Friday This n That

And it's Friday again.  This week, I was so turned around on what day it was, I didn't even think to say my usual Thursday morning 'talk to you Saturday' to mom when we finished talking yesterday.  I think I was thinking that yesterday was Wednesday.  Derp.

I'm one big, apathetic, atrophied lump.  To that end, I'm trying to do some basic exercises every day or every other to work on building myself pack up to normal.  Which reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where George gets the summer off (The Summer of George) and decides to do nothing, but then he gets hurt and his muscles are so atrophied from doing nothing that it's way worse than it should be and there's a long road of physical therapy ahead of him.  

Yeah, I've watched every single episode of Seinfeld multiple times.  It wasn't my fault, I swear.  Pre-Hubs, I was with two different guys for years each that were addicted to Seinfeld.  I haven't watched any of it since before I got married 22 years ago, but they're all still up there in my head.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, be really careful of what you let into your head, because it'll never come out.  I wish I could go back in time and walk out of the TV room where all the girls sat and watched Sybil together.  Horrible movie that's in my head forever.  Even the car accident couldn't knock that out.  More's the pity, I guess.

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.  ;o)

This morning, I heard a weird noise.  Well, a series of weird noises on repeat.  My guess is that it was some kind of bugs bouncing on the aluminum flashing we tacked up to keep the squirrels out of the eaves.  And every once in a while, the bug or bugs would miss the flashing and hit the wood instead.  Plink, plink plink plink, plink plink, bonk.  Once the sun came up all the way, it stopped, but it was weirding me out.  Not sure what kind of bugs, because I could see them from inside and there was no way in hell I was going outside to look.  Bugs... :shudder:

I'm really better about bugs than I used to be.  I mean, living in the woods cures you quick of being bug-jumpy.  Now, it's 'oh, look a centipede' instead of 'EEK! a centipede!'  I still don't want them on me, though.

This week, my daughter turned 33.  I still maintain that I am not old enough to have a 33-year-old kid, but there it is.  

A few days ago, I posted something to Facebook about being fat.  It was just a statement, followed by some personal thoughts on being fat and steps I could take to not be fat, but I suddenly had people telling me what to eat and offering support.  I went and re-read what I wrote and nowhere in there was anything that could've been construed as asking for help or feeling bad about myself.  :shrug:  I guess I was just trying to make a statement that others might find useful, you know if they themselves are feeling bad about being fat.  Anyway, it turned into a kind of sociological experiment.  Can someone just make a statement anymore without people offering advice and opinions?  I don't know.

Ugh.  I have to go grocery shopping today, but it's going to be like 100F.  The plan is to get out of here as soon as the sun reached a height where it won't blind me while I drive east, but it'll still be in the 90s by the time I get home.  Wish me luck.

And on that note, I bid you adieu.  Have a great day wherever you are.  Stay cool, my friends.

Sunday Update - 2026 Week 11?

 I counted and it was week 11, but I could've miscounted.  :shrug:  I could go online and check, but meh.  I'm unmotivated this morning.  Big surprise, I know.  Bu then I haven't been overflowing with motivation this year, have I?

You know the drill... no writing, no editing.  The usual marketing.  I moved 20 copies of Project Hermes.  No residuals there yet.  On the upside, my previous marketing efforts have gained me 20+ sales this month so far.  It might not seem like much, but it's better than all but 2 months in the last couple years at least.  So yay.  This week UNEQUAL will be free.  The week after that the entire A Model Curse series will be free.  

No reading.  I DNF'd the book I was reading because it wasn't holding my interest enough.  :shrug:  I might try some non-fiction for a while and see if that sparks me.

No baking.  Which works for me because my ever-widening ass could use a break from all that.

On the activity front, I was pretty busy.  I only spent one day sitting on said EWA.  It's Spring and all the things need doing.  Plus, we had what appears to be the last cold days until next fall, so we were in the woods doing work.  I don't know my weight because stepping on the scale is depressing.  

