D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

writing life

Hypervigilance

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To most, “hypervigilance” is but another word amongst millions of words. Likely, it’s a word few people use in their daily life. But for those of us with an anxiety disorder, hypervigilance is the thing that paralyzes us with fear. Imagine.

I had the resonator in my car’s exhaust system replaced the beginning of February. The place that did it had great reviews on Yelp and came recommended by a friend whose opinion I trust. (No, this isn’t about the muffler shop, not really, but read on.) A month or so later, I noticed my car had a clicking noise when I shut it down. Immediately fight-or-flight kicked in.

What’s that noise? What does it mean? Lots of cars click. It’s the metal contracting, isn’t it? I have a new metal thing in my car, and this is the first time I’ve driven it in warmer weather. That’s got to be it, right? I can’t take a car back to a muffler shop and say my car is clicking. It’s a stupid reason. All cars click. This is the sort of inner dialogue I must always invoke when confronted with fearsome things. This is what hypervigilance leads me to.

So I decided it was likely a normal thing and let it be. Well, sort of. You see, once a thing is revealed under the influence of hypervigilance, it doesn’t simply “go away.” And letting it be? Well, forget that. The refrigerator turning on and turning off has been known to send me reeling. And that’s a set of noises I have carefully catalogued as “normal.”

I “ignored” the clicking for a little over a week. Then a few days ago, I had reason to get out of my car while it was running, and I heard (oh, those pesky, hypervigilant ears of mine) the same sound that had sent me to the muffler shop in the first place. (And in my defense, let me say that I hadn’t heard the sound initially—the guy at the smog check place had originally pointed it out to me.) I freaked. I’d had the new resonator for just over a month, and it already broke?

This led to an overnight anxiety attack. I decided I’d call the shop in the morning, get a feel for their response. That would allay some of my fear. The guy at the shop said he couldn’t tell me if continuing to drive the car would be safe unless he saw it. Okaaaaay…

So off to the shop I went yesterday. It turns out the clicking sound which others might have noticed or might not have noticed, but which I dismissed because my coping mechanism convinced me it was a dismissible thing turned out to be the very thing that caused the mechanic to decide to replace the original resonator. Not the sound I thought sounded like the sound that had triggered the comment from the smog-check guy. The click I’d dismissed!

This is what hypervigilance does to those of us disabled by anxiety. I see things and hear things and smell things that set every nerve in body off on tangents I wouldn’t wish on an enemy. So I share this because most people don’t “get” anxiety and tend to tell those of us who do to relax and that everything’s fine. “Don’t worry about it,” they advise condescendingly. Sorry, that’s not possible in my universe.

One Book or Two?

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I have found myself recently running a back-and-forth in my head surrounding the efficacy of splitting the final book in the Lisen of Solsta series into two separate volumes. I’ve just passed the point where I would break it, and I certainly do not have enough “story” apparent in my remaining notecards.

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But here’s the thing. The number of notecards left to be brought to life in the text has little relation to the amount of writing left to be done. My notecard system (previously described) continues on in an abstract configuration until I begin to narrow in on the sequence of events noted in a single card. Then that card, like a living cell, splits into two, into four, into eight—you get the picture.

So, do I have two books in this story? Or, will I end up with but one, slightly longer than the last but not long enough to split up? Stay tuned. Only time will tell.

And Then Again, Maybe Not

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In my most recent post, I bemoaned the “romantic” nature of the titles of the books in my feminist fantasy trilogy. I beat myself up sans merci. Funny how that pity pot catches up with a person. I spoke of reality—as though I have a hold on reality. Ha! In addition to that post, I whined quite a bit on Facebook, deleting three-quarters of the posts immediately after posting them, but I did leave a couple hanging out there.

People had suggestions. Some said keep the titles, change the covers and my marketing strategy. (Truth is I don’t have a marketing strategy. I’m a freakin’ introvert, okay?) Some said they had no problem with any of it. I’m also fairly sure that there were some who thought I was full of it and posted nothing rather than hurt my feelings.

