Waiting on the e-mail server to jump back up at work, and taking a lunch break at the same time.
Visuals from the morning walk - I love the nascent oak leaves, fragile green, so young they seem to shiver on these chilly March mornings. They are at their most beautiful now, before they darken, all gloss and muscle over the summer months.
Wondered whether squirrels feel the cold the way we do…
Got eight more pages of revisions done this weekend–yahoo. I know, I know, I know! I’m just doing the minimum to get by. (I hear your voice inside my head–can you hear mine?) But that’s what it takes sometimes. Just do what has to be done. I’m kind of white-knuckling this whole getting back to writing. Making myself do it until it’s done.
I had decided I would get the book making the rounds the minute I got the first fifty pages done, but I realize that I can’t. What if they got back to me three days later and said “Send the whole thing!” There I’d be, with a couple hundred pages of revisions to do inside a week. Bleah.
Got the first eight pages of This Little Pig edited this weekend. Think I’m going to re-inflict the novel on the workshop. Not because I’m so much interested in critique (sorry, guys, if you’re reading this). But it gives me a deadline to get the next revisions done. And I’m deadline-driven, to say the least.
Am also working on a short story tentatively titled “Addressing Gods Anonymous.” I’m really pleased with the concept–a 12-step group for gods who are trying to break the deity habit, but so far, I’m not so pleased with the execution. Started with one god - Erma - as a talking head, but I think I need more.
Knee’s hurting-can’t sleep-that’s why I’m writing this at 1:30 in the morning. Think I’ll go try again, though.
Since I began my new job at [editor's note: removed the name of the university - see June 8, 2006, post] two months ago, my home office has steadily gotten messier and messier. Just run through, get the bills straightened out, and run back out again.
That was part of the excuse I’ve been using not to write… “How can you expect to accomplish anything in the midst of all that chaos?” So, today, I removed the excuse. My office is now de-messified. Now I just have to write, right? Right!
Drove my husband to the hospital this morning to have an endoscopy done–just part, I thought, of the “I’m 50 and I don’t want to die” testing that any reasonable human being does.
With Rick still out from the anesthetic, the gastroenterologist came and told me the results. He said “Every inch of his stomach lining looks like raw hamburger meat. He has hemorrhagic gastritis.” So how does one of the most phlegmatic men I’ve ever known end up with a full-stomach ulcer? Aspirin.
Rick had a heart attack at 47, and has been faithful about taking what the cardiologist tells him to take, when he tells him take it. The heart attack was almost purely genetic–he doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke. So I’m sitting here railing against fate. The medicine that’s keeping him healthy heart-wise will kill him if he doesn’t stop taking it.
Today sucked.
I remember now why I write. Just got back from the DFW Writer’s Workshop, and listening to a new young writer, Jamie Lavish, who’s writing a financial thriller, reminded me why I miss writing so much. That intense sense of accomplishment when someone you respect compliments you on a turn of phrase or your dialogue, and even when they see the bits you missed is such a rush in so many ways. And I remembered why I go to the Workshop–listening to Daryl, who has such a wicked sense of humor, and watching him stretch away from reality and into fiction. Listening to Steve, who has such a deft sense of language and place in Quaver’s Quest. Amazing… my friends, who write like nobody’s business.
I love the Workshop, and missed it while I was away. I was so pleased when Don invited me back, and hope I can be of some use. I know I’ll be there on Wednesdays, short of death or disease, for the foreseeable future.
Time to think about writing about writing again - I think the last time I started something like this I called it “Laundering my Maunderings” or something to that effect. Luckily, it’s gone away…
I have only recently rejoined the DFW Writers’ Workshop, after about nine months away. Long enough to birth a new career at [editor's note: removed the name of the university where I worked - see June 8, 2006 post].
Am loving my new job - and loving being back at the Workshop. They’re a good bunch of folks, they always accept me with open arms, and I’ve agreed to write the newsletter once more. Here’s hoping this year will be a better year for the newsletter!
This intro is just that - I’ll be writing more here about writing. I’m struggling with a couple of things at the moment. One of them starts, “Once upon a time there was a princess who did not know she was fat.” That’s actually as far as I’ve gotten… ***sigh***
More later.
