Between snow days and moving (again), my brain was put on standby and nothing was accomplished. Except for moving. We accomplished that. But no writing. Barely even any worthwhile play writing (and you know, when all else fails my play stories usually still manage to get written). But no, February was almost complete slush there too. The short story was not read and revised. The novel did not grow.

I can’t even remember what DID happen, except for moving. That much I know we did. Everything else blurs.

Well anyway, let’s make March a better one, shall we?…

Oh, wait, are we really already a whole week into March? Damn.

“Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.”

No, no context, I just like it

progress report:

I finished my short story this week – beginning, middle, end, and done. I’ll probably be nagging people to read it for me some time this week.

Last weekend, I wrote a bunch of stuff for my novel, and it’s currently sitting at a homely but endearing 21,000 words.

I wrote this, which might be a poem, but is probably not… (this is not a poem, I see scrawled in my memory, across my attempts from old college workshops).

I blame it on Courtney, because she wrote a poem this week. Hers is a real, actual poem.

Inexistence

It doesn’t exist. You might think it does. You remember it,
this thing you fashioned with your own mind and hands –
it’s a story, it’s a photograph, it’s an organic hot dog,
nested carefully in its bun and sliced into perfect half moons.

It wasn’t reality, where you placed it, in another
dimension, another consciousness, another lifetime.
Maybe you accidentally left it in that place
with all the lost socks, that damn wine cork,
and the TV remote.

That’s why you’re the only one who can see it.
Because you can see it. Because it is there,
but at the same time, if no one else sees it,
it’s kind of not.

I have been writing though, but just feeling antisocial and a little bit invisible.

I added a works-in-progress page (linked in the about box, currently, on the sidebar). I need to get around to redesigning this thing properly some time soon, so I can have proper page navigation ‘n stuff

An alternate reality Danny and Lexi story, by Jim Amos

Danny raised the chainsaw until it was at head-height – each pneumatic tooth purring like some crazed panther on a hunting high – then swung with all his upper body strength in a downward arc that sprayed Lexi’s arterial plasma like rain from a garden sprinkler. He was sorry that it would come to this, so sorry. He had loved Lexi since that day when they were 9 years old and playing tic-tac-toe inside the tunnel under the old quarry, but a zombie was a zombie and so there could be no other end to their relationship than one of severed flesh and disintegrated bone. Of course he wished he had taken the opportunity to get inside her panties first – but he was beginning to understand that life nearly always held you back from what you really wanted. At least he had escaped having his dick ripped off by this fiend of the undead. There was always that.

the ass kicking:

I’m starting Jillian Michaels 30-day Shred, which I’m doing 5 days/week rather than daily, but I’ll do it for 6 weeks rather than 30 days. Anyway, it’s hard, but I guess it doesn’t really feel like enough. Maybe I need to start out on level 2? But the fact of it is, I’m used to exercising for 60-70 minutes per session. The Shred feels like it’ll do an awesome job at sculpting, which is what it’s intended to do, I guess, but I’ll be combining it with a 45-minute yoga/fitness blend on cold days, and on warmer days I’ll do my regular 4 miles outside.

Speaking of the regular 4 miles on ass-kicking hills, I had no idea my calves had been so neglected, because Shred makes them want to cry, lol! I guess hills really don’t do much for calves. My ass though, chubby as I might be otherwise, is pretty damn tight

Honestly, it’s not the working out that I’ve ever had trouble with, but my terrible eating habits. It sounds like it should be so easy, you know, just don’t eat so damn much? I’m going to try to fall back on South Beach Diet again. It’s worked for me in the past, and I am obviously not to be trusted with carbs. I’ve tried to live in harmony with carbs, and it just keeps not working, again and again. I do much, much better when I just cut most of them out.

the novel:

The hardest goal for this year (we will not say the word “impossible”) is going to be the novel. I think an ambition of this magnitude requires a schedule. (Because I’m a Virgo, and super-dorky!) Let’s make a schedule, shall we?

February: finish part 2
March: finish part 3
April: finish part 4, the end
May: pull everything together, polish a bit, and done

June and July: novel sleeps? How long should a finished first draft sleep for? Maybe just one month, since we’re working with the near impossible here

(July?)/August: commence hacking it to pieces.
September/October: out to beta readers.

October/November: get feedback back (lol).

November/December: with feedback, instead of NaNoWriMo, we’ll do a NaNoRevMo, lol! Carry on into December, before Christmas eats us all alive again. 2nd draft done, by the end of the year, and ready to be thrown out into the world first thing 2011 (you know, since we might as well wait until after Christmas is done eating us all alive).

