May 03 2024

The Golden Retriever’s Owner

Author: Jamie DeBree

I didn’t really want to walk the dogs one night earlier this week (okay, most nights this week). It was cooler and windy and threatening to rain – it had sputtered a bit an hour earlier, and I hate walking in the rain (though not quite as much as the dogs). I’ve had to walk the dogs separately for awhile now, and one of my biggest fears is the weather turning bad before I get back from the first walk, necessitating a second walk in worse weather (or not being able to take the second one at all).

In any case, the temperature was still decent, and while my eyes do not handle the wind well at all, the weather is not supposed to really get much better or worse, and the dogs need their exercise (so does their owner). So, I put my shoes and jacket on, and off we went for a short hike around a nearby school/church “compound” of sorts.

As Athena and I reached about the quarter mark of our walk, I saw another walker with his dog coming toward us, and crossed the street, as Athena can be rude to other dogs. And then I realized it was an elderly man who lives a block and a half away from us, walking his golden retriever. He waved, I waved, Athena was on good behavior, his retriever wagged its tail…everyone was friendly all around.

I’d been wondering about him for a while now, as I hadn’t seen him out walking since I’ve been able to be out again and the weather was decent enough. I’m sure he’s in his 80’s, and one afternoon last summer, I had a very nice chat with him while I was out walking Apollo and he was out in his yard. We’d discussed my first surgery, and his health, and his poor neighbor, whose dog had pulled her over and broken her hip. He’d been headed over there to walk her dog for her while she was healing after he finished walking his golden.

A year or so before that, he’d seen me one evening walking past his house with both dogs, struggling to keep them under control as another dog passed on the other side of the street (yes, I did keep them under control, but it was hard work). He’d smiled once the other dog had gone past, clearly sympathetic, and simply held up one finger.

I got the message. And I knew he was right, but I wasn’t ready to admit defeat just then. That was before Athena chomped my left wrist, before I had two surgeries in six months, before I fell walking Athena and seriously stretched a tendon, again in my left wrist. All of which forced me to follow his sage advice, and walk one dog at a time. My left wrist is no longer strong/stable enough to control a large dog that might lunge at a bunny on its own. I don’t know if it ever will be again.

I don’t know his name and he doesn’t know mine (that I know of), but still, we know each other, and we’re friendly in passing and I’m sure we’d take the time to chat and catch up if circumstances allowed again.

I like knowing he’s still out there, able to walk his dog and enjoy the seasons even at this late point in his life. He’s living the kind of life I want to work toward, and I will do my best to be like him in my “golden” years. Perhaps I’ll wave and have sidewalk conversations with someone younger than I, out walking their dogs in the twilight hours as well.

If I do, I’m certain I’ll think of him, and the years seeing him and his goldens on the street, waving and sharing a smile and a common love of our four-legged friends.

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Apr 20 2024

The Snow Globe

Author: Jamie DeBree

I don’t actually own a snow globe at the moment, so for demonstrative purposes, here is my overly dramatic Begonia Ignita, “dying” of thirst.

Everyone’s probably had at least one week in their life when just about everything went sideways or topsy-turvy. It doesn’t happen to me often, but this past week was definitely one of those. Starting first thing Monday morning, things broke I had to fix, things I tried to fix wouldn’t mend, concerning announcements were made, schedules were thrown off, plans were derailed…

It was unsettling, in more ways than one.

But then Friday morning first thing, everything suddenly turned around. Deadlines were met, communications restored, projects that had been waiting on others got finished, good conversations were had, and while I didn’t really appreciate the timing because I was tired and I didn’t feel like putting in that much mental effort, a project that’s been hanging out a long time suddenly took off and got mostly finished, with just a little clean-up work to do Monday.

And just like that, the world flipped upside right again.

Which leaves me with one question:

Who shook up my personal snow globe this week, and would they please just leave it on the shelf for awhile now?

