October 5, 2023

🎃 lisa writes stuff issue #24 Preptober 👻

also, tarot for writers

Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice-of-life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.

Dear Internet,

I’ve been working on a schedule to best use my time in the realm of writing. It’s not just the actual act of writing but it’s also all the mundane tasks such as research, note taking, reading lit mags, emails, and social media.

Nothing is in stone, of course, rather, it’s rounded off. Like, it’s 15:13 and I’ll read lit mags util 15:30 or I need to submit to five markets that day before 17:00.

It doesn’t feel like a lot but I found that the “not a lot” tends to grow to “quite a bit” if I’m not on it.

And I need to get my shit together because this is Preptober and November starts NaNoWriMo.  (I’ve written about NaNoWrimo and Camp NaNoWriMo here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

This year I’m going to fuck myself because I’ll be out of the country for 10 days in November and yet I still plan to pull this off.

Pray for me.

Across the NaNoWriMo forums, people are getting excited and putting together survival lists for November. The lists range from what they are wearing and eating to music playlists and locations they will write in.

Me, on the other hand, I’m investigating lots of different tools to keep me on track.

I’m down to using the following software:

• Scrivener (writing)

• Zotero (research)

• Pinterest (research)

• One Note (organization)

• DayOne (journaling)

• Spotify and Pandora (music)

(I don’t get kickbacks for linking.)

I used to use Scrivener for everything, and it was designed to handle everything, but I found it getting too unwieldy so now it’s just for writing and organizing that writing. Zotero is from my academic days when I was doing research and needed to track citations. We all know what Pinterest is. One Note is Microsoft’s version of Evernote (I’ve canceled Evernote because they constantly have price increases and it was getting ridiculous), and DayOne is a journaling app I’ve been using for years.

Zotero and Pinterest are free though you can pay $20 / year to up your storage on Zotero. Scrivener is about $50 and is one and done price. One Note ($50 for MS Personal Edition) and DayOne ($35) are both yearly subscriptions.

For Preptober, I’ll be in N. Michigan until the third weekend in October and then we head back to Kentucky for the winter. Here I have a fancy desk in an office (of sorts) that I can work and not be bothered by Mr Lisa and the dog. It’s a bit tricky in Kentucky since it’s an open air loft. The condo building has a library and work areas on the first floor which I’ll be using. In Kentucky, I’ll be getting back to my writer’s group and there is a separate NaNoWriMo group I’ve joined. (The NaNoWriMo group has a discord which I’ve also joined.)

As for the rest of the crap (clothes, drinks, foods, etc.). I am not concerned by these things or need to specialize them from my day to day existence. When you work from home, you get into that groove of dress / eating / hygiene which is what I’m hoping will continue through this experience.

For Preptober itself, I need to figure out what I’m writing /on/. People juggle different projects just counting words written towards the 50K. Others work on a specific project. Once I figure that out (I’ve got a few weeks) on what the fuck I’m doing, I can breathe again and jump into the work.

What I’d really like to do is make a dent into at least one book project. The one I really want to work on, I’m feeling a bit discouraged because I stumbled across an indie writer’s interview about her recently published book and it was near identical to my plot. Her book takes place in MI, with a witchy FMC, and the MMC is a librarian. The witchy FMC is coming into her powers. Chaos ensues. My story takes place in MI with a witchy FMC and the MMC is a rare book seller (or bookstore owner) and the FMC is coming into her powers. More chaos ensues.

Reasonably, I know that there are a lot of stories that line up to each other. There is only so many plots to cover but this is too close to home for me. I’ve been toying using mental health as the impetus of my FMC’s goal/plot/etc.

I have no fucking idea, really.

And this is where tarot for writer’s come in.

I know you’re thinking, “Geeze. Crystal pyramids.” But hold on. Let me explain. This is not a new concept! Book Riot wrote about it a few months ago as did DIY MFA in 2022 and The Creative Penn in 2018.

As a tarot user, I own quite a few decks and I’ve got the basic understanding of how it works but other than doing a daily pull, I haven’t gone too deep with using tarot for anything let alone writing.

The more I dug into learning about tarot for writers, the more I like the concept. The NaNoWriMo forums were chock full of advice on how to create the spreads and how to interpret the cards. The big recommendation is for Tarot for Writers by Corrine Kenner, which I bought.

Being stuck on the plot mentioned above drove me to buy the book. I keep looking for inspiration everywhere, but it’s been hard for this particular book. I’ve been gathering one lines creating a store of them to kick off writing other things, which has been helping, but I really want to get this book out into the world so I’ll grasp onto anything that will help.

Is using tarot for writing a crock of shit? Whose to say! I’ll report back.

#

I’ve reached 17 weeks in the 51 Stories in 51 Weeks project. I’m not under any delusion these are MacArthur Genuis level but the point is to see how far I can stretch myself. It’s also a good way to track my mindset each week as how I’m feeling tends to sneak out of my consciousness.

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Submission update

75 submissions, including 44 rejections, 6 acceptances, 1 withdrawal, and 1 consideration.

Publication

chapbook: commercial breaks

Snippet

The following snippet is from my poem craving nostalgia which is out to a few lit mags and I’m hoping it will get picked up. The story behind this poem is in my 20s, I smoke Virginia Slim Menthols for this very reason I describe below. The poem is also about how women are treated in public spaces with what they did and what they wore. We’re all whores, didn’t you know that?

have you ever been to a bar

and have men slide over to you

sometimes their sweaty palms

on your ass or

on your arms or

the bold ones will touch your face

they will ask,

these sweaty men,

can i bum a cigarette?

and you shake a virginia slim’s menthol 100

out of the pack and

in their direction

they recoil,

just a bit

because a virginia slim menthol 100

is not

a sexy cigarette

It is not

an american spirit, a dunhill,

or a marlboro in the red box

it is not

something a

grown man would smoke

The leaves are finally turning,

lisa  x

(Fuck fascists and Nazis!)

You've just finished reading A Most Unreliable Narrator: the slice of life newsletter from the GenXer about town, Lisa Rabey. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook and Bluesky if you're so inclined. I am everywhere. Copyright © 1996 - 2025 by Lisa Rabey