Excuses, excuses!

I haven't written but twice in the past three months! It's been a long, hard, dry spell and there's no respite in the near future. Between a kitchen remodel, juggling four kids and a week-long trip to Disney, I am spent. But I wrote for hours this week which was bliss.

March will hopefully find me back in the saddle again.

Only Mostly Dead

I am not dead. Yet. I am exhausted and have no time to write, let alone think about anything but my son's upcoming surgery, Christmas and all the lovely holiday entails (including hours upon hours on the computer for non-writing shopping, researching...am I the only one who obsesses?), and catching some shut-eye every once in awhile.

The plan: dive head-first back into my novel once the kids are out of school (and I don't have to worry about the blasted schedule) and continue on when they go back in January.

I miss the character chatter that used to constantly fill my brain. Is it strange to say I'm a little lonely without Casey and Ezra? And Jean-Pierre, oo-la-la! I'm sticking to it, promise. Until then, the blog will continue it's silent time-out.

Merry Christmas!

To Sleep, Perchance...

I am a perpetual night owl. It's a double-edged sword. My muse awakens around midnight, but it's about the time my brain stops forming cohesive sentences. To write alone, uninterrupted, without a babe on my leg...it's worth the sleep deprivation. But it does catch up with me, and the loss of sleep has hit me hard this week. October overflowed with family and visitors and staying up into the wee hours of the morning. It was worth it, as always, but I stole from the sleep fairy, and now there's H-E-double-hockey-sticks to pay. Mr. J and kids can vouch for me. They've been taking the brunt of my theft.

The other night I went to bed at eleven--Mr. J was knocked flat on his back, shocked. It's like getting the kids in bed by seven. It never happens. But I needed the sleep badly, so there I was, cozy and warm under the covers, the only light coming from the numbers on my clock. Just as I was drifting into that wonderful, fuzzy place where your mind is all mushy but you can kinda, sorta still hear the tree branches scratching against the window, just when I was there...words came streaming through my consciousness. The opening scene of my book played out in my mind--the scene I have worked on approximately 86,493 times re-wrote itself right behind my darkened eyes. And I knew it was good, much better than anything I'd written before, but why--*yawn*--why did it have to come now? It wasn't even midnight yet.

I rolled my tired bones out of bed and typed in the dark on my laptop as hubs moved into REM slumber. I'm glad I did. Even in the light of the day, it's proved to be good stuff. Now, dear Muse, if you could but wake me and tell me exactly what I need to change on page 257, I would be much obliged.

This beats out any YouTube laughing baby vid...

You can't help but be happy after watching it.


...And lucky me, I am related to this chub-a-lub.

Needed this

http://querytracker.blogspot.com/2009/10/editing-how-to-avoid-staring-into-great.html

Advice on editing your manuscript. Great, sound advice. I'll be re-reading it in the throes of my editing woes.

Successes

I take out my woes on this new blog like I'm beating a dirty rug on my back patio. It's an unbalanced view of my writing, and a completely off-kilter view of my life. I write because I love it, because it drives me, because my brain gets a weird high from creating and pretending. I love pretending. I always have. When I was a teenager my social pseudonym was Brooke. Or Kate. It depended on my mood and on my earrings. Silver dangling daisies with a huge black center worn with a black bathing suit at a water park? (True story.) Brooke, all the way. Preppy pegged khakis and a rugby shirt with penny loafers (so hideously hot back in the day)? Kate fit the bill. It was the fake me, and I lived up to Brooke's flirty, sassy personality, her forwardness with the boys, her confident appeal. Kate was more reserved, shyly smiling from beneath a book or newspaper, biting her lip softly and sighing dramatically.

Oh, I was pathetic.

But it was fun to pretend, to fill another girl's shoes, to be someone else and create dialogue through her filter.

One of my faves of all time as a kid was to climb up into the weeping willow in our front yard and sit for hours, creating my own world where all the cute boys loved me despite my beaver teeth and all the girls thought I was uber cool. Or a world like Anne of Green Gables where I milked cows and served mice-laden plum pudding and currant wine to guests at a formally set table. Or a world with a secret, walled garden that only I had a key to and therein I'd rule the fairies. Oh, those were the days. I didn't need constant friends because I found them in books, read high in the comforting branches of the weeping willow. And where the books left off, my mind would continue.

Those characters and creations sometimes became darker, and I'd lie in bed literally weeping over a scene where a family member was in a fatal accident--the very details playing behind my eyes--from something outlandish, like falling from a train trestle or being cooked in molten lava from the dormant volcano outside my window. I could almost feel the fall, the whoosh of wind gathering speed, the cracking of bones on the rocks below. I could see the lava, red and smoking, melting the flesh of my loved one. Seriously? What was wrong with me?!

My mind is now muddled and fragmented by motherhood, but I still love to pretend. It's oh-so-easy to push those scenes and catchy lines that fly into my brain to the back of my head, where they get lost in the piles of laundry that demand my attention. Or in the continuous flow of dishes and crumbs that run through the kitchen. Or in the hours spent in carpools and on errands. But some voices shout above the din, demanding attention in my literal vortex of chaos, and sometimes they are beautiful, enchanting or plain hysterical.

And so, among all my frustrations, which are easy to complain about, there is a smattering of success. There is joy. There is real, emotional writing that fuels my need to keep at it, to write until the baby cries at 3 a.m., to finish my story and write another. Somewhere in my mind, there is a tale the world will enjoy. That is enough motivation to plug away...

FRUSTRATED

I have been re-working my manuscript from the beginning, and frankly am sick and tired of it. GRRR. (It must be noted that it is nearly midnight and I'm exhausted.) I never have enough time recently to devote the hours it takes to get some good writing in, so it's been editing, re-editing, and re-re-editing to the point of nausea.

So, I decided to skip toward the end (of 350 pages) and put the finishing touches on the ending once and for all. (That is a hysterically hilarious, lie-down-on-your-back-and-roll-around-the-room-cackling-like-a-crazy-lady thought. To be finished in one attempt? Oh...gasp!... it is just too much!) As I started reading to get into the character voice again I began to feel a panicky little flutter in my chest. It soon filled my abdomen and rushed down my arms, leaving them almost feelingless. Staring at that screen, I was completely overwhelmed with the seemingly insurmountable task of writing a cohesive, emotional, balanced, non-cliche, interesting, relevant work with consistent, believable characters. I almost lost it. I couldn't deal with the mountain of work before me, but I also did not have the time nor energy to freak out.

So I made the conscious decision not to, and shut my computer and took a deep breath. A grim realization struck me: I have become a perfectionist and as such, realize that even when my manuscript is the best I can make it, it still may not be good enough. That thought truly sends me spiraling downward into the black hole of mediocrity I fear, and it's hard to climb out of that hole and face writing again.

But...deep cleansing breath...there is always tomorrow, and so I look forward to renewing my spirit, doing yoga and Zumba, taking a long, hot shower, putting my baby to bed and carving out an hour or two of good, solid writing time. I need to write again, not just edit until all the joy is squeezed out of it and I'm only concerned with syntax. My soul and psyche need to create, so that is my goal this week, on the cusp of the fall snowstorm that is blowing in tonight.

I will hole up and I will write.

But for now, I just need sleep.