Amy Moorman's Blog

I now own three cats. I am beginning to think that the third one may have been a mistake.

In fairness, it’s not his fault. Completely. He is everything you expect a cat to be: cute, soft, and slightly more than batsh*t insane.

But no, the main problem is that none of these cats can stand the sight of each other. It’s Animal Kingdom meets The Real World around here, but with less alcohol (because unfortunately, I don’t drink).

So now I am stuck in my house with three cats who despise each other – spending my days scoopin’ poop and breakin’ up cat fights over the most heinous acts of disrespect (like sniffing the wrong butt at the wrong moment, or … *gasp*… making eye contact from across the room)!

I made a very wrong turn somewhere in my life, didn’t I?

Oh hi, it’s 2021!

My last year went a little something like: Christ, a PANDEMIC! Shut this sh*t down… Work from home, school from home, don’t leave home! Ok, administrative leave… trying to get through 1st grade online is pointless. People are dying, people are rioting, people are racist, Trump is F**King EVIL!! Wow, look, I bought a house!! #*(&$^($ Oh shizzzz they cut my salary… depression depression anxiety anxiety… Trump’s going to kill us all. Thank God he lost the election! Why won’t he admit he lost? You Lost! You Lost! You Lost! Concede, bitch!! A vaccine! Where did all the vaccines go? Insurrection, holy hell… depression anxiety depression anxiety… Yay, Biden’s president!! Ugh, we’re still all going to die. Where are all the vaccines??

But someWHERE, someHOW, in the middle of all this chaos and mess, I did a little thing. I pushed my “baby” from the nest.

That’s right, BRICK is now roaming free in the world as a Published Novel!!! *cue angelic voices singing*

I’m proud of myself for seeing this project through to the End, and for letting people read this story (including my father, which may have been one of the scariest things I’ve ever done).

It can happen, y’all! You can accomplish impossible things. If you just keep pushing forward.

Thanks.

Since I last updated this blog, I have a new “real” job, and a new house in a new city/state. I also have a new plot idea. I have not, however, done any writing at all.

We moved for many reasons: Iowa was too far from family, there was nothing to do there, and my job was too stressful, too precarious, and becoming increasingly too toxic and bad for my health. I still feel exhausted and stressed a lot of the time, but it feels more natural than my previous anxiety. We moved less than two months ago, and starting over does take a toll. But the tremendous weight of a terrible work situation has been lifted, and I feel happy for the first time in years.

Now I hope that once we get used to our new routines I will be able to write again. I still have stories I want to tell: my steampunk trilogy, and perhaps its sequel(s), as well as my new idea – a YA post-apocalyptic dystopia story with a non-binary protagonist.

A year ago I wrote about putting my WIP Brick to bed. Yet there it sits, gathering dust. My queries to lit agents tapered off when I was hospitalized with the flu last spring. I haven’t even looked at the manuscript in months. So, I am giving myself a NEW (Final) deadline: I will be self-publishing Brick by the end of March 2020. It will need a final read-through/edit, formatting, a cover, and a new title. It’s a lot, but I know I can do it. Hold me to my promises, universe!

The other night I had a dream in which I was finally convinced to try guacamole for the first time (not, maybe, one of my most exciting nighttime adventures). What stuck with me most after I awoke the following morning was the bite of guacamole I ate in my dream… had absolutely no flavor at all.

I realized this must be because I have no frame of reference for what avocado or guacamole tastes like. I have never tasted this thing before, so how could I know what this thing tastes like?

It got me thinking: about imagination. Specifically, about our imaginations during the writing process. Certainly when we write fiction we are creating events and settings for which we have no experience. How did Tolkien create Middle Earth if he never met elves, and orcs, and trolls?

Our imaginations are amazing, but they must have some boundaries too, right?

Most of my writing centers on human emotion and experience. Brick may be more personal than much of what I write, but I do trend toward character-driven fiction in everything I attempt. My next WIP is looking like a steampunk trilogy, but at the heart of it is still the experiences and growth of the characters.

Personally, I think that is what drives great literature. While I love reading fantasy and post-apocalyptic/dystopian genres, if it doesn’t have compelling *human* drama at the center of it, then it won’t hold my interest.

And I suppose that is where the limits of our imaginations might be.

The first novel draft I ever finished (not counting my Thorn Birds ripoff in middle school, which I do not) was a political thriller with historical elements I wrote during my first attempt at NaNoWriMo in 2009.

From the Grassy Knoll was about an historian and a government archivist who stumbled across proof of a CIA/Cuban conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy which somehow involved Fidel Castro being an double agent for our government. It was… not a good book.

I had a lot of fun writing it, however. Mostly I laughed a lot at how bad it was. But I remember writing one scene that I was incredibly proud of – until I read it again months later and realized just how ridiculously far-fetched its premise was (as opposed to the rest of my plot? Debatable).

I wrote about a young Archives Technician working at NARA in DC who was seduced by a Cuban spy to gain entry to the archive stacks, where she was murdered so the spy could steal the incriminating document. I loved the scene because I had visited NARA in 2008 and remembered touring the stacks, and really wanted to write a scene describing what they looked like. But unless my spy was the worst spy in the world, and NARA security was unconcerned with letting staff bring total strangers into the building after hours, my scene made no sense.

I’ve heard before that writing often requires you to kill that which you love. I know that had I pursued editing my political thriller manuscript, one of its (many, many) casualties in rewrites would have been that awesome description of the NARA stacks. Then again, maybe I could have found another home for those words, if I really tried.

I haven’t been sleeping well recently. It is for sure a stress issue, but it hasn’t coalesced into anything concrete enough for me to understand and take action against yet. So far, it’s just disturbing dreams and waking up with mutant tension headaches.

This is not a new issue for me, and I know I will resolve it eventually, but it made me think about how periods like this have a ripple effect on our lives.

Say I’m stressed and overwhelmed about work (common). That makes me tense and irritable at home, affecting my sleep, the time I spend with my son, and usually limiting my ambition to indulge in activities that otherwise make me happy – like writing.

Stress is one of the reasons it has taken me so long to “finish” BRICK. Two and a half years ago we moved to Iowa for a new job opportunity. I found that I threw myself 150% into the challenge of learning a new position, a new workplace, a new city, a new life for my son.

I like challenges. And I find my work fulfilling. But that doesn’t mean that other things aren’t important to me. And I didn’t let myself have that balance. I gave everything to my job, and to my son. But that meant I didn’t have anything leftover for me. For my writing.

So I have to be very conscious of my mindset now; to keep track of where I am concentrating my energy. To make sure I have something left that is just for me.

This is the time of year for making plans. Setting goals for our year. It may be cliched and arbitrary, but it is still nice to take space to re-center yourself on your path and make sure you haven’t gotten lost recently.

I have been working on my current novel BRICK for close to four years (much, much longer if you count the various plot iterations I have tossed aside). But 2015 NaNoWriMo was when I completed the first draft of this version of BRICK.

I’m going to let you in on a little known* secret: editing is hard! This process has been brutal for me, and I’ve definitely spent more time in the last few years procrastinating working on BRICK than actually making those edits.

But this is my resolution: 2019 is my year. Come what may, I will put this project to bed. I have other stories to write. So, this is where I begin my journey past the writing/editing part – and explore what it means [to me] to become an author.

*everyone knows this