Life is Grand at Every Age and Stage

I haven't written on this blog for a very long time. I'm at a major adjustment time in my life. The kids are growing up and moving out. Only one left at home now and she's going through sibling withdrawals. Her siblings are normal in that they tease and irritate her, but now that they are gone she misses them. She gets lonely for someone closer to her age than her father or I. She is very active in extra-curriculur activities so she is not home much. The house is very quiet. Although I miss the children as they have gone out into the world, I am happy for them.

I have enjoyed each stage of my life and that of my family. I enjoyed my kids when they were babies, they were a lot of fun as children, as they exit the teens and enter adulthood I am still thrilled to be their mother and proud of the young adults they have become. My husband and I have many things we enjoy doing together and it is great to have the opportunity to do more together.

The extra time has given me the chance to get back to my writing. It has been fun to produce some pages again. When I get away from my story I lose the feel of the story. I lose my enthusiasm for it. I forget how much I love the characters and how much I love the creative process. It has felt good, like a workout that stretches my muscles and leaves me feeling invigorated and ready to catch my dreams.

We all have things happen in our lives that pull us from our goals and our dreams. I am as guilty as the next person in letting life get in the way. Things get crazy and I get completely overwhelmed. It feels so good when I finally stand up and remember my dreams and goals and pursue them. It's a wonderful feeling. A feeling I hope my children will experience as they go through life. A feeling I hope everyone gets a chance to experience. What makes life grand? It's God,family and dreams.

Everything is going on (or "is it any wonder I'm going insane")

So...I'm sitting here tonight trying to ignore the steak-eating guys in my livingroom for sci-fi friday, AND my daughters and their cousins bouncing on my bed in the room above me getting chocolate all over my newly washed sheets and comforter, and it seemed like a good time to post. Hey, why not? Gotta find something to do to maintain my fragile sanity.

Everything is going on, making me crazy. I'm still cleaning up pumpkin seeds from last weeks pumpkin carving party, I have a baptism, and lunch date, and a baby shower tomorrow, and my daughter's birthday is Monday. I'm currently baking two kinds of cookies for the baptism, and for the birthday there WILL be Oreo cake. The kitchen floor is sticky and the laundry is piling up. Worst of all, Work is a Beast. I just can't do the full-time job on part-time hours thing anymore, and there is one person there that make me want to glue corks in my ears so that I just don't have to hear his voice ever again! Okay. I've vented that. Now lets move on. :D

All this work stress is making me think more and more about how badly I just want to write for a living. Problem is, the stress is eating my creativity and I'm still battling the desperate desire to focus my writing time on one of my contemporaries instead of this historical that I have devoted all of my writing time and energy to over the last year. Yes, it's been one year since I submitted those first fourty-one pages of this ms to my firewalker sisters for critique. I should have the dang thing done by now. Why don't I? Could it be those bouncy, chocolate covered children upstairs? That obnoxious co-workers voice in my head? Maybe it's just this crumbling sanity that begs me to steal away and watch back episodes of Top Chef for mental relief instead of doing something productive. I don't know, but whatever it is I need to get over it and finish a book!

Okay, vent session over. :p Time to work on my characters and get something done!

Waxing the Turtle

You know there are a million things that can take us away from writing. I will be determined to write and then I find myself answering e-mails, checking snail mail, dealing with bills and house cleaning. Before I know it, it's late and my energy is spent. Sherry once gave a talk on this very subject. She called it waxing the turtle. It may look good, but it doesn't keep you moving forward. I'll have to see if she still has it somewhere and if she'll post it. It was a great talk.

I love to write, but you couldn't tell by the amount of time I spend doing it. It's not that I don't want to. It's like that's my reward for getting everything else done. Problem is, I never get everything else done. I am doing better. I set a goal to write at least an hour a day. I'll confess right now, that's not happening, but I am writing every week. I wrote about 8 hours last week. All of it on Thurs. and Fri. I didn't get any writing in this week until today, I got in 3 hours. So although I haven't met my per day goal I am making the time for writing. I love my characters and enjoy spending time with them. I am making good progress on my story. The feeling of accomplishment can't be beat and yet, tomorrow if I don't push myself I will be back to waxing turtles. I don't want shiny trutles, I want a completed mauscript. So I plan to keep my eye on the goal and start working toward it.

Sending Thanks

The Utah RWA retreat just past, and I had about 53 much needed epiphanies (well not exactly that many, but dang near). It is so easy to get off track when I'm away from my firewalking sisters! But they always put me back on my way to fixing what's wrong - and I'm talking even more about my ways of thinking than of my writing. It's all that negativity build-up that they so quickly shoot down like the BS that it is, ya know?

So sisters? For all your gems of wisdom and encouragement, I thank you and the powers that be that I have you in my life.

I can be right, or I can be happy, but I can't always have both!!