Of course, anyone who’s actually done this process before is welcome to shed some light on how my timeline is destined to fail because of my glorious noob-ness.

And has anyone ever tried a staggered beta-reading process before? I read a novelist blogger (Allison Winn Scotch maybe?) who said she liked to have her first 100 pages read and get feedback, and then she knows if the rest of the novel will work or not. I think I might try something like that. I feel like I need somebody else’s eyes on this mess so that I know it’s headed in the right direction.

So, in that light, I’ll probably be soliciting some beta readers around the end of the month, for my first seven chapters (estimated 70 pages). Ack! I said it out loud, people! We’ll also let this take the place of the promise of my first chapter after the new year. Seven chapters is better than one, right?

progress report for the three weeks I haven’t been blogging:

These past three weeks have probably been just about as productive as everyone’s past three weeks, which would be a big lazy mess of Christmas/New Year. I did actually add maybe 4000 words that I managed to steal from some old notes and drafts (it’s not cheating if you steal from yourself), and the first part is done. Did I say that out loud? Done, ugly, sketchy, but done!

Part two is officially in the works. Part 2 is roughly chapters 8 through 15, I think. Parts of them were very eager to be born last month, but I welcome the rest of them into existence, if they would be so kind to join us

health:
- cook more, eat out less, less prepared convenience foods
- exercise 5 days a week (currently doing about 2 or 3)
- more strength training (trying out Jillian Michaels Shred to start!)
- lose 25 lbs before I get knocked up
- 1 glass of wine a day is healthy, 2 or 3 glasses not so much…

hardcore writing goals:
- novel finished, revised, and out to agents by the end of the year! (Whoa, that’s ambitious! Can I get some cheerleaders on this one?)
- get Dylan in preschool/part-time care for daily writing time, so I can accomplish my ambitious goal of finishing my novel by the end of the year
- publish a short story
- keep up with my weekly progress reports
- pre-draft novel #2 during NaNoWriMo 2010

family life:
- get a babysitter and go on regular dates with my hubby again
- as a possible side-product of all those dates, get knocked up… (but no sooner than March/April, so that I can finish my novel by the end of the year)
- save a downpayment to buy a house next year

Good luck on everyone’s goals for 2010! Let’s make it a good one!

Playing this week, “I Will Follow You Into the Dark,” by Death Cab For Cutie. (listen here, good guitar lesson here.) I’m in love with this song this week. It’s quiet and beautiful, and it inspired a heartbreaking little story idea.

not a film critic:

Into the Wild: Very thoughtful, and inspiring. Now I wanna backpack through Alaska. I know, the book is usually better, but my “to-read” list is a mile long already. Hubby read it and enjoyed it, and was able to point out where the differences were. I’m wondering if the film might have better suited the visuals of an adventure anyway?

I expected to be bored by it, but I absolutely wasn’t. I mean, how interesting can one guy be out in the wilderness? But the point is, he spent much of his journey meeting very interesting people, making these fantastic human connections that he outwardly rejected. He seemed to have such an impact on so many people, and came to an unfortunate conclusion in the end.

I make myself a promise though – when my kid(s) is grown and self-sufficient, I’m totally going to climb a mountain!

progress report, week of 12/7:

Not much bulk added to the novel this week (a few random lines, a couple good paragraphs). Christmas is starting to happen in a consuming way, hubby is sick… it’s just that time of year.

I did manage to send a story back out into the world again this week, and I wish it luck. I hope I’ve taught it all it needs to know, so that it might stand on its own little feet and prosper. Again, I subbed it to one of my top favorite magazines, lol! If it doesn’t work there, I might try my hand at simultaneous submissions next time. And maybe I’ll cast a bit more modestly, lol! You know, reaching for the stars and all

This week: whatever I can manage, considering it’s the week before Christmas and all. I still like the goal of having part one entirely first-drafted before the new year. It’s still doable, I think.

I’m going to share my first chapter with you all after the new year. (Eeek! I said it!) So I hope you’ll hold me to that

(I assure myself this time, book #1 will not be abandoned for book #2, no matter how it begs! I am too far emotionally invested in book #1, and it will be my firstborn! It will forever hold that place in my heart!)

But it’s helpful, I think, to see trends starting to take shape in the scope of my stories. I’m starting to notice some similarities, based on what book #1 is about, compared to what book #2 is about – life and death, marriage and relationships, trying not to become your parents…

I still don’t know if I’m writing YA or not. Upper YA maybe. Maybe not. The protags from novel #1 are 20 years old. But I’m thinking the protag for the second novel is going to be about 25.

