Well, I've returned to annotating Anemone's Song for editing. I'm working on it during little bits of time throughout my day. I wish I could get a solid hour or two of editing for my book, but life is simply too hectic right now. So, I do what I can and try to take comfort in the knowledge that it will add up over time.
After all, something is better than nothing.
I feel so incredibly tired after taking my daughter trick-or-treating tonight. Granted, with a new baby on the way, that's not too surprising, but I'm determined to stay up a little longer and see if I can make it to the official start of Nanowrimo.
I'm a little apprehensive about doing Nano this year; I spent most of October wavering back and forth about whether I would participate or not. Last year was very tough, and I almost didn't make it through the week three slump. I blame it now on not knowing my characters well enough before I started, and for not having a good plan of where I was going in terms of scene progression.
And THAT I blame on my book, Anemone's Song, which I had just finished writing only weeks before Nano 2009 began. So I was burnt out and didn't plan much for last year.
This year...eh, I didn't plan at all. And that's not for lack of ideas. I had a few neat ideas rolling around in my head, but I never managed to settle on one of them.
So, that's why I'm totally winging it during Nanowrimo this year (heaven help me!). This has the potential to be very painful for me. But I hope I'm wrong about that.
If nothing else, maybe I can manage to do some typing on Anemone's Song during November, and begin editing it, since I'm not taking things so seriously this year. (Famous last words, right?)
For all of those who celebrate Easter, I hope that today was a very peaceful and joyous occasion for you. For my own family, we had a good Easter, if a rather uneventful one. And yet, that does not bother me too much. My days are so hectic since I started working again that I can use some peaceful, uneventful weekends. There's time enough for the craziness of easter egg hunts and the like next year, when our daughter is old enough for them.
My daughter is one year old now. She had her birthday last weekend, just before Easter. It is hard to believe that a whole year has gone by already. She's growing up so fast.
In terms of my writing, I haven't been able to do as much as I'd like since my evenings are so hectic after work, but my daughter is starting to sleep until mornings now, and so I'm able to get a little writing in again on some nights. I'm trying really hard to finish up my novel, Anemone's Song, and I'm looking at markets for my short story about the vampire cows. I'm really hoping to get published this year, whether it's a short story or a novel (looking doubtful on this front, given the current pace of my writing), or poetry. I just hope it's soon.
You see, I have really been wanting to re-dye my hair red. I have this obsession with red hair since I think it's so beautiful, and I used to dye it back in college. Long story short, I went back to brown, my natural color, before I got married, and so I've been a brunette for a couple of years or so now. But I really want to dye my hair red again. Only I decided that I won't allow myself to dye my hair again until I get published.
I'm hoping it will serve as extra motivation to get more writing done and to keep plugging away at trying to get published. I'm just afraid that now that I've promised myself that, I'll never have red hair again...
1418 words in the past couple of days. Not bad. I just hope I can keep it up. In the meantime, I'm trying to get a job. There is a position I particularly want that I have applied to recently, but I am trying not to get too attached to it in case I don't get it. And, considering the current state of the economy and the fact that a lot of people are out of work, there's a good chance that I won't.
Man, am I pessimistic today, or what?
There's just a lot of things going wrong lately, I guess. I need something to go right. Maybe the weather is part of it, too. There's nothing like cold weather to make you feel like saying, "Bah humbug!" to everything.
Well, I'm going to try to apply to more jobs and do some more writing, if my daughter permits me to. She's gotten a real attitude lately, heaven help us, when things don't go her way. Plus, she's become real clingy. I can't wait for this stage to end.
I just finished typing up my story in its entirety. I'm surprised it didn't take more than a couple of days, considering I can only work on it during my daughter's naptime (and considering she often doesn't cooperate with the whole napping thing, despite a regular routine). Now I can print out a copy and begin some preliminary editing.
Yesterday I wrote a little fresh material on my Mer novel, which I have now given a title (finally). I have decided to call it Anemone's Song. It will probably be changed if it ever gets published, but oh well. This is a fine working title for now. I don't totally hate it, or find it corny, like my other list of title ideas that I've been kicking around for a while.
I'm hoping to get some more work on my Mer novel done before Nanowrimo, but I doubt I'll finish it up by then. What may happen is that I switch from my new Nanowrimo project at the end of November to Anemone's Song on the first day of December, or NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month). Just for a change of pace. November really takes it out of you. Last year, I took a long sabbatical from writing after it. My husband calls it a long, drawn out writer's marathon.
He's right. But I did it.
Here's to hoping I manage to finish this year. It's looking bleak, but I'm clinging to hope.
Eeeee! Finished, finished, finished! My daughter actually cooperated by sleeping long enough this afternoon for me to complete the story! Now I'm wondering just how far I went beyond the word count. I'm a bit scared to find out.
Onward to feverishly typing it up and pulling out my hair while editing...
...or not.
I'm sick. I actually kind of like editing, most of the time.
