Sweet Book Child of Mine

          

 Hello, new world. Pic from Wikicommons.

                A quick post tonight..it's been so busy here with Halloween, a friend's baby shower and still trying to settle into our new house. Yet so much of the time my brain is in another world trying to figure out what happens to my characters next. I'm in the dense, unknown part of my story where the conflict needs to take a leading role and all the stakes need to be raised. It's taking a lot of brain power. I'm not a great storyteller but I'm a good writer so I'm hoping I can camouflage my weakness with great writing and an interesting premise with likable characters. After all, isn't fiction about twisting the truth!?

            You know that part where you're the new person so everyone comes and introduces themselves to you, invites you over for lunches etc and you pretty much get to sit back and just try to remember everyone's names? Well, I feel like that phase is waning and I need to get on the bandwagon and become more social. But my big problem is that with such little free-time the more I spend away from my notebook/computer the longer it will take to get published. Is that a selfish thought? Is that all work and no play? Or is that what it takes to get the job done? I was at a friend's house and realized that if I want to have friends here, if I want to be included in things and be a member of society, I might need to shortchange this dream I've been working so hard to achieve. And yet, if I do, it feels like someone's asking me to spend less time with my child. These past few years my work has become like one of my children..it takes up so much of my time, it really doesn't give a lot back, as soon as I fix certain issues, new problems arise...and yet I'm devoted to it, love it and can see the potential simmering just under the surface; of what it can become with some tlc. (Or rather, grinding my nose to powder with all the nose to the grindstone that really goes into writing a book).

         I guess tonight I feel a little overwhelmed with life and with trying to become a best-selling author. And with the news that Penguin and Random house merged, it reminds me that the publishing business is an industry I'm trying to hold onto with my fingertips because it's barreling through change faster than I think any of us can keep up with.

  I hope I'm not complaining because no one likes to read about that. I guess my question is...how do you balance the home/work life? Esp as a writer when you constantly feel that pull towards that made-up world where you  live half the time anyway. Or when your characters rove around your brain demanding to be heard but you don't have the time to write down everything they say?

         I don't want to be anti-social or give up on making new friends. But the fact is, this book-child of mine won't let me be until its story has been told. And we've got a ways to go yet. ::shivers with excitement::

Library Fail

    Today I loaded up my two-year old and 2-month old and we drove 20 mins to the nearest library. It was also pouring rain which I was all about because coming from the desert, there is nothing more exciting than a booming downpour to shake up the weather.
 
  So we're soaking wet by the time I get them loaded into the car and then out of the car and into the library. But it's worth it because there's a little cafe off the front foyer that I'm dying to go back to and write in, and a flat screen tv behind the information desk with advertisements for tots' reading time, adult book club in the fireplace room etc. I'm standing there with a big grin on my face because I love libraries and this one is sweet.

   Then I get up to the counter dripping water everywhere and present my change of address form to get a card. I totally get REJECTED. Because it didn't have my first name, only my last on the page. I tried to tell the kindly lady that my license has my former address printed on it which is also printed on the change of address form but it was a no-go. I seriously got all teary and it was embarrassing and I hope the lady didn't notice and I wheeled us back out to the rain.

 Maybe it's hormones. Maybe it's my still-newborn-stage-lack-of-sleep. Or maybe it was the feeling that heaven's doors were closed before me after I had tried to live a worthy life. Anyway, it was horrible. The library is in my top three favorite places to be in the entire world and all of that goodness was closed to me and my little'ins. So, back out into the pouring rain which had somehow (or maybe it was just me) seemed to be pouring even harder and colder. Suck.

 So now we're home eating lunch. In my new "I love to clean. I'm all about cleaning" mantra I'm trying hard to embrace, I have of course thrown out every envelope that might possibly, probably had my name on it. Then I found a receipt from when I signed up for electricity. Does that count? Has my full name on it..it's a receipt for payment for turning on electricity and my address right there under my name. I am going to call and see. I'm determined to get in there. They can't shut me out! haha.

