Sunday Update - Week 4

Well, there's another week of 2020 gone by, and this one without a lot to show for it.

I wrote four days out of seven for about 4500 words.  Then I got derailed by some kind of weird ass 24 hour cold. Excuses, excuses, I know.  I'm this close to hitting 20K on Cinder Ugly, so maybe next week I can claim that accomplishment.  I also got a minimal amount of editing done on Ugly and the Beast.

I did read a bunch.  I'm 5 books ahead on my goal  I'll need that later, I'm sure.  I also hit the thrift store and got some new paperbacks.  Yay.

Then I made a to-die-for coffee cake.  It's basically cake mix made with less oil and one more egg, and it has streusel in the middle and on top.  Wicked stuff.  (Recipe below.)

Yesterday, I got tripped up by a stomach thing and accomplished doodle.  I swear, it was a week for crap.  Well, bring it on and get it out of the way already.  I've got work to do.

Other than that, work stuffs and lazing around.  Here's to a better Week 5.  What were you up to last week?

To Die For Coffee Cake

Cake:

1 pkg Butter Pecan cake mix

1 cup water

1/4 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs

Topping:

1/2 cup butter (very cold and diced)

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

3/4 cup flour

1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350F. Spray 9x13" can pan with non-stick spray. Make cake batter according to directions on box, but using the above measurements instead of theirs. Combine streusel ingredients using a pastry blender until they're crumbly. Spread half the cake batter in the pan. Sprinkle half the streusel mixture over the top. Dollop the remainder of the cake batter over the streusel, getting it about as even as you can. Sprinkle the remainder of the streusel over the batter, again getting it about as evenly distributed as you can. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

The Halloween Scrooge

Halloween is fast approaching.  Meh.

When I was younger, I did Halloween.  When the Kid was home and young enough to enjoy it, I did Halloween.  When we lived in town and there were children trick-or-treating all around, I did Halloween.  When I was still scarfing on the candy bars, I did Halloween - if only for myself.

Now, I'm no longer young, the Kid is an independent adult, and we live in a place with no children for the most part.  (One younger couple with one 6 year old and a baby do not make for a rush of kids at Halloween.)  I'm also done with the candy bar scarfing, so that pretty much means I don't do Halloween.

I don't even do scary movies.  Although this time of year, watching campy, non-scary, scary movies is kind of fun.  I watched Eight Legged Freaks and Lake Placid on Saturday.  I'm also into the Final Destination movies, which aren't scary to me.  I enjoy the suspense of how people are going to get killed.  If you've never seen them, pretty much everyone dies in one way or another and some of those deaths are pretty ingenious. 

Yep, I'm pretty much a Halloween Scrooge.  Bah Humbug. 

With my memories pretty much shot, I only remember one Halloweens from my childhood.  The one where they wouldn't give my older brother candy because the football team had already come through and wiped the town out.  I got one piece and my sister got one piece at only a couple of houses.  Bummer.  I remember a Halloween from when I was like 15 and shouldn't have been trick-or-treating anyway, but my friends and I got dressed up and wandered through a neighborhood in the dark.

When I was in college, I remember a party my friend threw.  I was a sexy modern-day vampire before those were cool.  (Pre Interview with a Vampire days.)  My friend walked around her house carrying a bowl of Cheerios and a knife.  (Cereal Killer... get it?) 

Between those years and the years when the Kid was old enough to enjoy Halloween, meh.  And since then?  Meh.

I don't have a problem with Halloween.  If you're into it, good on ya.  Go wild.  Have a blast.  I'll just be sitting here on another regular Thursday, reading and trying to decide if I'm really going to write a book starting the next day.

Do you still celebrate Halloween?  Are you taking a kid out or are you staying home to pass out treats?  What will you be giving away this year?  What's your favorite Halloween treat?  I used to really groove on the Snickers bars.

Eat Your Peas

Okay, I think I may have a handle on this thing.  Something occurred to me this morning - I promised myself I wouldn't start anything new until I get some of this backlog of writing into shape to be sent out into the world.  I mean, come on, I have like 13 books in various stages of 'ready' - which is to say not ready because if they were really ready, someone somewhere would've wanted one of them by now.  And starting something new right now just feels like adding to that steaming pile of unfinished.

I spent the better part of the summer whipping a manuscript into shape only to decide I wasn't going to try to publish it. 

Now I'm in the middle of editing the one book that was the hardest for me to edit.

And I hate editing.

