Author: Jeffe Kennedy

The Sweet Pea Cure

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

So, it looks like my blood pressure is creeping up again. Not coincidentally, the day job has been crazy awful busy.

Consulting is a funny business that way. It’s all feast or famine. Flood or drought. And, while it’s wonderful to have a bunch of work, and therefore money, coming in – this much is overwhelming. It tumbles you over and drowns you.

Yeah, I’ve been forgetting to breathe from my belly. I might also have slacked off on meditating. And, um, taking my selenium and hawthorne. I sit at the computer and work for hours straight without getting up.

The thing is, when life is peaceful and going along at a doable pace, my blood pressure is just fine. It’s when the stress cranks down that I get into trouble.

Isn’t that true of most everything? The true test of your relationship is not how well you partner with each other when everything is great, but what happens during the poorer/worse days. Sure you can write a novel over the course of years, with infinite time to screw around with it, but can you write one under deadline with editorial pressure? You can be pleasant and accommodating to other people when you’re happy and feeling generous, but what about when you’ve had a lousy day?

So, when David wanted to check my blood pressure the other day, I let him, even though I didn’t want to, because I knew it would be high. I can feel it when it’s high, in the flushing in my cheeks and pounding in my head. Can anyone else feel it?

David sent me out to take a walk and on my way back I cut some sweet peas and put them on my desk. Now when I smell them, I remind myself to relax, to breathe, to go take a walk.

This, too, shall pass.

Meet Bunny Rodriguez

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Harry’s Roadhouse is one of our favorite local restaurants, just up the road from our house. It features prominently enough in my life that I already had a subject tag for it on the blog. Well, last Friday night, we went to Lobster Night at Harry’s.

They do this in the summertime on Friday nights. They fly in fresh-caught lobsters from Maine and cook them that night. Major treat for us landlubbers. You have to make reservations ahead of time because they want to be sure of the exact number of plane tickets needed for the lobsters. I’ve long been meaning to sign us up, but never quite got around to it.

Well the weekend before last, we went to Harry’s for breakfast and I saw the sign on the door saying that Labor Day weekend would be the last lobster night of the season. I said to David that we should do it and he said great. I told the host when he seated us that we wanted to sign up and he promised to send the signer-upper to us.

She visited us during breakfast, wrote down the reservation name (David’s last name) and my credit card number. She put us down for two lobsters and reminded us that we were reserving lobsters only and would have to wait for a table, as is always their practice. All is good.

When we got home, we saw neighbor Doug out walking his dog. We’ve barely seen Doug and Susie all summer – another thing we’ve meant to do – so I suggested that we invite them along to Lobster Night. I go chat with Doug, give him the scoop. Amazingly they’ve never been either, though they’ve lived here much longer, and he’s excited to go. I tell him to call, reserve their lobsters and maybe mention they’ll be joining us.

So, later that same day, Doug calls me and says Harry’s doesn’t have our reservation. He told them Dave, Jeffe, David’s last name – nothing. But he made their reservation. He says for me to call Kathleen and make a new reservation. I don’t want to do this, because I know they already have one for us. I figure Doug somehow failed to communicate the proper information, so I blow it off.

The next morning, Kathleen calls me. Smitty, she says, invited us to join him and Susie at Lobster Night, but she needs a reservation from us. Now, Doug’s last name is Smith and everyone calls him Smitty, even Susie. But he’s never asked us to call him Smitty, so we don’t. I tell Kathleen we already have a reservation and had invited them to join us, in fact. Oh ha ha ha, Smitty said something like that, but she can’t find my reservation anywhere and will we be joining Smitty or not?

I say we are and all is, once again, good.

We get there Friday night and it’s a gorgeous evening. David and I get there first and he puts our name in for a table. He comes back and says they asked if we were with Smitty. We have wine and sit outside to wait. Doug and Susie arrive. We have a lovely time.

The lobsters were absolutely amazing. As good as being in Maine.

As we leave, Kathleen asks us how everything was. She is the same lady who came to our breakfast table. I say amazing, wonderful and I hope I just don’t get charged for a second set of lobsters for the lost reservation. She laughs and says oh no, no, no – that one disappeared.

We get home, I pull my phone out of my purse and there are two voicemails, missed calls from a local number. Yeah, I knew what this would be. Both are from Kathleen, the first saying they hadn’t seen us and to be sure to come or we’d lose our lobsters. The second, about 45 minutes later, saying something similar and to please call.

I call, ask for Kathleen. She gets on the phone and I say, hi, I was just there eating lobster and on our way out we chatted about this lost second reservation that you left me two voicemails about.

