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Announcement!

/ Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment

So this week I got some exciting news!

*drum roll*

I just signed a contract for a novella coming out with Nine Star Press! It’s the story of Oscar, who very much does not like the holidays, and Nathan, who very much could be one of Santa’s elves. They meet in the crazy that is Black Friday, and immediately hit it off. Of course, falling in love around the holidays is never easy, but they might just be able to do it!

With acceptance comes cover forms to fill out, edits to return, and blurbs to write. It’s all very exciting.

Short post today, as I have baking to do, triplets to hang out with, more baking to do, then friends to visit.

What a Week

/ Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment

Life is kind of funny in that when you have a deadline approaching, you will of course have more things to do. 

For instance. I had a deadline on Thursday for a manuscript and I’d gotten a later start on writing it than I’d planned, so I was cutting the submission close. Weekends are prime writing/revising time (when I can write a couple thousand words instead of a couple hundred).
So what did I have on Saturday? A horse show. Now, the shows take all day generally, plus preparation in the week before. And then it usually exhausts me, so I’m completely useless the next day.
No pressure.
Thankfully, while the day itself was exhausting, I was able to get up on Sunday and work on the story. I got enough done on Sunday that I wasn’t in a panic on Thursday trying to do One Last Edit before submitting it. The story went out the door!
It taught me two important things: I can hit a tight deadline, and I never want to do that again!
But the horse show (which is a fund-raiser for the 4-H club), went really well. The day was hot, my first horse was kind of a brat, but I still got a ribbon in every class and generally had a good time. There was a BIT of stress in the morning, since the horses at the barn didn’t want to come in, it was going to be too hot to leave them outside, and so we got a late start. Which mean we barely had time to warm up before our classes. I was a tad stressed. Just a tad. But I survived.
Sunday, aside from working on the manuscript, involved rewatching the anime Princess Tutu and knitting. I told you I was worthless after a show 😛
I’ve also started a new knitting project yesterday (because two projects at once just isn’t enough). I’ve had this yarn sitting around for a year or so, and I’ve never been sure what to do with it, but I decided to finally try making full mittens (instead of just fingerless mittens/wrist warmers). 
I’m not following a pattern, because I’m sort of just planning on knitting up like normal and then finding a pattern on how to end the mitt part. Should be fine. Right?
Well, if you want to see more of my knitting pictures, I’ll post them on Instagram, I’m trying to actually be active there: AlextheRate. Sorry for the quality. I’m currently using an older iDevice for Reasons. 

Excuses and Priorities: Finding the Time

/ Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment

While having a conversation with a fellow fledgling writer, he mentioned he “didn’t have time” to work on his current project. I mentioned that you make time for what’s important in your life, so if you’re not “making time” then it’s not as important as other things.

This is, of course, true within reason. If you’re exhausted after a long day of work, then even if you have time to write, it might not be a good idea to write–the words will probably feel as tired as you. There’s also times when you’re just not in the headspace to write–whether because the scene is dark and you’re too happy or the scene is happy and you’re too sad. But generally, if you make time to write, then you’re going to write more than if you didn’t make time. (Um, duh, right?)

He sheepishly agreed with me and said he deserved to hear that, since he applies that to so much else in his life/preaching. It’s a good thing to apply to life. Obviously having kids (which he does) complicates things, since their priorities might not match with your own, but the logic still applies (just slightly tweaked).

I think of myself as fairly busy. I work full-time, ride horses at least twice a week, write and edit my own stuff, am (sorta) active in a writers’ group, am a leader of a 4-H club, see my friends at least once a week, visit family (although not often enough), run my single-person household, and get 6-8 hours of sleep a night (which is mandatory for the happiness of the world). I’ve had people ask how I do it. Well, I follow some rules.

