Phoenix Living

Writing-mind: “Hey, I’m in physical rehab too, ya know.  There’s only so much energy to go around.  You aren’t bitching out the OTHER minds for operating in fits and starts…”

Get-Shit-Done-mind: *raises one eyebrow* “Uh, have you HEARD some of my conversations with exercise-mind? You’re getting the same breaks as everyone else, baby.” *pokes W-M with stick* “Now, work! We can’t very well establish a ‘daily writing routine’ if you won’t at least TRY to write some words every day, cancer recovery or not.”

Writing-mind: “Nope, huh uh, I’m tired. And achey. And cranky.  Make exercise-mind work.  Or how about errand-mind, she’s been sitting on her ass for most of the last nine months. ”

GSD-mind: *looks skeptical* “Your ‘rehab’ looks a lot like ‘avoidance’ from over here.”

Writing-mind: “No, hey!  Out of the house equals adventure!  Observing humanity!  Pattern recognition! Fodder for writing ideas!”

GSD-mind: *rolls eyes* “We have not yet had problems with the idea pipeline, even during the worst of times.  Look at you!  I assign you one simple task from the list, “pick which story to write next”.  Simple friggin’ to-do item, easy check-off.  But noooooo, YOU decided that was some kind of challenge and now instead of picking between two story ideas, we have EIGHT.”

Writing-mind: “Hey, four of them already have titles, even!  This is work, we’re working here!  Also, hungry.  And tired. Wouldn’t moving around do some good?”

GSD-mind: “Well, we do want to get moving earlier in the morning to see how that works for loosening up throughout the day, and…hey! I see your tricks.  We aren’t leaving this house until YOU write some words.”

Writing-mind: “Oh yeah? What if I just put little quote marks “around everything”?”

GSD-mind: “Nope.  You can write dialogue, though, if you feel like writing quote-marks.”

Writing-mind: “You won’t complain about what I write, I just put some words down on one of our projects?”

GSD-mind: “Sure, writing words equals no complaints.”

Writing-mind: “And the blog counts as one of our projects, right?”

GSD-mind: “Counts as two or three of them, if you look at the Callie project, Cancer Chronicles, and writing posts.”

Writing-mind: “Agreed then, no take-backs! I’m off to write down this conversation as a blog post.”

GSD-mind: “Hey, that’s totally cheating!”

Writing-mind: “You didn’t say no cheating.  Now, go wake up errand-mind, I’m going back to bed.”

Andrea and others are organizing a marathon fiber-spinning-and-knitting event called SpinAThon to help raise funds for our copious medical expenses incurred from the recent breast cancer adventure. It’s happening May 1st (and hopefully May 2nd as well, if we get enough donations!) in the Austin area and occasionally elsewhere — and we’re broadcasting the volunteer spinners and knitters on internet-streaming webcam so you can watch the progress in your own home!

How can you help? Well, sponsoring several minutes (or hours) of spinning will most definitely help us, both in the raising of funds and in making SpinAThon a more noticeable event. (Last I checked we were already up to 18 hours; our goal is to reach 48 hours or more.) As little as $5.00 will sponsor 5 minutes of spinning, and larger donations will sponsor fiber time at the same $1 per minute rate. Visit the main SpinAThon page and click the “Donate” button there (found just above the pictures of me) if you want to jump directly to the donating part.

If you can’t donate funds but still want to help, here are a few ways:

Are you local to Austin, TX or not local but with a webcam, and do you spin or knit? Consider joining the volunteer spinners and knitters practicing their craft for the event. Contact Andrea (naturalobsessions@gmail.com) to get more details on how to sign up for this and when to schedule your spinning time. She can also help you get set up with the free streaming webcam service several spinners are using for the SpinAThon.

If you don’t knit or spin, and can’t afford to donate at this time, consider linking to this post or to the SpinAThon website itself and spreading the word. The more people who know about this, the more likely we are to reach our goals and create an awesome event for everyone!

And of course, the days of the SpinAThon itself, you can watch the progress of the volunteers as they create the novel sport of endurance fibercraft on Live (Really)Reality (Internet)TV! Any questions not answered here? Check out our SpinAThon FAQ (90% written by yours truly) or contact Andrea directly with your question. You can also leave questions in the comments on this post or over on the Reesa Brown Fan Page where it’s also linked.

Thanks to everyone for all the help that continues to come in, it makes a positive difference in my recovery!

This year has been full of grief, change, healing, recovery, and much more. I know 2009 has been a year of upheaval for many of you out there reading, as well. Hopefully as the calendar year closes, more of you than not are seeing the light around the bend before the end of the tunnel, at the very least. We’ve got a few more rocky months ahead before our own smooth sailing here, but we’re an awesome family with wonderful friends, which makes the turbulent journey easier.

As I mentioned, it’s been a long, slow, recovery year, which has meant a fairly lean year for new words written. Still, I’m 3 chapters into the novel’s new draft, and the work is still going on that, enough that I have hope someday (perhaps even in 2010!) it will grow into a finished draft. I missed being in this year’s Arse Elektronika as planned due to the double whammy of major health issues and a crashed computer with lost files. However, I still managed to get two short stories written in 2009. One is still out circulating, looking for a published home. (That would be “The Entirely Explainable Expiration of Elmer the Cat”.)

The second is actually co-authored, and contained below in the remainder of this post for your viewing pleasure. This is actually still in its second draft, as I’m waiting to hear back from my co-author on which parts need to change to suit his vision. He was the idea-man on this particular story, and probably the only other relevant piece of info to help you understand this story is that my idea-man is coming up on his 12th birthday in April. It was certainly a writerly challenge to fit all the various pieces of ideas into a semi-coherent narrative. (I strongly suspect we’ve “borrowed” from several recent movie and videogame plots for many of these ideas, given my idea-guy’s preference for large amounts of television.) I think it turned into a fun story, though perhaps one that may borrow a bit too heavily from others to be publishable elsewhere… (Note: Neither author had seen “Shaun of the Dead” when the story was written, but I understand there are some similar plot points there as well.)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy our collaborative effort as you enter into 2010 — may it be a better year for all of us than 2009 was.

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