Tag Archives: answer

Coffee & Conversation: Do you watch any sports, and if so do you have any special game day rituals?

23 Monday Mar 2020

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There are a great many people who won’t agree with me on this one, but honestly, I don’t see how it’s any different. My “sport” is Survivor. It’s a game. People are eliminated. There are competitions between players. You can have your fantasy teams. And at the end of the season a winner takes all.

No one who watches sports actively do anything other than eat snacks and drink beer on game days, so it’s not as if the “sport” part of the equation means anything to those of us who aren’t participating. And if we are counting the amount of work contestants/players go through, they certainly go through a large amount of body-wreckage like your average sports player, including contracting infectious diseases that often-times wreck havoc on their bodies for years and years to come.

As for the game day rituals, yes! I’ve managed to coerce my family into liking Survivor (mhahaha) and we play a season-long game based on our guesses as to who is going home.

After episode one, we all choose one person as our winner pick who, if we managed to get it right, will be worth a massive amount of points.

Before every episode after the first, we each write down the boot order, from who we think is least likely to go home to who we think is most likely to go home. These are listed by order number. Then, at the end of the episode we circle the eliminated player on each person’s list and whatever placement that player was at is how many points we each get. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: How has the coronavirus affected you?

17 Tuesday Mar 2020

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Literally everywhere I look, this is the only topic of conversation. I’d originally been going to answer a completely different question this week, but I decided to sideline that one until next week because of the last few days.

On Thursday last, I received an automated call from the county that all schools would be closed Mar 16 for at least two weeks (which is why this is coming out today and not yesterday–kids say hi though). In the 24-48 hours after, multiple messages went out postponing, then cancelling an all-day kid’s sporting event that had been scheduled this weekend, possibly cancelling the entire season, library closure noted (so much for working by myself), dentist closed up (was supposed to go in today and was hoping to get my popping jaw looked at), and restaurants have been effectively boarded up until further notice (this one doesn’t truly affect me, but I’m feeling for all of the owners who were struggling to stay afloat month after month).

Toilet paper is completely gone at the stores, as is bread and milk, paper towels, disinfectant, etc. The pandemic has people walking around wearing masks and gloves (that they take off to operate touch-screens and then put back on–I guess to cultivate the bacteria) and the grand total of cases of corona for an hour’s drive all around me is…nil.

Which means this is probably only the beginning of the hysteria.

The news is one-dimensional. My twitter feeds are jacked too, which I expected because twitter is a toxic hell-plane, but I’d have thought that people might occasionally have something to say that doesn’t include the words “corona” or “pandemic” or “toilet paper.” Memes are out of control. Everyone is referring to “quarantine reading” as if it’s somehow different than regular reading.

And here I am being hypocritical and talking about it too.

Honestly, the hysteria is the worst. I’m glad that steps are being taken; not so glad that people are suddenly becoming the worst germaphobes on the planet. I’ve seen people crap on others because they’re not “obeying the six-foot social distancing radius.” I’ve seen so many freaking rules on how to wash one’s hands that I’m starting to feel as if I’m in preschool again. I’ve seen nasty comment after nasty comment always about how others are being irresponsible (but never, ever the person being nasty).

I’ve had both my kids come home from school last week and talk about how they were bullied (they didn’t use this word, but that’s exactly what it was), because they had the gall to cough, or sneeze, or, in the case of one of them, throw up because he choked on a hard candy and his body needed to expel it. The fact that this hysteria had spread to our children to the point where my kids were upset that people were mocking them for “having corona” is despicable.

Is this a sickness that can kill the way the yearly flus can? Yes. Should we be careful? Yes. Should we fall into this mass hysteria because we love jumping on ridiculous band-wagons and lose what brain cells we possessed? No. Please, no.

The next few weeks are going to be tough whether you get the virus or not because the world is losing its freaking mind.

So, what I have to say to you is, good luck out there!

Figure out what you have to do to meet your responsibilities, to care for the people you need to care for, to get your work done, to feed your family, to protect yourself. And do it knowing that fear is the mind-killer. Don’t succumb. You are better than that.

Be kind, be brave, be awesome!

All my love,
~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: Do you hoard anything and, if so, what is it?

09 Monday Mar 2020

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Notebooks! All the notebooks!

This is assuming you don’t mean books. Assuming that hoarding books is as natural as breathing for anyone who reads (and who actually has space) and that using books would be a cop out for that reason.

So my answer is notebooks. I have far, far too many. There are some people who only buy a notebook when they need one. Others who might grab a couple and keep them on hand. I have probably close to 200. And that’s just a guess because I’m not counting.

To be fair, not all of them are large. Some are super tiny, like index card size, and some are even smaller, talking you could string them on your keychain if you wanted, or stuff them in your pocket. I have one shelf that is two layered deep in unwritten-in notebooks because it’s shorter/smaller notebooks in the back and an extra layer of those super tiny ones in the front.

