A Brief Moment of Celebration between Showering and Scooping up Dustball Tumbleweeds

I finished writing a book this morning.

I've been working on the thing pretty much every day since September and when I haven't been working on it, it's been in my head, snippets of dialogue in the supermarket that I scratch out on the back of my grocery list, and sudden cold sweats in the middle of the night when I realize I've got a gaping plot hole, and moments of excitement when I snap together pieces that just might solve that gaping plot hole issue,

but mostly it's day after day of psychologically girding myself, gearing up to write, and fighting back the demons in my head that whisper why bother why are you doing this it's stupid and pointless and opening up my lap top and writing anyway.

You think when you come to the end of the book you've been writing for eight months, you'll want to whoop it up. Drink a bottle of champagne. Tear out of the house shouting I JUST FINISHED WRITING A BOOK!

The truth is nobody really cares.

Also, the house is a gigantic mess because you've been neglecting it for eight months and suddenly you can see the layer of dust on all of the furniture and the tumbleweed sized dog hair balls in the corners and the fact that you've been wearing the same clothes for possibly days? and when was the last time you showered?

(Don't answer that.)

So, there's tons of stuff to do and after you take a shower and put on some different clothes, it's time to get to it. Answering a bajillion emails and taking care of business-y stuff and never mind figuring out what to do with this Thing-- the inevitable revising once you get it back from your critique partners-- and Hey! It's time to query it! and what will you write next? yadda yadda ya...

One of my friends asked me the other day, when I told her I was getting closer to the end of this draft, how I was going to celebrate.

Confession: I'm not big on celebrations.

I'm not sure what it is exactly about celebrating that bugs me. The expense? The party-planning aspect? Anything to do with cake and glitter? Plus, it feels a little narcissistic to me. (See above: nobody really cares.)

I don't mind participating in other people's celebrations.

This weekend, for example, my son's graduating from college, and my husband and I are throwing him a party. A graduation is a Thing worthy of celebrating. The culmination of years of hard work and study. The marking of the movement from one life stage into another. An opportunity to hang together as a family, as friends, as a community to acknowledge the person you love who's done This Thing.

Writing a book, while it feels monumental at times, is so much more solitary. Especially when there's no guarantee that anyone will ever read it. It's like running a marathon in the dark. You don't get a certificate of completion. There's no stage to walk across. No graduation cap to throw into the air. No Congratulations to The Book Writer cards in the stationery aisle.

Ah well.

Cheers.

*throws all the glitter*

Everything but the Kitchen Sink-- Also known as Trying Every Trick in the Book... To Write a Book

It's weird to write a book.

I've done it more than ten times, and I still think it's weird. I know how it works, how to do it.

[NEWS FLASH: you sit on your butt and you pick up your writing implement of choice, and you write until the book is finished.]

I can give you all kinds of pointers about how to start, where to find ideas/use ideas/develop ideas, how to plug along through a first draft, (and a 2nd draft and a 10th draft), how to outline or not outline, how to reread what you have and reorganize it and revise it, how to plot and develop characters, how amp up conflict, how to edit and polish and blah bi di blah blah.

I can also give you strategies for working through Writer's Block.

[NEWS FLASH: you sit on your butt and you pick up your writing implement of choice and you write--even though you hate what you're writing and hate writing and probably hate yourself. Do that for 20, 30, maybe 56 days, and I promise, you'll break through Writer's Block.]

Yeah. So I KNOW ALL THAT. And yet, apparently, I must bow down humbly before the Muse and admit that I KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING when it comes to writing a book, specifically, the book I am writing now, which is technically a revision, my fifth or sixth complete time through it.

It's a strange complicated dark expansive personal story that seems to get bigger and more complicated every time I pick my way through it.

I heard the brilliant writer and teacher Jane Resh Thomas speak at Hamline University when I visited the MFAC program in January and she said that when you write a book, you are not the same person you were when you started it. You're exploring parts of yourself--some parts, that maybe you would rather not explore. Because I have basically been writing this story for more that 12 years, let's just say that I am doing a lot of exploring of the dark and dusty recesses of myself.