There are also many strong women’s themes in my writing, so maybe chick lit? Whoa, crap, am I a chick lit writer??? But without the shoes, or publishing jobs in NYC? Is that allowed in chick lit? Midwestern quirky chick lit, with snow boots instead of stilettos? Come to think of it, my website is pink, lol!

I don’t know why I’m so dead-set on finding myself a niche to belong to. My very favorite authors – John Irving, Lorrie Moore, T.C. Boyle – don’t really seem to belong to any niche except just good, engrossing, quirky, literary fiction. Maybe that is a niche itself?

progress report for the week of 11/30:

I’m easing myself out of the turkey coma this week. I accomplished more plotty stuff than actual plumping of word counts (parts 2 and 3 are developing!), but I’ve enjoyed looking over what I have so far. I’ve found that the first part of the novel (chapters 1-7) is pretty much sketched, so now just to plump and polish and move forward. That’s exciting news, for me at least, because the plumping and polishing part is the easiest, for me. Once I have the bones down, and I know what’s happening and who’s saying what, and such, the flesh usually falls right into place (ha, bones and flesh, lol!).

Favorite line of the week, Danny and Hannah’s mom:

“Birds? Your father left you birds? I’m not surprised though. I didn’t know much about your father, and I was married to the man for twelve years.”

Hope everyone’s writing projects are going well!

It seems in the past weeks the world has been thinking and reflecting on the topic of love in writing, and I’ve been collecting a few of the links I’ve found.

First, an interview @ Maud Newton w/ Marlon James: about his novel, the Book of Night Women (which sounds fascinating, by the way!), and writing about love.

I remember calling friends shouting, “I just wrote a love scene! All they do is kiss!” to which they would respond, “. . . and are they then dismembered?” and I’d go, “No, after that they dance!” It was hard. I resisted it for as long as I could because I didn’t believe in it at first, and even when I did, I couldn’t figure out how to write it. Not until Irish novelist Colum McCann gave me permission by giving me the best writing advice I’ve ever gotten from a writer: Risk Sentimentality.

There’s a belief that sex is the hardest thing for a literary novelist but I disagree: love is. We’re so scared of descending into mush that I think we end up with a just-as-bad opposite, love stories devoid of any emotional quality. But love can work in so many ways without having to resort to that word. Someone once scared me by saying that love isn’t saying “I love you” but calling to say “did you eat?” (And then proceeded to ask me this for the next 6 months). My point being that, in this novel at least, relationships come not through words, but gestures like the overseer wanting to cuddle. Or rubbing his belly and hollering about her cooking, or teaching her how to dance or ride a horse — things reserved for white women…

…I think, as a writer, the important thing was to layer the relationship with complexity and contradiction. There were situations where I could have left certain storylines one-dimensional and gotten away with it. I think the relationship is gripping not because they love each other, or think they do (or not) but because even with such a horribly skewed dynamic, hearts do what they want. And people don’t always fit in the roles that have been assigned to them. But of course the relationship is doomed; any slavery love writes its end in its very beginning.

On a similar tangent, I certainly don’t consider myself an erotica writer either, but I can’t seem to write a story that doesn’t involve or at least elude to sex in some form.

Here, an article on how writing about sex in fiction is almost never really about the sex.

More on writing sex here, from Storytellers Unplugged.

And finally, a must-see movie – film, I guess, we call them films when they’re artsy and thoughtful Good Dick: I suck at writing reviews, and there are plenty of good ones on IMDB, but really, it’s a hilarious, twisted love-story, but at the same time surprisingly sweet. Emotionally taxing, but so worth it! Movie trailer here. (Oh, rated R and not for the kiddies though!) Enjoy!

I didn’t work on my novel a single word last week. I’m okay with that though, little breaks can be efficient sometimes. And I just finished reading over everything I have, which is several segmented chapters, adding up to about 40-something pages so far. It’s beginning to resemble the first part of a novel. It’s shaping.

Last week’s questionable second-person short story got worked into third person after all, and I think I might be happy with it. Still poking at it – you know, turkey coma and all…

I tried to do a kick-ass yoga video last week, but the child vetoed that idea really fast. Yoga isn’t really so productive when he thinks downward-dog is like a bridge he can crawl under. Ah well… I walked 6.5 miles last week, which wasn’t a complete flop. We’re moving out of walking weather this time of year anyway, so I’ll take whatever I get. We might have a day or two this week.

(I hear you saying, “Dude, did you really just talk about your walking schedule in relation to the damn weather?” Yes, I did. Sorry about that.)

Yesterday marks the end of NaNoWriMo, so I hope everyone was productive with their novels last month, whatever stage of writing that might be. My official word count for the month was about 5000 words. Hey, no scoffing at my words! I’m pulling the “mommy of a crazy three year-old” card, and dammit, they were very good words!