One of the 'needs doing' things is clearing my garden beds of the leaves from last fall.  Yesterday, I hauled about 4 wheelbarrow loads of leaves out of the front garden.  My peonies are happy now.  Today, I need to do the shade bed and the south bed.  That'll leave me with the cedar bed in the middle of the yard, which needs weeding more than leaf removal.  

I've also been working on my deck garden.  (See Wednesday's post.)  Unfortunately, it seems like I killed two pots worth of carrots somehow.  I suspect I either knocked them down the day I had to water with the big jug or the first really hot day zapped them.  It disheartening, but I have more seeds, so I can plant again.  Still no sign of the potatoes.  They have until the next time I hit the grocery store (10 days at least) and if I don't see any signs of growth, I'll buy more potatoes to plant.  

I went to Wallyworld.  Yes, prices are up again.  No, I'm not pissed... well, not much... because at least there's a good reason behind it.  I can bear the burden of higher prices if it means crushing the Iranian regime.  The little bit of pissed I am comes more from the idea that some of these prices were raised in anticipation of rising costs.  

Not much else going on in my life, really.  It's hot but I'll get used to it.  I'm a little sore from bending over the garden yesterday, but I'll get over it.  All in all, I don't have much to bitch about.  (Not that that's ever stopped me before. LOL)

Have a great day out there, whatever you're doing.  Peace out.

Freakin' Wednesday?

 Oh my gah... it's freakin' Wednesday?  Where did Monday and Tuesday go?  Holy crap.  

Okay, so Monday... Dying Embers went on freebie.  Go snag a copy.  

And Tuesday...?  We voted. 2 tax increases, a property tax cessation for old people thing, and some dude was running unopposed for commissioner of something.  I voted no on the tax increases - natch - yes on the property tax thing, and I didn't bother voting for the dude I didn't know.  As of this morning, one tax increase passed, one failed, the cessation thing was approved, and the dude probably got elected but I wasn't paying attention to him.

So, now it's Wednesday and we're all caught up, I guess.

Today, I am thoroughly unmotivated to do any marketing.  I need a shower.  The cats... okay, just Sawyer... were spastic last night so I didn't get much sleep.  What sleep I did get was sometime this morning, so I got out of bed late which is part of the unmotivational problem.  And I have about a half hour before my morning call to Mom.  (Yes, I call my mommy almost every morning.  She's 84, so there are a finite number of days left to call her, and plus, I like talking to her.)

Sometime around 11 last night, whilst Sawyer was trying to dig his way through Hubs dresser... pat pat pat pat ad infinitum... I snapped and threw my pillow at him. Scored a direct hit, scared the holy hell out of him, and sent him running for under the bed.  I felt really really bad about it.  He spent quite a while under there and once I ascertained that he was physically unharmed, I got some sleep.  Until about 1-ish when he decided it would be a good time to play with a jingly ball.  He batted that sucker all over the house, running after it and jumping on it... jingling all the way.  Oh what fun it is to... nevermind. That went on for a couple hours.   

Today, I'm supposed to do more marketing, as I previously indicated.  I'm also supposed to go grocery shopping.  I'm not sure either of those things are going to happen, and if they do, there won't be much zip in any of it.  :yawn: :stretch: :blah:

And I just remembered our phone is out again and I forgot to call the damn phone company.  !@#$%!

I need a coffee IV.  Just stick the needle in a vein and let the coffee drain in.

What are you up to today?  Hopefully, y'all have more oomph than I do.

:wander off in search of gumption:

Thursday This n That

 I keep having to stop myself from doing all the little things I used to have to do when the internet was slow - like closing tabs all the time and expecting long wait times.  It's glorious and I'm still giddy.  (Probably won't be as giddy when I see the CC bill for all this, but... :shrug: It'll be worth it in the long run.)  Yesterday, after we aligned the dish, we were pulling over 300mbps.  WOOT.  If any of you friends of mine want an invite to Starlink, shoot me an email.  (If I don't know you, sorry, but I'm not inviting strangers all higgledy-piggledy.)  If you use an invite from me, you get a month free and so do I.

