideas, if you just finished PiBoIdMo. Which they aren’t, by the way. Stupid, I mean.). Yes, we all know that guy. When he visits alone, I can usually handle him.

But sometimes he brings company. He’s been doing that lately. Maybe his friend shows up more easily in December, along with that feeling of it being time to wind up projects, cross off items on the to-do list. Whatever the reason, she’s been here the past couple of weeks and, frankly, I’m getting pretty sick of her.

She’s the Internal Scheduler. She’s not as hard on my actual writing as the Editor. At least she typically tags the word “yet” onto her comments. Like: “You haven’t got very far…yet.” “This isn’t a very strong revision…yet.”

Where does that “yet” come from? From the Should world. The circle of you-know-where that Dante didn’t bother to mention. The world that says I should have finished these picture books already. The one that says I should have sent more than one revision per meeting to my critique group the past few months. The one that says I should have all of  them ready to submit by the end of the year.

I love December. I really do. I love the weather (it starts to get chilly here in California, but–even in a wet year–the rain isn’t pouring down). I love the holidays–the shopping, the wrapping, the Xmas carols in the stores. And, usually, I love that coming into the turn of the year, that feeling of things being good right now and a new set of possibilities waiting just around the corner.

But I do not like the Internal Scheduler. I do not like the fact that she tries to shove me into a regime, tries to make me think that time alone–those hours in the chair–will produce the story I want to tell. I do not like that she makes me start blaming myself for the things I haven’t accomplished.

So what am I going to do with the Internal Scheduler? Same thing I do with the Editor. Tell her to go away. Disappear. Vamoose. Firmly and not even the littlest bit kindly.

And I’m going to work on my stories. With attention and love and patience.

Michelle Cusolito has committed her time and energy toward raising money for the Phillipines. Today, at her website, my donation is up: a signed copy of The Writing and Critique Group Survival Guide and a critique, from me, of the first chapter of your MG or YA novel or a complete picture book.

Click here to bid. And make sure to check out all the other wonderful items!

This weekend, I’ve had a large chunk of unscheduled time. My husband is traveling, my son had some friends over all afternoon and evening yesterday, and today he’s got a paper to write. I’ve had time for both leisure and revising. It would have been a very easy time to just let go of the revising and wallow in the leisure.

But I’ve been doing too much of that lately. So each afternoon, I’ve pushed myself to get into my office and do some work.

And then, of course, I realized why the wallowing was so tempting.

I’m at some stage where the picture book revision just isn’t coming easily. I’m hoping that means I’m actually getting closer to good, closer to done, but I’m not sure. I could analyze the stories or myself to death, trying to find the why behind the painfulness, but I’ve decided…nope. Enough analyzing. Get working. Yesterday, in the dharma talk that follows my meditation “class,” the teacher talked about how the word dukkha, which is commonly translated as “suffering,” actually has a literal meaning that is something like a wheel in which the axle doesn’t fit well. Roll, roll, clunk. Roll, clunk, roll. Clunk, clunk. You know, that’s life.

And, apparently, this weekend, that’s my revision process. Acknowledging, noting as “not pleasant,” and rolling that silly wheel a little further along.

A couple of months ago, our wonderful cat, Lacey, died. I’ve had a lot of cats in my life, and this loss was the biggest–I don’t remember ever missing another cat quite so much after they were gone. So I “knew” it would be a bit before I/we’d be ready to bring another cat into our homes, and–as I do–I made a plan. We have a lot of traveling to do, little short trips, in the next 4-5 months, so I said…okay, no new kitty until Spring. The guys–as they do when it comes to pet questions–agreed with me.

BUT…Missing Lacey so much has translated into just missing having a cat around. Maybe it’s because we’re in Autumn, with Winter coming right around the corner. I mean, Winter. You’re supposed to have a cat on your lap, right? When my husband added a set of cupboards and little shelves along one kitchen wall, a few years ago, he set the bottom shelf “Lacey-high” above the floor, because that’s where one of the heater vents is, and, obviously, Lacey needed to be able to curl up under that shelf. Which she did.

That heater vent is being completely wasted right now.

So, I said to the guys, “Spring, Schming. Right after Thanksgiving, we’re going to the kitty shelter. We’re going to sit down in the kitty room and see who adopts us. And we’re going to bring that kitty home.” The guys…agreed.

But here’s the thing. I have never, never, NEVER gone and got a cat. I counted up the other day, and in the 18 years before I left my parents’ home, I was part-owner and co-habitor with at least twelve cats. Here’s the list (Siblings, feel free to add more in the comments if I’ve forgotten anyone!): Henry, Moses, Tommy, Freddy, Frankie, Callie, Flopsy, Mopsy (Later renamed Lily), Cottontail, Peter, Rye Krisp, Rocky Road (We got tired of my parents naming every pet we had with an -ie or -y ending name!) Dog friends, don’t get worried, we had four dogs in that time (Five? Can’t remember when they got Patrick the Chihuahua, no comments, please!), a couple of canaries, a guinea pig, and I believe a couple of salamanders. And fish.

We bought the canaries and the guinea pig, I think. There may have been some small amount of money exchanged for the first three dogs. But cats? My parents were veterinarians with their own vet hospital. Cats came to them. To us. Pick out a cat? Unheard of.

When I met my husband, he’d had two cats, both of whom had also come to him. Cat (I know!) and Fred. Fred was still around when I showed up, and he was an awesomely cranky cat who actually liked me: Bonus points with the then-boyfriend!