Plan for December then… I’ve got 3 full weeks before Christmas madness sets in. I should at least be able to match the word count I wrote for November. I’d really like to get the first part (seven chapters) done in a solid way and get a couple readers for it after the new year, to make sure it’s going where I want it to go, make sure the characters are who I think they are, make sure it’s actually working ‘n stuff.

Anyway, got a “no thank you” on the story I sent out a couple weeks ago. The editor was generous to offer his reasons, and said, “I liked much of the description in your story, but I rarely see a need for the second-person narration.”

Hmmm… really? Is second person not a valid narrative choice? I mean, I wouldn’t use it for every story, but I certainly feel it has its place. And I have to love this particular story in second person, versus what it would feel like in first or third. Maybe I’m wrong. (Anybody feel like taking a quick peek at a 4-page story?) It’s touchy though, because I know a lot of people don’t like it. But then, some people do, don’t they? Any thoughts?

progress report for the week of 11/16:

Let’s try not to let the “no thank you” detract us from what was actually a productive week.

Chapter 4 was born yesterday. It’s a Lexi chapter and she’s freaking hilarious in it. I think one of my favorite things about Lexi is her honesty, and the way she just owns herself, so that she can let these hilarious failures just roll right off of her back. And she needs to, since Danny and Hannah tend to poke fun a bit much. Anyway, chapter 4 was a blast to write and I’m so glad to have it in my novel!

A good bit of chapter 10 was born this week too, which I had to indulge myself and write because it’s one of those “when they fell in love” chapters, and I just can’t resist “when they fell in love” stories.

And if you could see how much of this novel is written, it would look like: chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 19. Yeah, okay, out of order much?

So with a pretty solid framework for chapter 4 and 10, and some random plumping elsewhere, I added about 2000 words to the novel this week. Better than last week!

I actually, finally, went and got my Virginia drivers license and plates! *cues confetti, lol!*

For this week:

- I’d like to walk three times, but it’s going to be pretty rainy… excuses…
- If I decide to stand by my second-person narration choice, then I’ll send that short story straight back out again. I already have somewhere else in mind for it.
- I have another short story (not in second person, lol!) that I’d like to get reacquainted with, now that I’m easing myself out of NaNoWriMo mode and into normal, everyday, writer mode.
- No specific chapter goals, since they quite obviously just come out as they please. I’ll gladly take another 2000 words this week. Sheesh, that sounds so tiny, considering some people (especially in NaNo month) are cranking out 2000 words or more each day. It’s looking like it’s going to be my average though, considering my current situation.

I’m telling you though, once I’m a big-name author, on contract ‘n stuff (we’re allowed to dream around here!), I’m totally getting a part-time nanny!

And they don’t nap anymore.

And they don’t sleep through the night because there are monsters in their bedrooms now. And they have bad dreams.

And even though it’s lovely that they’re potty trained, now they’ll wake you up to take them to the potty in the middle of the night. You almost want to tell them, “Oh, just go in your underwear, we’ll pretend it’s like a diaper and we’ll change them in the morning, Mommy needs to SLEEP.” But you don’t.

And they wake up at 7:00, on the dot, every single day, and ready to GO – and keep going, and going, and going…

The amount of involvement he needs is just so much greater. He should be in school this year, but you know, life happened in an epic way this year.

This has to be the hardest age. At one, they were adorable! Do you remember one, with their toddling and babbling? And newborns! My God, newborns were easy! They sleep 16 hours a day! Just strap that sucker to your chest and you’re good to go! Two was trying, because they just don’t understand the world yet – but three is impossible because they do.

Four gets better, right? Somebody tell me four gets better! (Lord, please, lol!) But if nothing else, at least there will be preschool next year. God bless school!

progress report for the week of 11/9:

If a zombie tried to write a novel, she might write about 1200 words in a week.

But they can’t all be great weeks. They can’t all be like last week, where I sat down and wrote about 1200 words in one single hour. Nope, not all hours can be like that. Certainly not. It might be near impossible for me to make my 20,000 words for the month, but I’m not giving up hope just yet. Better weeks will come, they always do.

On a more positive note, part 2 is itching to be written. Which is odd since I don’t have a damn clue what happens in the present narrative of part 2, but all the corresponding flashbacks are screaming at me!

Hey, that’s better than nothing, right? It’s better than being a zombie with no part 2 screaming to be written.

I think I’ll move my progress reports from Friday to Monday, since I do a lot of my writing on the weekends. And I’ll keep them separate from any other random posts I do. Gotta have some structure up in here!