1. Schedule things. I joke with my mom, but I require most events to be scheduled at least a month in advance if you want my attendance. Anything less than that and I don’t feel bad for saying “Sorry, busy!” Scheduling let’s me know when I am going to have a busy weekend and need to reorganize other items. Say my Saturday is booked. Since my weekend mornings are prime writing time, then I need to either plan to write more on Sunday or else try to squeeze in more time during the week. Scheduling allows for optimal use of all of your time.

That said, don’t overschedule to the point where you don’t have any downtime built in. I tend to expect everything to take longer than it does, so I never feel rushed to do the next thing. I used to not be as good at that, and you burn out quick.

2. Prioritize. This gets back to what I was saying earlier. I used to (okay, we all know I still do) complain that I don’t have time to write. And then I realized I couldn’t write in the evenings after work because my head wasn’t in the right spaces. But writing more was something I wanted to do. So I started setting aside time in some mornings to get up and write. Does it mean I sometimes roll out of bed when I’d rather be curled up browsing tumblr? Yes. But for me it’s worth it.

Some mornings I may only write 200 words, but it’s 200 more words than I had the night before. And just doing it feels like an accomplishment. And starting the morning with an accomplishment is a good way to do it!

Obviously this can apply to anything. But if you ever find yourself saying “I don’t have time for X,” but you spend your whole night watching reality TV shows, then you need to ask yourself, “Is reality TV more important than X to me?” If you keep spending your time that way, then yes, it is.

I’m lucky enough to have a fairly flexible schedule, and kids throw a wrench (or a whole toolbox) into working schedules, but if you really want to do the thing, then you have to make time to DO THE THING. If you come to the time to do the thing and you don’t feel like it at that moment, then you can always do something else. But if you don’t make the time to do the thing, then you’ll never have time to do the thing.

3. Do the above to everything in your life. Now, I don’t mean rank “friend time” vs “family time.” But if you’ve seen your fiends a lot that week and you need some alone time, don’t be afraid to say no if they invite you to a movie you’re lukewarm on and you’d really rather be writing. Even if you can do thing X during when you’d usually slump on the couch watching TV, you might be able to do something else during that time, which would then open up a different slot for doing thing X.

And that’s…pretty much it. I realize not everyone can/wants to have a life as structured as I do, but I think the core ideas can help everyone. No, you might not have a Google Calendar for every week sketching out when you have writing time, but having the idea of “I’ll wake up twenty minutes earlier on Wednesdays to [do X] before I head to my job” is sometimes all we need.

Also, if you do all the above and find out you still “don’t have time,” then it just means that the thing you “want to do” isn’t actually that important to you. And that’s okay too. It might help to rephrase the thinking though: “I’d love to do X, but I have too many other awesome thing I’m busy doing.” There’s no shame in realizing that while something might be really cool and you’d like to do it, it just isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. As long as you’re happy with the things you are making time for, then that’s all that matters.

Another Year Wiser

/ Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment

I had my birthday last weekend, in which I got a little crisp (but nothing that hurt for more than 24 hours), but otherwise had a lot of time having fun in the sun with my family (especially the three five-year-olds). I might not ever want kids, but I love my nephews and niece! They really make for a fun birthday.

Of course, birthday parties mean less time writing (I literally woke up, ran to the barn, got home, napped, then went to gatherings until 8pm, at which point I was so exhausted I didn’t have brain cells to rub together to form a story).

But I got stuff. First off, my stuffed Fluffy arrived. He’s from the manga/anime The Morose Mononokean, and he’s adorable. I actually bought him for myself a couple of weeks ago, but I regret nothing. He’s very soft. And it was a nice gift to find on my birthday 🙂 Though I had to hide him when the kids came over!

If you saw my previous post, you saw me mention that as a kid/teen, I had an obsession with taking pictures of presents that I’d received. I still do that, although slightly less often now, oddly enough, even though it’s easier now.