 That said, I'm slightly lagging behind on my ms. I've gotten it into my head to build most of the furniture we are needing. Such as bookshelves, a tv console, a dresser etc.. I just can't find what I like on the market and am unwilling to pay $400 for a cheap dresser glued together and glazed. So I'm really psyched about it but there goes most of my free time when I was already trying to claw out as much time for writing. I've decided to set some concrete goals:

   End of Nov (and Nanowrimo) MS complete
   End of Dec: Round 1 Crit partners finished
   Jan: Proffessionl edit and personal edits from Crit partners, cover design an formatting, scrounging up advertising/marketing.
   Feb: Marketing, ARCs, release info, reviewers selected.
   Mar: Book release, home-town book release party.

 I hope that's plausible. I've been working and re-working this story for over a year now. I've found that I need a few days of just planning the next set of scenes without any writing. Then, I take a week of great writing until I get to the end of my planning. Then it's back to the drawing board. It makes for slow work but I believe that's the best way I work. At least for this story.

  I do feel a little anxious trying to get all of this done. I mean, we don't have ANY furniture in our house. (Well, the girls have their cribs and I have our old queen size bed and we have a tiny kitchen set that's falling apart. But we need a king size bed and a new kitchen set so not sure I count it!) And when I was talking about how to prioritize everything meaning, "do I put my book on the back burner until we're more settled in?" Or, "do I put building furniture on the back burner until my book is done?" To me, they are both needs. I go crazy if I don't write. And, frankly, I'm a little nervous that the elements that make up my book will go out of style and a new wave will come in and all this work will be passe. Dystopian. Paranormal. Magic. Those have been around for a bit and sniffing the wind, I wonder if they are starting to fade? Agents are looking for epic fantasies and sci-fi these days. So maybe I'm still good.

Well, better go. More later!

Writing Wednesday and I Totally Suck

    Photo: Wikimedia Commons: Paul Keller

      We've been 8 days without any furniture or any belongs besides what we fit into our luggage, a few camp chairs and a blow up mattress. It really makes me wonder why we have so much STUFF when really, you can get by with so little. Finally, today the movers came with our belongings.Two nice gentlemen probably in their late 40's. They made good conversation with me, assembled everything they could and wouldn't let met help etc.. Capital fellows.

       6 hours, two broken bookshelves and a broken desk later the movers finally left. I was a little bugged about the broken furniture, about the fact that while the door was open a million flies swarmed in. But mostly I was bugged about myself.  That I didn't mark the rooms to make it easier on the movers like I'd thought too last night but was too lazy to do. That I didn't have any energy drinks on hand, nor anything but peanut butter sandwhiches to offer them for lunch. I'm new in town and our 2nd car, my car is still somewhere between  here and Las Vegas so I couldn't even go pick them up something.

    BUT all of that is so small compared to the big kicker...I had NO cash on me for a tip. 6 HOURS of work. I know they get paid but it really bugged me that they worked so hard and were so nice to me and I had nothing but change in my purse. I feel like such a schmuck. The embarassing part is that I hid out in the bedroom peering out the window to make sure they drove away and weren't coming back to bang on my door and demand their rightful thanks. This was so that I could finally take a breath. See how pathetic I am?!

  ::sighs:: THEN it was school bus hour so every time a big vehicle would pass the house I'd hold my breath feeling like they really were coming back with missing paperwork or something else in the truck so I'd have to face them again. A guilty conscience I tell you....

 So that's my confession and I'm probably over-reacting but they worked hard and hard work deserves something extra. Is it too much to stop by the home moving office to drop off a few $20s? Too weird?