Begonia Ignita, recovered and happy.

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Apr 12 2024

Refreshing

Author: Jamie DeBree

It’s that time again, when the seasons are on-again, off-again, on and so on, like a child flipping a light switch for fun. Snow, hail, sleet, rain, sun, wind, cold, hot…sometimes they trade in whole days, and other times, merely hours.

Isn’t it interesting how many of us humans feel the need to clean and dust and organize and purge major areas of our lives in the spring? For some, it’s almost a fanatical turn-over, a near-desperate need to renew our surroundings and sometimes deep swaths of our everyday lives.

For others, it’s a quieter thing, more of a shaking-out of winter into the backyard, sending the snow back to Old Man Winter and dusting the ennui of dark and cold into the bin for a good six months (hopefully).

Normally I fall into the latter category, quietly pruning the plants in the yard, maybe wiping down my kitchen cabinets, and thinking about all the things I should do now, while the weather isn’t actively trying to kill me. I enjoy watching the flowers pop up, the color gradually coming back, and being able to walk my dogs late without all the bulky layers and gloves needed in the colder months.

Spring always brings a bit of dread though, too. In the midst of all the renewal going on, there are still losses, and I’ve suffered enough of them in the spring that I’m somewhat on edge until summer sets in, wondering if there will be another casualty – one of my dogs, a friend, someone in the family. I try to ignore it as much as possible, but it’s always there in the back of my mind, until the weather gets hotter and the interminable heat of summer takes over.

This year, my husband decided to “refresh” our backyard. Once upon a time when we first moved in, we had a wild idea to put a dry riverbed through one side of the yard, and plant it with flowers. There was to be a tiny bridge to cross over it with, and a fountain at the end. And for a little while, all but the bridge existed.

But, grass seeds spread, weeds took over, and neither of us had the time or energy to stay on top of the maintenance. The fountain got covered over, the rocks started falling in, and the whole thing just got way, way out of control. We don’t work well in the heat, and weeds tend to grow great in the dead of summer, which is not a great combination of things to keep a neat-ish patch of yard.

So, the job being too big to handle ourselves, we decided to hire the landscaper who tore out our front lawn for us to come back and take care of the mess we’d made in the backyard. He’s been working all week, and a third of our yard has been torn up, and is in the process of being graded to fix a drainage problem (water in our basement), and to look much less wild than it did just a week ago. It will be rock and grass, easy maintenance (just mowing, no weeding), and I’m sure the neighbor who shares that fence line will find it refreshingly clean as well.

When the landscaper asked if I wanted him to “scrap” my handmade raised bed by the patio, I declined. It, too, needs a refresh, and I fear I’ve lost the roses in there, including my favorite Peace rose, which was over 20 years old. But I want to do that work myself. I want to finish those beds, fill them up with good soil, and replant them myself. I don’t want someone to do it for me – I want the satisfaction and ownership of doing it myself.

Sometimes, you have to just admit that the job is too big, and pay someone to get you back on track. Other times, it’s not necessarily about the finish line, but rather about continuing to work at it whether you ever crawl over that line or not.

I am looking forward to seeing our completed yard. And also to getting out and trimming up the front gardens where things have already begun to grow. I’ve started doing some spring-cleanup of routines and workflows, too, which feels good, and is already bearing some productive fruit (such as creating a dictation schedule again for writing).

With any luck, everything and everyone will keep springing up, rather than the alternative.

Are you spring-cleaning? Anything noteworthy this year?

That’s it for this week! If you have a favorite thing to share, or want to recommend a book, TV show, video or podcast, comment below, email me at jamie@jamiedebree.com, or catch up with me on Facebook or Instagram.

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Feb 20 2024

A Story of Adaptation

Author: Jamie DeBree

As I mentioned in my resolutions post, I’m focusing on short and micro-fiction so far this year. I’m also working on creating a daily writing habit, so 50 words per (week)day is my minimum. I’m quite enjoying it even though most of the daily words aren’t going anywhere, and others need to be fleshed out into longer short stories.