I'm still humpin' and stumpin' on the marketing thing.  Accidental Death is my best moving book so far this year.  With two days still left on this freebie offering, I've already moved 145.49 copies.  Woot.  Would that they were all pay sales and not freebies, but hey, beggars can't afford to be choosy.

Yeah, I've been distracted and depressed and under the weather, which are all awesome excuses for not getting any work done.  I need to cut that shit out.  Pull up my big girl britches and get back to work.

Finn is being a bad boy and getting on the kitchen counter - something he hasn't done since he was a kitten.  I need to put the fear of god into him, but he always looks so offended when I scold him and he's so cute, it's hard to do.  I think he knows this and that's like carte blanche to be naughty.  I swear these cats are like Pinky and the Brain from Animaniacs.  (If you don't know who that is, here's a link to their theme song.)  Finn is, of course, the Brain.  A criminal mastermind if ever there was one.  I know he's the one who knocked the cough-syrup cup off the counter, even if Sawyer was the one playing with it when I woke up.

Off-brand Delsym tastes like crap.  Orange, my ass.  

I need a new day planner for 2025.  I just keep forgetting to get one.  Derp.

Okay, I think that's about it for today.  Have a great one out there wherever you are!

Sunday Update - Week 28

Nearly forgot it was Sunday again.  Everything blurs together lately.

I wrote about a thousand words last week.  I told a friend that I had the words but not the gumption.  Turns out I don't have either.  When I sat down to write, I got the thou out and it felt shitty.  I know, I know, you can fix shitty, but it's hard to keep writing when you know what's coming out is shitty.

No reading, marketing, or editing.  Blerg.

The other day, Hubs and I took apart the pipes under the kitchen sink and cleaned them out.  The sink was backing up, so it was a must-do.  Talk about gross.  And there was one bend that had something I can only describe as a bezoar in it.  When it hit the bathtub, it clunked.  (We put the pipes in a bucket and scrubbed them out in the bathtub for ease of post-cleaning cleaning.)  No clue what the hell that was.  And it's not like we've never cleaned these pipes, so it was our mess and not the previous owners'.

Yesterday, I made ice cream using a recipe Silver James posted on her blog a while back.  As of bedtime, it wasn't quite hard enough to eat yet - more like a firm mousse than ice cream - but I have hopes for today.  (My freezer* has this thing it does where it freezes most things solid, but other things - like those liquid freezer pops - not.)  If it works, I'll drop my tweaked recipe here.  Hers was coffee ice cream, I made chocolate.  

Other than that, I have been thoroughly unmotivated for a couple weeks now.  It's hotter than Blue Billy blazes which makes exercise, fishing, and baking unpleasant.  I'm disheartened by the world which makes me want to crawl into a hole and pull the dirt in over myself.  Stuffs.  As such, I've been spending too much time playing free poker.  At least there I have the illusion of productivity and have almost $800K in chips**.  (Over a million in the play-money slots.  Woohoo.)  Friday I took 20K in chips and built it to over 200K.  Yay.  Would that it were real money. 

Here's hoping the next week goes better.  How did your week go?

* My freezer and fridge are on the same control.  If I turn it up (which is actually down), things in the fridge start to freeze, too.  Poorly engineered.  Gah.  On the upside, all the meats are solid as a rock, so no worries about food poisoning.

** All without buying chips, which you can do at this site.  I took the amounts they gave me and built them up to where I am now.  

Sunday Update - Week ???

I'm not sure what week it is and I'm too lazy to go look.  It was a week, the first one of May.  So there.  =op

I made a little more progress on Sleeping Ugly, but not much.  As I've said before, it will get done by the deadline, but I'm guessing RIGHT before the deadline.

Once again, I'm in a reading slump.  It's not that I have nothing to read or that none of it would interest me.  I even have a pre-release of the 18th book in a series I've been following for years.  I'm just in a spot where reading itself isn't blowing my skirt up.  Or like the gal at the feed store said, "I'd read more, but it's too lovely outside."  Maybe that's it.  Maybe it's that I have too much to do outside to be inside reading.  :shrug:  This, too, shall pass.