I’m giving myself an B+ for last week, because it was pretty okay! I could have walked more… but you know, I didn’t.

novel:

One week into NaNoWriMo, and I’ve only done 2200 of my projected 20,000 words. I don’t feel badly about it though, because the words I’ve been getting are good ones! My novel in total is sitting at almost 10,000 words, with most of the whole first section (ch. 1-7) sketched out and/or written. I’m well on track to finish part one this month, and should likely get some work done on part two as well!

I sent the boys out to see a movie this weekend, and I took some solid writing time to focus on my novel. I used to spend Sunday afternoons with my writers group back in Michigan. But since we moved, I haven’t done anything with my Sunday afternoons, so it was great to reclaim that time for myself. Sunday afternoons = MINE!

So in my writing time, I sat down to get some solid work done on chapters 4 or 5, hoping for some framework to fill out during the week. And BOOM, hello, chapter 6 pours out of my fingers instead! Four pages, and over a thousand words, and a good sketchy rough draft of it! Okay, well we’ll take it!

Welcome to the world chapter 6! You’re thoughtful and endearing and a little bit funny, and I thank you for existing

validation:

I went browsing through some old, old drafts of my first couple novel attempts. Oh my poor, poor writers group who had to read that nonsense! (Nonsense isn’t nice, I know – it did have spirit. But it was a mess, and it was going nowhere important.)

I feel a thousand times grateful I scrapped that novel and moved onto this one. Some of the characters have the same names, but they’re not even the same people. They have a story now, where things happen, where they make choices and life has consequences. This novel is a thousand times better. A thousand times more important.

I think I’ve just “found my voice,” as they say. I used to think that was bullshit, but it’s not. I didn’t have it then, but I have it now. And I’ve found something to say. (Whose quote is that? I read that somewhere recently – somebody clever said it, “Don’t just find your voice, but find something to say.”)

But anyway, I’ve found my story, and I can’t wait to share it, I love it so much! When I wrote The Short Story That Killed My Novel, I was so afraid to start all over again, and mad almost, because of all the work I’d put into my first attempts. But now I’m just grateful.

playing this week:

“Disarm” by the Smashing Pumpkins, inspired by my chapter 3 and a great love for some Pumpkins! Such a great song! And quite easy to play, or at least easier than the last time I tried

not a photographer:

I’m still endlessly amused that there’s a ravine outside my apartment

and finally, to do this week:

Chapters 4 or 5, plump up and polish the existing chapters. Other stuff I’ve been putting off for a really long time… More walking than I did this week (blah!).

Twitter is fun, of course. You can follow whoever you want! I’m following John Mayer, *swoon*. It feels a little bit ridiculous, but if you check out his page, you’ll see that probably about two-and-a-half million other women have the same idea, lol!

I’m also following Ingrid Michaelson, who is equally adorable and just an interesting person all around, in addition to her musical genius. I wanted to tweet to her to say that I am enjoying her new album, Everybody, very much, but then I got shy and didn’t, lol! She probably wouldn’t have seen it anyway with her 30,000 followers.

I considered giving up twitter this week, in honor of NaNoWriMo, and an attempt to put more of my time to good use, but I failed miserably. Twitter is just so useful! I use my twitter feed basically like a free-form open journal – if Dylan says something cute, or does something infuriating, if I have half of a thought I want to share, something that doesn’t quite measure up to a whole blog entry, or something that might turn into a blog entry later.

It’s nice to have voices answering back during the days, when most times, it’s just me and this three year-old. (Believe me, Dylan answers back! But not exactly in the capacity a functional adult needs.)

Twitter is, if anything, helping me embrace the professional side of my chosen “career.” I’m finding all these other writers freely swapping ideas and articles, and just generally talking about their days. Today, for example, I found this very eye-opening article in my Twitter feed, on the profits of a best-selling book. Or lack thereof, to be precise. (Not that this should surprise us…)

But these are all people writing and publishing their work, and I feel privileged to sort of “stand in the same room” with them, and listen to what they have to say.

These are two I found to start (I’ve only been at this a couple weeks). Both are accomplished authors who freely share an abundance of information and thoughtful blog posts out of the kindness of their hearts:
@aswinn, blog: Allison Winn Scotch.
@escottwrites, blog: Elizabeth Scott.
Both of whom I probably found via Nova, @novaren, who writes her own very useful blog. Nova who I found via Courtney, I think. Do you see how this works?

But the best thing about Twitter is that it’s linked from one person’s page, to another, to another. Most people keep their tweets open, so if you find something interesting, you just start following. It feels a little voyeuristic to start, but I think most people tweet as a sort of open experience – there is also an option to have your tweets kept private and viewed by friends only.