Oh! she says. Oh! I started to wonder about that after you left. The thing is, I had your reservation attached to the name “Bunny Rodriguez.”

And no, David’s last name isn’t anything CLOSE to Rodriguez.

But it’s all good. She sold the lobsters to someone else and she apologized for the confusion.

All of these various names. Plus, I have a new secret identity now.

Bunny Rodriguez, at your service.

Happy Labor Day!

Jeffe Kennedy / / Uncategorized

I love to have an all-white bed in the summertime. The layers of whites create a crisp cool feeling.

And look! Isabel matches.

It used to be, back in Wyoming, that I’d retire the white sheets after Labor Day, along with my white sundresses and white shoes. I know some people get annoyed with that “rule,” saying it’s arbitrary and silly. But I like the ritual of it. Observing the changing of the seasons.

In Wyoming, though, we could get a frost, or even a bit of snow this weekend. (I see our old hometown got down to 40 F last night.) Here, we still have a lot of warm weather still.

So, I’m enjoying the day off, finishing some outside painting and chores.

I’ll keep the white bed just a little longer.

Hope, Faith and Summertime

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

This photo is for Hope, who sent me this amazing and beautiful iced tea maker from Teavana, in celebration of continuing summer enjoyment. That’s a strawberry-lemonade herbal blend that’s just delicious. Note that my morning glories are climbing right up the post now, too.

I love when an act of faith is rewarded. Gardening is very much an act of faith. We put the seeds in the ground and hope they will eventually bear fruit. We can water and fertilize, trim and coax, but ultimately whether the plants flourish or wither is up to the vagaries of the universe.

Writing is like this, too. In some ways, it feels like an even greater act of faith to me, because we spend so much time and effort laboring alone for something that may never see the outside of a drawer. Even a really excellent book may never be well-received, for any number of reasons. And yet, we continue to hope, to believe. It’s like that old saw that went around a while back about women over forty having a greater chance of being killed by a terrorist than of getting married (which turned out to be completely fraudulent data, by the way) – we look at the statistics and resolve to be one of the lucky ones. (It helps to know that those statistics are often damn lies, to paraphrase.)

I think this is part of it though. In gardening, writing and other works. It’s good for us as human beings to invest faith in the universe. To express hope through effort.

Perhaps it’s what we’re here for.

Story Intrusion

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

This is Isabel’s favorite summer snoozing spot – on the east side of the house, in the shade, where she gets a lovely little breeze. It has the added bonus of a wall she can put her back against or, as she is here, press with her back paws.

Yes, I have to go pet her all the time. The cuteness is too much to resist.

The other evening I was out on the patio, too, reading Zoe Archer’s Blades of the Rose bundle. (For those of you not snapping up every ebook deal you can find, a “bundle” is like a digital box set. In this case, I was able to get all four of the books in her Blades of the Rose series for the price of one book. Fab deal. The only thing is, Kindle measures reading progress by percent, not page numbers. So, when you’re reading four books essentially at once, you’re stuck in the low percentages FOREVER. 3%. 4%. 5%. I have to get over it… But I digress.) While I was reading her lovely story, bits of The Middle Princess started floating through my head.

This is a good thing. First, it means that Zoe’s stories are inspiring and put me in the best frame of mind to create my own stories. I think it’s really a high compliment to the author. Second, it means that Middle Princess is talking to me and that part of me is connecting to the story even when I’m not actively writing. I don’t know how other novelists do it, but I really need that kind of ongoing flow, especially since I can’t work on it all day long. It’s also a lovely, dreamy feeling.

The phenomenon reminds me of REM intrusion. REM is Rapid Eye Movement sleep, of course, or dreaming sleep. What’s really interesting about sleep-deprivation studies is that they all show that the main effect of sleep deprivation is sleepiness. This seems silly until you think about it. The symptoms of sleepiness – feelings of fatigue, intense desire to sleep, blurred vision, murky thinking – all intensify the more sleep is missed. With sleep, the symptoms disappear again.

The really measurable effect of sleep deprivation is when REM sleep is lost.

Studies have been done where people were allowed to sleep as much as they liked, but were awakened whenever their brains kicked into REM. This has dramatic and rapid effects. People quickly lose the ability to make rational decisions instead of emotional ones. The most minor problem becomes insurmountable. After a few days, the need for REM state becomes so desperate that the brain spontaneously goes into REM even while people are awake, called REM intrusion.

