If It's Not One Thing, It's Ten Others

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Again. Really, I haven't.

I'll be honest, every time I sign on to the internet at night, I see my blog as the homepage and I think to myself that I really should write another entry. But there are only so many hours in the day, and I have a ton of stuff on my plate right now. The evening is my only free time at the moment, and when that rolls around, I have to choose whether I'm going to write, work on the business I would like to get off the ground one day, or do housework.

Yes, housework. Because I can't seem to get ahead much during the day, when I have a baby that toddles along after me, undoing 98 percent of what I try to clean. There's also bills, the lawn, a garden I'm trying desperately to get planted and failing miserably at because there's always something else that has to be done instead, like running errands or trying to get the roofer guy contacted about fixing our roof, or the carpet guy about replacing the carpet downstairs already, because it's been months that we've been without carpet down there, and I'm tired of feeling like an animal penned up in a small cage by being forced to stay upstairs all day with the kids. (And let's face it, there's a lot more for the little guy to mess up and get into with the number of rooms upstairs, versus one big room to play in downstairs.)

Even when I decide to write in the evening, I have to decide what in the world to work on, because there are starting to be a lot of demands on that front, between the book that I want to get edited already and start sending out to publishers, and the stuff that other people ask me to write, whether it's for a journal or the shared world project, Areceia, that I am working on with other writers.

What's really going on right now, when you get right down to it, is that I am overtired and overworked. Blogging just isn't a priority these days, even though I know it probably should be. But something has to give, right? More than one something, usually. And a lot of times, it's something that I don't want to have to give up or put off, but there it is. What else is to be done?

I used to think that if I were better organized, my life would be so much easier. Sadly, that's just not true. There's only so much that organization will help you, sometimes. Particularly when one has small children around the house that one must look after all day.

Perhaps, though, just perhaps, it will get a little better in the future. My husband and I have been kicking around the idea of him quitting his second job, so that he isn't working seven days a week anymore; if he were home on the weekends, he could help out more and take over some of the crap that's been settled on my shoulders with everything else.

The only problem is that we need the money from his second job right now, and I'm not altogether comfortable with him just quitting it. I don't have my other business anywhere near ready to launch, considering that I almost never get to work on it, with all of the other demands in my life right now. So there will be no cushion from that.

One of his coworkers suggested a solution that might work better for us, for the time being: working only one weekend day each week, and then alternating between it being a Saturday or a Sunday, week to week. Eric will have to speak to his boss about it next weekend. So we will see...

In some actual good news, however, I turned in the first installment of a story for the Areceia project, called Heart of a Warrior. Now I'm going to work on Anemone's Song for a few days while I have a chance. My son has surgery on Tuesday, and I don't know that I will have much of a chance to write for a few days following that.

I just hope it goes well.

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When Life Gets Tough...

...get to writing! Or keep on writing. Either way, this is what I'm determined to do. I missed my deadline to have the book finished by August, so now my goal is to finish before the end of September. I really don't need this book interfering with my ability to write during Nanowrimo, and I'm certain that it will, if I know that it's sitting nearby, aaaalmost finished, but not quite.

Mostly, the reason I missed my own deadline was due to a lot of craziness and stress in my life. Perhaps it's understandable if one knows my circumstances, but to me it isn't. Instead of writing through the pain and emotions, I stopped writing, which only magnifies everything and makes it worse.

I also haven't heard back about my short story that I submitted, even though it's been over the 6-8 week span the publication estimates for a response. I've determined that if I don't hear from them by the end of this week (week 10), then I will write a prompt letter.

August was my month of bad, horrible luck. Each week got progressively worse than the one before, culminating in finding out that my father has an incurable brain tumor, and leaving me ultimately unemployed again (knowing that it is a temporary position does not help in the slightest when one is laid off). I am hopeful that September will be my month of good luck--or at least be my bend in the road toward one that is.

I'm not yet optimistic about life again, but I'm going to write toward it.

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The Closer It Gets...

...the more nervous I become.

That's right. I still haven't heard about the short story I submitted to that contest back in November (actually, the end of October, because I wanted it out of the way before NaNoWriMo). I have until March 16th, however...I'm supposed to hear about it by then. I check the mail anxiously every now and then, and I have my husband on alert for anything from them, but nothing so far. And honestly, sometimes it's so far from my mind that I forget for a while.

They say no news is good news, but it will really stink if I wait all this time just to get a rejection. Oh well. There's nothing tangible I can do about it, right, so I'm better off turning my attention to other things.

I finally got out of my writing stasis the other night. I hadn't written much in a week or so because I was a bit stuck on the specifics of a detail in the story, but it wasn't a detail I could really skip over and figure out later. Finally, my husband helped spark an idea, and I wrote a few pages last night. I was having such a good night writing after that, I didn't want to stop. But, I finally did, and I think I left off at a good spot. Hopefully it will be very easy to pick up from that and resume my writing.

I could use a little cheer in my life, something to go well. Had a job interview the other week, thought it went well, and didn't get it. There's just a lot going wrong lately; I need something to change for the better. Like a job or a published story. *sigh*

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The Writing Continues...

I have decided that I'm shooting for a goal of 100,000 words for my book. That may not be enough, and I might go over it, but it's easier to keep track of your progress with a firm goal in mind. The good news is that I'm at 71,000 and some words now.

The bad news is that I haven't been able to write much the last few days because there's so much going on. I have a job interview on Thursday to prepare for, and my sister just had an emergency c-section. Her twins, my nieces, are on life support, and have a 60% chance to live, each. They think the infection that caused my sister's 103-something fever may have infected the placenta, so they sent it to a lab. If it was in the placenta, that means the babies probably have the illness...which is very bad.

I really, really hope my sister doesn't lose either of her babies. She's been trying so much for so long to have more children, and this was a dream come true for her. Besides, we just lost our mother recently. I don't want her to lose her babies, too.

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