And Lacey found us. She showed up one day in the front yard of our mountain home–clean, well-fed, cuddly, not in the least bit feral, and she climbed into my son’s five-year-old lap and stayed there. My husband says that maybe, if we wait, another clean, well-fed, cuddly, not in the least bit feral cat will show up. I say, no, I’m pretty sure that was Lacey Magic.

So we will go to the shelter and pick out a cat.

Do you know HOW MANY CATS will be at that shelter? It’ll be like this:

I really, really, really want just one cat. We are a very good one-cat family. I know, I know, and I’m not standing on a box and shouting “NO!” to two cats, but still, how in the world do you pick?! How do you walk out with one fuzzball under your arm and leave the others behind?

Tips? Suggestions? Awesome stories? The comments are yours!

So I’ve got a little more time these days. One job ended and, while I’m working to discover the next one and what it will be, I’ve got time for other things. Like more writing. Which is good.

As long as I use it.

Sudden changes can be…sudden. And disruptive. We can focus too narrowly on one task, the one that seems to shout TOP PRIORITY at us, while tucking the other, equally important, pieces of our lives into a corner. I think I’ve done that for the past couple of weeks. Plus, then, there was the cold. Which wasn’t bad enough to keep me from focusing on those “priority” items, but told me it was too much for my creativity. I let myself listen. For a little while, that was okay. Adjustments take…adjusting.

But now it’s time to write. And to look at some goals. I have some more writing time. How do I want to use it? Typically, unsurprisingly, the novel is calling. This extra time I have now is undefined–it could disappear at any moment; it could last for a while. And that “while,” makes me feel like falling into long stretches of early drafting. It makes me feel like immersing myself in characters and moments that build, over pages, to bigger moments. It sounds relaxing, attractive.

I’m saying “no.” I’m saying, “Hey, you have picture books you’ve been trying to Finish.” Part of the call to the longer manuscript is fear; I know this. If I look realistically at where life is right now, I DO have time to finish those picture books. I have time to put in the real work, the committed and focused minutes and hours. Which means…Gulp. Setting to it and doing it. Facing all the quibbles and false starts and WTHs and pushing through them to the other side. Yeah: Fear.

It’s another time when I have to ask myself, “Hey, Becks, what is it you actually want?” And while one of those wants is, sure, to just lose myself in writing and writing and writing, there’s another big one that needs to be attended to. That Big Want is: I want to complete some more projects, I want to submit them, and I want to see what happens. I want to give myself that chance to have my books picked up and possibly, hopefully, end up on a publisher’s schedule and in a reader’s hands. Many readers’ hands.

So it’s picture books first. It’s commitment and determination and focus the projects I’ve brought this far for a reason. It’s getting past the fear and through to the love.

What’s at the top of your writing-to-do list this month?

Words have power. As writers and, heck, as people, we all know that. I will get into an argument with anyone who dismisses a person’s right to choose their own name, their own identity, their own cultural definition. I’ll get into a BIG argument with anyone who doesn’t see the power claimed by those who call themselves “Right to Lifers,” as though those of us who support a woman’s right to choose are anti-life.

Ahem. Okay, that went off on a tangent. But, still, words=power. Yes? Yes.

So I’ve been making my way through a book by Walpola Rahula called What the Buddha Taught. I had been looking for a book that talked about the things the Buddha actually/supposedly said, one without too much interpretation of “translation” or too-heavy layer of spirituality. My meditation teacher recommended Rahula’s book. I’m liking it. It’s a bit slow-going, but it’s nice and basic and clear and has almost a sweet voice to it. There are lots of little details that make me pause and think and have a kind of mm-hmm moment. Like this:

According to Buddhism there are two sorts of understanding: What we generally call understanding is knowledge, an accumulated memory, an intellectual grasping of a subject according to certain given data. This is called ‘knowing accordingly’ (anubodhd). It is not very deep. Real deep understanding is called ‘penetration’ (paivedha), seeing a thing in its true nature, without name and label. This penetration is possible only when the mind is free from all impurities and is fully developed through meditation.”

So, to dissect a moment: Yes, I get the irony of assigning words (labels!) to different kinds of knowledge, in the same sentence as the author sort of dismisses names and labels as unimportant. As I talked about above, I think words and labels have power and, while letting go of any attachment to that power may be the point here, it’s not a point I’ve reached. Obviously. Separate from that debate, though, are a couple of things that hit me strongly about this passage. First, when I was young (okay, maybe still today–sometimes), I felt some inferiority around people who had a lot of what the author here calls anubodhd. As a child who immersed herself in fiction and imagination, I didn’t have a lot of facts at my fingerprints, and even when I thought I did, I’d get myself in an emotional tangle trying to defend my small grasp of them. I was much happier outside the world of facts, but I still often felt a lack, somehow, a shortcoming, without them. I don’t know that I agree with the author’s assessment of one kind of knowledge being less deep than the other, but I am in complete agreement that there are two distinct types. And it’s taken me years to recognize that I have some strength in the other, in paivedha. Whether it’s from all those years of fiction reading (yes, I know, it’s what we all want to believe!), or whether it’s because of my original brain chemistry, or a combination of both, I am better at paivadha than at anubodhd. Thank goodness, right? Because how else would I write?

But I think what I’m getting at most of all is that seeing “my” kind of knowledge recognized on this page, in a language and vocabulary and teaching that have been around pretty much forever, felt good. Warming. And again, despite the irony and the attachment-problem, let me just tell you how much I love that paivedha has been given its own label. Its own power.

Words. I think I’ll keep them.