Silence is Choking Me

 I had plans, last year, to try and write a post a week and publish a chapter of my finished trilogy a week.

That hasn’t exactly happened, but I’m trying to break through the feelings that have kept me silent and frozen, and well, that starts with a few words on a page, so here goes.

Oh, and this post comes with songs that inspired and fit its vibe. Let me know if you like that, because I might start including more song embeds and soundtracks to posts.

Never mind the whole “parenting takes time” thing – the real problems I’ve been struggling with are two primary issues.

1)       Everything is unbelievably hard and absurd

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zz4UG7nA3Q&si=6MoXUbaqbskegi3B – this song keeps playing over and over in my head periodically.

It’s not exactly revelatory to mention that, you know, the world order has been upended and norms have been disrupted further than we thought possible. Nor is it particularly shocking to hear a millennial lamenting, but hey, that’s what I’m gonna do – reflect on how I feel about where We, as a society and maybe as a species, are at right now.

So obviously, this comes with the caveat and blinders of being a white North American from Canada, but the fact that we’ve all just kind of gotten used to what ecologists and scientists are referring to as “ecocide” [citation] is um, a trifle fucked up? Just a little bit. One of my cousins, whom I love dearly, posted about this recently.

Ecological issues are deeply important to me, but I’m often unable to focus on them because of the sheer existential dread and grief that comes with trying to think about them. I’m certainly not alone there, but I want to remind people who are trying desperately not to think about the climate crisis and water issues and plastic pollution and methane levels and deforestation – you are not alone in being scared as fuck, and upset, and angry.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=v2e6nVHfXa0&si=XyY1DlX9hN9FFt8B

But there is an upside to this. Doomerism is the weapon of the elites against us, and it’s also a vast, inaccurate scientific oversimplification. Have things gotten worse? Well, yeah. I’m not going to sugarcoat that. But a hundred small things make a difference, and there is no point at which we should just throw in the towel. Yes, things can get worse, but they can always get better, too. Every inch we fight for counts. Every tenth of a degree centigrade that we keep from advancing matters. Every species we protect and give a chance to rebound, matters.

Nature is more resilient than we think. This is not a video game, where we fail at a number of conditions and the game is just fucking irreparably over and lost. It’s not even that we still have “a chance,” it’s that we have thousands of chances. And we should not, and cannot, squander them.

This entire screed also applies entirely and completely to the political situation we’re dealing with. Democracy is not fucking dead, and billionaires and the elites are not invincible. And yes, it’s hard not to give up sometimes, and yes we need to take breaks and focus on joy to survive – but friends, there is so much more fight left in us than we realise. We just might have to try some different strategies. I’ll be talking more about politics in a post soon.

2)       Oh hey, apparently I’m more disabled than I realised

So another fun thing I’ve been grappling with is a number of health issues that – I haven’t been ignoring, I’ve just been unaware/haven’t realised how much I was struggling with them. Reader, I recently went and applied for some specific programs and initiatives, government things. Without getting into the precious and specific details of my diagnoses, it wa truly humbling, shocking, and in every way upsetting to realise just how much I’ve been dealing with, without…really realising or understanding the extent of my own problems.

It’s so easy to fall into default expectations of physical ability, especially if any or most of your disabilities present invisibly. I kind of thought the whole mental illness and autism things were bad enough, but hey, apparently there’s more I’ve been struggling with, and having to describe it for bureaucratic purposes really put it in ugly, ugly perspective.

So honestly, I’m grieving right now; over what I thought I could do and time I’ve lost, and I’m trying to adjust my expectations of my future. I don’t have any conditions that are immediately life-threatening or degenerative – to my knowledge, and so far – so in some ways, I do count myself as very lucky. But it’s still not what I envisioned and what I expected, and adjusting to that is goddamn hard.

So that’s where I’m at, but I have too many long-form thoughts and poems and stories percolating to be silent for long. But hey, I don’t want this post to be entirely either a) a bummer or b) kind of toxic, hopeless complaining, so I’m gonna close with a list of some things that are bringing me joy right now.