And here's one thing I figured out:

All of my old strategies for writing a book-- the word counts and the daily goals and the typing on my lap top and the index cards-- none of that seems to be working with this one. So I decided-- what the hey?-- why not try something new?

Forget the damn laptop. I've been writing by hand. With a pencil. I'm filling up composition notebooks, something I haven't done since I was twelve.

(two of many notebooks. Plus a to-do list
with the first item:
NO INTERNET UNTIL 3) 

I hand write in the mornings and type and revise in the afternoon. I take a lot of breaks. When I'm stuck, I clean something in my house or throw something out or clean something and then throw it out.

This book takes place partly in a forest and every time I get to a place where I have no idea what the characters are doing or thinking, I start describing trees. I have hundreds of pictures stored on my computer. Types of trees and leaves and fruit and bark. I have pieces of bark on my desk.

(there are satyrs in my book too. Satyrs are from Greek
mythology and they have tails and they
like to chase nymphs. Look at the one I painted
with watercolors. Note: the privates are modestly
covered by leaves) 

I'm doing yoga again. (wearing yoga pants has inspired me.) I'm gathering stones and creating altars and burning candles and staying off social media and walking the dog multiple times and binge watching Supernatural and painting with water colors.

I'm terrible with water colors and I don't care. I also don't care about publication anymore. Or sales numbers or sequels or self promotion or marketing. I do some of those things, sure, but this book comes first. It may never be read by anyone except for a few close friends. And get this: I don't care. 

In the mornings I change out of my pajamas and into my yoga pants and I park my butt on the bed in my office/guest room where I've been working, and I pick up my pencil and write.

In Which I Do a Social Media Detox, Quit Reading Books, and Rediscover My Loathing for My Dining Room Table

Week Four of The Artist's Way is a killer.

You're not allowed to read. 

No books. No newspapers. No magazines. No backs of cereal boxes. Nothing. For someone who is pretty much a reading addict, this particular assignment fills me with horror. I make a living --(and I use the word "living" in a metaphorical sense) by writing books. So, reading books is my job. And telling me not to read books is like telling me not to breathe air. 

Side note: I am doing this course called The Artist's Way, a twelve week set of exercises that is supposed to help you rediscover your creative self. I went through the course seven years ago and as loony-tunes as it seemed to me at the time, IT WORKED. See here. 

The first time I went through Week Four, I thought I was going to die not being allowed to read for a week. But funny thing: back then I was not on Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or Instagram. I did not spend hours answering emails and reading blog posts and scrolling around online. Social media did not exist when Julia Cameron designed the exercises for The Artist's Way, but I have to think that when she says No Reading, she also means No Tweeting or Facebooking or emailing. 

The whole point of Reading Deprivation is to take a break from consuming other people's words, to control what we allow in. "Our reward," Julia Cameron says, "will be a new outflow. Our own art, our own thoughts and feelings will begin to nudge aside the sludge of blockage, to loosen it and move it upward and outward until once again our well is running freely."

Yeah yeah, whatever, Julia. Bring it. 

Last Sunday night I signed off all of my accounts. Goodbye Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr and Instagram. Adios blog posts and Yahoo news. So long BOOKS.  My husband was out of town. When I talked to him on the phone, I told him I was ready for my week of reading deprivation. My prediction was that without my constant farting around online, I'd get a ton of work done on my latest writing project, which honestly, I had been slogging through and not enjoying all that much anymore.   

Also, I would clean the house.

Day One: 

Because I don't check email or read the crap news of the day, I feel peaceful and happy and oblivious. I clean the breakfast dishes directly after breakfast. I walk the dog. I write for most of the day. When my daughter gets home from school, she is greeted by the enticing smell of freshly baked chocolate chip scones. Yay! This is fun! I am Miss Productivity! 

I don't miss reading until I get into bed. It's my habit to read a book at night and to scroll once more through all of my various forms of social media. I am stricken. What do I do? 