I’ve got spiral-bound ones, glued ones, some with locks, some with leather ties, some with recycled paper, some with glitter. I’ve even got one with a furry cover. Some were super cheap. A few not so much. Many were presents. It’s a go-to gift for me for a lot of people because they know that notebooks are always appreciated no matter what size/shape/style, especially so if they’re pretty.

Whenever I get knee-deep in a new novel idea or start a new challenge or just need to hit the refresh button on my mind, I’ll go sift through my notebooks to find one that fits the idea I have just right.

The one for my Houndmaster books is a floppy green that used to have a tie but it broke because I used it so much.

The one I’ve set aside for my shaman stories if I ever get to them is a pale blue folded cover with wood rods keeping it shut.

The one for Canvas Blues is a spiral-bound plain tan one that had hard covers so I could write short ‘yesteryear’ pieces whenever I was out and about.

The one for my poems was a gift. Feels like leather, but is probably fake, has a cute lock-clasp and a stone embedded on the front cover.

The one I used (but haven’t touched in years) for my DaSunder Chronicles is a smaller gold mottled, hard-covered notebook that reminded me of the desert.

It’s an obsession. But I guess it’s better than say, food wrappers or nail clipping or anything equally gross.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: What would you do differently if you know no one would judge you?

02 Monday Mar 2020

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I wouldn’t feel the need to use a pen name. Wouldn’t feel the need to keep my writing to myself. I would talk about it openly among family and friends rather than vaguely.

The bulk of my family is heavily religious with some of them being the judgemental kind. Many are against the LGBT community. Many are against sexual activity in general. Many are misogynistic.

To give an example, I want to go into a story.

I write under two different pen names, this one where I feel free, feel as if I can write and publish and do whatever I want, when I want, how I want. Some people give me poor reviews, but I don’t read them, I don’t care. People are welcome to dislike my work because I’m doing something I enjoy doing and a stranger’s poor opinion isn’t going to take away this little pocket of freedom I claim. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: What was your worst word mishap?

24 Monday Feb 2020

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Most writers have their arch nemesis, those fickle words that just won’t appear on the screen properly. Backwards vowels, missing letters, a correct spelling that ultimately is the demise of the sentence because it’s the wrong, freaking word.

When reading over work, especially your own, it’s easy for your eyes to fill in the missing gaps, rearrange words into a proper order, even delete instances of times when mistakes like “the-the” occur. This is one of the reasons a writer needs to set aside a book for long enough to forget the word structure or have someone else look the story over.

Here’s a short list of some of my most common mistakes, the ones that I can remember off the top of my head because they happen so often. This list is not comprehensive and I have done much, much worse, up to and including typing in rhyming words or even typing a synonym or close-to a synonym in place of the word I wanted to write. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: Where do you get your ideas?

03 Monday Feb 2020

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Idea questions are one of the most common questions writers receive and let’s face it, the real answer is never enough for anyone not in the industry.

Because the answer is Everywhere!

To many people that sounds like a cop-out, a way to shrug the question off and move on because you’re too tired to actually answer. The reality is, it is the shortened form of the answer, the TLDR, the I’ve-answered-this-question-a-million-times-already response.

The longer answer is still Everywhere, but it’s more than that too. It’s about the wanderings of your mind and the questions that arise from those wanderings. It’s about the what-ifs and then-thats and can-I’s that follow.

You go for a hike, following a river, letting your mind wander:

What if the river ran up this hill rather than down it?
Then that would mean the water would pull from the ocean and pool in the mountains.
Can I create a setting, a plot or a character who sails the frigid seas pooling at the tips of those mountains?

You misspell something, miss-say something, miss-hear something: What if it’s not a mistake?

You take things that are figurative and you make them literal: What if getting mud on your skin really was the end of the world?

You take your fears and exaggerate them. Twist your own beliefs to see what kind of character might stem. You look at everything and everyone around you and ask yourself: What are they thinking? Why is that there? What if I change this small detail, what would happen?

But what about when this doesn’t come naturally to you? After all, creativity is a muscle like anything else and if you haven’t been practicing it might feel stiff.

One way to push past that stiffness that leads to general, overused ideas and force yourself to think outside the box, is to do the List 10 prompt challenge. Number down on a piece of paper to 10 and then choose a word/prompt (or have one chosen for you). Then for every number, you write whatever comes to mind based on that prompt. You’ll notice as you work your way down that the ideas become harder to come up with. The easy ones, the ones that mimic things you’ve seen or read, are already taken and you’re forced to push harder and further in order to link something–anything–back to that prompt.

The rule of thumb is, you write your 10 different ideas and then scrap every single one of them. Then you come up with number 11. That way you’ve walked past all the easy ones, the ones everyone else has already thought of, the ones that sprang to mind quickly because you’d read that book or seen that movie. And the one you finally decide on will be one that took you longer to reach, made you work for it.

Another way to push past the stiffness is to experience more. Go out beyond your normal haunts. Read books you normally wouldn’t read. Cook food you normally wouldn’t eat. Talk to people you normally wouldn’t get a chance to speak to. And listen.

Always, always listen.

And that is how I come up with ideas.

~Emmi