3)       The comforts and remedies

I’m lucky to have really good friends and relationships in my life, and I haven’t really had any friction from the people who care about me or socialise with me over my struggles. I’m really grateful for that. I recently finished an absolutely epic-length play-by-post roleplay game based on the Monsterhearts 2 roleplaying game system, a Powered by the Apocalypse build, and it was very fulfilling and deeply satisfying. We’re doing a few little epilogue-y things, but the actual game and a bunch of emotional stuff is pretty wrapped up.

That said, many of the same people and a couple of new faces are also involved in a second play-by-post game with a different system and storyline, involving Triangle Agency (which is a really cool system and game in terms of its design; strongly recommended!) and that’s been a blast. These games have been absolutely essential to my sanity and morale over the past couple of years, and I’m so grateful to have made some excellent friendships and deep bonds with my tablemates.

In terms of my other creative pursuits outside of writing, I’ve had a pretty good time with my knitting and jewelry-making; my wife and husband got me a chasing hammer and a new set of flush cutters for wire for Mother’s Day, and my god, having the right tools can make such a huge difference. I’m also pushing myself a bit with some market appearances this summer, like the local South Country Fair, and that’s pretty exciting.

Here’s a couple of pieces I’ve made (May 15^th, 2026, hot off the bench) and some in-progress knits.

  (This was a progress shot, but the bolero is now finished, and extremely soft and fluffy, btw)

I’m also enjoying parenthood a lot more than I feared; my son is absolutely wonderful, and a very kind, sweet, bright little creature, full of spirit and curiosity, but also immensely helpful. I couldn’t be a parent without the support structures of my spouses, and I’m so grateful that I get the chance to have this, and to have such a fantastic kid. I was so terrified that I’d hate parenthood, especially this toddler stage – and sure, sometimes it’s very hard work and tiring, but I’m inexpressibly happy and relieved that my greatest fears have been proven utterly wrong.

So that’s all for this post, but expect some political posts and a musing on the ends of, among others, Good Omens Season 3 and some other media properties coming soon, plus some more poetry.

***

A writer and artist, Michelle Browne lives in southern AB with xer family and their cats. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible. Find xer all over the internet: *Website * Amazon * Substack * Patreon * Ko-fi * Instagram * Bluesky * Mastodon * Tumblr * Medium * OG Blog * Facebook

Hi, everyone. Here's what comes next. -

 Happy Friday.

I was born on a Friday, and I’m thinking it might be a very good publishing day. What do you think? When do you usually read your newsletters and emails? (No, really, sound off and tell me.)

So, one thing about the blog articles I used to write, before I took basically a two-year hiatus, is that they were very structured and kind of formal. Now, I’m not saying I’ll never write essays like that again, but I think I need to change up my style because not everything that comes to me readily presents itself in that format.

Now - I want to try and publish regularly. This is how writers survive, after all. Although many writers affect reticence or suffer from social anxiety, we’re still a sort of artist, and all artists perform and communicate to some extent; and without attention, we dry up and wither away like a forgotten houseplant.
(Just a moment, I need to water my plants.)

Right. So, I’ve spent this week wrapping up my editing practice - contacting clients, deleting my website and Facebook page, and kind of saying goodbye internally. But that means I’m now freed up to, you know, actually pay attention to things like both writing and marketing (and writing articles again, something that got awfully thin on the ground over the last few years).

What will go here?

In addition to returning to non-fiction essays and opinion pieces, and in addition to a less formal style for quite a few of them, I’m going to be serializing my next work, Prairie Weather!

Prairie Weather?

My Canada Council of the Arts Grant-winning novel project is 155,000 words long. A cozy academia with many PoVs, it’s about exploring queerness, coming of age, and navigating friendship, love, and heartbreak. Set in my hometown of Lethbridge, Alberta, It’s a fun and sweet romp with plenty of interpersonal drama.

I mean, as long as your definition of a fun, sweet romp includes things like a stabbing, revenge, and a men’s help group going deeply awry.

I’m thinking that, since the trilogy is complete, I’ll post a chapter each Friday, and essays or nonfiction on Tuesdays. Partly to warm up the space and break in my Patreon and Substack, I’ll be posting some of my best works from the archives - possibly with updates and commentary.

