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::

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.