Yeah, you actually start dreaming while you’re up and about. Puts a whole ‘nother spin on hallucinations, doesn’t it?

I kind of wonder if Story Intrusion (my term) isn’t similar, though less pathological. I hope.

Maybe I’ll go have a nap by the side of the house.

Why It Has to Be Every Day

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

When newer authors ask me for advice, which they sometimes do, apparently laboring under the notion that I know what I’m doing, they often ask if they really truly have to write every day.

It’s funny, because I remember asking that very same question, in the neighborhood of 15 years ago. I was at a writers’ weekend retreat and someone asked our esteemed visiting writer guy about his writing schedule. He said he got up every day at 5am and wrote for two hours. That he had to. to get it done. I ended up being the voice of “really? truly, EVERY day?” He said, with rare exceptions, really, truly.

I didn’t want to hear it.

It’s not welcome news.

Someone said on Twitter just the other day that she was considering getting up at 4:30am to get her writing done, but was dragging her feet. I replied that I did it for two years and it worked. She said, wasn’t I exhausted? I said, yes, at first. Then I got used to it. It was the only time of day I could be sure to write every day and it totally worked.

I’m not convinced that, for true writing productivity – especially creating something new – anything else does work.

I rediscover this periodically. This last week I’ve been getting back into drafting The Middle Princess. After an extended spell of revisions on several different works, I’m composing again. I’d gotten about 26K into this novel when I had to set her aside. I figured she was well on her way, with good momentum. She’d wait for me.

Oh no no no.

Frankly, for the last week? She’s been a sulky bitch.

That’s the hardest part of writing, I think. When every word put down is a day’s labor. When you work for two hours and get 250 words. Being in that place is the polar opposite of everything we love best about writing. It’s the 40 years in the desert. It’s traversing the Fire Swamp, only less interesting. And like those travails, I truly believe there is only one way through it.

Keep going.

It’s tempting to think, oh, something’s wrong – that’s why it’s not working. Or, I’ve written myself into a corner, that’s why I feel stuck. Even if those things are true, you still have to keep writing. Delete and write. Or rework and write. Or skip and write. But the one answer is always the same.

Keen readers will note which thing that is.

And yes. It has to be every day.

Finally, yesterday, after a week of agonizing through my 1K/day workout, the story started to flow again. It’s like the ice breaking up on the river. I’m not riding the rapids in glee yet, but at least I’m not chipping away at frozen stuff.

Hallelujuah.

Five-Year Plans and the Monkey’s Paw

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Sunset catching distant rainfall last night. Gorgeous shade of rose.

So, last week I talked about Danbling and Overthinging in plotting a series arc. Theoretically plotting one, since I’m not much of a plotter. But one of the insightful comments made me realize WHY I’m not much of a plotter. It comes back to how I live my whole life and The Monkey’s Paw.

You remember that short story, right? I think we all had to read it in school. The monkey’s paw grants three wishes, but at terrible cost to the wishers. I don’t want to blow the story if you haven’t read it, but it’s the syndrome where you wish for a million dollars and then your kid gets killed by a city bus and you get a million-dollar settlement. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t interfere with fate, “they” say. That’s not so much the story I carry away, not being all that into fatalism.

I totally believe we map our own futures.

But.

I don’t think we can control it.

See, I’ve done training in a bunch of those systems where you map out a one-year, five-year, ten-year plan. You visualize exactly what you want, how you want it and precisely when. Most of the success gurus build off of this idea, in one way or another. The “exact” and “precise” aspects are meant to duck the monkey’s paw curse. You don’t let the tricksters mess with you – you specify exactly how you want your million dollars and when.

You know I’m all about “Be Careful What You Wish For.” What you get might not be exactly what you thought it would be. But for me, this doesn’t translate into “demand that the universe give you exactly what you want, when and where you want it.” That seems the height of arrogance to me.

This is why, despite my spreadsheets and other planning, I do not have a five-year plan.

I know what I want, what I wish for, how I’d like for my life to go. But I’m well aware I’m asking for gifts and blessings. If the universe chooses to rain good things on me, then I’m grateful. And I feel like part of that gratitude is leaving it up to Tao or the gods and goddesses or whoever, to give it to me in the best way at the best time.

So, while I have many plans and wishes, none of them are tied to time.

KAK’s comment made me see why I don’t really do this with plots, either. I do think the stories are gifts. I know in general what they’ll be and how they go, but I don’t feel like it’s my thing to control them. In fact, I think I’d be overstepping myself to impose my plan on them. That’s an excellent insight for me.

Now I just have to remember it when I start to overthing.