I’ve also been reading actual books lately (gasp!), so I might talk about that a bit, especially where it relates to my creative journey(s). Right now, I’m enjoying a “Gothic Girl Summer,” where I’m getting around to a whole bunch of gothic horror novels I’ve been meaning to tackle for a minute. It’s giving me some serious ideas for the style and direction of the bottom-up rewrite of my trunked first-ever novel, then called “Synchronicity”.

Not just writing?

For the Patreon specifically, I might also post about my art, but if people are into it, I can do that elsewhere. If you don’t know, I make jewelry and knit, and I’m getting a little more serious about drawing, too, for the simple reason that I’ve always wanted and meant to, and now I’m doing a drawing challenge. (Follow that on Instagram!)

That should be everything for now, but I’d love to hear from you! If you’ve been following me for a while, what would you like to see more of? Less of? If you’re new here, say hi!

***

A writer and artist, Michelle Browne lives in southern AB with xer family and their cats. Xe is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find xer all over the internet: *Website * Amazon * Substack * Patreon * Ko-fi * Instagram * Bluesky * Mastodon * Tumblr * Medium * OG Blog * Facebook *

This post has been incredibly hard to write, but here we are.

So, before I get into the career necromancy, some housekeeping.

Who tf are you?

If you've never heard of my ass before - uh, hi. Thanks for reading this far! I'm an artist and writer; you can call me Magpie or Michelle. She/her or xe/xer. I'm queer and poly, and I live with my two spouses, our son, and three cats in southern Alberta, Canada. I make jewelry and knitwear and sometimes sew; I write science fiction, fantasy, literary fiction - and maybe romantic and gothics?! Ideas are cooking. I even have a non-fiction research project I want to work on and publish.

I got married in 2022, moved houses in 2023, and moved again in 2024, the same year my wife had our son. It's been exciting and busy and packed, and life keeps happening - but it's been pretty hard on my non-fiction writing output.

Also politics and mental and physical health issues have been a thing happening to me, so you know, those take time, too.

The rundown

So, what can you expect from this space? How often can you expect it?

• I'm hoping to post biweekly (every two weeks) or more.

• Content will vary between poetry and articles, with fiction excerpts or short stories, brain permitting, plus occasional publishing news.

• I may re-publish some of my best old articles from the blog archives. Re-published articles may be edited or rewritten, and both their vintage status and any alterations to the original content will be noted.

• Expect typos. Sometimes I need to say things more than I want to say them perfectly. I'm also going to be writing on my phone a lot.

I'm going to sunset my MailChimp newsletter and switch to publishing on Substack and on Patreon. I may still publish on Medium and Tumblr, but I'm considering sunsetting my OG Blogspot blog for traffic reasons. (SciFiMagpie is my handle on pretty much every site you can think of.)

Regardless, the same content will be accessible at each of these social media locations. I'm probably not ever going to do exclusive or paywalled content. At most, paywalled content might be early releases.

I'm also sunsetting my editing work. I'll be doing the occasional book for friends, but 11 years is a good run. I haven't always been as reliable or prompt as I would have liked, mostly from mental health, and it's time for me to let editing go. I need to make stuff.

However, if you like my fiction and non fiction, or my artisan stuff, this is probably good news. I'm also going to be posting more on my Instagrams, so follow @rainbowbazaarartcollective or @SciFiMagpie on Instagram or even Tiktok to see what I'm up to. Theoretically, I might be on Bluesky, but I'm more of a long-form or group-chat bitch, so I can't promise much.

I also want your opinion on all this! If you're familiar with my previous writing, chime in. Where do you want to see me?

If you've read all this way, leave me a 👍or ❤️ the post.

See you all soon - for real this time. Change is scary, but I have too much in my head, and I'm tired of closing my mental cupboards on half-finished ideas. Time to start releasing them into the wild.

***

A writer and artist, Michelle Browne lives in southern AB with xer family and their cats. Xe is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find xer all over the internet: *Website * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Tumblr * Mastodon *Facebook * Medium * Twitter  * OG Blog* Instagram * Paypal.me * Ko-fi

Upsetting People is Not Revolutionary

Well, The Joker just hit theatres, and honestly, I'm not sure whether I'm going to see it.

Art by Michelle Browne.