So, I’m on twitter, and I’m enjoying it very much! Come join me if you want

I love using NaNoWriMo for those early vague stages of the novel, where you don’t know what it’s about yet, all those sketchy words you fully expect to scrap and rewrite anyway. I conceived of my current novel in the afterthoughts of NaNo last year. So I think I’ll use next year’s NaNo as the launching point for my second novel, which means (Holy crap!) I need to finish this one first!

Wow, is that like a deadline?

(Random question for any other novelists reading this: What is your novel pace? One a year, every other year, just whenever they happen to pop out?)

So NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, and I’ll be joining the masses in my own modified way. Through previous years, I’ve found that my most natural pace and best quality writing comes out at about 500-800 words per day. I don’t want to force myself to write beyond my best pace just because it’s novel-writing month, you know? So 25 workable days (taking one weekend day off) at 800 words/day, and my goal for this year will be to add 20,000 words to my novel.

I don’t think it can actually be called NaNoWriMo anymore, since I’m breaking just about every rule in the book. Whatever it is will be useful to me, because more important for me than the actual word counts is the pressure to buckle down and actually do it, to get into the habit of writing every day with consistency. November always feels like the kick-ass month where I finally get my crap together after a whole summer of slacking. All that routine and forcing myself to have structure and accountability. Do you hear me talking over and over again about accountability? What’s wrong with me, with my obvious lack of personal accountability?

So my plan for November is to buckle down in the morning hours before noon (eastern time). These hours are my most useful time, because beside that my mind is fresh in the morning, Dylan is usually the least needy in the mornings. He needs his breakfast and his Diego, and then he mostly ignores me anyway. So there will be no twittering, no facebook during these hours – if you see me on Facebook or Twitter during these hours, I’d ask you to kindly (or not so kindly, whichever you prefer) tell me to get my slacker-ass back to work! No reading blogs and no commenting on them. If I comment on your blog during these hours, please yell at me!

I didn’t post my progress for last week, which I totally mean to do every week. You can pretty much gather that if I don’t update for the week, it was a huge flop. And it was! (My whiny excuses: Dylan has decided to start having bad dreams these past couple weeks, so sometime around 3:00 or 4:00 every morning he comes crying and screaming into our room and won’t sleep in his own. He’s horrible to sleep with! Twisting and turning, ending up sleeping sideways pushing both of us off our sides of the bed, with his feet in my face, and headbutting the hubby!)

But anyway, this week was actually okay…

progress report (week of 10/26):

Reading: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz! And loving the crap out of it!!!

The license: fail again, sheesh! Next week, I swear it!

Chapter 3: has structure! Yay! Is it a no-no to start a chapter with a flashback? How about two chapters in a row? Well I don’t care because it’s got me writing! I also wrote the end of ch. 7 (part 1) and first line of ch. 8 (part 2), which feels very important because now I know chapter 7 and 8 exist and I can’t wait to work on them! It’s like seeing a marker point in a race, something to run towards, like fuel!

Two short stories: totally untouched! And will probably remain untouched if I’m going to commit to those 20,000 novel words this month. One of them I really want to finish though, so we’ll see.

Getting my lazy bum off the couch: about 3 miles, twice this week. I’ve done worse. We’re aiming for 3 times, and the four-mile ass-kicking route with the giant hills!

Next week: should add 6000 words to the novel, which should finish off chapter 3 and sink my claws into chapter 4. And I’ll get that license taken care of… you probably don’t believe me at this point. I don’t know if I believe myself.

I’m thinking that if I take the kid in with me, I might have a small advantage. They’ll have to be civil in front of a child, right? Especially a cute child like I have. Or if he happens to be in a not-cute mood, maybe they’ll take pity on me?

Yes, I know, DMV ladies pity NO ONE!

I just hate being lectured, or when they roll their eyes and look all smugly down their noses like I’ve actually put them out personally by not doing it on time. I’ll pay my damn fine – I’m a grown woman, and I can accept the consequences of this failure – but I don’t need any damn attitude.

(You see, I talk all big and snarky on the internet, but in real life, I’m a mouse…)

So anyway, let’s discuss the things I did do this week…

This week:

The submission: submitted!

Unbearable Lightness: finished!

Chapter 3: by the skin of my teeth, I conjured up one single idea this morning that might get me into it (that is, instead of just staring at it all perplexed, and poking at it with a stick to see if it might move…). I’ll make this one of my primary goals for next week. I was getting about ready to skip it all together and move on to chapter 4, but maybe I don’t have to…

The other short story: maybe a line, or two, if that…

The dresser: meant to be accomplished on the weekend, so…

The license: big fat FAIL!