It has been a busy week. My sister and my nephew have been in town, and I have been visiting with them several days of this week. Between that and caring for the baby, I have only managed minimal writing this week. However, I am taking advantage of the situation to ask my sister questions about cows and other general animal questions as they become pertinent to my story.
I believe I am halfway finished with my story. I look forward to completing it and turning my attention toward my Mer novel again. Hopefully I can work on that some more before Nanowrimo.
It has been an awful week for me. My daughter has been really fussy the last several days. She hasn't been sleeping well. It's a battle for naps and nighttime sleep. I don't know what's gotten into her lately, but it's driving me insane.
Suffice it to say that I haven't managed much writing. I wrote a little bit tonight, after she finally settled down for a little while. I'm at the point in my story where they conduct an internal examination one of the vampire cows, and since I don't know much about cows, I brought in a firsthand source: my sister, the veterinarian. She's more than happy to help, and told me that she wants to read it when I'm finished writing it.
She also told me about a story idea that she has, but she says she's not a writer and wouldn't have the time to write it anyway. She told me the idea and said I can write it if I want, but she didn't know if it's the kind of story I'm into writing.
It IS an interesting idea, but I just feel a bit uncomfortable taking her idea and writing it as my own. The writer in me almost feels like it would be plagiarism, even though it wouldn't. I totally have her permission, but...
...it isn't my idea.
What does everyone else think? Would you be as uncomfortable with this idea as I am, or would you feel that it's totally okay, if you have permission to use the idea? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.
Well, after my daughter FINALLY settled down and went to bed (it wasn't easy getting her to fall asleep tonight, let me tell you), I managed to write some more. My word count for today is 552! Yay me! I met my yearly writing goal again for the first time in a while. It feels good to accomplish something.
All of this made me wonder about the writing habits of other writers, though. How do you get your work done? Do you have a schedule that you follow? If so, what is it? Do you set page or word goals? Do you make yourself sit down for a certain length of time, and whatever you accomplish is what you accomplish?
I'm very interested to know these and other tidbits of information about your own writing habits!
Being a mother means sacrifice. Sometimes that sacrifice comes in the form of one's writing, throughout the days and months of a new baby's advent and adjustment to the world. Luckily, my daughter is starting to sleep longer periods at night, and so I have some precious little time to devote to my writing now and again. I have written a number of pages of an interesting short story about...vampire cows. Yes, you read that correctly.
Perhaps some other time I will recount exactly how it is that I came up with THAT idea, but suffice it to say, I'm writing the story, no matter how bizarre it may seem. I am also enjoying myself immensely. I am getting back into the swing of things again, writing-wise, and I feel wonderful--normal, even. I feel like a person again, with a bit of my own corner of the world, my own life, if only for a few minutes at a time.
I cannot now describe how much of a contrast there is now with the previous months of dark, grim, ugliness. Perhaps some day in the future I will be able to write it all down in an article about Post Partum Depression. Right now, I'm recovering, I feel wonderful, and I am so in love with my daughter like I just couldn't be before. Nothing else matters.
I feel like I'm plodding along so slowly in my writing that slugs are passing me, slathering me in their slime as they speed away. Hm. Actually, that's probably the most creative sentence I've written in about a week, right there.
I haven't been doing a lot of fresh writing lately. If I do, it's only bits and pieces. Nothing significant. I'm still working on my new short story. I didn't get it done for that deadline, but I figured I wouldn't, all things considered. There's just too much going on in my life right now. I'm trying so hard to get the apartment set up for the baby, but I can't do it all myself and my husband is almost never able to help me. He's always working overtime so we can pay bills and buy groceries, and I barely see him anymore. The little time he is home, we're both sleeping for most of it. So I'm doing most of the housework and preparations myself, but at this point in the pregnancy, there's a lot I just can't do, and it seems he never has time to help me. So nothing gets done that needs to get done, usually. It's frustrating.
On top of all that, I'm not sleeping well anymore. I find I can only sleep for about 2-5 hours anymore, before I wake up and can't get back to sleep for several hours. So the upshot of all that is that I can't even get a lot of housework or preparations for the baby done myself because I'm so tired and I have no help. And trying to write when I'm tired is just about impossible.
Probably the most I've been able to accomplish in relation to writing the last few days is to read some of a book I have on how to write magazine articles, produced by Writer's Digest.
And did I mention we're in financial and other stress again? We're always tight on money as it is, but Tuesday a really bad snowstorm hit our area, and we got dumped on big time. You could hardly see anything while driving, so we ended up canceling our appointment to interview a pediatrician that morning and went home. I tried really hard to convince my husband to stay home and not go in because of the weather, but I couldn't...and not too long after he left, he got in a car accident due to the snowy, icy roads. So, unfortunately (long story short), he didn't get in to work that day. He was okay, but the other lady in the accident was complaining about neck and back pain even though she seemed to be moving and walking around just fine, so my husband is worried she's going to take us to court and sue. And we can't afford to go to court and hire a lawyer, much less be sued. It would put us in debt that we'd never be able to get out of, probably, since we're barely making it right now as it is, and since we're already a little in debt right now anyway. How are we supposed to support ourselves, much less our baby that's almost HERE, for crying out loud, if we have to go to court and get sued? We're barely squeezing by as it is.