But I have written a few things that I really like as micro-stories, and those, I’m turning into exclusive bookmarks and cards for my new online shop. I wouldn’t sell them as just a single tiny story, of course, but packaged into a handy bookmark (I love the prototype I’ve been using) or a card to give to someone else? That seems like the perfect use for these bite-sized bits of fiction.

As a bonus, it allows me to explore my love of paper crafts and it’s starting to make me more excited about sharing my stories with the world again.

To start this endeavor, I used a little story I call “How it Ends/How it Ended” to create a batch of simple bookmarks with a cover, two pages, and a back cover bound by a grommet at the top that allows the pages to swing out for reading. It took a bit of finagling to get things formatted and positioned correctly, but I’m really quite pleased with how they turned out in the end, and I’ll be making more bookmarks with different micro-stories throughout the year.

While I was making those, I had an idea for a card to go with the story. I think we’ve all been in a position at one time or another of seeing or running into a person within our normal sphere of life that we never quite talk to or chat with, but it feels like we know…or should know them.

Well, “How it Ends” is one of those “missed connections” stories. So I’m creating cards that read “I Think We Should Meet” on the front, and then when you open the card, you’ll read that little story, and then under the story on the right side of the card, it simply says, “Hi”. A little gift to tell someone that they’re someone you’d like to know – or at least like to talk to once in your life.

I love this on several levels…it’s self-publishing at the smallest denominator, it allows me to create both a story and a physical, hand-crafted object, and it’s something I think some people might actually find both entertaining and useful. I’ll be playing with different types of bindings and formats over time, which will be a lot of fun.

It’s allowing me to write, finish, and publish on a micro-level, using the smaller bits of time and mental energy I have available after the intensity of the day job.

Adapt and change – that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? With my current day job, I simply don’t have the mental capacity to write and publish larger works on a regular basis (though I am still working on them when I do have more energy). By changing how I work and what I’m working on, I’m enabling myself to still do what I love, on a different scale, and when my circumstances change again (eventually I’ll be able to retire), I can change up my focus and processes again.

An important life-lesson for me to remember, as I tend to think that if I can’t do exactly what I want, how I want to do it, then I should just not do that thing.

I need to be more flexible, and this is a great step in the right direction, methinks.

Have you adapted a process in order to continue doing something when your circumstances changed, just in a different way? Share your story (here, on social media, or if you’re reading via email, feel free to hit “reply”)! I’d love to hear it!

Oh! And while we’re on the subject of change – the Brazen Snake Books site has a completely new look! I’m working on incorporating a store there, so there are several links that don’t work simply because I haven’t built the store out yet. But it’s coming! Check it out if you’d like, and let me know what you think (or if you run into anything that doesn’t seem to work).

Jan 31 2024

Digital Moves & New Routines

Author: Jamie DeBree

As you may have guessed, I’m still trying to get my new routines settled. This means that for the past two weeks, I’ve been doing my “50 words per day” during the times I’d normally be writing a blog post.

It takes awhile to establish new routines, so I expect (hope) this will get better going forward. I’m writing a lot more regularly now, and my “50” words often come in at 150 – 250 per day once I get going, which is exactly what I was hoping for with that resolution.

The other thing that took some time and focus last week was a site hosting issue. My old web host (A Small Orange) was bought years ago by one of the huge conglomerate services, and I’ve been wanting to move my sites to an independent host for several years now as the service and support through that big conglomerate has gotten increasingly worse. I’ve just been too lazy to pull the trigger, as I’m currently running four active and a couple inactive sites, plus email with special configuration for the majority of my domains. Needless to say, the thought of moving all that was a very daunting thing.