I mostly take pictures to send to my friends. But I’m still not sure what my obsession with it is. Maybe so I don’t forget that I own this thing? Even though I own the thing, so I obviously have it. Although, now that I think about it, I believe at one time I heard that insurance companies only would replace personal items in a house if you had proof that you owned said item. I’m not sure if that’s accurate, or if a picture would even prove you owned it, but I think I got it in my head that I needed to take pictures of all my presents so the insurance company would buy me my stuff if we got robbed/the house burned down.

I don’t know. I was weird. Because I’m obviously not now.

So, good news on the writing front: Once I finish the current xmas story (which has a fast-approaching deadline, so I’ll either finish or give up), I can return to the rom-coms that I’ve been working on, and hopefully will have more information to share than just “Still not done yet.”

Happy Birthday to Me

/ Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment

My birthday has always signaled the end of summer to me (and probably still does for a lot of kids). It was always a week or so before school started, and so the free, wild days were gone.

This year my birthday just signals the end of a very busy month.

After dog-sitting a geriatric pup at the end of July, I had roughly a week and a half to breathe before rushing off to my own four-day vacation. I got back from that and immediately (like, didn’t even unpack vacation stuff) went to my parents’ house to cat-sit for them (it’s actually more like garden-sit, because I’ll be honest, the garden takes more work than the cat. Though the garden doesn’t wake me up at 3 am begging for breakfast). I drove home on Monday from THAT and here we are.

To say the least, my word count is lacking, my birthday has come (it was Wednesday), and I’m really looking forward to September! *check calendar* October!

Oh, and there’s a Christmas piece that deadlines in the middle of September that I’m trying to hit. NO PRESSURE SELF. 😛

But really, even with all the crazy, I’ll likely hit my word count for August, I had a good time on vacation, I got to ride a lot this month, and things are pretty good.

I hope everyone else had a nice summer too.

One Queer Journey

/ Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment

Right. So this week I’m house-sitting for my parents, and since the cat hasn’t changed much in the year since I’ve watched her, you won’t be getting more adorable cat pictures.

Instead, I decided to spend my week going through the boxes of my stuff that are still at my parents’ house (two boxes of stuffed animals, one box of books, two boxes of miscellaneous junk). One of those boxes had a shoebox full of photos (organized by film roll/date and sorted accordingly because it’s me). I also found an unused photo album, and since I’m all about downsizing, I decided to junk all the photos that I couldn’t fit in the album. That’s my childhood reduced to 160 pictures (aside from those photo albums I’ve already made).

Which meant I spent a few days going through the photos of my childhood (which involved a lot of me taking weird pictures of birthday presents, because that was a thing I loved to do. As if I was going to forget what I’d gotten). And I thought it’d be fun to share my haircut journey. Some of these I look back on and say, “Really, genderqueer, why was this a surprise?”

Back in the day I had fairly blond hair. And since I had two older brothers, my mother LOVED to put me in dresses. I was not as happy about this.

You can’t see the full extent of frilly dress-itude in this picture, but I think the bow says an awful lot.

But long hair does not a girly-girl make. My mom may have insisted on dresses for holidays, church, and special occasions, but most of the time I ran around in jeans…or cleats.

Because I played soccer! I loved soccer. My dad was a great coach, I was fairly athletic, and I got to be rough and tumble. I wasn’t a good long-distance runner, but I could sprint well and knock people (completely legally) on their butts.

The older I got, the more I resisted the dresses, the more I was a ‘tomboy’, until eventually….

Listen, I’m not saying it was a great haircut on me, but this was probably sometime in the nineties, so we’ll just go with that as the excuse. Also, I’m pretty sure it was the first time my parents (read: my mother) let me pick my own hairstyle. And the hairstylist just sort of went along with me, I think. The details are a little fuzzy.

I don’t necessarily think clothes make the man, but they sure do say something about me 🙂

And yes, in that first picture I was holding Mario Paint. It was the one video game that was MINE and not my brothers’ and I was so proud of it (even though it wasn’t nearly as fun as all the games my brothers had that I played).

