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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Have New Headphones, Will Write!

Now that the kids are finally getting better, I have been able to start enjoying the new headphones that my husband bought for me. Right now I'm listening to the sounds of the Amazon rainforest while I type this entry. So technically, I'm also researching while I write this. I started writing a short story for the shared world that I am participating in with a group of other writers, and it takes place in the rainforest, which is why I need to familiarize myself with its natural sounds. Of course, trying to describe some of them might be a different matter altogether...

Eh, I'll muddle my way through that when I edit. For now, it's all about the crappy rough draft with lots of bracketing.

What's that, you say? Bracketing?

Bracketing is something I started doing in college, when I was writing a lot of theology papers. I didn't always have the precise words for the thoughts I wanted to formulate while I was working on the rough draft, so I would write some approximation of it in a little set of brackets, so I knew to go back and fix it later, and that way I could keep going before I lost my train of thought.

Bracketing served me especially well when transitioning into the madness that is NaNoWriMo. It satisfied my inner editor enough to keep going instead of getting bogged down in searching for the precise words I wanted to use, and thus making it much easier to make word count. I get to be compulsive, but not so anally compulsive that my brain shuts down and doesn't get much accomplished.

(Dang, this is a long Youtube clip!)

Speaking of getting things accomplished, it's time to work on that short story and then see if I can write any more of that article I alluded to in my last post. Especially since my husband keeps looking back at me and the laptop from the PS3 game he is playing. I have quickly learned that this means he is thinking about stealing the computer from me to look up a gaming hint. *sigh* Need to fix the other computer!

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Now There's Some Irony For Ya!

You know what's ironic? Now that I have my blog set as my homepage, in order to remind myself to post on it more often, I haven't the time to write the posts that I want. Shoot, I'm surprised I could get online tonight, much less type out a short blog entry. As luck would have it--or rather, the lack thereof--the kids and I have become sick. My son has it the worst, followed by me. My daughter has a fairly mild case, at least so far. *knocks on wood* And my poor husband is hoping and praying that he doesn't get sick, because he can't afford it. He's at a new job, and they're just starting to send him out on tech calls by himself, so sick days aren't an option at this point in time.

I'll be taking the kids to the doctor tomorrow morning. My son in particular needs to be checked out. He's been running high fevers the last few days, and I'm starting to suspect an ear infection; I've noticed him tugging at his ear today. I hope they can get everyone on the road to feeling better soon.

So that's what's going on in my life right now. Needless to say, not a whole lot of writing is getting done. Though I did start an article that might amuse people. Once the kids feel better, maybe I can finish it.

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Busy, Busy Bee

Okay, I admit it. I'm crap at keeping up with this blog. Of course, one look at the sporadic entries in this blog could tell a person that, right? Blah. No, really: BLAH. My problem is that I'm scatterbrained. Out of sight, out of mind. Which is probably why whenever I want to make sure I remember something, I write myself a note on a post-it and stick it somewhere I can't miss it, like the front door, or on my laptop.

It has occurred to me, therefore, to set my blog as my homepage. I figure, if it's staring me in the face every time I log onto the internet, I won't be so forgetful. (Hopefully this theory will prove to be true...)

So what's the life of this writer been like since September? Hmm...chaotic, mostly. There have been a lot of schedule changes and added responsibilities, what with my husband graduating from school and me settling into a semi-workable routine for keeping up with the chores around the house. As for writing, I have been working a great deal on Anemone's Song, but I have also taken on some other work with this shared project that I am doing with some of my other writer friends. So while I edit my book, I am also worldbuilding with other writers and working on some short stories.

Can I just say, though, that Anemone's Song is one--excuse the phrase--long ass book?! Yeah. This is taking forever. Or, as Pinkie Pie would say, FOR-REV-VER!!!

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Occam's Razor for Writers

So I've been fiddling for a while with a bio to include with my story for The Forge. All the while, I kept thinking to myself, "Wow, it's kind of hard to write an author bio." But I left it alone for a couple of weeks, and when I opened the file tonight, I realized that, with the exception of one sentence, it really is a good bio. I deleted the sentence I didn't want, and voila! Now I have a nice little bio. I think, as usual, that I was making things too complicated. I was too busy fretting over the fact that I didn't have many significant writing credentials yet to see that my bio was pretty good. So, the moral of this post is to keep your writing a simple as possible--even when writing a bio.

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Goodbye, Borders

It's the end of an era. I used to work for Waldenbooks years ago, which was owned by Borders Group. As such, I've always been very loyal to the company. I'm so upset right now.

And I really just don't want to shop for books at B&N.

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