I solve this problem by rereading the chapter about Not Reading in The Artist's Way and go to sleep happily. 

Day Two:

I have no idea what's going on in the world or what my friends on Facebook or on Twitter are doing and I am okay with that because after I finish my day's writing, I'll be busy cleaning my office. 

Later, as I am taking books off the bookshelves, I realize that I don't want all of these books. Some are books that I read and didn't like and never plan to read again. Some are books that I haven't read and admit I never will. 

And come to think of it, what about the books on the bookshelves in other parts of my house? The ones gathering dust in my bedroom? The ones on the shelves in the living room? The ones piled in the bathrooms and next to my bed?

I don't want some of those either. 

I make a vat of homemade lentil soup. My daughter informs me that she does not like lentil soup.

The aromatic sofrito base of my lentil soup

Day Three:

My dining table is covered with books.

My office is a disaster area. Thinking about what books I really want and don't really want has made me question everything in the room. Why do I have these curtains? These beads hanging in the closet that my daughter hung when this was her bedroom annoy the hell out of me. And I never liked this rug. It's ugly. 

Day Four:

I sneak a peek at email and realize that I am not as important as I thought I was. I suspect the worlds of Twitter and Facebook are rolling along just fine without me too. I am both saddened and relieved. 

My daughter's home sick from school. She's watching a Dance Moms Marathon. I have never watched this show and immediately begin to mock it. Three hours later I am still mocking it, while my ailing daughter snoozes on the couch beside me. 

I pull down the curtains in my office. I throw out the closet beads. I roll up the rug. I eat the hell out of leftover lentil soup.

I write my ass off. 

Day Five:

Daughter's home sick again and I am secretly happy so I can watch Dance Moms with her. I eye the cluttered dining room table with despair. In addition to books, I've now added pictures I've always hated, clunky bookends that I refuse to put back on my pristine organized bookshelves, various ceramic cats from that time in my life when I thought it would be fun to collect ceramic cats, stupid plastic plants that exist only to gather dust, and a bunch of shoes I haven't worn in years.

I don't want these cats.

I eat leftover lentil soup.

I realize that I don't like a lot of the things I have in my house. Some stuff's kinda neutral and pointless. A gift that's not my style. A thing that has no meaning or purpose. Other stuff has a halo of negative connotation surrounding it. Gifts with strings attached. Or worse, guilt. Ugly things I used to like but can't remember what the hell I was thinking. Plastic fruit covered with beads? Why do I have these things? 

That's it. They're going on the dining room table. 

I write and write and write. 

Day Six:

I don't like the dining room table. Truth be told, I loathe it. There. I said it. 

I have an epiphany. What has been blocking me in my writing project is that I have been holding onto an earlier version of the story. Once I decide that I can let it go, I feel a surge of energy and excitement. I know what to do now. 

The entire dining room is filled with things to give away, including the dining room furniture. 

My daughter and I are watching Dance Moms when my husband calls from the airport on his way home. 

"How was your week?" he asks.

"Pretty good," I tell him. 

Day Seven:

My husband and I walk around the house together expressing our loathing and love for a quarter century's worth of accumulated stuff. I head up to my office to tackle a file cabinet. My husband begins to excavate the basement. 

I work a bit more on my book. I love it again. 

Thoughts on (not) Cleaning, Potential Writing Topics, and Weird Places to Grow Pumpkins

So my readers often ask me why it is that I write so much about cleaning my house (or rather NOT cleaning my house).
Okay. That is a total lie.

No one has ever asked me that. But it's entirely possible that some of you have thought about it. Perhaps you are wondering how messy we are talking if this woman (me) is continually bringing up the subject: here. Here. and Here. It does seem to be a persistent problem, how to balance out writing with other obligations.

Perhaps you are wondering if cleaning (or rather, NOT cleaning) is an appropriate topic for a blog post about writing and reading and all things related to writing and reading. Well, yes. I think it is. Stick with me here. It has to do with school lunches.