And I'm still not fishing.

What exactly am I doing?  Hell if I know.  I did a bunch of gardening stuff.  I've been exercising.  There's been some spreadsheet stuff.  Shopping.  Cleaning.  I did the windows last week.  And some dusting.

Oh, yeah, and last week was the well thing.  The well pump went kerplooey.  But they got it fixed quick so we were only without water for 24 hours.  Of course, then the well had to be chlorinated, so we had a few more days on bottled water until the bleach was washed out of the system. But it's all good now.

Spring is in full swing here.  The trees are no longer naked.  The flowers are blooming or getting ready to bloom.  Hubs has already mowed the yard twice and done the first bug-spraying of the year.  The birds are stopping by on their migratory route.  The bucks' antlers are growing and so are the does' bellies.  Life is good.

How are things where you are?

Thursday This n That

I can't get motivated this morning.  Coffee ain't doin' it.  Smokes ain't doin' it.  Getting up and movin' around ain't doin' it.  Bleh.  Oh well, motivated or not I have shit to do.

I have three books left to read before the end of the year to reach my readjusted goal of 90 books.  Nothing's blowing my skirt up right now.  Plus, I have editing to do and work stuff to do.  Not sure if I'll get those last three read in the next ten days.  What I kind of want to read will take me more than 10 days to read by itself - Shogun.  I picked it up at a thrift store.  It's a FAT book.  Epic.  Right now, I'm reading a Mack Bolan spinoff called Phoenix Force: Ultimate Terror.  It's good, but not really grabbing me.

I picked up Christmas dinner fixin's yesterday.  Scallops, shrimp, and a big Porterhouse steak.  I also bought a ham because at that price I couldn't pass it up.  I'll make the ham today so we have loads of hammy leftovers.  Hubs will be manning the grill on Christmas - unless the weather is super gross, than I'll cook.  Not sure what dessert will be.  I already made another pumpkin cheesecake - half of which is already gone. 

Had a couple of good fishing excursions this week, which might be why I am unmotivated this morning.  Sore, tired... bleh.  Lure fishing is loads of fun now that I'm finally catching stuff, but it's murder on my feet, legs, back... All that standing and casting and reeling is tiring.

Okay, like I said at the beginning of this, motivation or not, there's shit to do today.  Have a great day and drop a comment in the box as you head out the door.  :waves:

Sunday Update - Week 12

Well, I didn't tell many people this but I went on vacation last Saturday and was gone through late Friday afternoon.  (I'd rather the interwebs not know when my house is empty.  You know how it goes.)  As such, I didn't write a damn word, send a freakin' query, or read anything - even though I bought like 5 books for my Kindle. I carted the thing from here to FL and back without even turning it on.

Know what?

It was friggin' awesome being away from it all.  Hubs and I hung out with his family, walked on the beach, watched the gulls, ate good food and relaxed (for the most part... we were with family after all LOL).  I even took a day and went to meet JB Lynn - which was also frickin' awesome.

Pics, however, are still loaded onto Hubs' laptop and I haven't transferred them yet.  Wanna know why?

Because I seem to have left my gumption somewhere over eastern Missouri... maybe Alabama...  :shrug:  All I know is it hasn't made it back home yet.  Perhaps my gumption is partying hard in Atlanta.  I pull it back home soon.

I mean, I did read 2 books last night.  That's a start. Right?

Anyway, we're home now.  I'll write a post about it all later.  (Because I can't even find the gumption for that yet.)

Later days, dudes.

How was your week?

Thoroughly Unmotivated

Looks like I've been a naughty puppy lately.  But don't feel bad, blog readers, it's not just here at The Spectacle.  I haven't really been getting much of anything else done either. 

I don't even have any good excuses. 

I'm not writing.  I'm not editing.  The malaise seems to have struck me early this winter (hell, it's not even winter yet, so what's that say). 

I could sit here and whine about how I hate my book or how much I feel like I suck at being a writer right now, but no one wants to see that - including myself.  Blahdy blah blah blah.  Bleh. 

