I don’t know how I came to acquire Lullaby, by Chuck Palahniuk, without first having read a single review, or at least the back cover! Maybe I was so moved after reading Survivor that I just looked at the stars on Amazon and bought it blindly.

You see, the problem is that this book is about babies dying of SIDS, and I have a baby!!!!! It’s about a culling song, in a book of nursery rhymes, that parents read to their babies without knowing it, and the babies never wake up. I am about 45 pages into it and I keep saying to myself, you shouldn’t be reading this, this is going to give you nightmares!

Maybe I ordered it back when I was pregnant, before I knew that everything changes when you have a baby - it has been sitting around for a while. I can’t watch scary movies anymore, or see gore, and I certainly can’t read about bad things happening to babies! Having a baby does change everything, and I think I am turning into a romantic-comedy kind of girl.

Yet I keep picking up the bookÖ (this is fiction, this is fiction, this is fiction) Eeek!

The ideal Saturday morning: take out the recycling, go to the farmer’s market.

I don’t know if I mentioned before my strange habit for making schedules (usually ones that I don’t keep). These are detailed and include the exact times and descriptions of what I am supposed to do. 6:00, wake, drink coffee, write something. 8:00, baby wakes up, eat breakfast, must include protein and veggies. 8:30, do the dishes while Dylan finishes his breakfast (translation: throws his breakfast on the floor). 9:00, play. 10:00, go for a walk if nice outside, or do yogaÖ and so on throughout the day.

I call these my guidelines for a productive life (yes, they are titled!), because most of the time, I don’t feel very productive. I revise them often, sometimes daily, as I discover more about what works and what doesn’t. I guess this is usually to accommodate the baby, who seems to change so much from week to week. Maybe all of this really has to do with my need to find a working woman/mommy balance, but that enough for a post all on its own.

So anyway, my new Saturday morning routine is a keeper! Saturday mornings will go as usual to breakfast (perhaps replacing my writing block with some fun and mindless activity like gaming or reading my mommy boards), then, we take our recycling to the recycling place (are there names for these things?), and go to the farmer’s market to buy armloads of fresh, locally-grown (and even some organic!) fruits and veggies. Oh fun! How have I lived in this city for almost three years and never been to the farmer’s market???

I don’t think the point of all this is to be a schedule-Nazi, but just to make sure that some things get done. I feel great when things get done, because then going off-schedule, which seems to happen so often, feels a little more deserved than indulgent.

I can already see my child growing up to rebel against my love of structure and then blame me for his dysfunctions as an adult. *sigh*

I love how in love I am with my baby first thing in the morning. I say to him, I missed you, you were sleeping so long! (This is, of course, contingent upon him having actually slept a long time.) This morning infatuation is so special because I know when 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. comes around, he’ll probably have me tearing my hair out

When people say, “Oh, I just loving writing!” I know they’re full of crap.

I’m glad he said it first

This is from An interview with John August at Cecil Vortex. John August wrote the screenplays for Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the Charlie’s Angels movies, among others.

It’s refreshing to know that writing is supposed to be hard work. And I’m not talking about the process of writing itself, like fingertips clicking away at the keyboard writing - but the journey to the chair, the shutting down your web browser and actually opening a Word document journey. It helps me feel like a little less of a failure to know that real writers are allowed to feel like writing is a chore, because the world does not give that impression sometimes.

This just about sums it up:

I really don’t like writing. That’s a terrible thing to say of course, because one is supposed to love one’s art. But I’d rather do just about anything than sit down and start writing.

The thing is, I love having written. I love going back and looking at the scene I wrote. So “writing” is a necessary, painful process I go through in order to get to “having written.”

When people say, “Oh, I just loving writing!” I know they’re full of crap. They’re probably lousy writers who are regurgitating their daily thoughts in a journal. Actual writing is hard work.

And this one is for Lee, if she’s reading, on the subject of getting unblocked:

In terms of getting blocked, or unblocked, I never force myself to write in sequence. I’ll happily skip anywhere in the script to write the scene that interests me. I can almost always find something that I’m willing to write.

(found via After The MFA)

There are three things:

1.) Tired! There is not enough coffee in the world to keep me awake. This week Dylan likes to wake up at 5:30 for a cry and a quick cuddle, but this morning, he decided to stay up for breakfast as well. Funny thing is that we had our alarms set for 5:30 anyway, so that I could do some writing, and Jim could do some work, but instead we entertained a tired and hungry baby.

2.) Tofurkey! Man that sounds weird, and for some reason, I feel a little embarrassed typing the word. But my vegetarian husband is slowly brainwashing me, and I have to say it actually tastes really good.

and 3.) Today is the day I stop eating like a frat boy. That day was also yesterday, and the day before, and it will probably be tomorrow as well. But anyway, today is the dayÖ