If only I had more time

There came a time in my life when personal and work interests took me away from writing. Though I had enjoyed the outlet writing gave me, I just never found the time to get back into again.

When the planets aligned eight years ago, allowing me to quit my job in printing and become self employed, I'd envisioned all this 'extra time' I'd have to write. After all, my son would be moving into kindergarten soon and business was sporadic. Slow days wouldn't mean me sitting at my desk twiddling my thumbs or chatting with co-workers, I could be writing without worry of the boss catching me work on personal projects on company time.

I started to write again for at least an hour or two and during the day, and as my love of writing reignited, a couple hours at night once my son went to bed. It felt wonderful.

Ten months later, I had my daughter. Let me tell you, having a baby at home directly impacts writing time and mental capacity for constructive thought.

I thought naptime would be my writing escape, but I was tired too, and friends called, housework needed to be done, and of course, work.

When I finally got her to the preschool stage, I was overjoyed to have my quiet writing time back. Work was slow enough, I could write again and make time for both kids and parental/social obligations.

I started looking around online and found some writing groups to get involved with. My actual writing took a back seat to learning how to write better.

When full time school hit, I thought I was golden. I would have all day--on slow days--to write!

But the bills still want to get paid and new equipment must be purchased to keep up with changing demands? Crud. My slow days were spent with promoting the business and developing new products. Then there are critique partners to work with, learning about this whole publishing business, and figuring out how to make my writing suck less.

Now business is good and steady. Which is great. Except that mythical devoted writing time I'd envisioned? Yeah, that just never seems to happen. Something will always come up. Something I can't blow off because it’s not a matter of break time, or being off the clock. There’s overtime, rush jobs, and customers calling during my morning writing hours and no boss I can give puppy-dog eyes too and beg to get out of it. No sir. It’s all me.

That time you hope for, that you can devote solely to writing, will never happen unless you make it happen. Write when you can, be it five minutes here and there or a block of hours you set aside each day. Every word you manage get down is one step closer to putting that idea into words, or finishing and polishing your current WIP.

If you have the fortitude to shut your door, turn off your phone and internet and just sit and write, go you. I allow myself to do this one month a year—November for NaNoWriMo. I know I can pump out an entire rough draft of novel in a month. I’ve done it four times. But if I did that all the time? I’d quickly find myself single, wearing the same clothes all week and living off ramen noodles while my children played in the street.

So it’s all about balance. We all sacrifice things for what we love, right? I won’t cut my kids out or my husband, work still needs to get done and the yard needs my attention, but I will turn off the tv, let the answering machine get the phone during writing time and do my best to stay off the internet unless what I’m doing is writing related. I will try to manage my time to get the most out of a day as I possibly can.

That doesn’t mean that everything coming out of my fingers during writing time is uber awesome, but hey, getting words written is half the battle. The other half… I’ll get to that when I have more time.

Bunny fodder

I hear feminine sobbing and sniffing coming from somewhere in the midst of the crumpled pages that litter my floor. Ms. Wildstar, the most likely suspect, is over at the edge of the room trading beautiful and handsome adjectives with Xander.

Delilah is languidly combing out her lusciously long, curly, ebony hair far too close to the adverb storage crates for my liking. And she's not sobbing. She's casting coy looks at Nekar and Zsmed.

Unless the rabid dust bunnies did a real number on Marin's manly bits, I'm thinking it's not him crawling back into our midst. Everyone else seems to be accounted for.

Hmm. I give up all pretense of writing and dig around in the paper until I uncover the culprit. "Trala?"

She looks up at me with tear-filled blue eyes. "You remembered my name!"

"Yes, well, I do that. I wrote you, for goodness sake. You're right here." I point to one of my character sheets where her name and information are neatly typed. Of course, there's also a big, thick sharpie line through it all.

Her sobs elevate to full-fledged wailing.

"Oh, shut up you whiny woman. It's not like you're the only one cut around here." I point to all the others who are shaking their heads and rolling their eyes at her.

She takes a deep shuddering breath and holds up a scrap of paper—recently cut from the sequel I gather by its position near the top of the pile. "She says I'm sappy and boring."

"Ms. MC never liked you. I thought that was pretty clear from the original scene you played an active part in."

"She was just jealous." Trala balls up the paper and tosses it aside. "Mr. MC bought me a pretty blue dress. It matches my eyes." She batts them at me as if I hadn't noticed them yet.