And that's where I'm at - bleh.  I'm thoroughly unmotivated right now.  The only post I've managed to write was that ranty one yesterday that accidentally got published that I'm not even sure I want to see the light of day.  (If you saw it for the brief time it was out there, I apologize.  It wasn't ready for prime time.)

Anyway, now's the time to talk amongst yourselves.  You'll still see me at Killer Chicks because I'm committed to holding up my end of the blog there.  I don't know how much you'll see me here or at The Guide or at A Pound of B.S. until after the new year, when I might just be able to pull my head out of my orifice.

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.

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?

This and That

In case you missed the announcement at The Unpublished Writers' Guide to Survival (or you missed it over at Alexia Chamberlynn's blog), some people having a Twitter pitch party where you use the hashtag #pitmad* and tweet your pitches.  After which, I assume, anyone who likes your pitch will get in touch with you.  Personally, the idea scares the bejeebers out of me.

In other news, I had submissions out to three publishers.  The two for Dying Embers have... well... died.  As far as I can tell, Djinnocide is still alive at Harper Voyager.  Just as well, I guess, since I'm going to be a busy beaver soon.  (And that's the story I'm sticking with - like Aesop's fox who didn't want those sour grapes anyway.)

The reality of it, though, is that no matter how busy I think I'm going to be, I'll always have time to work.  (Or, if there's a contract involved, I'll make the time to work.)  My problem, though, is right now I'm thoroughly unmotivated.  I don't have anything driving me to get writing done.  Yeah, it's there.  And yeah, I still love it.  But no, it's not motivating me on its own.  Must be the Mid-winter Malaise has me in its dastardly clutches.

If you need postage, buy 'forever stamps' TODAY.  Stamps go up by a penny over the weekend, and if you get the 'forever stamps', they still work for the higher rate.  Who knows what the freight rates will be.  :shrug:  Last year they went up like 8 cents for the lowest cost Media Mail package.  Bleh.  I know it's only 8 cents, but they're nickel-n-diming me to death.

What's going on in your world?  Any this or that to share?

*corrected after Janet pointed out I had it wrong.  D'oh.

Who the Hell Do You Think You Are?

Or the All-Encompassing Writing Pitfall.

It goes like this...

"Who the hell do you think you are to try and write something like this?  You're not good enough.  You have no idea what you're talking about.  Everyone will laugh at you for this one.  Or at least every self-respecting agent who gets a glimpse of this will not only reject your book, they'll print off your submission materials just so they can set fire to the pages."

"And then there's the whole 'write what you know' thing.  Which you're totally not doing in this case.  What does a housewife from backwater, piss-ant, scrubby-ass Colorado know about the doings in Washington, D.C.  Who do you think you are, Vince Flynn?  ROFL  Right.  Go back to making shit up with your post-apocalyptic worlds or your genies and leave the reality to the boys and girls who know how to do it right."

"Sure, writing is all about making it up, but readers are going to see right through your smoke and mirrors crap. They're going to KNOW you're talking out the other side of your ass here.  What do you know about medical examiners and engineers and government agents?  Seriously.  You must've been pretty damn full of yourself to even start this project.  No wonder you can't edit it into something good."

"No wonder they rejected your other stuff."

"Hack."

Just Meh

I picked up this book a few weeks ago (whose title and author shall remain nameless).  It had all the earmarks of being something I'd love.  First off, it's a suspense.  Second, it's near-future - which I love.  Plus, it has big ideas that I'm sympathetic toward (as opposed to big ideas that make me want to gag).

I tried to read it.  I slogged through 211 pages for petesakes.  And that took me 2 weeks.  Meanwhile my TBR pile was growing and beginning to get a mite testy that it was being neglected.  Yesterday, I made myself pick the damn thing up again.  I read two pages before putting it back down again.  At that point, I admitted defeat.

You know me - I hate not finishing a book I put so much time and effort (and money - since it was a hardcover) into.  That's part of the reason why I tried so hard to finish this damn thing.  I wanted to love it. In the end, though, I just didn't.  And here's the thing.  I didn't hate it either.  It was just 'meh'.

