Category: My Writing Life

Mine has words on it.   Wanna read two of them?

The End.

It’s three a.m.  I’m too tired.  It’s not sinking in yet.  

Today and tomorrow are being dedicated to the hard push.  I have a couple of chapters to finish.  It’s getting difficult at this point because I’ve been sitting sooo much.  In the future, I’m sticking to the daily word count and then jogging or something.  I feel so incredibly restless–so, yeah, I’ve been pushing.  Yet, I must make it two more days.

I’ve kept myself so cooped up, I’m almost desperate for some lunches out with friends and maybe a long bookstore trip.  

This weekend, yes, I’m pitching and nervous about it–but I’m also spending most of the weekend with writing friends, so it’ll be fun.  Yesterday, I worked on a synopsis all day.  I have a love/hate relationship with those things.  I hate them up until the point everything clicks, then I usually end up pretty happy with the results. 

This one is a “just in case she asks” kind of thing for this weekend.  So, it had to be short and sweet.  Whittling 100,000 words down to four pages was a real challenge.

Still feeling groggy.  This morning was hell for my entire family.  My husband sets his alarm for 5:30– which for me still feels like 4:30.  I was so distressed by being jarred out of a sound sleep, I faded in and out until I had to get up.  During a fade, I had one of those death nightmares.  Don’t you hate those?

I was in my car and going fast up a hill on a highway.  I didn’t see the sharp curve until it was too late and didn’t make it in time. I have been having this dream for years and hate it.  Makes me paranoid to drive sometimes. 

So, when I dragged my exhausted butt out of bed, it was to find that my daughter had overslept for school.  She really needs another day home for the illness, but she’s terrified of getting behind. 

Then, I had to wake my son four times. 

Yes, Daylight Savings Sucks.  The extra hour of sunlight is nice in the evenings, but so is candlelight earlier… 

I’m here, just trying to adjust to the Daylight Saving’s change.  I’m one of those people who takes at least a week to acclimate.  I really see no point in this since we have to turn our lights on in the morning now, anyway. 

But we train our minds to awaken at certain times in the morning.  Knowing that time will be wrong, has me waking up several times during the night to check the clock. 

So, I’m tired. 

I’m also in the final countdown to pitching my book this weekend to an agent.  I’m anxious about it but a lot of that is because I still have to make up business cards and get the actual pitch down.  Whittling a 100,000 word manuscript down to three to five sentences is harder than it sounds. 

I’ve done this before–years ago when I was trying to market my book length work–and I remember being even more nervous then.  I even had to tell an editor in one line what my book was about over the phone!

I’m still nervous, but in a completely different way this time.  I believe in this book much more than I did in the others.  I want it this time in a way I couldn’t have before.  I’ve worked through really difficult times to get to this place again in this career I want. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting all this into one pitch to an agent.  There’s a very real possibility she won’t be interested and that’s okay.  But this opportunity fired me up to see how fast I can write a first draft and I couldn’t feel more like snoopy dancing. 

But… I’m writing something that yes, has been a lot of hard work, but I also enjoyed writing it.  

Only the first draft will be complete, but I’m already itching to jump in on the rewrites because I have all these great ideas for layering flavor and character. 

You should see the comment section on the side of my manuscript! (And no, Heather, I don’t use pink either. <g>)

So, in addition to slamming out the last couple of chapters this week, I’m also trying very, very hard not to catch whatever has laid my daughter flat this week.   As usual, her timing is impeccable.  I simply can’t miss the OKRWA meeting this month. 

But I feel so sorry for her–I heard her coughing most of the night so actually caved and gave her a little Nyquil.  She’s nearly sixteen.  That stuff works.  Too well, which is why I hesitated in the past.  But she needed to sleep. 

Now, she hasn’t made a sound in two hours.  I know because I keep going upstairs to check on her. <g>

 

 Lavender Swirl, Lower Antelope Canyon, Navajo Reservation, Arizona.The photographer is Kenneth Parker.  More than worth the time to visit.  Stunning! 

Okay, I would delete the last post but too many people read it.  In fact, I was six people away from breaking the 200 reader mark today!  How exciting.  I’m so curious about all these people who cruise through here… <g>

But, my face is burning.  I am sorry you picked a personal rant day to check me out.  We usually do have fun here at the snark.  In fact, look back a couple of posts to the current Scene From a Pic.  Pull up the comments to read the first entry from Heather Harper .  It simply blew me away.  I even printed it out. 🙂

But, I also believe in sharing all of the good and bad in choosing writing as your career, life, calling–you name it.  One reader called me painfully honest and well, I still believe that’s a good thing. 

Yes, my day managed to get worse, but then, it got better.  I’m back to my normally upbeat self.  I love my children like nothing in this world and we’ll work through all this.  I’ll find something to make my son see how important schoolwork is.  Today might have helped when his teacher sat him down and explained failure to him.  Poor kid looked shocked when he got home.  He just thought he could scrape by and go on to the next grade. 

But… tonight, while he’s been sitting here next to me catching up on the two months of work his teacher so graciously let us work on over the weekend, I’ve managed to kick out 3000 words.   

I freaking made my word count! 

