Sunday, April 30, 2006

Clawing Up From Depression, Or: Getting it All Together

Jenn and I lolled around in bed yesterday talking until nearly 2:30 in the afternoon - she's been busy running psych studies and analyzing data until 10pm, and I spend two days a week in Indianapolis, so we needed the catch-up time.

Today, I reorganized my room so it's more work-condusive - put a bunch of bins full of old novels and stories into K's old room, which we're using for storage (that's where my 30 years of National Geographics ended up). I love my new room set-up. I have the smallest room in the house, which meant that for nearly a year I've had a desk where I can't pull out the chair all the way because it kept hitting the bed.

Cleaned up my balcony garden today as well, putting all the lemon balm with the lemon balm and the basil with the basil. I'm proudest of my pot of morning glories, which look like they're boiling over the pot and getting ready to burst. I love gardening. It's incredibly relaxing watching little seeds grow up into these lush, vibrant garden that takes over the entire outdoor table.

I was walking up and down the stairs today, doing laundry (the washer and dryer are in the basement), and thinking about how much easier it was to get up the stairs, to think about doing this mundane task, and I realized again how depressed I'd been for so long, how stressed, and subsequently, how sick. After much thought, pain, irritation, and many PP visits, I've also finally decided to get my IUD removed.

I hate this idea, and put off the decision to remove it for nearly a year - but the infections and irritation aren't going away, and I only have about 7 days a month where I can have sex comfortably. When I only saw my partner once a month, I could work around this. I could justify all the pain and the stress from walking around in a constant state of discomfort. I just can't justify it anymore. I'm not looking forward to another painful, bloody visit, but once it's done, it's done. How I'll negotiate contraception in the future, I don't know, but for now, I'll take a normally functioning vagina that I don't want to claw out two weeks in every four. I can't do pain and itching anymore. It's not worth it. Jenn and I plan to part when she graduates and I get a job elsewhere next year (it's not likely we'll find good jobs in the same cities), so what I'll do after that, well, that's a time away yet.

For now, I'm just tired of hurting and bleeding all the time.

In the meantime, things are looking up. The IUD is out in 18 days, tDW is out to readers, and I'm contemplating what's going wrong in the last 40 pages of God's War that's keeping me from pushing through. As my buddy Patrick's pointed out, it's also time to start getting my application materials ready for Gaming Company, so I'm looking through short stories and getting back into video game playing (ah, research).

I'm also starting to make notes for Over Burning Cities, the next book in the fantasy saga, and going over several of the early chapters and cleaning them up.

My buddies Stephanie and Ian should be heading down here around the 4th of July, and Patrick and his family are coming down the week before Wiscon; it's going to be great to have people in the house. I'm looking forward to it.

In the meantime, Jenn and I are going to finish up another episode of Babylon 5, eat some macoroni, and then I'm packing things up for another couple work days in Indy...

3 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

Perpetual Beginner said...

Best of luck with the IUD removal, and with getting good (and better yet helpful) reviews on tDW.

If you ever make it another couple of hours south to Louisville, let me know. I know a good coffee shop, and a kick-ass dojo.

Kameron Hurley said...

Kristy - when I refer to "readers," I'm talking about a core group of my writing buddies who read all of my drafts before they go out into the world. I don't use them as much for short stories anymore, but novels are another matter. Because they're big and I'm still having a lot of trouble with plot and pacing, it's a good thing to have them go over it.

Particularly in the case of tDW, it's been cut and re-cut so many times that I need some people to catch all of the descrepancies. The day after I sent tDW out, I realized I had a Huge Logical Error in the text that turned up because, well, I've cut 80K. I'm holding my cards on this one because I'd like to see if my readers catch it (I can clean it up in two sentences, which I'm going to do today, but I shall be amused to see who catches it and who doesn't).

My reading pool is generally a bit larger than it is on this pass - I've only got one person who hasn't seen the text before. The rest have read different versions, which isn't ideal, but rummaging up new readers was tough. Ideally, I'd like to have my writing buddies do the first pass, then a second pass by friends who are fantasy fans.

That would be neat.

As for God's War - be sure not to hold your breath! I have 100 pages to go just to get draft one done. Draft one of tDW was finished in 2003. I have a writing friend who - just from the time she *sold* the book to the time she'll see it in print - has waited 4 years.

I haven't even got an agent yet, let alone sold anything...

So. It might be awhile :)

Perpetual Beginner said...

If you're in the market for readers who haven't seen your stuff before, I'd be more than willing to have at. On the other hand, no sweat if you'd rather stick to people whose editorial tendancies you know and trust.