Quite a few cultural critics I admire and respect have panned it, still others have said it was boring and unambitious - and frankly, it's no secret that I'm not the biggest fan of comics, for a variety of reasons. I'm curious, sure, but based on what I've heard from various podcasts and Youtube shows, as well as friends' chatter and Twitter, it's basically a dumbed-down Taxi Driver or Fight Club, without realising that those movies were critical of the main character's perception of the world.

Of course, there's also the problem that the director, Todd Phillips, talked about "triggering people" dismissively in some interviews, and both he and Warner Brothers seem to want to have it both ways - to upset people, to flirt with inciting violence, and to insist that it's just art, which cannot be censored (and that criticism is the same as censorship...which it isn't, by the way.) Phillips also complains about "woke culture" with the sort of embittered smugness that generally demarcates other failing comedians - such as Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K, Jerry Seinfeld, and other men who have mistaken their own prestige for talent.

Joaquin Phoenix, the twee, breathy method acting star, also seems to have made the same mistake. "I wasn't comfortable while making the film," he insisted. But while I really loved his acting and the movie Her in general, I can't help rolling my eyes at this take.

Upsetting people is not art

There's this idea in art and cultural commentary, and particularly in the zeitgeist, that because art is supposed to evoke emotion, evoking emotion constitutes art in and of itself. Quite frankly, stepping in a dog turd and breaking one's ankle also elicits emotion, but it generally isn't considered an artistic performance. Now, if said event is filmed and uploaded to Youtube, is it art then? Academics and Smart Internet People are ready and waiting to explain both how it is, and isn't art.

The thing is, the Joker movie isn't an unfortunate or hilarious accident. Great effort went into it, as well as a hefty budget and substantial promotional energy. This isn't some accidental, daring indie darling coming out of nowhere. It is very much commerce in the trappings of art. Now, can that still be art? Sure. But let's call a card a card, shall we?

Art qua art? Try Art qua money. 

This movie has an agenda...and above else, that's making money. The controversy over it - which, as much as I hate it, I am writing about and therefore contributing to - basically functions as a marketing push.

Rather, we should express how terribly bored we are about the whole thing, and we shouldn't fund the damned enterprise. Go see it in the cheap seats, or undertake alternative measures to see it, if you absolutely must. Or, do what I sometimes do when I want to hear about content but not suffer through it, and read, watch, or listen to a bunch of different thinkpieces about it.

But honestly, there's nothing more to say about this virulent, nasty, boring movie. What I'd rather talk about is the central premise - that upsetting people is somehow artistically virtuous.

Good art makes people think too

There's sort of a corollary to the whole "If people are upset, they'll think!" argument, and that is that happiness is an opiod, something that dulls the senses. That's as absurd as it is untrue. First of all, happiness and contentment are not the enemy, and in a world such as ours, rife with inequality, we ought not treat them as such cheap currency. They're rare, and they ought to be treasured. That's not to say that we should lull ourselves into thinking everything is all right - but that's not what happiness is about.

Rather, happiness comes from change, achievement, new experiences, and appreciating what we have. And good art - say, the book series beginning with A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle - will certainly do this. Yes, those books make me happy, but they also fill me with wonder and admiration. Art that makes us happy also makes us connected to others, and might even encourage us to make art ourselves, try to be good at something, or try something new.

A friend of mine is really into Lois Bujold's Vorkosagian series, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice trilogy. Some of those books are hard on the heart, sure, but nobody who's advocating for happy art is saying it needs to be, say, forced positivity art or pablum. And, sure, all these writers are ladies - but that doesn't mean men can't (or don't!) write nurturing, empathetic books with characters who are more than angry, lost boys. Not to mention that the most recent Hugo and other fantasy and writing awards are really showing a wonderful sea change - Mary Robinette Kowal, for instance, or The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet or Space Opera being fine examples. As far as empathetic male writers, I must always recommend Zig Zag Claybourne's The Brothers Jetstream, Ari Marmell's Mick Oberon series, or Chuck Wendig's writing. 

And yeah, we do need to give empathy and kindness to these lost boys who relate to these movies - but the way to do that isn't to enable their bad habits. It's to give them a better world, access to therapy and medication if needed, and fight toxic mental habits. That's what the rest of us have to do - but the good news is? It works.