My son and I are sitting together, both working.  No music or TV and when he needs help, I stop and show him that mommies do know something about verbs, nouns and adjectives.  heh heh  He thinks it’s special to sit next to me while we both work.  Looks like a new tradition has begun. 

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! 

Fact:  It is damned hard to be a writer and a mom.  Yes, it’s hard to be anything else and a writer. I get this.

We are an easily distracted lot.

I understand I have to make time.  I do make time.  But yes, there are days when I just want to pull my hair out.    

I thought it was rough when they were little and got into things–when my thirteen month old son pulled a nightly Houdini–never making a sound or uttering a word.  I didn’t sleep for two years with him.  I ended up taking a break from writing about then because I had a job as well.

The child didn’t talk for a long, long time, but he could skulk around the house, in the dark, while silently taking apart the dishwasher or removing every single screw in the living room furniture.  He seemed to find screwdrivers no matter where we put them. 

He would build his own versions of ladders and I’d find him on top of shelves, just sitting and smiling at me.  He’d construct elaborate working draw bridges, leaving trails of evil Legos waiting for that groggy, early morning stumble…

We actually had to build up the sides of his baby bed four times until we found a level he couldn’t circumnavigate– that was still safe!  Everyone thought it was riot that I had to unlatch the sides to get him in and out, but they weren’t there for the time he was fourteen months and it was three a.m and he’d pried off the electrical outlet covers with a screwdriver– then explored the little hole–just as I came around the corner and dove for him. 

When he finally talked, it was in mostly sentences like he’d been doing it all along and then he read so very early.  He can still read like a dream.  I watched him fly through a huge book and ace a reading test recently.

But kids basically trade one set of difficulties for others as they get older.  And there is something that happens around the fourth grade. 

It.  Is.  Not.  Fun. 

Today, I needed to hit a major word count.  Instead, I’ve been dealing with school work and behavior issues and it’s not only with my fourth grader but my fifteen-year old daughter, too.  I’m exhausted and so very disappointed that I can’t find a solution here. 

How do you make a nine-year old boy CARE about his work?  He’s so freaking smart his teachers are constantly frustrated.  They tell me he could ace anything if he just cared.  We’ve tried putting him in enrichment to stimulate his mind and interest.  We’ve tried keeping him busy with the one thing he loves-science.  He has a 97% in that subject.  (I can’t even begin to go into all the details of the experiments that started so, so early… but let’s just say he’s very interested in how different things freeze… nothing alive, don’t worry–just toys, liquids, dirt.)

He’ll come home and tell me with a big smile he met his reading goal and we’ll celebrate and then the teacher will say, yes, but it was with a lot of bad scores because he reads only enough to pass and get the points.  Agh!  I have to actually WATCH him read or he won’t do it.

So, I live in a house where kids are grounded like 80 percent of the time and I’m sure all the neighborhood moms with kids I turn away at the door, think I’m the meanest lady on the block. 

My children don’t realize how sad grounding them makes me.  I don’t like it when they’re upset, but I like it even less that they won’t at least try and pull their weight.

Yes, this is a blog about writing.  But writing requires brain function and when you have two page emails coming from teachers and then catch your other kid breaking rules and can’t sleep at night because you need to make sure one or the other hasn’t snuck into the family room for phone or TV… 

And they are sweet and loving kids.  They don’t pop off with attitude and they’re always doing nice things for me–hug me several times a day.  I am told “I love you” every single day without fail and if I get into an argument with my daughter, she’s searching me out in less than an hour with an apology.

They just don’t care about their grades.  I don’t get that.  I sweated Bs because I was a perfectionist.  And even when I went through my boy-crazy time, I still cared about my grades.

I’m sharing because I’d like to hear from other writer parents with kids my age or older who have maybe gone through this.  Did you find something that worked???

I had a crazy weekend.  Not one word written since Thursday.  The worst thing about a three day break at this point in the book is it slows momentum–big time. 

But the other bad thing is my mind is pretty much stuck in my urban fantasy setting right now and all weekend, my characters were stomping around and swearing that I left them in a pretty tight spot.  I’ve been so deep in my heroine’s head, I cussed at a couple of innapropriate moments and I think I even reached for my knives at one point. 

Uh, I don’t have knives… 

I tried to fit in friends and family who have been feeling neglected in my personal race here but my mind was just not altogether there.  I kept spacing and I really, really, really wish I’d been paying attention when I accepted that last appletini Saturday night… 

So, I need to slam the work in this week and I’m trying not to think that I have bridal showers and baby showers and a closing on the new business…  not to mention sitting the kiddies down daily to look over homework… they have grade issues. 

Doesn’t it seem like everyone plans their weddings, babies and get-togethers in the spring?  And what’s with the extra school projects?????

In good news, my new batch of Riesling looks fantastic!  I’ll be racking it on Tuesday and then giving it a couple of months to clear up for bottling.  It already smells fantastic, so I’m excited about it.  I’ll be putting together a merlot or pinot next, haven’t decided. 