There's a great book by Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, which is pretty much THE manual when it comes to writing inspiration and craft, where she recommends writing about school lunches whenever you are suffering from writer's block. Her point is that writing something--anything--even about the contents of your seventh grade self's lunch bag can miraculously break down your walls and get the creative juices flowing.

I am not suffering from writer's block at the moment. But I am in this floundery phase between projects. My publisher accepted my revision (woot! woot!) and the manuscript is now in copyediting. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking about how cool that sounds while at the same time I am thinking that I don't know exactly what the copyediting phase entails. But I am certainly excited about the prospect of figuring it out! If you've been following this blog with any regularity, you know that after many many years of toiling, I've snagged a book deal. My YA novel is due out next year around this time (Sept. 10, 2013, if you'd like to mark your calendar).

So I'm wondering what to work on while I'm waiting and I'm also feeling kind of floundery because of stuff going on at the home front. Specifically, last weekend my husband and I dropped our first born child off at a college 648 miles away and now we're back home and son's bedroom is sadly empty but somehow I am still finding his clothes in the laundry. Also he didn't quite clean out all of his toiletries and whenever I walk by his bathroom I note the half-used deodorant and the squeezed up toothpaste container on the sink, and I wonder if I should clean that up (or not).

Which brings me to the actual point of this blog about cleaning (or rather, NOT cleaning). Because, this, dear readers, is what is preoccupying my mind and I must get it out of my head by writing about it: my realization over the weekend that I have likely failed big time in one very important parenting area. I never taught my brilliant boy how to clean a bathroom.

It is a stunning oversight on my part and someday his future wife can berate me, but today there is a more urgent cause for worry. My son lives in a suite with seven other boys and they share one bathroom and somehow the college neglected to tell the boys that they would be responsible for cleaning and stocking that bathroom. Well, as you can probably imagine, all of the parents had hearty laugh about that. What is 55,000 dollars a year paying for, etc. Then we ran out and bought toilet brushes and cleaning supplies and toilet paper and piled that up in the boys' bathroom and then wondered if any of that stuff would ever be, uh, actually utilized. I suppose we will find out at Parent's Weekend in October!

One of the moms told me that she overheard the boys talking.

Conversation:
Boy #1: "Do any of you know how to clean a bathroom?"
Boys # 2-7: "No."
Boy #8 (who is not my son): "I, uh, do, sort of."

I'm sure that kid is probably kicking himself now. Oh, we mothers (and I say mothers, because geez, isn't it the mothers who clean the bathrooms? and isn't this THE problem in the first place?) are kicking ourselves too and feeling pity for boy # 8 who should not be saddled with this job himself.

So, doing the only thing I know how to do, I told my son a story. This goes back to my own freshmen year a gabillion years ago, but I remember it vividly because it was so disgusting. It was Halloween and I went to a party hosted by a bunch of boys who lived in a very cool apartment-like dorm room, complete with a lovely kitchenette. I remember walking by that kitchenette and noting the splattered remains of a large pumpkin the boys had carved in the sink. Seeds, guts, and pumpkin entrails spilled out onto the counter, and there was the awesome carved pumpkin grinning over the mess.

Cut to: the end of the year. The same boys had a party and I walked through the same kitchenette, with the remains of that same mess spattered on the counter. But this time there was a plant growing up from the sink drain like Jack's Beanstalk, the vines climbing across the counter around the corroding mess, and sprouting darling little pumpkins. Yes. These boys had never cleaned up the carved pumpkin from back in the fall. Had never, I guess, used that sink again. And now they had a bizarre garden to show for it in their kitchenette.

My son seemed appropriately awestruck by my story.

But now that I think about it, he may have been contemplating potential chemistry/biological experiments brewing in his bathroom.

I Attempt to Dip my Toe into the Pool of Self-Promotion

(Full disclosure: I am not in any way an expert on marketing or publicity or social media.)