  This whole move I've tried so hard to see it as an adventure. It's been huge and patience-testing with a 2-yr old and 2 month old baby on my hip. Only now as I sit here in my new living room surrounded by boxes, broken furniture and a million flies do I feel a bit overwhelmed. I'm not an interior decorator by any means. We've got so many things we have to buy...a couch, new bedroom set, drawers for the girls, kitchen towels etc..I'm not a spender. (Which is why we need to buy new things..the old ones are just plain too old now). And I really want to have a sophisticated grown up pad. This is our first kind of official place we're going to spend some time at and we're already making friends so I really want to have a place that reflects where we are in life. I think I'm still so geeky and weird and socially awkward. I don't mind sleeping on a blow up mattress. But girls my age should have a proper bed with proper matching bedding and a real sidetable instead of some  that maybe I don't want people to see that so much as the other side -the confident-in-my-skin person I'm trying hard to be or maybe are becoming more. The art lover, the collector, the cleaner. Actually I never see the cleaner in me so that personality just might not exist. So these next few weeks are going to be challenging to say the least.

   Now, moving past me and my whiny meanderings...Beth Revis has a blog series "Writing Wednesdays" that totally rocks.

   Oh Beth Revis why are you so cool? You probably never leave your movers hanging out to dry.If Beth Revis offered online writing classes I would so sign up. She spins each "lesson" in her own way that makes each topic refreshingly new and actually applicable. Case in point? The last few paragraphs of today's lesson totally blew me away:

  This is what separates the very best of the best YA. Good YA has the character realize everyone wears a mask. Great YA has the character realize he wears a mask, too.

The best YA lifts the mask off the reader.

There is no greater accomplishment than a book that can make the reader realize who he is behind his mask.

I'm telling you, sooooooo goood! So check out her blog post today HERE. Your writing will be better for it.

I hate Apartments

Tell me one good thing about them. Having a pool/workout community doesn't count because technically that has nothing to do with the living that goes on within in an apartment. (This is the biggest and perhaps only pro I can think of). And you might be thinking "I can call up maintenance anytime to fix something" to which I say, "define 'fix;".

    Normally I'm not a complaining bugger but today our water was shut off with no forewarn. All day. You never realize how much you need and use water on a consistent basis until you go to flush the loo and nothing happens. Or you go to wash your hands and nothing comes out. Or rinse a spoon. Or add water to your dinner recipe. Or come in from a hot morning at the pool ready for a cold drink of water and its been turned off and your 2-year old daughter guzzles down your last water bottle and you feel bad about wanting to yank it out of her small, innocent hands before she's done but your mouth shrivels as you watch the last drop disappear.* In our community email, it says it was an emergency water valve issue. But as I mentioned, I was at the pool this morning and overheard two maintenance workers talking about shutting off the water and it didn't sound like an emergency to me.

     Let me preference this rant by the fact that we have the weirdest neighbors that have only fueled my perseverance towards publishing and getting us out of here. Like the one across from us who will stomp out onto her porch and rant to the world about all her problems. Then she repeats the process about ten times slamming the door every time she goes back in. Oh, and she also likes to spray shaving cream at an imaginary Obama and any office manager that comes to tell her to stop.
   Needless to say, I'm pretty ready to move. Preferably to a house with 3+ acres. Because nothing ever goes wrong with your water or appliances in a house (hehe).

   The good thing out of living in an apartment in the middle of the desert with wacky neighbors and no water is that as mentioned it really has spurred me on to write more/better/faster/consistently. Whenever these things happen I always think "As soon as I publish I won't have to deal with this." As soon as I publish maybe we can move away from here...buy a house...I can finally decorate because we'll stay in one place...I can stock my pantry with tons of food so that I don't run out of powdered sugar and forget about it until I'm ready to frost my feel-better-about-no-water-situation chocolate cake and can find a 1/4 cup of powdered sugar (which any baker knows if about one individual serving of frosting. And even less if you were counting on drowning yourself in chocolate soothing). I can make more friends. I can have an awesome community of readers and book affecionados and we can chat about books 24/7. I can finally have something of success under my belt. I can finally look good with blonde highlights. I can shop at JCrew and their clothes will magically look great on one whose chest isn't as flat as a board and who has hips.

 Publishing will probably end world hunger.

Bring it on published novel. I'm ready for you.



*And you're 7 1/2 months pregnant which means you sustain yourself on water. Esp through a Nevada summer.