In store news, I’ve been so frustrated!  I do these fun newsletters and plan to really pump up the humor and snark in them this year, but the effort is for nothing when the things don’t mail out.  I’m tempted to create my own newsletters and try to get a mailing list together privately.  Cafe Press will never share the mailing list for my subscribers and I have nearly 150.  It’s seriously cool that 150 people are interested in the next Snarky style and it would be nice if I could give them the newsletters they requested.

Here are the newest designs I did right before the newsletter that disappeared… 

  Called Invisible Writer.  I love the red color and did this design for it specifically–though it looks cool on the blue ones, too.  There are always versions in the men’s shirts, too.

 Hear That Echo?  Says, I tried meditating so I could free up my mind for writing and it worked! But… now I can’t get started until I clean up all these cobwebs.

And last but not least, I think I’m nearly as excited about my critique partner’s ARCs as she is.  Check these beauties out! 

I didn’t shut down that late last night.  I typed my last page and hit 3000 words around 12:30.  Man, I was happy with myself for sticking to my guns, but this picture pretty much shows how I felt about that time I turned the puter off.

Until I got into bed!  My mind would not shut down!!!  It was noisily crackling with energy and ideas. 

Did I give the new character the wrong look? 

Why did I open up a new possibility of deep-assed research? 

Wait, I can’t use that character trait because my CP had something similar recently! 

And since I’m on chapter fifteen, shouldn’t there be a freaking all-the-way love scene by now??? 

I’ll have to go back and thread a lot more sexual tension in my secondary romance plot… 

Am I ever going to just fall asleep?????

Two hours later, I’m in that weird stage of ‘not’ sleep where you’re highly annoyed and you’ve drifted off a couple of times only to have your mind start playing tricks on you.

I was hearing everything from my husband chewing his own teeth, to this stupid, loud, twittering bird who must have been in some sort of smack down with the barking squirrel.

Then, I would drift off and awaken to that, eerie, middle-of-the-night silence–you know the one–and the feeling that someone was standing over me. 

Agh! I would sit up, my eyes scanning the room, my heart pounding–fear a heavy lump in my throat. 

It was the silliest thing ever!!!  But by three in the morning, I was just plain pissed.  Kind of like I was when I watched American Idol last night.  I’ve always known reality shows were nothing but useless bunk and now I’m sure of it. 

Today was somewhat frustrating.  No word count as of yet.  That’s two days this week, so I’ll have to make it up tonight.

I couldn’t continue because two things happened.  One, a new character popped up into a scene yesterday like one of those bopping moles in that Whack a Mole game. 

But… I just loved him!  I’m ready to finish that scene but he threw the plot out of whack a bit.  In a good way, but it’s a minor setback.

Problem was, I had researched the next setting in the last part of the book and upon further research, discovered t’would not do a’toll.  Damn.

So, I’ve been researching.  All day.  I have this old book about swamps but it was written in the 70s and terrain changes.  Finally, about an hour ago, I discovered personal pages!

Tip.  If possible, find personal pages when researching settings.  Seems there is always someone out there who is enchanted with the place they live and writes about it. 

I thought about emailing the author of the page, but honestly, I worry that my questions about what my “made-up” serial killer could get away with in his area would ah… freak him out a bit.  Ya think?

So, I’m using precious ink to print them off, pictures and all.  Tonight, I’ll go over them and do an outline of the next couple of chapters.  Maybe… just maybe, I’ll catch up the word count this weekend. 

I have family coming Friday night and I really should call up some friends for Saturday or Sunday. 

Hey, Friends of Rinda, you know who you are– I still love you!  I promise!  Remember that while I’m going through this incredible push to finish.  🙂

Sometimes, you have to force yourself to take a break.  My legs are numb and I can no longer feel my butt.  <g>

I came into my office at nine this morning, planning to work straight through until four-thirty.  I’ve been munching on baby carrots and drinking bottled water and I swear, I had to pry every single one of the 3500 words I wrote today out with sharp forks. 

This was probably silly, but I’d hoped to double that word count today.  I did it last week after all.   But days where you hit that fly zone and blow out more than two chapters are rare.  Uh, probably for a reason since I’m usually burned out the next day. heh heh

But I was distracted yesterday.  Had family things happening, met my new little three week old nephew who is so freaking precious!

Then I had this kick-ass plotting conversation with Rachel which not only helped her out, but gave me a few good ideas in the process–so that was most definitely worth it.  

There were other things, but man, I don’t want to bore you all to death.  In short, no writing yesterday, so now I’m behind.

I thought to make up yesterday today, but here it is three o’clock and I’m dying here.  I need to get up and move around.  There is enough laundry piled up out there to smother several adults and well, my brain is shorting out. I’m sure I’m misspelling something here.

In the future, I won’t give myself such short deadlines.  Now that I know I can comfortably spit out around 3000 words a day, I should be able to work in a nice, steady fashion on these first drafts.  

And since I already brought her up, I’m going to thank Rachel for inspiring me to give this “write the first draft really rough and keep it steady” approach.  

Hey Vincent, it really does work.

Me after seeing the topic Heather gave me “off the top of her head.”  Yeah, right.  She’s had an evil plan all along.

The topic?

“Write about a government mandated vaccine for psychic cat scratch disease.”