But I know, as a writer with a novel coming out in little more than a year, that I have got to get up to speed and fast. The book industry is in a state of angsty turmoil over the rise of e-books. Marketing budgets are not what they used to be (if they ever were) and publishing companies are asking authors to do more of their own publicity. Unless you are already a celebrity like Julie Andrews or Snooki, I’m sorry to say that no one is going to send you out on a multi-city book tour.

The trouble is I don’t have a degree in marketing. And I’m hesitant to shell out thousands of dollars to hire a publicist. When I first got my book contract I talked to a good friend about the pros and cons of hiring a publicist. My point was that I was an intelligent enough person—I should be able to navigate the publicity waters myself. "After all," I said, "I don’t hire anyone to clean my house, right? And anyway, the few times I did have a Merry Maid come in, they didn’t even do that great of a job, etc. I can do this. I’ll create my own buzz. I’ll set up my own book tours, yadda yadda ya."

My friend waited until I finished then she said simply: “But DO you clean your house?”

Haha. She is a funny one.

Okay. Maybe she's right, but I am a stubborn (and cheap) do-it-yourselfer.
Unfortunately, I'm also reluctant when it comes to selling myself.
So that’s another hurdle.

Forget the time and money involved in self-promotion. I’m struggling with the idea of self-promotion itself. I’ve heard horror stories of writers slipping manuscripts under bathroom stalls to editors, tweeting spam links to their self-published book series, driving around with boxes of books in their car trunks and hawking them like they’re selling kitchen tools on an infomercial. Uck. I have a hard time even talking about my book. The worse thing for me about querying agents (besides the rejection that usually followed) was the pitch part. I just wanted to send them a letter saying: "Here’s my manuscript. Thank you for reading it."

As soon as I announced my book deal, I've had people asking me what my book is about, and I feel like a deer in the headlights. I know I should have a prepared ten second elevator pitch—a couple of snappy sentences that sum up my novel, but instead I stammer and fall back on my inclination to say: "Um, here it is. Puh-lease read it."

Which is probably not the best way to self-promote. There’s got to be a middle ground. Somewhere between having a filthy house and managing to keep it clutter-free without shelling out the bucks for a housekeeper.

In the spirit of do-it-yourselferism (and probably also as a way to delay actually self-promoting), I have been researching all aspects of book-promotion and gearing up to do whatever I can to help my publishing company Beyond Words/Simon & Schuster market my book. (Plug: It’s a young adult novel called Thin Space) Yeah. I know. I know. Not the best elevator pitch. I’m working on it.

But my head’s dizzy by all of the marketing things I must do. Just to give you an idea what I’m talking about-- debut writers that I’ve been studying

1. Set up and maintain a website
2. Blog
3. Vlog
4. Review and promote each other’s books
5. Tweet
6. Maintain Facebook author and book pages
7. Host contests and giveaways
8. Plan a launch party at a local bookstore
9. Create “swag” –bookmarks and postcards, etc., related to the book
10. Put together a press kit
11. Attend/speak/sign books at writer conferences and conventions and book fairs
12. Give talks and sign books at bookstores
13. Talk and/or teach writing lessons at schools or give Skype visits
14. Write discussion questions for students and/or book clubs
15. Give blog interviews or old-fashioned radio ones

And somehow they do all of this while writing their next books.

Just writing this list now kind of makes me exhausted and overwhelmed. Luckily my book won’t be out until Sept. 2013. And lucky too that so many writers are willing to share their ideas.

My advice: pick their brains at conferences. Follow them on Twitter. Lurk around their websites. Many of them share how they promote their own books—what works and what doesn’t. Start with writers in your genre or who have novels coming out with your publishing company. It also helps to attend workshops and take advantage of a professional organization such as SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators).


Hands down the best resource I’ve stumbled upon is Marissa Meyer’s (author of CINDER) NaNoPubMo blog series. For thirty days Marissa shared all of her research—work she was doing to prepare for her own debut book launch last year. If you’re a soon-to-be published author (or plan to be) stop what you’re doing and read every one of Marissa’s posts on the subject.