I don't know how the rest of you were raised, but I had to clean my plate before I was allowed to get up from the table.  The meat I never had a problem with.  No prob on the starches either.  But the vegetables?  OMG, I did everything possible to not have to eat those.  I would hem and haw.  I would whine.  I resorted to stuffing them along the edge of my plate and then making sure I was the one to clear the table - until I got caught.  I even went so far as to swallow some of them whole with a generous gulp of milk so I wouldn't have to actually taste the loathsome things.  (This worked best with peas because they're really just green pills, and if I could swallow hard aspirin, I could certainly choke down soft peas.)

In order to get to the fun stuff in life - like dessert and playing outside - I had to eat my peas.

In order to get to the fun stuff in writing - like creating new stories - I have to do my editing.

:gag:

So in some immature, foot-stomping, breath-holding, pissy-bitch fashion, I've been refusing to eat my peas which leaves me stuck at the proverbial table, staring down at what are now incredibly cold and nasty veggies, whining about how I want to go play.

Hell, even worse, I already made a deal with myself that if I got this particular manuscript done I could go play with the NaNoWriMo kids.  (Deal making is the scourge of parenting, btw, but that's a subject best left to another day.)

Basically, I have to eat my peas.  Now if I could just find a glass of milk large enough to wash down 300 pages of edits before November 1st.

And don't try to talk me out of it.  I fixed this plate and I'm going to eat it all, even if I have to sit here 'til Christmas.

Hair, Beautiful Hair

I'm breaking down and getting a haircut today.  I'm way overdue - again.  I don't know what it is about getting my hair cut that makes me drag it out.  I'm all like 'meh' until I notice myself pulling it into a ponytail every damn day and then I need it cut NOW.  This time around it's been like 5 months - and I need a cut so bad I almost whacked it off myself yesterday.  "Hand me the scissors and to hell with looking good!"  Yah, didn't go there. Thank goodness.

Maybe it's that I haven't really had a good haircut in 9+ years.  When I lived in Utah, there was this one gal who did an awesome job on my hair - and then she moved.  She was the last great haircut I had.  The Utah gal after her was so-so.  My first beautician in Colorado should've changed her sign to say "Butcher".  Then I found another gal who was alright, but she moved.  And her replacement was so-so. 

I'm totally dying for a good cut.  But I'm not getting my hopes up. 

And it's not like I get anything difficult done.  Cut it like whatever picture I bring in for you.  I even try to get big pictures with good definition so you can see how the cut should be done.  And for 9+ years, I've walked out with hair that looks nothing like the pic I gave her. 

A few years back I took the Kid to Walmart and she got this guy, Daylen.  He was wicked awesome.  Her hair was wicked awesome, too.  And he was fun.  I wanted him to be my sassy gay friend.  (Out and proud in the NE plains of Colorado, bless his heart.)  But I didn't need a haircut that day and he was never there when I went back. 

So, today, I'm headed to the Walmart here.  We'll see what happens.  If I'm lucky, I'll come out looking like this:

or this:

(only darker with gray because I don't color my hair.)

If I'm not lucky, I'll come out like this:

Keep your fingers crossed.

General Malaise

I just notice I haven't posted here in almost a week.  Bleh.  I've really been falling down on the job.  Sorry.

I blame this general malaise that seems to have fallen over me with regards to anything writerly.  I could blame THAT on the fact that my writing doesn't seem to be going anywhere, which I could then blame on the fact that I feel like everything I write is crap right now, but that would only lead back to the general malaise.

I could blame this on the limbo I seem to be in over a Harper Voyager - who promised to have answers to us by a certain date and then pushed the date back and then seemed to drop off the face of the earth with regards to giving any kind of updates about anything.  (Their blog is quieter than mine... maybe the malaise has them, too.)

I could blame this on the query process that seems to have slipped into that old rejection rut.  I know the malaise has brought the queries I've sent out to a mere trickle.  And yeah, I know that I'll never get a 'yes' if I don't keep sending submissions out.  But the malaise has me going 'meh'.

It could be that my annual January-March malaise was rescheduled due to the fact that I was so busy with life stuff during that time.  "I'm sorry, but we overbooked and we need to push your regularly scheduled malaise back a few months."  Feh.

Whatever is causing this, I'm in the grips of it.  I know I need to pull myself up by my bootstraps.  I know I need to shake this off.  Once I shake it off, I'll see everything clearer - including the actual quality of my writing (which I suspect doesn't suck nearly as bad as I'm thinking right now).  But shaking it off is easier said than done. 

So, for now, I'm floating in a sea of meh. 

How about you?  Do you have a time when the malaise strikes you?  How do you get past it?