And I can't put my finger on exactly why it was just meh.

Maybe it was that the characters felt flat to me.  Maybe it was that early on, I could see where the story was going.  Maybe it was that I had such hopes for this novel that I oversold it to myself and then it under-delivered.  :shrug:

I kept reading, hoping the characters would do something to make me love them or hate them or feel something for them.  I read on praying to the reading gods that the author would do something unexpected to make the story sing.  I pushed ahead dreaming that the story would live up to my expectations.  And I wasted two weeks and 211 pages doing it.

Today I'll be moving on.  I have a whole piles of works by awesome authors I know won't disappoint me.  Hell, the new Allison Brennan alone should pull me out of the malaise this book put me into.  If that doesn't work, I have Kevin Hearne, Laura Griffin, Nancy Holzner, Gini Koch, Justin Gustainis, Monica McCarty, David Farland - to name a few - to brighten my spirits.

Unless it wasn't that author and it was me.  Gack, what a depressing thought.

What about you?  Ever read a book that was 'just meh'?  How long do you usually last before you give up on a story?

And don't forget to enter my 30,000 Pageviews Contest.  You have until the 10th.

Getting Ready to Bloom

With the first iris of the season slowly getting ready to bloom, I'm forcing myself to turn away from the blahs of winter.  Because, let's face it, I've let myself go.  I haven't been keeping up with the blog, I haven't been writing, I haven't been exercising.  Hell, I haven't even been cleaning.  (Lucky for me, my husband has been too busy himself to care.) Enough is enough.

Time to stop laying on the couch, watching Grey's Anatomy reruns and eating whatever I can find to stuff in my face.  Time to create TO-DO lists and then actually DO them.  Yep, it's time to pull my head out of my special place and get to work.

Like the iris, it's time to make with the blossoming already.

Writing When I Don't Wanna

I so didn't want to write yesterday.  It wasn't that I didn't like the story.  I wasn't even against the work.  It was just that I didn't want to sit here and bang on the keyboard. 

But here I was chatting on FB with Daughter.  (Which in retrospect makes not writing seem silly.)

I told her I should be writing.  And she said 'Yes, you should."  In that guilt-inducing tone all FB chat text can take.  At that point, though, it was after 9 and I'd already checked in with my lack of progress in LoNoWriMo...  Or HoHoNoWriMo*, as the Daughter called it.  Still, if I want to be the PITA mom she knows I can be about her course work, then I really need to back that up with my own work. 

Right?

So, I sat down and cranked out 545 words.  Not a huge amount, but it was something.  And you know what?  I'm pretty proud of those words because if I hadn't let the kid guilt me, I would be 545 words short this morning.

Your turn...  What gets you writing when you don't wanna write?  Is guilt your motivator or do you have a better tool I could try?

*HoHoNoWriMo = HouseHold Novel Writing Month... plus it's kinda Christmassy.  She such a smart kid.  =o)

Unmotivated

Okay, I do care.  Let's just say I spent the day cleaning my daughter's bathroom and it sucked anything resembling motivation right the hell out of me.

And you pretty much know how unmotivated you are about working when you're cleaning.  Or at least, that's how I know.

On the upside, I may be unmotivated, but I don't look like these people...

**Image Deleted was an old photo of two unhappy people**

Could they possibly GET any unhappier?

How are you?  Motivated?  Unmotivated?  Wishing you were as happy as those two up there? 


(And for the record, I'm only unmotivated about social media today.  I did get a thousand words typed.  Now I must go watch the Packers beat the Saints.)

What's the Point?

When I started this journey seven plus years ago, I didn't have an exact goal in mind.  I tried to write books several times over the preceding years, but I never finished one.  I guess my initial point was to finish a damn book.  And then?  Get it published, of course.  It seemed so easy then.

Man, was I stupid.

