Now that the Marking is Over, Routines Get Rebuilt

It’s a bright, sunny Monday where I woke up early and got to work on writing projects first thing, getting a bunch of stuff done before I sit down to write this blog post. It’s cool enough that I notice when I walk around without socks on, but not so cold that I regret this decision within an hour of waking up.

Over the weekend I realised that the last three weeks have been rough on my mental health. This shouldn’t be surprising – end-of-semester marking is one of those gigs is custom-built to trigger all my anxieties: high stakes, tight deadlines, and you only get one shot to put together feedback that will help, and you want it to be clear because there’s no chance to explain or expand on things the way you do when critiquing stories for friends.

All of this comes together to create a very muddied vision of what “doing a good job” looks like, and my anxiety feeds on uncertainty like a tick, growing fat as it burrows deeper and deeper into the dark parts of my subconscious. I finalised everything last Tuesday, but it took me the rest of the week to start pulling myself out of the slump. There were too many things left unattended too during the marking period, too many things that needed to be dealt with before my brain returned to a space where work was possible.

I read a bunch. I watched some wrestling. I sat at my desk for the first time in weeks. I realised that my email had become a nightmare while I marked, with over a hundred messages still waiting for a response, and my RSS feeds needed tending because there were about 400 unread posts accumulated there. We do not speak of the unchecked notifications on social media.

On the email front, I got my first round of queries about the next GenreCon. These happen every year about this time, and usually amount to “when is the next one? What can you tell us?”

The answer, this year, is “virtually nothing,” for my contract ended after the last con. Your best bet is querying Queensland Writers Centre via admin@qldwriters.org.au or calling on 07 3842 9922.

Meanwhile, some interesting things that popped up as I processed feeds and inboxes:

• This comic about 11 Signs You Are Not Getting Enough Sleep is kinda glorious.
• Kathleen Jennings has a lot of (very pretty) work-in-progress images from the development of the cover to Gillian Polack’s new book.
• Via Inabitat (aka my favourite source of SF settings) – this arched bamboo roof made by a Vietnamese architecture firm is fantastic and went straight into the “locations to use in fiction one day” file.
• Terry Crews remains awesome.
• Fed up with all-male “greatest comic villains” lists, the Mary Sue puts together a list of the greatest female DC villains.
• Via Jane Friedman’s Blog, a post that explores a sentiment I write a lot when marking: Rule No. 1 for flashbacks: until and unless you’ve invested us in a scene, don’t flash back (or away) from it.
• Seth Goddin on the existence of markets, not “the market,” is worth thinking about in a writing context.

My goals today: get some writing done; get this blog post written and posted; go for a walk; read something. Remember that I’m getting back into the swing of things. Wake up to an alarm and get back to the daily routine, which fell by the wayside when my partner stopped leaving for work at 7:30 . Focus on small advances on projects, instead of trying to rebuild entire projects in one day.

It’s less exciting than showing up here and crushing large word counts, but it’ll be more effective in the long run.