So now I’m going to be a big fat dork and give myself a grade for the week (don’t act like this isn’t fun, lol! You all know you want to grade your weeks too!).

We’ll go slightly easy on me, you know, the way teachers always go a little easy in the beginning just so that the student doesn’t go running off in tears. We did give me a hefty lot to do this week, but unfortunately we’re going to have to dock some major points for that license, young lady…

This week: B-

My hubby asked me a very important question a couple weeks ago, except he didn’t know how important it was when he was asking. He tends to do this, spout off insightful comments without knowing how insightful they are – and then I usually unleash a bitch-fest on him, because I don’t do well when the truth hits me hard in the face.

He asked if I thought of myself as a stay-at-home-mom, or a work-at-home-mom?

My answer to this question means two very different things. Am I a stay-at-home mom, who raises children for a living and writes for a hobby? Or am I a work-at-home mom, who aspires to write for a living, while simultaneously raising a child and not keeping up with her housework? In my current state, I’d say I’m pretty unproductive at both. But in truth, what I want to be is a work-at-home mom. The only distinction between me and other working moms is that my career ambitions don’t pay out until after the story is already written and published.

I need to start taking my writing life a lot more seriously. Events like these are effective enough to make you stop in your tracks and say, whoa, we might not have as much time as we thought we did. Considering my parents checked out at 38 and 54, I could be well past prime here.

This year has sucked, I’ll give myself that much credit. Do you want to know how much this year sucked? Hubby lost a job and found a very swift relocation, epic cross-country move, no family or friends here, gained fifteen pounds (!!!), hate this apartment, dad died – and hey look, I’m actually an orphan now (if a 29 year-old woman can be counted as an orphan – I don’t feel ready to not have parents). This year sucked! This year sucked so bad, you might even be inclined to laugh, in the way something can be so unbelievably horrible it becomes laughable.

I might even rank it up there with my 24th year, where we ended up moving back home to my dad’s, sleeping in a closet because there wasn’t actually room for us there – it was a big closet, you might even call it a room if it had a window. Come to think of it, I gained fifteen pounds that year too. I guess I’m quite obviously a stress-eater.

But even in my 24th year, I finished my degree. There was that. No year can suck in its entirety.

I had this draft saved from almost three years ago:

This was my first post to my paper journal after I found out I was going to have a baby:

“I haven’t written in this thing for so long. I find myself wondering if there is even any point anymore. I guess there must be. When I am 45, when my children are grown and going off to college, I’ll probably wonder what kind of woman I used to be before it all started. When I was young and newlywed, when my breasts and butt and belly were all in the right places.”

I could so easily become engulfed by this sweet sweet boy. I could forget everything I had ever hoped for myself and want nothing more than to be his mother. That is exactly what I am afraid of.

I had this conversation with Jim this morning (sometimes I amaze myself with my depth of thinking and intellect – only sometimes): that Dylan has come and joined our family, not the other way around. We were on a path before he came, and he joined us. It doesn’t mean we should change our plans, and it doesn’t mean we should stop. But just accommodate this little traveler and make him a part of our already existing life.

Even then, I was so afraid of letting my life escape me, and forgetting about all those dreams I had as a young woman, all those things I knew I really wanted.

So if I am going to consider myself a work-at-home mom, then that means not having made any money off my writing yet makes me a very unsuccessful one. This is not a mommy blog. This is the blog of a woman who is trying to jump-start her professional storytelling career, who happens to also be a mother, among other things.

I remember my very last rejection. It was from Zoetrope All-Story, aiming quite high for my first submission out of college, lol! But I got a note handwritten from whoever read it that said, “Thanks for the interesting read.” Hey, I’ll take “interesting” as a compliment, because from what I hear, magazines don’t just toss out compliments or even comments just for the hell of it.

I wasn’t very disheartened by the rejection. I mean, hell, it was Zoetrope, and it was exactly my fourth submission to anything, ever! We were taught well in my undergrad writing program about how many rejections writers get out there in the real world. We were taught about constructive criticism and how to make your writing grow from it.

I also took it as a sign that I wasn’t quite ready yet. I had just finished my undergrad work, I needed to practice on my own for a while, and that’s what I’ve been doing. I moved to two different towns, I had a kid. I wrote many failed short stories, two failed attempts at a novel, much, much, much practice writing, much learned from my former writers group, and five years later, I think I’m finally at a point of ready to try again. For real, this time. Taking myself seriously.

