Best laid plans and all that, right?

Previous years, I’d write 90K words in the first seventeen days. One year I hit the last week, didn’t like what I was writing, and decided to write Exhumed instead, and did 50K on that in the last few days of the month. I’ve had 13K word days, FFS–NaNoWriMo shouldn’t be hard.

But Livi #3 is sitting in limbo. I’ve written about 20K total on two or three projects this month, but nothing is going anywhere. I’m used to banging my head against things until they work (you don’t finish thirty-something books without that particular “skill”), but I think, ultimately, it doesn’t want to be written yet. I also think I know some of the reasons why, and I think I know how to solve some of the problems. But there are pieces that need to snap together and they’re not.

I think one of them is me.

All my life–like from my earliest non-traumatic memories–I have just wanted to write/tell stories. It was how I kept myself occupied being alone all the time. It was what gave me strength and power when I had none. It was what made living bearable. It was like breathing to me, and if I had to stop for any reason, I always felt half-alive until I could continue again. For years (right up until the year I got sick, actually) I was writing nearly 500K a year quite happily.

And now I…don’t want to write. And I don’t even care that I don’t.

I’ve been a pretty debilitating depressive episode for a year and a half now, the kind where my continued survival defies all logic. Previously the “fun” (not fun, but anyway) thing about bipolar disorder and rapid cycling was that as awful as major depressive episodes were, I could claw–and sometimes bounce–out of them and feel great. There is no bouncing now, though. It’s chemical, yes, but it had an external trigger that nothing can be done about, because I just get re-triggered again and again every day, and I can’t get it out of it. Becoming someone who will survive it doesn’t mean it goes away, it just means you survive when everything continues to be terrible and always will be.

Of course it only occurred me last week this might be one of the factors, when I looked back and realized I hadn’t finished a book since April (which I barely did) and hadn’t even touched for-pay projects, which normally I can write any time because I have no emotional investment. I know I’ve been suffering freelance burnout, and burnout from my volunteer commitments, but it hadn’t occurred me until recently that, hey, maybe the chronic depression is affecting me too! To be clear, the stories haven’t stopped in my brain. They never have (except while I was seriously ill, and I recovered from that), but I just…have no burning desire to put them on virtual paper. I mostly just want to burn through my day until I can sleep again.

I’ve circled around the “maybe I’m broken and not a writer anymore” thoughts a lot, as if that’s a thing one can suddenly stop being. And then how to fix things, because I like solving problems. I’ve dealt with writer burnout, but that’s not what this is. And I don’t know how to refill a well that seems cemented over, other than trying to keep hydrated and rested, eating foods I know will ultimately make me feel better, and dusting off the treadmill now that there’s snow outside and below zero temperatures. I’m going to take the rest of the year, particularly the last week of NaNo, to write whatever I want and try to find some spark of enjoyment in something.

If that delay’s Livi#3’s projected Fall 2017 release, so be it–you still get her second adventure this February.

There is still a week to enter to win a Livi Prize Pack, and if there are no entries, I’ll use it for a review drive for Solomon’s Seal in December as I’d originally intended.  Solomon’s Seal is also on sale on Kobo for Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and Bloodlines will be 99c starting tomorrow until the end of the year.

Keep rising.

When the tone last night on Twitter went from cautious hope to gallows humour to utter shock and horror, I watched all of it. Perhaps a mix of a trainwreck I couldn’t look away from and utter disbelief, I was up until nearly 5am, checking Twitter on my phone well after I shut my laptop down for the night. All but a few of the most cynical people I know genuinely thought humans were better than that. Admittedly I was one of them and should’ve known better.

I’ve already been ranting on social media about rape culture and white supremacy, trying to share resources, and privately comforting American friends. I’m Canadian, and I admit I’m privileged by a certain level of distance from events, but the same attitudes that led to Trump are rife everywhere else and I absolutely believe we as America’s neighbours must confront uncomfortable truths as well and remain vigilant; humans are headed for another awful period, and we must not remain complacent.

I haven’t much else to add; it is not my country of residence going through this, and while I feel shock and horror as a woman, I am not in fear for my safety (concerned, due to NATO and climate change, but anyway…). But there is a thing I know very well.

Despair.

I know how to live without hope (seriously, fuck you, hope) because everything I ever hoped for is gone. I know how to survive fully aware things will never get better. I know how to keep breathing in the face of a world and body and mind that continually tells you to stop; while there is still a 15% chance I ultimately won’t survive bipolar disorder, after over twenty years of it I can say I have a reasonable understanding of how to do so.

You survive despair by finding a way to keep breathing every day. You find inspiration to fight even when you know you’ll never win. You keep taking care of yourself. You become someone else if you have to.

You surround yourself with stories—watch Aliens or Fury Road if you need to be reminded that women who fight monsters sometimes win. Find those moments of clarity and truth in fiction, and hold tight to the heroes and survivors who inspire you. Write a character who inspires you, who helps you survive (this is where both Zara and Livi came from).

Here is something absolutely no one knows about me: nearly every morning, my alarm goes off, and it’s “I Shall Rise”. It has been so for a year now, because I need it—because I have to get through every day with despair. That song is my moment of clarity, a deep breath as my eyes close and I feel like I might survive no matter how much I don’t want to.

And while I loved the peppiness of Hillary’s campaign tune being “Fight Song”—it’s a great song, on my running playlist and a Livi theme—I felt like she should’ve had “I Shall Rise”; she is a woman who has fought and been mocked, survived and been slapped, and who has risen again and again in dedication to bettering a world for people who fucking hate her. It’s an anthem of the battle-worn who keep going. And even now, you know that woman will rise.

I had hoped this “season finale of America” (wasn’t that a funny joke a few days ago?) would end with Buffy defeating misogyny…

…but you got Angel‘s “Not Fade Away” instead.

And I can’t offer any solutions or help beyond support as my American friends navigate a rightfully scary world where their friends, family, and neighbours voted for someone who advocates fascist ideals and will now have the power to enact them. I can’t offer hope, or wisdom. I can’t tell you not to despair. I can only suggest using whatever resources you have at your disposal to survive this, to rise, to keep breathing and loving and fighting.

I can offer hope that you can survive through despair.

Just keep rising.

Do you have particular fiction or heroes who remind you to rise? Let me know in the comments.