Finding Center

Our local chapter of RWA had an interesting meeting yesterday. I have to admit, I was a little surprised that I found the workshop as interesting as I did. One of our chapter members and her husband have been studying the martial art Aikido (and boy! I hope I remembered that right!) for . . . oh . . . twenty years or so, and they agreed to give a presentation to the chapter. I'm not really into martial arts, and I wasn't in the mood to roll around on the floor, but I do find the studies of Eastern philosophies and religions interesting, so I thought maybe I'd hear something interesting while I sat on my chair and watched everybody else roll around on the floor.


So okay, the only people who rolled around on the floor were Kim and her husband, and the rest of us only stood up a couple of times, so I ended up participating. But just as I hoped, in explaining the philosophy behind Aikido, they also brought up some ideas that I decided needed pondering to see how they might also apply in my life, not only to the practice of story telling but in other areas as well.

One of the exercises they had us do was finding the power center inside our bodies. For years, I've thought about professional athletes and the rituals they create to signal their bodies that it's time to shoot a foul shot or run a race or slolem down the side of a mountain. I've thought it might be good to create a similar ritual for myself, but I haven't yet found one that works for me. Sometimes I like candles, sometimes they're too sweet or strong. Sometimes I like to write to music, sometimes it bugs me. And playing 3 games of Free Cell . . . well, let's just say that's not a good idea. But I think I might be able to take a few seconds to find my power center before I write every morning.

The main thing I brought away from the meeting was the realization that our minds really are as powerful as people keep saying they are. With absolutely no training, merely on a suggestion in the middle of a workshop, every woman in that room was able to create a physical change in her body strong enough to keep the person next to her from bending her arm--the same arm that the same person had bent all too easily just minutes before.

The concept that my untrained mind can create a physical change in my body is kind of overwhelming. If that's true -- and it certainly seemed to be when I did it yesterday -- what other changes would else might I be capable of bringing about in myself? What things am I creating by defaulting to old, comfortable thought patterns that are so much a part of me I don't even know I'm doing it?

Like I said, I'm going to be pondering all of this for a while. Meanwhile, it might be good for me to remember that you can learn something of value almost everywhere you go, as long as you don't shut your mind and refuse to listen.

The Flying Plotting Board

Urrrgh!!! I am so frustrated I want to just throw my plotting board. I love to write, but trying to get my plots to flow smoothly without anything feeling contrived or forced is beyond me. I refuse to just say good enough. It has to be right. This would be easier if I knew what right was, all I know is what I have right now isn’t it.

I love my characters, but they are not being very forth coming about why they’re there and what their goal is. I have a photo journalist in Iraq, but I can’t quite pin down what her story is. I have now figured out many things that it isn’t, but I haven’t nailed it yet. The story is running in circles in my brain and just making me dizzy, but until I can figure out what exactly she’s doing I can’t move forward.

This is the most frustrating part of writing. I love it when I finally have a very vague and general outline. Then the scenes can flow and I can make great progress, but if the plot isn’t solid there is little sense of building a story from it. It’s like building a sand castle where the tide comes in. You know that soon the whole thing will crumble and be swept away. I want my stories to be strong, books that people want to read over and over again. I want to be on the keeper shelf, not the book flying across the room because the plot is so ridiculous no one can even finish the book. So even though I want to throw my plotting board, I won’t. I’ll give it a little rest and let my subconscious stew on it for a night and attack it again tomorrow.

Firewalkers Summer Retreat

The Firewalkers are getting together for a much-needed writing retreat this weekend, and I can't wait. We've got 5 lovely days away from reality stretching out in front of us and, other than the time it takes to travel, every minute of it will be devoted to friendship, laughter, writing, and Angie's world-famous guacamole. Oh, yeah . . . and chocolate. I'm even going to drag along my digital camera in the hopes of getting a few pics to post here.

Naturally, since I'm leaving town tomorrow, today has been completely devoted to the doing of laundry and the catching-up-with of e-mail. I still have way too much to do before I leave. I probably shouldn't admit here that I haven't even started critiquing pages yet. Later. When the laundry is finished and dinner is over, when I can settle back to read and relax, then I'll do my critiquing.

Last time I left home, my dog escaped the house at midnight (have I mentioned that she's a black lab mix?) and got hit by a police car traveling about 35 mph down the street. Amazingly enough, Angel came away from the encounter with just a sore paw. Granted, it was a very sore paw, but nothing was broken. I'm told that she limped for a few days, then limped when she wanted sympathy, and then seemed to forget all about cars and danger and pain.

She was almost healed before I got home from the Romance Writers of America conference in Atlanta, but it still took her several days to forgive me for being gone. Excuse me, but isn't it cats who are supposed to hold the grudges? My cat jumped onto my lap when I walked in the door and started purring. Angel refused to enjoy being scratched between the ears until she was quite sure I'd suffered a while.

I guess she thought it was my fault she got hit -- and maybe it was. Maybe she dashed out the door in the middle of the night to look for me. It's hard to tell what's going on inside her head. I just know that something's going on in there. You only have to watch her playing her own version of Chase The Ball to figure that out. This dog doesn't just play, she makes up entire sets of rules for each game, and she never cheats. Well, almost never.

Anyway, I'm hoping she doesn't make a mad midnight dash in front of a police car this time. I'm also hoping that Angie is planning to bring plenty of guacamole.