In high school I let my hair grow out again, either because I do sometimes like it long (even if all I do is put it in a ponytail or braid) or because peer pressure indicated long hair was a must to attract the attention of guys (which is what all high schoolers want, right?).

So I let it grow out. And out and out and out. The picture shows the absolute length of my hair (it doesn’t grow any longer, because I shed too fast for it go do so. It also shows my hair’s tendency to have a SLIGHT wave.

The reason I took this sort of random shot?

Because it was the summer before my freshman year of college, and I once again cut all my hair off. I didn’t go as drastically short this time, mostly because I was going through enough changes, I didn’t want to look stupid (which I then felt like I looked back with my short hair).

Over the course of college my hair got shorter and shorter and shorter, until a few years after graduation, when I started getting basically the same short hair as I have now (with some variations and different styles over the years).

So here I am. Thanks for joining me on this journey down memory lane!

Coming Out, Part 2

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So, at the beginning of this year I was talking to a therapist about coming out to my family as genderqueer, and we discussed how to do it and whatnot, and eventually it got to the point where I needed the topic to just naturally arise with my parents because otherwise anything would feel weird. Like a setup. My mom (and I assume my dad) knew I was on the LGBT spectrum, but none of the details.

And then Thursday happened. It was a terrible day for me emotionally and I couldn’t even tell you why. It just sucked. It got a little better as the day wore on, but I was mostly on edge. Anxious and depressed and just BLAH.
In the evening I was down near home, so I swung by to pick up some zucchini and a cooler, and my mom and I chatted (for like an hour and a half). Then I went to leave and she asked if I was getting excited for me coming vacation and I said I’d be excited for that once I got my hair cut, then I described my haircut.
Her: You want a boys’ haircut?
Me: Well, lots of girls have that haircut, but yes, I do want a boys’ haircut. *pause, thinking: Well, fuck it.* You know, because I’m genderqueer.
I am the picture of grace an eloquence. 
We talked a little about transgender vs genderqueer, which came up again when she called me her “daughter” and I corrected “child” and she looked at me dumbfounded, and I explained I preferred nongendered words, but we could discuss that pronouns at another time. She seemed stunned and I said she probably needed some time to process this, but she said she was fine.
I think she wanted to seem fine and not like she had to readjust things in her head, but I also think needing time to readjust things in your head is OK. Like, hey, I just told you flat-out that you don’t have a daughter anymore. Even if you’re totally cool with it, I imagine it takes some pondering. It sure took me some pondering!
So that was my very low-key coming out as genderqueer. Hopefully this means she’ll never question my clothing choices again (although someone should probably question my clothing styles…).
And if any of my readers have questions, feel free to ask 🙂

Dogs, Heatwaves, and Writing

/ Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment

If you follow my whining me on twitter, you’ll know that I’ve spent the past week dog sitting. Which isn’t a problem, generally. I mean, I always complain, but I’ve rather gotten used to sleeping in their bed and the lack of really hot water in the shower (it’s summer, it’s fine). The dog is always a stressor, because he’s more work for me than I have to tend in my daily life, but this year it’s rough.

As you can probably tell by his picture, Duke is a geriatric pup. He’s gotten more and more white as the years have gone by, and although I’m not sure of his age, I’m guessing it’s around ten or twelve, which is about peak for a Labrador, and he’s a Chocolate Lab. He was a handful as a puppy, but he’s also raised three kids to five years old, and taught them to respect dogs and how to behave around dogs, and not to be afraid of big dogs (even when they plow right over you when you’re just learning to stand).

He’s old. He has a breathing problem (he pants a lot, and I’m pretty sure it’s not just because it’s hot most of the time), is going blind and deaf, and has terrible hips. The hips especially have taken a swift downturn recently, where when he’s walking on the tile (seen here with him sleeping), his hind legs will just slip out from under him and plop him on the floor. He’s pretty chill about it. He just sort of sighs and says Well, I guess I’ll lie here then.