***

Michelle Browne is a sci fi/fantasy writer and editor. She lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partner-in-crime and Max the cat. Her days revolve around freelance editing, knitting, jewelry, and learning too much. She is currently working on other people's manuscripts, the next books in her series, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.

Find her all over the internet:
* OG Blog * Mailing list * Magpie Editing * Amazon * Medium * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook * Tumblr * Ko-fi

A Loaf of Bread: on Imperfections

Hello hello!

So, my father's been visiting this week. As those who follow my blog and Facebook may know, my familial relationships are somewhat complex and...perhaps the word 'fraught' is applicable. Still, things have gone pretty well. On the weekend, I was eager to show off my baking skills, which now include yeast bread. I don't have a stand mixer and do everything by hand, so as other bakers and cooks will know, this is a bit of an achievement.

Bread (and creative pursuits) are hard 

Bread is easy to mess up. It has to be kneaded the right way, left to rise, the water has to be the right temperature, and people across the internet have pretty fierce debates about when to add the salt for the sake of the gluten structure. Some people recommend a drier dough; some, a wetter dough. Different climates, elevations, and water types affect the taste of the bread. As a friend who went through culinary school explained it, bread made in a particular city will never taste quite the same as bread made elsewhere because of the makeup of the atmosphere. The point is, there's an art to it, not just the science of combining ingredients in a particular order.

While my father walked around the lake to make sure he could handle the carbs, and complimented the taste, he was also quick to look up the science of making bread. He immediately started looking at various ways to make absolutely optimal bread - using a stand mixer, of course, not tearing the dough as it's kneaded, the way to proof yeast, the chemical process of autolysing - and started quizzing me about whether I'd measured everything out to the gram or used volume measures.

I felt quite embarrassed and explained that I wasn't striving for perfection--just a good, edible loaf of bread. Food tastes different depending on whether the cook had their heart in it that day or was doing things perfunctorily. Something doesn't have to be perfect to be enjoyable for what it was. I explained, too, that I'm a relative novice - this is my third loaf of yeast bread ever, which is really not much - and that, as with knitting, one must do garter stitch, then stockinette, then lace stitches. I have to master a simple version of a thing before I start doing it more precisely and better.

My father, seemingly not understanding this, challenged me to a bread-making competition for the next time he visits. Although I laughed at the time, I felt disquieted later. The thing is, he proudly says that he can't cook but can follow a recipe, and that's very applicable to the arts. A paint by numbers kit is perfectly acceptable, but to create something new, diversions from a formula must occur, or will happen inevitably. For writing, bad or mediocre stories precede adequate, good, and excellent ones. And even then, writing is kind of hard.

I spent a long time not even attempting to make yeast breads because they're so difficult and technically challenging. Then I tried a breadmaker and ended up with some bricks. Eventually, I got up the courage to use a conventional oven and start attempting loaves. I'm definitely better at writing than I am at making bread, but that's okay.

At some point, reading about a thing can just be intimidating and make one self-conscious about imperfections. It's easier to criticize than to do, let alone to do well, and even the best art can never be utterly perfect from every single perspective. People are different, and what satisfies one person will leave another hungry and bring another jubilation.

How do you know it's good enough?

There's an anecdote I heard about Tennessee Williams; a friend of his found him sitting at his typewriter, editing a story that had already been accepted for publication. Williams shrugged off his friend's incredulity, saying the story wasn't done.

For my own part, I'm currently re-editing And the Stars Will Sing and The Stolen: Two Short Stories for re-release. I have a lot more bread to make and a lot more projects to knit, and many more books to write and edit. And none of these things will be perfect, but they're part of a process. Finally, at least they may satisfy some people in the moment, and when I release them, they will represent the best efforts I could offer at the time.

Here's the other thing, though - hindsight is a luxury borne of experience. It's easy to say "this ought to have been done a certain way", but that comes about after circumstances have changed. Maybe I shouldn't have torn my dough, maybe I should have left that character alive, but even having that alternative perspective only has come about because a decision was made. It's too easy to beat oneself up and focus on the past rather than using that experience and acquired knowledge to improve the future.