The old host gave me an annoying shove when they raised their price around $7 per month. I was already paying nearly $40 per month, so that was excellent motivation to find a new host. I spent several hours last week researching web hosting and potential hosts, going back and forth, and finally settled on GreekGeeks, which is an independent hosting company that seems to be proud of its independent status (so less likely to “sell out”, hopefully), and also had more good reviews than bad when it comes to customer service.

GreenGeeks isn’t the cheapest host out there, but I’m a “get what you pay for” believer, so I wasn’t looking for cheap, just less expensive. They have a good deal running right now, so I bought a year’s worth of hosting for $60, which is over $20 less than one more *month* would be with my old host. After that, it triples to right at $200 per year, but it’s still $300 less than I’d pay with the old host. Win!

The best part though (so far), is the free migration service. I requested it and figured they’d move one site, and I’d have to do the others plus my email accounts manually. But they have some sort of very cool tool, and one hour after I requested the migration, I got an email saying it was done, and telling me to repoint my nameservers. I did, and everything just…worked! I do use WordPress and cpanel, so obviously the tool is specific to that, but that saved me *hours* of work…had I known that was possible, I’d have switched hosting a long time ago.

So, here we are on the new host, the sites are running well, and now since I’m thinking about the technical bits, I’m thinking it’s a good time to update my templates. I have one picked out for my author blogs, and just need to purchase it. I was kind of at a loss for the main BSB site though, because I also want to install WooCommerce and set up my own web store, so I want a theme that will work well with that. Hmm.

Then while browsing the GreenGeeks blog, I found this article, specifically on WordPress themes for selling books! Huzzah! There are two of these I really like…can you guess which ones? Which one is your favorite?

I have vacation time that I need to use up from the day job (use it or lose it!), so I’ve scheduled one day off per week for the next four weeks, and I’ll be working on these template updates, the store setup, and some publishing tasks that should (if all goes well) result in some new stories coming out this quarter, as well as the newsletters picking up again.

So that’s what’s going on, and why blogging is kind of sporadic at the moment. There are good things to come though, methinks. I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching, and making decisions on what I want to prioritize and spend time/focus on, and it’s time to get back to treating writing as a business, rather than a hobby.

In the past, I’ve thought I needed to have wide blocks of time in which to do things, and sometimes that’s still true (the template changes, for one), but increasingly I’ve been focusing on making the most of smaller blocks of time to get “a little bit” done every day. For right now, that’s working, so I’m rolling with it for more than just writing.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what I’ve been writing during my daily micro-sprints, and some of those have been for the Magpie stories. So that’s encouraging, and I’m excited to get some of these little bits polished up and available to buy in several formats, hopefully from my own store on my own site as well as everywhere else.

Thanks for staying tuned, so to speak!

Dec 29 2023

Year in Review: 2023

Author: Jamie DeBree

Well That Was…Something.

You may want a snack and a beverage…it’s gonna be a long one. 🙂

This past year has been the weirdest and least productive I can remember in recent history. That includes 2020. Looking back at my resolutions and goals, it was mostly a bust, with pockets of unexpected and redefined success. But that’s not unsurprising considering how much of this past year revolved around medical procedures, including the anxiety leading up to them and various significant side effects after that added to my recovery times.

In many ways, it was a “lost” year as far as doing the things I want/like to do, but for the most part, the medical concerns that have been plaguing/distracting me for the past three years have been resolved and/or explained, which is good. I have some residual issues that will either heal or they won’t, but they’re things I can live with whether or not they improve, so I have zero plans to interact with medical personnel next year with the exception of my optometrist, because I really need a new pair of glasses, and my dentist for the normal preventative stuff (and that’s only ’cause I like and trust him…otherwise I’d be skipping that too, honestly).

On the other hand, I’ve experienced a few significant mental shifts as well, and those are really shaping my perception of the future and what direction I want to take things moving forward. One of my goals was to cultivate better impulse control, which I pretty much failed at. But I’m well aware of it and I’ll definitely be working harder at reigning that in for the long term.