Of course, putting carpeting down would be a good solution to this problem. Except in his old age he also has some bathroom issues, which I’ve ranted about enough on Twitter that I’ll spare you the details. But it’s messy. And frustrating. And STINKS. And I can’t really be mad at him because he’s just an old dog doing his best.

Another problem with the hips is going up and down stairs. Thankfully he can pretty much live in the downstairs, but when he has to go out, he has to go down five porch steps. Which he usually does without completely collapsing (but every time he collapses it breaks my heart). But most times to get back up the steps, I have to grab him by the hips and walk his hind legs up the steps while he works the front end. We’ve actually gotten pretty good at it. (His owner made a ramp right before he left to try to avoid this problem, since the level of hip issue has turned suddenly for the worse, but the ramp seems to cause us more problems than solutions, so we’re doing it our way.)

So some mornings I get woken up by whining at 4 am because he’s fallen and he can’t get up (I’m serious), and I trudge downstairs and haul him to his feet and then let him out to pee (because why risk it) and then trudge back to bed. That’s better than the second morning when I woke up to…well, we won’t discuss that.

But he’s a lovely creature, and while I wish his owner would have given me a bit more warning about what I was stepping into, I can’t blame the dog. Even when I leave him out in the cool porch where he has food, water, and easy walking turf, plus access to potty space, and yet he LOOKS in the window like I’ve betrayed him. Okay, I may blame him a little for that.

The house itself is lovely. The owner has a fantastic sense of style, and has added a few touches that I appreciate.

Yes, those are tea kettles that say “Green Tea” “Ceylon Tea” and “Oolong Tea” in the kitchen. They also have a gas range stove, which I only really care about because it heats my tea water so quickly.

The reason I’m (over?)sharing this is because I came into this week with GRAND plans of productivity. That was, until I met my charge for the week and realized how much time and effort was going to go into caring for him. Which is partially an excuse (because I still have time to watch the entire second season of Daredevil), but also can be emotionally draining. Bargaining with a dog is futile. Bargaining with a partially deaf/blind dog is the beginnings of insanity. But there’s really not any other choice.

That said, I still outlined a Christmas novella(?) that was supposed to be 20K at max, but the outline seems to be sort of long for that. But who knows. I wrote it out by hand in a tiny notebook, so maybe it’s just the right length.

I’m not a frog.

/ Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment

Part of me wants to sit here and write a post about how I haven’t gotten anything done because I’ve been busy and now I’m dog sitting a geriatric dog who weighs about as much as me and who can’t go up and down steps in an old house that is nothing but steps. I was going to complain how I’m exhausted and sleepy and the dog is sitting at the bottom steps of the porch unable to get in because going up steps is nearly impossible. I was also going to complain about how I’ve been here a day and a half and have had to clean up two piles inside the house already. There was going to be a lot of whining here.

And I think I have good reason to be whiny and exhausted. But today I’m going to strive to be positive. My friends just had their first baby! His name is Owen and I haven’t seen him (they haven’t left the hospital yet and the pic I saw was a wrinkly little raisin), but he’s the first born among my friends, so it’s exciting.

I rode yesterday, and while it wasn’t a great ride (*refrains from whining*), I’m glad I got one last ride in before my week away (and a week of intense heat!). I also did all the barn chores, so I feel less bad about eating those three cupcakes last night while rewatching The Force Awakens. And I saw some toads, which isn’t unusual, but most of the time they are large (the size of a coaster), but I also saw a tiny one (pictured) who was roughly the size of a quarter. (Let me tell you, it’s hard to take a picture of something that small, in poor lighting, while playing the game of “how close can I get before you hop away.”)

The rest of the day was a blur of frustration and exhaustion, so I won’t go on about it. This week was pretty good in the writing avenue, and though I’m sleepy and grumpy, I’m going to try to keep that momentum going this morning. Possibly while listening to Christmas music. Because reasons 😉 Hey, it is Christmas in July, isn’t it?!

Hop to it!