One comment in particular, however, nailed it. From an online friend dating back to the mid 1990s. She hit me with some straight talk that slapped me right back into place, and here’s what I took from what she said. I have to let go at some point. Lisen, my main character, and all her friends deserve the opportunity to find friends out in the world, on their own. I can promote the books. I can suggest—politely, mind; I’m not into that in-your-face line of promotional strategy—that you check the books out. Maybe I’ll even take the money and time I’d planned on redoing covers and such and put it into a video for the books. Now how’s that for a strategy?

And in the midst of my “poor-me-ing,” a couple of soft-but-persistent voices arose. Comments in the midst of my maelstrom of self-pity. They’d read my books and loved them. Which brought home to me the “real” reality. I can’t know who is reading or has read my books. Not really (there’s a variation of that word again). Secret readers hide out everywhere it seems. They hide in their corners reading away, not reviewing, just absorbing. And passing the books on to others. A moment of sweet contentment, a moment of grace, when I discover I’m not writing in a vacuum.

A novelist sits at home, alone, at a desk, surrounded by sheets of paper or notebooks or, in my case, 4 x 6” cards that lay out a story she wants to tell as best she can. She lives in that world, whether it’s a modern-day metropolis or a Greco-Roman-like world in another dimension, and manipulates characters and situations to conjure up the best possible tale.

And that, my friends, is my excuse. I simply confused the “real” world with my pretend world and assumed I had that level of control. Nope. And now I’ll get back to my latest project where I still have control. Happy Monday!

Hello Thursday (observations of a day)

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What do you have in store for me today? I woke up in my usually usual sad-ass state of mind, so just about anything that happens after that has got to be an improvement.

Here’s what I should do today: Vacuum, laundry, scrub a couple of small floors, exercise, plan excellent meals with only healthy ingredients, get out in the sunshine, clean up my porch. And write oodles of pages on my new WIP.

Here what I will do: Write a page or two, maybe. Oh, and submit another blog post. Yeah, this one. Here.

What is it about life that stymies me? I look out the window of my office in my apartment, and I can see the busy street of a very small suburban town on the outskirts of Los Angeles. I wouldn’t exactly call it bustling. The Village of Claremont and its multitude of colleges is not a bustling kind of place. More like a tortoise than a hare. Which is to say that things do happen here, just not very quickly.

Back to life. And Thursdays. Why is Thursday important? I don’t know. Just happens to be the day we’re in at the moment. And I have promised myself to write a couple of blog posts a week. To keep the energy flowing. I am a writer, after all.

Across the street, it’s gardening day at the Claremont Manor. The lawn mowers fill the air with the never-ending hum of grass cutting. Now “Claremont Manor” sounds ritzy, doesn’t it? It’s a retirement community, and an expensive one at that. Takes up a long city block, north and south, east and west. Its visitors include at least two ambulances a day and their accompanying fire department vehicles—small two-person truck and a ladder truck, because heaven knows you might have to climb up to the second floor, and finding the stairway blocked, what do you do? Call in the ladder!  Which brings up a question which has bothered me for some time now. Why do they send a minimum of three vehicles and six or seven personnel to a trip-and-fall incident?

Well, hopefully I’ve primed the pump now. Time to get back to the book eking its way slowly out of my soul. Perhaps next time we meet, I’ll wax philosophical. Or I will offer sage advice on the writing of novels. Or maybe I’ll just ramble on like I did this time.

Feedback from the Masses

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Must keep the blog going. That’s what they say. If you want to keep your platform steady, the blog is the way to do it. Well, god knows, I can’t tell my platform from my brand from a hole in the ground, but I’ll keep the blog active.

Next, I must come up with a topic. Shoot. What the heck do I write about? About the cat I had to euthanize last week? (No, too sad, and I’d really rather not go there.) About how my new work in progress is moving with starts and stops? (Probably not since I want to inspire people, not leave them wondering if a writer’s life is all that great.) Oh, I know.

Reviews.

First, my books are slow in picking up readers and reviews. Because of that platform thing, you know—my blog (and my Facebook page and Twitter and Google+ and, oh lordie, I can’t seem to do any of this right). Stop it, Hart. Back to topic.