The fact that I made a goal of 6 hours sleep per night is laughable – my sleep has been all sorts of messed up this year with over 12 weeks combined surgical recovery, and even now, some nights I can’t get comfortable. Add the absolute gem of menopause & hot flashes waking me up mid-sleep to the mix, and I’m doing really well to sleep a full 5 hours in any given night…and even luckier if I don’t pinch a nerve doing it.

Needless to say, I’ve given up on sleep goals. I gave up trying to get to bed before 1am as well, and now the “quiet time” I had scheduled for 11:30pm – 12:30am runs from around midnight to 1am. It’s working for me, and that’s a resolution I did successfully keep, which was to spend an hour every night planning for the next day and then reading before bed. So that’s a “loss-win” combo.

Speaking of reading – see that empty white rack in the photo above? That was overflowing with comic books at the beginning of the year. One of my goals (not resolutions) was to read a comic book every morning to get caught up with several year’s worth of back issues, and…that was a resounding success! The only unread comic books I have now are the larger graphic novel formats, a Spider-Man huge issue I plan to read this weekend, and then a few more Spider-Man and Venom issues that are now in my hall TBR rack. Which is where my new issues will all go from now on, because I am officially caught up! Huzzah!

I did not meet my goal of journaling daily, but I did start the year journaling, and I’m ending the year having discovered I like “art journaling” (a cross between traditional journal writing and scrapbooking, basically), and while I don’t have a definite schedule for it (yet), that will continue on into the new year with me.

My exercise goals were thrown way, way off track (and down a hill, as I couldn’t even do yoga for long stretches of time), so that was a complete bust, and I’m both heavier and more out of shape than I have been in quite awhile (currently rehabbing a wrist that atrophied more than I realized during “recoveries”, and then got strained when I started lifting weights again). Alas, there wasn’t really any way to avoid that, so…onward, with more movement in the new year.

As for my writing goals…I started out okay and then with everything else going on, I found myself trying and repeatedly failing every night during my allotted writing time. I just…couldn’t, mentally speaking. It sucked. I found myself seriously considering quitting for the first time in a long time – giving up the business name and packing it in.

Which is where one of the more significant mental shifts comes in, and I’ll talk about that more next week.

Financially, I’m not anywhere near where I wanted to be by now, but…medical expenses. Next year will be better. I also spent more than I should have on things like my rediscovered love of fishkeeping and plants, but I’m not going to feel guilty about that. This year wasn’t a good one, financially, and I’m just going to keep working on it and hopefully have better luck (and less medical issues) in the coming year.

All that said, this time last year, I was in a much worse place, constantly worrying about the near constant pain I was in, anxious about what would happen in the coming weeks, and feeling like a total failure for being unable to focus on anything productive and *yet again* having gone through another year without publishing anything.

This year, I’m in a far better place both physically and mentally, and I’m looking toward the next year with a healthy optimism and plans for making it much more productive. And even without any of the successes above, that would make this year a win.

Next week, my resolutions, goals and plans for 2024. I think I’m gonna need a (new) pair of shades. 😉

How was your year? Did you accomplish any goals you might have had, or learn something while missing them? What are your goals and/or plans for the next year?

Dec 22 2023

It’s Tradition!

Author: Jamie DeBree

Traditions = Memories

I’ve been thinking about tradition a lot lately, as one does when faced with the decision to either maintain, replace or just get rid of them a few times a year. I like tradition for the most part, but I don’t like being inflexible about it to the point of stress and hardship.

In fact, I think that’s the main problem with traditions. We tend to hold on to them so tightly, and try to recreate them so exactly that we lose sight of what we’re actually trying to preserve and hand down, which is the spirit of the thing. Experiences will be different for every person based on their perception, and that will happen whether the experience is exactly the same every year or not.