At the end of the day, the best one can do, even if it's imperfect, is better than an ideal creation that never enters the world. I know what the perfect loaf of bread would taste, feel, and smell like, and I can imagine it, but my learner's efforts and the slow process of attempting garlic olive oil bread and brioches will yield more goodness than a hundred dreams of snow-white loaves ever could. After all, as any poor person could tell you, dreams may be enticing, but they leave one's belly empty.

What do you regret? What would you change, and what have you learned from creative failures? Let me know in the comments.

***

Thanks for returning to the nest. Leave a comment and say hi! I want to hear from you. Keep up with the new releases by getting on the mailing list. Buy my books on Amazon, and keep up with me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and the original blog. This is the one and only SciFiMagpie, over and out!

Writing Sucks: It's Okay to Hate Your Art Sometimes

Hello hello!

Now, all the writers I know can anticipate what I'm about to say, but for those who prefer consuming media to making it, it may be a surprise. Art sucks. It's not just that drawing symmetrical eyes is difficult. Sure, there are fandom politics to deal with, as a recent ridiculous blow up in the Steven Universe fandom demonstrated. But sometimes, writing a storyline is just plain brutal.

A good example of this is The Underlighters. Sure, I enjoyed writing it, but sometimes, I didn't. I just had to write it. Same goes for After the Garden. Both of those books have scenes that were just emotionally hard to write. I won't include any spoilers, because of course, I'd prefer that you buy and read them for yourselves, but people who've already read one or both will probably know what I'm talking about.

But why is writing--or art in general--so hard? Well, there are basically three reasons. 

Writing and art can be tedious 

Art takes time. Right now, I'm working on a new productivity method--fifty words a day, fiction or blog, no matter what. My birthday? Halloween? Christmas? Doesn't matter. I will still have to write fifty words, at a minimum, that day. Sometimes I blow past this goal and write five hundred or even two thousand words, and sometimes, I just barely squeak by with the two or three sentences required to make my goal.

I tried higher word counts, and all that did was frustrate me. I tried a 'no zero' method, and that just resulted in a surprising number of zero productivity days. Something about fifty words a day really motivates me. A close pal of mine sets writing time limits. Chuck Wendig recommends three hundred and fifty words per day. Stephen King, as many people know, writes about two thousand words per day (link). I spoke to Emmie Mears recently, and they tend to write several thousand words per day over a very short span, then take long breaks. The point is, you might have to fiddle with your personal minimum, but finding it is the key to productivity.

I used to wait for inspiration, but when it didn't show up, I was lost, and I let my readers down. The funny thing is, once I get the engine going, the muse tends to hop in the car and participate the way I wanted her to in the first place. Using my new limit, I've been able to finish a first draft of The Meaning Wars, the long-awaited third book in the series of the same name.  Which brings me to...

Writing and art can be technically difficult and intricate 

OH GOD, SEQUELS. The writers are nodding and biting their lips and gnashing their teeth right now (hopefully not at the same time, because ow). Readers may be shrugging in confusion. The thing is, in addition to the famous "soggy middle" syndrome, there's a lot of stuff to handle in a sequel.

For The Meaning Wars, I had to advance and entwine character narratives, but I also had to introduce a huge new source of tension. How would my war be fought? It took me a long time to accept that I'm just not a boots-on-the-grouund military sci fi writer, and that traditional ways of describing combat and conflict wouldn't do the trick. Instead, I listened to the news and worked on chapters until the lightning bolt hit.

When I realised that I would have to use legislation and small details to convey the sense of oppression, fear, and restriction my characters would face, I got stuck again. How in the nine Hells was I going to do that without a lot of annoying exposition? Then I realised that even though I was writing in the third person, I could use epistolary techniques like news reports, letters and messages, and announcements or broadcasts. From there, it got a lot easier. I just had to think about specific, frustrating restrictions from the real world, and model obstacles accordingly.

Still, I will be working on book four soon, and after that, Monsters and Fools - the final book in The Nightmare Cycle (see above re: the Underlighters). I'm scared as hell of that sequel because the same problems will be presenting, and I have even more connective tissue to lay down! But I'm still here, still writing a blog post about it, and still refusing to give up. 

