ieva melgalve

I have been so swamped in my day job & my whattheheckisthatcalled that goes on in my head that I barely manage to surface to breathe. Not good for writing. The good news is that I’m reading a lot (the best thing to relax during lunch breaks or at evenings) and half of these books are non-fiction on subjects like “Japanese psychotherapy”. Of course, that does not unclutter my mind too well, but somehow it helps: a sentence from this book, a sentence from that, and something starts to shift and shape itself.
Not an excuse for not writing though. I think that I either have to come up with a really, really good excuse or get my backside on the work. After all, it takes just half an hour to write another page in my comic, for example, and I have half an hour in every day, no matter how swamped and horrible it is.

The past few days have been rather intense–I’ve been meeting people, writing things (mostly non-fiction, for freelance gigs and whatnot), some editing etc.. The contrast between this and the last weeks, no, actually months of doing much less that I could is surprising; I don’t even know whether in a good or a bad way. There are still things I have to catch up to (most notably, that darned comic I am stuck with, and Virgin that I still want to finish even though it’s so scary).
Also, I have decided that I’ll go to Finncon this year, making arrangements and stuff. This will be my first con abroad, so notably scary.

Other than that, I’ve been reading a lot, and partying a lot, and, of course, being my usual haphazard, half-witted self. Sometimes I really wonder how I manage to get by day by day when life around me seems so chaotic, and I’m struggling to keep up at least some sort of appearances. But then again, I think that’s how it is for most people.

So, I have written what I think of as my first horror story. (I’m not counting a bloody and severely disgusting spin-off of a classic Latvian stage play I did when I was fourteen.) It’s about… Snow White. The idea was conceived three weeks ago, and took a horribly long time to mature. I had to translate it from “concept” to “tangible characters and world”, something that apparently takes much more time than translating a brilliant vision to something that has an idea underneath.

This has been time that’s more like a pond than a stream. Only, in my case, it’s been that sort of a pond that is rumored to have an abyss in its bottom, or a sunken castle, or both. I have thought much, learned much about myself, and by sheer thinking about who am I and what am I made of, I’ve uprooted the writing nerve and made it so raw I can barely touch it. Everything I’ve written seems to be so egocentric, and obvious, and irrelevant, and alien at the same time. No wonder I haven’t been able to produce new words, except those I write at the day job.
Of course, this is going to pass as soon as I realize that my writing isn’t about me. Well, it is about “me” as the deep and ever-changing thing that I am; but it’s not about “me” as I think of myself in everyday life.
Writing isn’t about “writing what you know”. Writing is “writing what you hadn’t realized before”. Since I’m so keen on realizing things right now–and my thoughts move faster than my stories do–I seem to do most of the self-revelations by thinking, not by writing. Robbing myself of the mystery and the miracle that is writing.

I won’t spend long in this beautiful castle of thinking about myself, basically because it gets really boring after a while. The good stuff is that what glitters dimly through the blue-green waters of the pond, peers through the weeds and the algae. As soon as you drag it out, clean it, examine and define it… it becomes a museum stuff, and a museum of me isn’t as exciting as I assumed it could be.
So yeah. I’ll be back in the game. I hope it’ll be soon.

..which is the best estimate of my current position.
I have cold so bad that every time I cough I keep expecting my lung to fall on my keyboard.
But I’m alive, and it’s a lot.

This spring is beautiful though. Every sunny day after work, my husband and me spend fifteen minutes (or half an hour) sitting on the bank of Daugava river, watching the swans and the reflections in the water. There’s something soothing about the spring air so warm that it flows into your lungs like water; and you’re drowning in life.
Drowning in life. It is good. It is infusing me with life.
And I’m alive.

I built a house on a broken hill
Broken and mended with my own fears
I built a house on an empty space
That my mind produced instead of a cure

A house of plaster, a house of words
A creaking, cracking house of dreams
A house that held against all the winds
A house that was the birthplace of streams

There is still a place in the basement deep
A hole that opens in the deepest of dreams
It peers down deep into the abyss
Deep down, there’s a mirror of all that exists

And there I lay down on a floor, and I look
And in the reflection, there is not any house
I see myself floating up in the sky
And the streams of tears and blood flowing out

There is nothing to keep me and nothing to hold
There are no cracks and there are no seams
But there’s future below me and past up above
And me, flowing freely. A thousand of dreams.

So, first five days of Story-A-Day May have been quite good. I’ve written a story in each of them, some better, some (umm) requiring heavy editing. On average, it is just the same as if I’d written them in my normal story-a-month pace. I am running out of words though, this funny exhausted feeling I’m usually getting through NaNoWriMo.

But it seems that for me, most productive way of working is short one-month long spurts of concentrated activity instead of…well, anything that’s longer than a month. I will have to declare June an EditANovelJune. After all, it’s all fun and games, as long as I do it for a month. And as long as nobody gets hurt.

So my short story, “The Roommates”, has been published in Fusion Fragment. Go ahead and read it, it’s online and for free.
I’m quite happy about how it looks even though I’m coming through the usual post-publication blues. I think I’ll try to make a “behind the scenes” post at some time, but not now.

The scariest thing about having an opinion (or accomplishing something, or just being known) is that people will disagree with you and criticize you. There’s no way around it; the more people know about you the more criticism you will receive. (Sure, you can switch off the comments or never read them, but I think in most cases, that’s not the way to go. Sometimes, yes, but not always.)
There will be people who hate you just because you are who you are, and try to mess with you because they feel threatened by you. That is a sad thing but at least I can deal with it.
But there will be people who give me honest and grounded opinions who differ from mine, people who prove very well that my ideas are wrong. I am now able to predict them, but I cannot guard against them unless I spend all the article fending off differing opinions instead of stating mine. (There are people who do that, and their articles feel just lukewarm and moderately boring to me.)
I think that it’s reasonable, as long as it doesn’t take too much time, to respond to the best counterarguments. Which means figuring out the opponent’s idea, understanding why it’s valid and stating why I disagree.
This means that I’m giving myself amounts of self-doubt that I wouldn’t normally have. This means that there are moments when I think that what I said or did was horribly, abysmally wrong, and now I’m tainted for life and people-will-never-like-me because of that. (Every time I write a critique about Latvian book, I’m pretty certain I’ve gained a life-long enemy. This far people have been very gracious though.)

Last time I got myself out there in the wilds, I got scared about it all and retreated back in my cave, whimpering, licking my wounds and feeling horribly inadequate and foolish.
Now, I hope that I’m stronger, and that my backup (meaning my husband, and a friend or two) will help me through.

1. Take one moderately creepy religion/philosophy/worldview. Something that isn’t merely unacceptable or unfit for you, but something that makes you shudder every time you have to deal with it, something you would keep your kids away from, if you could. For me, it is Christianity. For you, it could be something else.
2. Take a kids’ version of that moderately creepy thing. A simple propaganda material that’s meant to be convincing and light. For me – “Bible heroes” flash cards, with oversimplified pictures of smiling people (Jonah in scuba gear, on the back of a smiling whale) and text that is adjusted to the gentle minds of small children (“Jesus died on the cross because he loved us.”)
3. Draw one card and get the rough idea of a story (conflict) out of it.
4. Research some more to figure out the stuff that’s been left out of the card. Dig deep.
5. Put it in a different time, space, religion – anything to twist the idea around until you love it.
6. Sleep on it.
7. Write a story.