Take my Christmas tree, for example. I have two trees of different sizes – a four foot tree that’s easy to maneuver and put on a table, and a six foot tree that is beautiful and was given to me by a friend of my mom’s when I first moved out of my parents house. I love having a tree, not so much because it’s “a tree”, but because I have a nice collection of ornaments that I enjoy getting out and seeing every year. I have some ornaments that I got because they’re just pretty, but I also have a lot of ornaments that were made by other people, or hand-picked and given to me as a gift, or made by me.

I don’t put all the ornaments out every year. And I don’t use the same size tree every year. But I do like the tradition of having a tree, and there are certain ornaments that I want to see every year, so I focus on putting “a” tree up, with a minimum of the special ornaments I really want to see. Preserving the tradition without being too hung up on getting it exact from year to year.

I would love to dispense with the gift tradition altogether, but can’t seem to convince my family of that. Since we can’t get rid of it, my next preference would be to limit ourselves to giving one gift per person, preferably something small and funny/amusing, or something homemade. Alas, the older generations still cling to the “give me a list I can pick from” style of giving, so we do that, but it’s just going through the motions for my husband and I (we don’t exchange gifts for holidays…rather, if we see something the other person might like, we buy it and give it to them right then).

I do like baking, and I only really do it once a year, so I keep the cookie tradition alive. I make one cookie for each person in the family – I try to make a batch of everyone’s favorite, and then everyone gets a box with some of each type in them. My way of mingling everyone together into one big family unit through food. I don’t see myself giving that up anytime soon – it’s work, but I like it, and food is one of the most instinctive and visceral ways we show someone we care (I like/love you enough to want to help you to *survive*).

But I have no qualms in mixing up what we have for Christmas dinner. Some of the traditional foods, sure, but I see no harm in beef one year and ham the next. Actually sharing the meal with family is what’s important there.

I think the most important tradition is just spending time with friends & family (friends, if your family isn’t one you want to be around!). Making the time to sit down and play a game of Scrabble or cards, watch a movie, and just “be” in the moment. We should probably all do that more often, but the holidays are a great excuse, even if it does require a lot of energy and I’m very glad to go home after and be done with it. I just wish I had more time on either side to rest and recharge without worrying about work.

I’ve spoken to several people this year who would prefer to just dispense with all traditions and treat the holiday like any other day. I hope they are able to do that for themselves, but personally, I like punctuating the passage of time with set days to think about…well, things like this. And I also think that having so many different holiday celebrations in the same shortish time frame across the globe is a major similarity that can make us feel closer to our fellow humans…if we let it, anyways.

What are some traditions you want to preserve “as is”? Do you have any you’d like to change or update?

Writing News

Last week’s post was preempted by the need to finish the Christmas story I always send out with my cards. I did finish it though, and now I’m taking a writing break until January, when I’ll start in with my new writing goals.

Recommendation(s)

My only recommendation this week is to relax and enjoy the long weekend, whether you’re celebrating or not. Happy Holidays!

Dec 08 2023

Duly Noted

Author: Jamie DeBree

Digital Paper Everywhere
Last week, I got an email that both annoyed and concerned me, and we’ll get to that in a bit. First, some note-taking/storage history:

I’ve been an Evernote user since 2011 – a paid user, at that. Somewhere around the time they started screwing with the interface several years ago, I quit using Evernote and switched to Workflowy, because Workflowy is simpler and I just didn’t really need all the bells and whistles of Evernote, plus I *hated* the new interface (they had a lot of slow-loading issues and such then too).

But…I still paid my yearly Evernote fees, because I was too lazy to export *all* my data, and it wasn’t all that expensive in the grand scheme of things ($35 per year).

Fast forward to this past July. I’d been happily using the paid version of Workflowy for years when suddenly I couldn’t get to it from work. This is a big deal for my workflow (so to speak), and I work in our IT department, but it was being blocked somewhere higher up the chain, and there wasn’t any way to deal with that. So, remembering I had an Evernote account (and a more expensive one, as the cost had gone up to $70 just last year), I switched back to Evernote, since I could get to that everywhere.