Those are the major things going on right now. There are a million other smaller things going on, too. Our family just can't seem to get a break. I'm trying hard not to get depressed or dwell on things and worry--or let my husband do it, either--but it's hard not to. And needless to say, it's hard to do a lot of writing with all of this happening around me and being on my mind. Still, I'm trying. Probably not as hard as I should be, but I just can't seem to get a decent night's sleep to be able to have enough energy to get anything done. I find myself falling asleep for unintended naps when I sit to rest, and waking up hours later. It's frustrating.
Well, at least tonight I read two and half chapters in that book on magazine writing. So I got something accomplished, right? That's more than I've managed in a few days, writing-wise...
Well, I arrived back on Monday. The baby shower was nice, and I got to see my family for a few days. I wrote very little while I was there, however. I had a feeling that that would happen. It was hard to find the time alone to write, and I've never been able to write very well with too many people around. I can't concentrate with a bunch of side conversations going on around me. Plus, my nephew was there, and I spent a lot of my time playing, watching, or reading to him.
The little writing I did do, however, was some more of the book review I'm working on. I'm hoping to re-start my writing habits using that, beginning tomorrow. Today I did research, mostly. I'm looking up various forms of poetry and articles about writing poetry in the hopes that they will offer some advice or insights I can use to improve my poetry. I need to go through some of my poetry soon and see what I think is currently submission-quality, then look up some markets that I think might work for them.
Well, my story was rejected. I found out the night that I came back from my trip, which kind of sucked because I was already tired from driving all day. Maybe that's why I felt only slightly disappointed and almost indifferent. *sigh* It's too bad. I put a lot of work into it, and I thought that it came out rather well. I'll be curious to see what stories did make the cut when that particular publication comes out. I might try submitting my story elsewhere eventually, but for now I think I want to take a break from it for a while and work on something else. Then I can go back to it with fresh eyes and see if I think it has any weaknesses that I didn't catch before.
I'm hoping to begin working on the fairy tale re-tellings just as soon as I can get back into my writing groove. I'm having trouble getting back into my daily habits since the break from it during my trip. I lack the motivation on the one hand, but on the other hand I just forget to sit down and make myself do it. There's so much going on now, and so much I'm trying to accomplish before the baby comes. I simply don't have time for everything, and I'm feeling very anxious and impatient to get the baby's room ready. It should have been done months ago, but like everything else around here, it's been put off for various reasons. And some of the stuff still gets put off, but I'm doing what I can right now and hopefully I can get my husband to help out. But even that's hard because he's working overtime almost all the time now, so the little time he has to be home and help is usually gone, and on the days he doesn't work overtime, he's so tired that he sleeps all morning and I still don't get help. And yet, we need the money at the same time...
I really wish my story had won instead of being rejected. It wouldn't have been much money, but it would have been something. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get published. Or have a normal job again.
Well, I didn't get any writing done today, but it was for a very good reason. I went in for my Gestational Diabetes test, and while I was doing that, I had to go to the bathroom. When I got in there, I discovered I was bleeding, so I called my doctor. The nurse told me to go down to Labor and Delivery because they wanted to make sure it wasn't preterm labor or something like that.
So, I had to leave in the middle of my Gestational Diabetes test (which means I will have to reschedule and go do it all over again, next week). Luckily, the center where I was having the Gestational Diabetes test was just down the street from the hospital that I'm going to while I'm pregnant. So, I drove myself down and went up to Labor and Delivery. They had me give a urine sample because they wanted to see if it was a urine infection, and then they took some information, my vitals, and hooked me up to the monitors so they could monitor the baby. I was there for hours.
Long story short, they ruled out several things and they think they know what caused the bleeding. I'm on rest for a week (I can get up and move around, but I'm supposed to take it very easy and not do any bending, etc.) and I have to do some other things, but the baby and I are fine. I feel bad for my husband, 'cause he called me from work just as I was going to Labor and Delivery, and when he found out where they sent me, it gave him a scare. But, I told him to stay put until we figured out what was going on, exactly (which, of course took several hours). So, I got periodic phone calls from him throughout the day, as he got breaks at work, to find out what was going on.
Finally, around four thirty or so they released me. I got home around 5pm, and I warmed up some food to eat dinner because I was very hungry by then. I was really tired at that point, so after finally talking to my husband when he called me again, I went to lie down for a while and took a nap. I wasn't even going to try to do any writing after everything that went on today. And, so, that's why I haven't reached my daily word count or anything else. Maybe tomorrow I can get some stuff written, since I'm supposed to be resting anyway. I'm just glad the baby's okay. That's all I care about.
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