Anyway, after those seven years & seven months, I'm wondering what the hell the point is.  I've written so many books I lost track of the number.  I've received so many rejections, I could wallpaper the entire inside of this house and have a few to spare as wrapping paper (or litterbox liners).  I've studied umpteen posts, joined and left several forums, had and lost crit partners, beta readers, and blog followers.

This year has been the second low point of my career.  The first was after Spectacle (my first book) got rejected to death and I felt like maybe I couldn't write my way out of a paper bag.  I got over that one but it took me nine months to write anything again.  That one felt horrible.  This one somehow seems worse.

It's been since about February - when I finished the first draft of my NaNo novel - that I wrote anything I really felt good about.  You know, new words that made me feel all shiny inside.

I read somewhere that it took Ken Follett something like 11 years to sell Eye of the Needle.  11 years?  Seriously?  And the other day, I was grousing about the 'why am I doing this' over at Janet's Journal when Silver James said it took her 20 years.  I guess looking at that, I shouldn't be whining.  I just don't have the faintest clue how they did it.  How do you keep slogging through this day after day for that many years without either going insane and shooting off your writing hand or giving up to find some less heart-stomping occupation - like unwanted-puppy euthanasia technician.

I know...  Boo-hoo, whoa is me... blah blah blah.  Blech.  I'm tired of myself, and I don't know what to do.  I feel like I've done everything this industry has asked of me.  I wrote the book of my heart... Nope.  I wrote something trendy and now... Nope.  I wrote and wrote and wrote... Nada.  I've worked and reworked and edited and re-edited and rewritten everything from my queries to my synopses to whole damn books, trying to make something happen.  I've taken everyone's advice - from casual blog readers to betas and CPs to published authors who've chimed in to help.  I'm still sitting here, writing for my own enjoyment and it's not so frickin' enjoyable anymore.

It kinda reminds me of that song from A Chorus Line - Dance 10 Looks 3.  Maybe I need the writerly equivalent of a boob job.  I wonder if some literary tits and ass would do the job.  I wouldn't be myself anymore, but maybe that's what it takes.  Sublimate everything to reach the ultimate goal of seeing my work in print.

Nah. I can't do that.  I like my tits and ass the way they are.  Sure, they could be firmer, but surgical procedures are a too drastic to consider.


So now I'm sitting here at 41 wondering if I just wasted a large portion of the past 7.583 years.  I'm middle-aged for crissakes.  How many more years am I going to spend sitting at this computer typing stories no one wants to read???  Seriously.

Is there a point?

To this post?  Probably not much more of one than venting.  To continuing to write?  The jury's still out on that one.  What's your point?

The Seven Year Itch

Some say that at seven years, most people start to re-evaluate their relationship.  Why am I with this person?  And what if there's something better out there for me? 

Well, I've been married for almost seven years... but that's not what I'm talking about.  Hubs and I are still going strong, with nary an itch in sight.  Nope, I'm talking about the other major relationship in my life - me and my writing. 

Writing and I have been together for seven years now and I might be getting the itch.  I've been thinking a lot lately about why I'm still doing this and wondering whether I shouldn't just get a job ringing up groceries.  (Lord knows there'd be more money and less stress. "Paper or plastic?"  How hard can it be?) 

Of course, during the research for this post, I also found where other people were relating the seven year itch to VD.  I've got the writerly clap?  Figures.  Maybe I spent too much time hopping from one genre bed to the other, trying to find the right one, that I caught something itchy.  I wonder if penicillin works for writerly diseases...

Anyway, I still love Writing - I think.  I remember why I fell in love with it in the first place.  It's just that I'm bored with our relationship.  I'm doing all the work and Writing is just laying there, drinking beer and watching infomercials with one hand down its pants scratching its nether regions.

I want the romance back.  I want it to take me dancing - or at least give me a reason to dance.  I need a little sizzle. 

As with everything, this too shall pass.  I'll find the romance again.  It's not like this hasn't happened before.  This time, though, just feels longer and harder - and not in a good way, if you know what I mean. 

BoredBoredBored

But, hey, it's a holiday weekend - so not caring isn't such a bad thing.