Now we’re back to last week’s email. Evernote has changed ownership, and after last year’s price doubling, they’ve now decided that the yearly rate will jump almost double *again* to $129.99 per year.

Needless to say, that’s a lot of money for a program I use basically for text notes. It can do a lot more, but I use exactly one other feature (emailing directly from the program) that I really don’t need to use (it’s just convenient).

So I started looking at other note-taking apps, and most of them don’t have an easy way to import Evernote files. The ones that do, either don’t have online interfaces (so still couldn’t get to them at work) or they have much less user-friendly organizational structures that would require a lot of cleanup and reorganization on my part. *sigh* So, I resigned myself to paying the extra money, while still looking around at what other people are using and wishing Obsidian or Joplin had web/cloud user interfaces, even for a fee.

Then I remembered my Workflowy account, and just on the off-chance, tried to reach it again from work. And it’s no longer blocked! Hallelujah!

Needless to say, I re-upped my subscription (yearly is $49, monthly is $4.99 – I went for monthly because it’s December, but I’ll switch to the cheaper yearly after the holidays), and I’m working on migrating my Evernote notebooks and data to Obsidian for safe (and permanent) keeping. I’ll move what I need to Workflowy as I need it.

So, all’s well that ends well, and I actually prefer Workflowy anyways, so I’m very happy with this turn of events. Thank you, Evernote, for pricing me out and reminding me to try Workflowy again!

Are you an Evernote user? Will you be switching with the extreme pricing change?

Writing News
I finished the story that I’ll be sending out in Christmas cards this year! It feels good to finish…well, anything, really. So I’m excited about that. Now I think I’ll work on another short story for the season while I’m in the mood, and then I’ll get back to Magpie in January.

Or maybe I’ll set the short in Magpie. Tempting….

Recommendations
I highly recommend Workflowy if you’re more text-oriented like me (rather than graphical/image-driven). There is a free version, for those who don’t need/want unlimited space. And Obsidian or Joplin if you don’t need a web interface and have something like Dropbox for syncing (that’s what I’ll use to sync those notes between my laptop and phone).

Nov 22 2023

All the Things…Except NaNo

Author: Jamie DeBree

Creativity Calling
It’s that time of year again, when the big Thanksgiving family gathering is just a few short days away (one, by the time this posts), and the gift-giving-est time of year looms larger. Needless to say, I have been doing everything *but* writing lately, and I’m actually okay with that. If I were focusing hard on writing 1600 words a day, I wouldn’t have gotten my dad’s birthday gift done on time (I nearly didn’t anyways), and I wouldn’t be anywhere near ready to put my advent calendars together (which I’ll have done by the time you read this) so they can be distributed and to their rightful recipients before December 1st.

I wanted to make things to include in the calendars this year (instead of buying all of it), and that takes time. So I spent the time, and enjoyed it a lot, and I’m really not sorry I prioritized that. I honestly think that being creative in these other ways is helping me want to get back to the writing. And making things always makes me feel a connection with generations past, which is the mindset I need to be in to write the story I’m currently writing.

There’s a lot going on in general, but also a lot shifting in my head at the moment, and I think it’s a good shift (at the tail end of several not good shifts). I’m not sure where everything will end up, but considering I’m not dealing with constant pain and anxiety any longer, it seems like it’s flowing into a more productive and creative state of mind.

Writing News
I’ve actually written less this month than I did last month, and now I’ve completely lost the nightly writing habit, too. Needless to say, I’m not going to win…or even finish NaNo this year, and I’m fairly certain this will be the last year I attempt it. I love the idea and the philosophy, it was a great help to me for several years, and I think it’s a fantastic way to get that first novel finished. But, it’s not for me anymore

Even though I’m bowing out of NaNo, I’m not abandoning the story I started. It comes first in the series I’m already working on, and I think writing it first is still how I want to tackle the whole thing. Madeline is the family matriarch, and her story is at the heart of all those that will come after. So I’m going to keep working on her story a little at a time, and move into the rest of the series from there.