Writing can be emotionally demanding and exhausting

One of the projects I recently finished, Bad Things that Happen to Girls, was absolutely brutal. I've been pretty open about having mental illnesses, but referencing feelings from my turbulent youth and early adulthood was very taxing. The story isn't literally biographical, but it's got emotionally autobiographical elements, and that was hard enough. Some of the more vicious scenes of emotional abuse really took it out of me, and you don't even want to know how hard the ending was. But I'd been working on the story since 2006. It had gone through two full rewrites as I struggled to nail down the timeline and events, and then I had to get it edited. Compressing the timeline and wrestling the elements into place was bad enough, but the subject matter left me curled up on the couch more than a few times.

But I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I am so glad I've released these stories into the world, and I have so many more waiting to be set free. I will be in pain, frustrated, swearing, or just slogging away at a blog post in the future, and I can't wait. It's not that suffering makes you an artist--it's that being an artist makes you suffer. Creation can be gruelling and frustrating. And that's okay.

Special thanks to Emmie Mears, Chuck Wendig, and Delilah Dawson, as well as Sarah Dimento and Katie de Long, for letting me peruse their brains!

***

Thanks for returning to the nest. Leave a comment and say hi! I want to hear from you. Keep up with the new releases by getting on the mailing list. Buy my books on Amazon, and keep up with me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and the original blog. This is the one and only SciFiMagpie, over and out!

The Story of a Scarf

Hello hello!

Well, as those who follow my Instagram may be aware, I'm not only a writer, I'm a crafter. I knit, bead, work with wire, do a little bit of crewel embroidery, and sew.

Since I was a kid, I've had a fascination with softness. Silk and velvet (velour, too) would make me halt in place. Even now, I love to stop and touch things that look soft (with permission, of course, when applicable). Bits of ribbon, of lace, of velour and velvet, and even of satin overflow from the craft shelves in our living room.

Source. Though I only have two shelves, and it's not this, um, tidy.

I'd had many of my scraps for years--some, for over a decade. A stint in theatre camp while I was in elementary school (grade school, as it's called outside Canada) bright me quite a few opportunities to save little scraps of fabric from the art projects we worked on. With access to a box of leftovers from the theatre projects the university students would run, I ended up with a small pile of treasures. Still others came from doll clothes, old projects of my own sewing, and even rummage boxes. There were even a few bits from old velvet roses from chocolate boxes, Christmas ribbons, and a Halloween costume's cape.

I saved these bits and fragments, positive that some day I'd make something useful from them. I worked on other projects, repaired skirts, modified others...and the scraps sat in a shoebox, waiting. I tried to sew them into a tiny quilt, but the stitches were too crooked. I soon gave up and shredded it. The scraps sat, waiting, a tiny pile of soft memories. I'd made a few other strangely-shaped and unusual scarves, some with trims. They challenged my skills, but I'd learned to be bolder.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, the lightbulb moment I'd been waiting for arrived. I realised I could use bits of the ribbon to frame the scarf and could arrange the patches so they'd roughly fit together and form a rectangular shape. By using a flatter, larger piece of fabric to back it, I wouldn't have to deal with the rasp of the seamy edges of my neck or craft something that looked good from only one side.

I arranged my patches, shifting and flipping them, coordinating colours. I sewed with whip-stitch and flat-stitches, layering some sheer fabrics over others. The scraps puckered a little, creating a ruched effect all over the scarf and adding even more texture.

Finally, it was finished.

Source: me! The scarf is folded in half.

I'd worked on special and challenging projects before, but the one I've just finished is probably one of the best. It's a way of visualising a lot of my life--bits of things I worked on when I was a kid, growing up in the back of my parents' medical clinic, to scraps from old doll's clothes that fascinated me, to more recent acquisitions. It's not perfectly even, but bits of lamè, velvet, netting, velour, satin, and rayon mix and mingle in long stretches. Bursts of colour like fireworks.

I don't think I could be happier about this. I can think of a few personal lessons I learned from sewing it, but they matter less than the pure joy of having this abstract mosaic, this map spanning from my childhood to now.

Sometimes, the end result really is more important than the journey.

***

Thanks for dropping by the nest once again. Leave your comments, rebuttals, and vehement agreements below. Don't miss any of the phuquerie. Find Michelle on Twitter, Facebook, and on Tumblr, and find her work on Amazon. Check back on the blog to see when one of the irregular posts has careened onto your feed. This is the one and only SciFiMagpie, over and out!