Reviews.

Try again.

First, I appreciate every single review from readers. I feel especially moved by the reviews from strangers—you know, the people who have no reason whatsoever to like your book but they do anyway. (Which has been the case for me so far. Although I am waiting for that 1 star review that’ll kill me but say unequivocally that I’ve arrived.)

Reviews are the recognition spot, the point where the writer discovers whether or not they’ve gotten the story across. Did you get it? Because I really worked hard to set this, that and the other thing up so you—the reader—would say “ah” at the denouement. (And by the way, the denouement—or as I prefer to call it, the “punch line”—should be short and sweet. As a writer, I have to hit it and run.)

So did you say “ah”? Oh, good, you did.

Then, there are those who see my Lisen of Solsta trilogy as pure fantasy and adventure. That’s a tad disappointing, but maybe their subconscious hasn’t finished working it out. I’ll give them some time. And if they enjoyed my world building and the excitement of the chase to the end, then I’ve still achieved something.

Yes, reviews, like it or not, are a book’s barometer. They tell the writer whether or not she’s succeeded. So far, my reviews have told me everything and nothing about my achievement, but, as I said above, I do appreciate every review some reader takes the time to write. Because a review means I’ve touched something. (Or, maybe it means they’ve got their own egos in the mix. Either way, it’s good to hear back from people who otherwise would remain silent in their response.)

Thank you, Amazon and other venues, for opening the review process up to everyone.

Thanking

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Just a few miles away from my destination—the Ovitt Library in Ontario, California—I found myself thinking about what a friend had reminded me to do in approaching the presentation I was about to give. I blogged just a couple of days ago about my fears as I neared this moment. My friend, who knew she’d be out of the country and unable to come, had called me before leaving to wish me luck. I mentioned that I’d given a whole slew of speeches in my teen years in my church and had even competed and won an award. She said, “Find the girl. Remember the girl.” I knew that girl still lived on somewhere inside me, so I wrote my friend’s words down and kept them close.

I drove past Chaffey High School.  It’s a very large campus on Euclid Avenue, the main drag through Ontario and Upland. I never attended school there; my alma mater is in Pomona, a couple of cities away. But Chaffey remains an important part of my personal story. At the age of five, I appeared as one of the kids in Finian’s Rainbow at the Gardiner W. Spring Auditorium on the campus. I have few memories of those moments, but I have been told that one night a piece of scenery either fell on me or knocked me over.  I ran off the stage crying with many commiserating mumblings following from the audience. I recovered quickly and returned for my final scene, and the audience applauded my spunk.

So, as I drove, I remembered the girl—the girl who gave speeches, the girl who played the secondary lead in the high school musical, the girl who walked back out onto a stage at the age of five after an unpleasant encounter with scenery—and I knew I would do well this day when I was about to test that public person.

And I did. There were at least 30 people in the room, a room with bad acoustics, and I connected with many, if not all, of them. They laughed in all the right places. They smiled and I smiled back. I made eye contact. I spoke clearly and relatively succinctly about a 37-year journey making Lisen of Solsta happen. I spoke mostly about self-publishing, something I’ve done through three incarnations and 20 years.

I ate lunch with several of the club members afterwards and enjoyed the company. Being an introvert, it’s hard for me to spend much time out with other people, but I managed to stay for nearly an hour, and that’s pretty damn good for me.

I only sold four books, gave out many bookmarks, lost all four pens I’d brought for people to sign a mail sheet, but three of the pens mysteriously returned before I left. But the fact that I, the zaftig writer, got up in front of people, without a podium, stood for nearly an hour as I talked in clear and ringing tones about a subject both near and dear is where I claim my success. Next time I won’t fret, at least not anywhere near as much as I did this time.

Oh, and did I mention my posse? Several members of my writing workshop who’ve provided valuable critique of everything I write (except for most of what I post here) showed up to cheer me on. My sister came as well. At this time of giving thanks, I give thanks for this day in which I proved to myself I could do it and thanks for the people who helped make it happen.