It's That Time of Year!

Some people get excited about Christmas.  Others really wait and plan for that summer vacation. Personally, I am a fan of Halloween.  I mean, how many holidays encourage you to let your inner child out?  This year, my friend and book promoter/editor/inspiration-when-I'm-not-feeling-the-whole-book-thing, Jackie, and I decided that we had to celebrate the holiday by releasing my vampire-themed book First Bite (also with werewolves, elves, werecats, and more).  That was an adventure all on its own.  While I was pushing to finish the book's corrections and get the formatting down, Jackie was busy making sure her oldest boy was dressed appropriately to be what else but a vampire?  I promised her a shout out for her ingenious cape, and here it is:

However, in recent years, I've found even more reason to be excited by Halloween.  It is the last day of normalcy before the chaos that is NaNoWriMo.  My first endeavor with NaNoWriMo lead me to the fascinating world of Caitiff Academy.  I had always enjoyed a good super hero movie, but I had found myself wondering about the other side of the coin.  After all, a villain is only defined by her choices, and in the mind of a villain, she might be the hero and the hero the villain.  This idea spawned a universe where children of different backgrounds explored just what it meant to do what was right.  I fell in love with Annie Poe, the heart of the series, even as other characters came to life around her. 

This year, I was so busy from the end of July through October that all of my characters were bottled up inside of me.  It hurts to be a writer and have no outlet.  It also hurts to be a rider and be trapped by physical issues to turn a passion into a hobby.  But to have both held from me for three months led to waves of deep, unpleasant introspection with no real way out.  I wouldn't call it full depression, I don't want to take away from those who truly suffer, but I would have moods come upon me where there was nothing but darkness around me.  I was once surrounded by such thoughts all the time in my youth and massively unhappy all the time.  I was a certified pessimist, but somewhere in my seventeenth year, I found a freedom.  I broke free from a lifetime of self imposed expectations and began to take the first steps to becoming the person I was meant to be.  Slowly, I learned to let out my characters - to let them breathe and have lives and adventures all their own.  It took several years of trial and error to be able to let them out when I was able.  Being the quintessential struggling artist does tend to mean one must have a job to pay for life, but my characters didn't always work around my own timetable.  Finally, I reached a compromise to be where I am today.  

When I finally  had the freedom to write in the evenings, I unleashed a story that had been waiting to be told for nearly five years.  My first in the series, The Other Side of the Looking Glass, had been set aside for other characters like Annie and her friends, or the universe of Scarlett in First Bite.  But Nora finally prevailed, and I had a time crunch to complete her second story in two weeks - just in time for today, November 1st, the beginning of NaNoWriMo.  I am so happy to report SUCCESS!!!  As of today, Through a Rabbit Hole is complete in a rough draft.  

Now I can let the accomplishments sink in as I feel my Caitiff characters come back to me.  This year will be a busy one, and I don't just mean juggling's life's expectations with a book in a month.  No, this year is the year of Caitiff Academy: Gemini.  It's time to let the twins out, and it'll be hard to hold them in check for the forty hour work week.  I just hope that the life lessons that have led to this moment mean I'm up to the challenge.

GOOD LUCK to all fellow NaNoWriMo participants.  You can do it!!!!!!!

Try, Try Again

There is a general conception of success and failure being defined by outcomes to certain events.  I tend to look at a bigger picture.  If I happened to fall off at my first horse show of the year, by most accounts it would be deemed a total failure.  However, by looking at the bigger picture, I saw what was to be gained from the experience.  My horse successfully (and because it was a schooling show I was allowed back on) cleared the obstacle in question, and we successfully finished all of the remaining obstacles cleanly.  Despite perhaps more logical thinking, the relative success of this endeavor has spurred me on to try bigger, better things.

A moment of back story though, to better understand where this is coming from.  My herd of horses, all five of them (minus one, plus another) have one thing in common.  In their lives with me, they have been asked to jump varying obstacles for the fun of it.  I once saw a bumper sticker that read Jumpers Jump for Joy.  I'll freely admit, that has not always been the case.  I have, at various times, been absolutely terrified by anything over three feet in height.  At one time in my life, it was a measly two and a half feet.  Again, logic might have dictated that I give up on jumping, perhaps even horses in general, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and so I endured.  After a terrible fall last year (over 3'9" fences) I was faced with the very real dilemma of continuing on as I had or trying a different path.  For six months I tried the different path of pure dressage.  Unfortunately, while I admire the principles of the sport and truly love the upper movements, to school only for Second Level or below was, in a word, boring.  I had my now 15 year old Thoroughbred learning piaffe, my Mustang freely offering airs above ground, but to go back and recover the basics made me venture back into those forbidden waters.  This time, however, when I came back to jumping, something had changed.  One would think, after the near back breaking (literally) fall I had endured, I would have freely moved on without looking back.  Such was not the case.  Instead, my Mustang and I are now poised to enter into the registered circuit, a world long held at arm's length due to the idea of failure and the sheer price of it all.  At home, we've jumped his height (he's 14.2 hands, so that would be a 4'10" fence).  My Thoroughbred mare has been allowed back up to 3'9" after accepting that cross rails can be noticed too.  The newest addition, a 17 year old Thoroughbred who is doubling as a lesson horse, has been taken up to 3'3".  The three foot glass ceiling, it seems, has finally been broken.

I suppose the point I'm trying to make in all of this, and since when have I ever made any sense for so long, is that simply seeing a pass or a fail on a single day is doomed to failure.  We cannot look at a single ride on a single horse and judge ourselves so harshly.  We have to be able to look back over the course of weeks and months, and, more importantly, we have to be able to look forward.  I have experienced truly soul shaking failure.  I was unable, after years of schooling, to complete my first Prelim event.  But then, after severe pep talks to myself, I managed to win a Prelim Combined Training class on the same horse.  I've fallen, had horses stop, and cried in frustration and self deprication, but today, I can only see the progress I have made.  If not for those failures, then the success of that 4'10" fence would not be so sweet.  I would not go out for the sheer joy of feeling the difference in my horses when the height surpasses 3'6" or 4'.  I would never have known that because I was not able to look beyond.  For all those who feel limited by their fears, or by past failures, stop dwelling on a single moment in time.  If you love what you do and can do what you love, then do everything in your power to do just that.  Believe me, it is well worth the effort.

BlytheLea

RIP Strabo Tempest aka Fence Destroyer Extraordinaire.