But first…it’s almost time to send out Christmas cards, and I always send out a flash story with my cards. I have this year’s story written, but I need to edit and polish it up a bit, so that’s what I’ll be working on for the next week or two.

Recommendation(s)
Whether you’re in the US celebrating Thanksgiving or somewhere else just celebrating a normal Thursday, I found this recipe while looking for traditional sweet potato casserole recipes, and I’m going to try it, with the small change of using both strudel and marshmallows on top, in stripes (my MIL will really want the marshmallows). I’ll let you know how it turns out, but I suspect it’s going to be incredibly good!

The recipe is by Jenn Segal. Check it out here: https://www.onceuponachef.com/recipes/sweet-potato-casserole.html

Oct 31 2023

The Fright Night Train to NaNoWriMo

Author: Jamie DeBree

Boo!
Happy Halloween! As you read this (if you read it Tuesday the 31st), I’ll be frantically scurrying around finishing up the prep for our Halloween yard haunt. Or handing out glowing bags of toxic waste (okay, candy, but the bags will be glowing) in our bright yellow hazmat suits (thank goodness they don’t breathe – it’ll be chilly out there this year). We’re doing a Radioactive theme, so UV lights and glowing slime are the main attractions. Just the thing to make our zombie baby crew happy. I’m not sure the skeletons are all that impressed, but the campers and banjo players seem content enough.

Fingers crossed the slime turns out. As I write this, it’s still not made, and I only have internet recipes and a bunch of ingredients waiting for that sweet, sweet chemical reaction. We shall see. I really should have bought more blacklights. And tonic water. Hmm.

I’m planning to create a scrapbook layout in my journal to commemorate the event with photos, so I’ll post a pic of that online once I have it done. This coming weekend, probably.

Next Stop: The Land of Writing Madness
Wednesday is the first day of November, which is also the first day of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo or “NaNo” for short). If you’ve been reading here long, you’ve heard of it – I’ve participated on and off since 2004 – and I used to win (write 50,000 words in a month) regularly when I first started, though not so much the last few times I participated. Tempest and Desert Heat were both NaNo novels, as were several that were never published.

This year, I’m getting back to the keyboard with a fictional memoir/story prequel to the book I’m currently working on, in order to establish the backstory I need for my current novel draft already in progress (I know that might sound a bit convoluted, but it makes sense to me). If it turns out to be a decent draft, I’ll clean it up and publish it. If not, I’ll still end up with the backstory I need, and hopefully a much better daily writing habit than I currently have (and much faster than the 250 words a day I’m doing now).

Do I know what’s in the story yet? Um, no. That’s the whole point – Madeline Hunter needs to tell me her story, so I can tell her great, great granddaughter what she went through, so that Lauren and her daughter Maddie (named for Madeline) can make it through their own story. While I know some of the highlights (and low-lights) of Madeline’s story, I need all the juicy details that one can only get directly from the character as she’s moving through life while I watch and type.

I’ll be posting excerpts every Friday of my writing for that week throughout the month, so check back then (or watch your email/social media) for those posts if you’re interested in following along.

Will you be discovering someone’s story this month?

Recommendation(s)
Head over to the NaNoWriMo site at nanowrimo.org, and check it out! Even if you’re not normally a writer, you can be in November! My husband participates in NaNo whenever I do, and just deletes his drafts after…I don’t even get to see them. So, don’t be afraid, jump in and give it a try!

Already signed up for NaNo? My username is “outofwords” on the site (I don’t know if that profile link will work or not, but you can try it, if you’d like). Look me up – let’s connect!

Jamie DeBree

Writer | DBA | Dog Wrangler

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The Fright Night Train to NaNoWriMo