Trying is scary. I have this theory about avoiding fear of failure though not trying. If I never tried to publish one of my stories, then I could still say I haven’t failed. I could say that the only reason I haven’t published is because I didn’t try, or because I didn’t really want it. It wouldn’t be because I wasn’t good enough. I could still tell myself I’m as good as any of those writers. I could tell myself I could be published, if I wanted to, if I really tried. And I could make myself believe it. I could keep on writing for a hobby and finding people who love the stories I write, and live secure in this fallacy that I could be published, if I wanted to.

That’s how you avoid fear of failure through not trying – and I am expert at it!

Or I could try, actually try, and here’s the scary part – if I try to make this all real, and it doesn’t work, then I really have to say I’ve failed.

So I’ll try then. I will stop wasting time, I will finish stories to completion, and I will submit them. I even have a story in mind to start with, the one I submitted to Zoetrope, the “interesting read.” Looking at it five years later, I can see where the voice hadn’t matured yet, and where I am now better able to pull it together. Looking back at it again, it was a damn good story, just not ready yet. And maybe I’ll start a little more modestly this time. You know, maybe not one of the top paying markets in the country, lol!

I need public accountability. I need you all to take note of these goals and be critical of how much I’ve accomplished by Friday. I need that because I don’t know if I can keep myself accountable enough on my own. So…

writing goals:
- I’m going to submit something, somewhere, by Friday. That’s my assignment for the week. I just thought I’d put that out there, and I hope you’ll all hold me to that.
- also I want to make a good stab at chapter 3 of the novel
- fill out the bones of a second short story I’m working on (also have a market in mind for this one)
- finally (for crying out loud!) finish reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being!!!
- and don’t worry LH fans, two scheduled updates for you this week too

non-writing goals:
- finally get my Virginia drivers’ license and plates – I’ve been here seven months, I think that’s highly not allowed, lol!
- buy a new dresser from Ikea (oh the hard work!)

All this while raising a brilliant, well-adjusted, and potty-trained (thank you very much!) three year-old?

We’ll let the laundry suffer probably. We usually do.

That’s all.

There are things I want to write about, but none of them are describing what’s going on with my dad right now, especially when I hardly understand most of this to begin with. Writing about all of that, how fast things can go from one thing, to another, to another, makes me feel kind of panicky. So instead, I’ll carefully skirt around what you’re probably most curious to know, and tell you everything else…

I want to say that it was nice to catch up with family again, even if it is under the most stressful of circumstances. I’m always surprised at what a BIG family we have, when you add us all together, my dad’s side, my step-mom’s, and even my mom’s side, closer than ever even after she’s been gone thirteen years. We’re a regular circus, let me tell you!

I’ll tell you that Dylan spent four days in the ICU waiting room, and came home snotty with a temperature of 100.5, which isn’t even a real fever (is it?) and now I’m worried he might have swine flu or that flesh eating bacterial infection you get from hospitals, when really, it’s probably just a cold from playing with his cousins and random strange children. And now he’s cranky and needy, and hugely spoiled on attention from the past week.

But he seems to have gotten even smarter, cuter, and a little more mature in the past five days, if that’s even possible…

Which leads me to say that this child needs to potty train! I think it’s not his choice anymore. He turned three in July, and he’s way too smart to be wearing diapers like a baby. Just like all his other growing up steps, giving up bottles, moving to a big boy bed, giving up his binky, we’ve had to just give him a firm push towards it (= make him do it, lol!). Because left to his own devices, it’s looking like he’ll be quite happy to wear diapers until he’s in college.

I want to say that I’ve always been more of a thinker than a talker. I’ve been called shy, but as a child, my teachers called me reserved, and I think that’s much more fitting a term for it. So even when my dad’s nurses say, “Talk to him, he can hear you,” I still don’t have much to say, not after the first or the second or the third time. I don’t say much under normal circumstances. So I sang a couple songs instead. I never sing for anybody without begging, so maybe that counts enough.

I’ll tell you that for as long as I can remember, I’ve been prepared to receive a phone call like I got Sunday night (and that alone is enough to make me feel terrible.) Maybe that’s partly because I’ve already lost my mom, and that I know these things – parents – don’t last forever. Some barely live long enough to see their own children reach adulthood. The other part is that people have faults. People have bad habits, and lifelong bad habits have consequences.

And I’ll tell you that three year-olds say the most heartbreaking things sometimes, and of course they don’t know what they’re saying when they say it – in fact, from their point of view, it’s all quite simple. The most heartbreaking thing I’ve heard all week is when Dylan said, “Grandpa just needs some x-rays and some medicine, and then he’ll wake up, and be all better, and we’ll say, Yay!”