"Very true. But she was already jealous of the other women Mr. MC spent time with. You were an anvil."

"Are you saying I'm heavy?"

I'm saying you're not real bright, you dimwit. Yet another reason you got cut. "Noooo, I'm saying I’d made the point twice and in this case, the third time was not the charm. It was the anvil hitting the reader over the head."

"What about the other girls, did they get to stay? Are they lighter than me?"

I smack my forehead. "There were a few that floated away, the rest were heavy anvils like you. You're not alone, dear." I pat her little head. Huh, sounds rather like a ripe watermelon.

There are times when a character can be less than intelligent and it works within the story. Trala was not one of them. She was just aggravatingly dim and that made her all wrong as a love interest for Mr. MC. Not only that, but when I decided to add more of a romance twist to the novel, those 'other women' had to go unless they served a major purpose. This one, nope, not one of the lucky two.

Hmm. On second thought, the 'lucky two' both ended up dead, so I suppose they weren't so lucky after all. Hey, I might be on to something here...

"Hey Trala, I hear there are some cute bunnies behind the desk. Maybe you should go look for them and see if they are hungry."

"I love bunnies!" Her face bursts into a grin that reeks of unicorns, sparkly rainbows and i-s dotted with little hearts. She dashes off into the shadows.

Population control at its finest.

Monday update

I had planned a fun post for today, but instead decided to spend my creative efforts on a final nitpick edit run. Not that I finished the edits, but I did get several chapters done and since it's been a little while since my six hundred and twelth time reading this thing, I was enjoying myself. All right, maybe I exaggerate slightly, but I've read it a lot.

My fractured ankle is starting to bother me less. I'm officially off my crutches and down to hobbling in my walking cast. Which is nice because I'm falling woefully behind on my flowerbed cleanup project that I'd begun before misfortune caught up with me.

To further overload myself, I've picked right now as the time to paint and redecorate my living room. Why on earth would I do that now? Our tv blew up. Seriously. Tiny flames and several puffs of smoke and all. Which means a new tv is required to view few shows we do watch. Which means we have to get the newest tv, the kind that doesn't require our current mammoth entertainment center. Which means dismantling said mammoth entertainment center and finding new homes for the far too many knick knacks that it has become the home for over the past eleven years. And while this is all going away, what better time to paint than before the much smaller entertainment center and new tv arrive?

I'm also in the midst of rethinking a short story that needs revising before going back out into the world and coming up with better blurbs for all my work than I currently have so I can post it on my new page writing page here.

You know, if there ever came a point in life where I only had one project going on, I think I'd self-combust out of boredom.

Motivation

Nothing makes me all warm and fuzzy inside quite the same way as chatting on the phone with a fellow mom and hearing that her child is still plugging away at their NaNo Novel even six months after our school NaNoWriMo Young Writers program has ended.

Contented sigh. Another kid turned on to the joys of writing.

I've run into several of my writing program kids in the past weeks while doing volunteer work in both the elementary school and middle school where I run the writing program. Several of them are still writing, others are looking forward to next November. On days when I feel down about my own writing, I think of these moments and feel successful.

I'm not a teacher. I'm not an awesome public speaker. In most social cases, I'd rather be in my writing cave, but doing this program for the last three years has been a very gratifying experience. It has driven me to start submitting my work so I have something to show for my efforts and to set an example of success. I'm very excited to have something to show them this year, and by November, I hope to have a couple more.

Ah, goals and a deadline, they are a powerful motivation.

An interesting way to waste time

I'm innocently critiquing a story last night during Lost's commercial breaks when my husband says, "Go check this website out. The pictures of Dubai are amazing."

So I do. It's both cool and a little disturbing. At least I think so. Sure makes me think twice about doing any gardening in a bikini, that's for sure. Yeah, I know, that sounds weird already, but I'm not one of those people who can just sit and sunbathe. That lasts for five minutes (unless I'm in the midst of a really good book), and then I start looking around at all the things that need doing in the yard. I might as well do two things at once.

But someone somewhere could be unknowingly capturing that unflattering pose and posting it for all to find.

On the other hand, there have got to be a million story ideas hidden among these photos. What could those two people at the theme park be doing? Who is the woman talking to on her cell phone as she walks down the street? And my personal favorite, why is there a man standing in his underpants in what looks to be a construction site?