D started kindergarten this week, which is a full day program here where we live.

I’m packing him a lunch from home, so far. I’d first been worried about his peanut allergy (come to find out, they only have one, very apparent, item that has peanuts in it – a peanut butter and jelly sandwich). Then I was then worried about all the other hippie stuff I worry about, high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated bullshit. But that’s sort of beside the point though – the point being that D broke his brand new Transformers lunch box zipper on the second day he used it. That was kind of tragic for him, because he loved that lunch box and was very excited when we found it.

You know, it’s Transformers. (more…)

My boy finished his last week of preschool last week. This first year for us – first year of school for him, first year working on anything in a very focused capacity for me – went by sort of unnoticed, I think. We started it, and became immersed in it, and just as soon it was over.

I know it made a big difference for him to be in school. But I spent a lot of the year not feeling like I’d accomplished very much. During the days while he was at school, I’d often find myself on Twitter or blogs. I struggled with the discipline to sit down for those 3-5 solid hours and write for the whole time. For so many years, I’ve trained myself to write in little pockets of time. 20 minutes while he watches a cartoon, or 35 minutes while he’s in the bath, or 15 minutes when some toy has caught his attention, or 45 minutes before bed. So suddenly when I had a stretch of 5 hours uninterrupted, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I’d like to say I got better at it as the year went on. Maybe I did. It’s hard to measure in any certain capacity. There were days when nothing went according to plan – hubby missed his train and I had to drive him to work, or I had household stuff to do, phone calls to make, errands to run or whatever. There were plenty of days where one, or two, or even all three of us were sick. (Starting school = disease, let me tell you!!!) There were days when one blog after another after another were just so damn interesting that I never got around to the writing, and before I knew it, it was pickup time already. (more…)

I have now decided that the expression, “Oh my God!” is absolutely not taking the Lord’s name in vain. No, it is definitely a prayer. 100% prayer – as in, Oh my God, help me, this child is driving me up the wall!

Blue plaid button-up shirt and green camo pants?

I still love my honey, even if he can’t dress my baby, lol!

Just so you know, if you leave your journal out on the dining room table, the journal you’ve been keeping for two years, and you then leave the room, your toddler will take a crayon to it. He will scribble all over several of the pages, maybe even important things, or profound things, or all those sweet baby things you wrote about him when he was little. Yes, he will scribble it all out, with a big fat orange crayon. Just so you know.

Also, I find it funny how these Friday updates never end up happening until Monday. Toddler rules, I tell you!

not a writer:

There are these forks in a novel, just like in real life, where the character makes a decision that branches off a whole different future than they might have had otherwise. But the thing is, in real life, we don’t get to see those other dimensions and what our lives might have been like had we made different decisions.

In a novel, I can. My problem has been, I think, that as I went about this business of writing a novel for the first time, I was trying too hard to hold on to parts of those old futures, the different scenes that happened in whatever dimension of the lives they might have lived. This stupid novel has been through dozens of drafts and idea stages, and these poor characters have been through so many possible scenarios.

It took me writing about half of the thing to finally find what the heart of the story actually was, and so now I’m finding that things that I wrote for old drafts don’t really matter to the story as a whole. Maybe, at one point, in an old old draft, many dimensions ago, they did matter. Now, not so much.

So this is what I’ve been working on this week, thinking about which parts of the story really belong, really matter, which dimension should my characters live in, and it’s honestly driving me a little crazy.

And for the record, my hubby absolutely thinks I’m crazy when I talk about my characters like this, like they’re voices in my head or something. Do other writers talk about their characters like this, or am I really crazy?

Changing the POV from third to first really changed everything. It honestly did, and I really didn’t expect it would be so different. So, when I was wondering before whether this was starting a second draft, or starting over, I think it’s probably closer to starting over. Better than starting from scratch, but you know, starting over just the same. Everything is being rebuilt from the ground up. Blank slate.

I think I might try out NaNoWriMo, and I obviously won’t finish the whole novel in that month, but I’ll commit to the 50,000 words anyway. It might be an interesting challenge. Maybe I’ll try early mornings? Maybe hubby will get up with me and work on that million-dollar idea that he keeps distracting himself from with television shows? What do you say, Hubby?

Novel stats:

Part 1, four chapters
13,400 wds and 41 pages.

I’m liking the structure of novels like Then We Came to the End, and The Feast of Love, where the novel is broken up into broad sections, then further broken up into chapters. I think I’m going to adopt this strategy, which actually resembles what I was badly doing when I first started, and wrote big fat monstrous chapters. I think those big fat chapters were supposed to be sections.

So, my first section/part has four brand-spanking-new chapters. It could use just a bit more plumping up and polishing, but I’m nearly finished with it, and hope to finish it off by the end of the week. Then move on to the second section/part, obviously, since the second comes after the first, lol. Do you see how clever I am?

There will be seven section/parts. I might get all creative and give them titles, or maybe I’ll be boring and just number them. Creative sounds better than boring, of course, but we’ll see.

Happy writing

It finally happened. My child brought me a real live bug. It was a HUGE roly poly, with big fat creepy crawly legs. I did my very best to act cool about it, lol.

I am making up a blogging prompt, because I feel like it! One year ago, on this date, this is what I wrote in my real life journal:

8 months? Seriously? I just don’t know how some people have the balls! I was sitting in the doctor’s office with Dylan, waiting, and this woman, mother, asks, “How old is he?” and then before I can answer, she blurts out, “8 months.” Not even a question, but a statement! Then I say, “No, 14 months.” And she has the balls to say, “Oh, he’s little.”

First of all, my kid may be skinny, but he is AVERAGE height for his age, NOT small. And how often do you see an 8 month old standing on his own, walking very independently? I think there is an obvious difference between and 8 and 14 month-old. Seriously! *rolls eyes*

LOL, that’s me having a very obvious hissy-fit. I should have shared that then. How funny

I almost forgot there was a reason we don’t go to the park. He was the worst little boy EVER! He was playing so nicely, and he played for about an hour, which is plenty long enough, I think.

Then it was lunch time – past lunch time actually – and I was hungry and he must have been starving. I even warned him ahead of time, “We’re going home soon to have lunch…”

And then when it’s time to get in his stroller, he explodes! Horrible, back-arching, stiff as a board, whipping his cup of juice across the playground, murderous screaming tantrum as I try to get him in his stroller (and he’s stronger than me, I swear!). The little girl he was playing with just sat there quietly, contently in her stroller, drank her cup of juice, and watched him freak out. And the mom says, “Oh, I guess he likes the park.”

Yeah, I freaking guess so!

He’s not going to the park EVER again! Not until he’s twelve! And if he ever wants to ask why, I’m going to make him read this post!

Dylan, sitting on the ground, mud streaks on his cheeks like war paint. I say, “We are going in the house right now if you don’t stop eating that dirt!”