Go on. Do it. And while you do, I promise I’ll work on that 10-second pitch for my novel.

Not Just Sitting Around Eating Bon-Bons

One of the best things I ever got out of attending a writing workshop was a new friend. It was July 2008 at the amazingly inspirational and life-changing Children’s Writing Conference at Chautauqua and I was pretty much at a crossroads in my writing life. Did I want to keep writing for children? was one of the many questions I had going into it. That conference is on the expensive side and it was hard to justify spending money like that on myself, specifically on a hobby that didn’t seem to be going anywhere in the career sense.

I clicked with a lot of people that week, some just dipping a toe into the writing pool and others already treading water on the deep end. I was searching for a person somewhere in the middle, maybe one who was ready to pull off the floaties and dunk her head under. I found her waiting in line at a porta-potty. Donna was an aspiring picture book writer, and she had a couple of novels under her belt too and they sounded interesting to me. We had a few things in common. Kids sort of the same age. (But she has four!) We’d both been English teachers, and we were spending our child-raising years as uber-PTA volunteers. We nervously exchanged manuscripts that day.

I say nervously because there is always this element of fear when you first look at someone’s writing (and know she is evaluating yours too). The biggest worry is that you won’t like it and how will you tell her without hurting her feelings? Ideally, you’d both be at a similar level and looking for the same kind feedback. Up to this point I'd never found someone like that, so I wasn’t holding my breath.

But, whew. What Donna wrote was pretty darned good and apparently she thought my stuff was worthwhile too. After the conference we started emailing each other and this correspondence quickly turned into a twice daily check-in. Every morning we email each other our goals for the day and every afternoon we write what we call our "accountability." At the end of the year I scrolled through all those emails and found that they were a record of Donna's and my writing journey and our friendship. There are our goals, of course, but also snippets of daily life, books we’ve read and errands we’ve run. Stuff we make for dinner. Funny and/or annoying things are kids and hubbies do.

Once Donna wrote that a friend of hers wondered what she did all day at home. The implication was that Donna must be sitting around eating bon-bons. She certainly wasn’t out working. Or cleaning her house. That accusation became a joke to us. Yes, we were sitting around eating bon-bons all day. That’s what writers do. For a Christmas present that year I compiled all of our emails and had them printed and bound on one of those self-published book sites. I titled the book Sitting Around Eating Bon-Bons and even used a picture of bon-bons for the cover art.

Now it’s an annual tradition, that correspondence book. I’m editing Book Three this week and it’s inspiring to see how far Donna and I have come since we met. I can’t count how many times we’ve talked each other out of quitting. And when one of us has any kind of success, the other feels it just as much, if not more so. Writing can be such a lonely activity. Also frustrating and exciting and heartbreaking and amazing. It’s a million times better when you have another person to share the journey with. All I can say is thank goodness Donna and I had the same inclination to head for the porta-potty when we did.

Musings on Cleanliness, Procrastination, and Italian Grandmothers

Today I need to clean my house. Relatives are coming in from out of town and eighteen people will be sitting down to dinner next week on Thanksgiving. So there is a lot to do and I must get right on it.

Or, I could delay all that and write about cleaning my house. I read this article once that Italian women are the best cleaners in the world. I think it was sponsored by the company that makes Swiffers or whatever they’re called. You know those mops with a cleaning cloth latched on for quick-dusting floors?

Apparently, Italian women weren’t buying that product at the same rate that other women were. The Swiffer people discovered that Italian women really get into cleaning, spending way more hours a week than anyone else. They have a different, cleaner, definition of clean. So the company began to market the Swiffer as a mop that would polish your already clean floors and their sales went up in Italy.

I don’t know if it’s true that Italian women are so much cleaner. I’m half-Italian, but that doesn’t seem to mean much, which you would see if you visited my house. My grandmother was extremely clean. The saying went that you could “eat off her floors.” And this was before Swiffer was around. 

I think my grandmother would’ve loved Swiffer (but only for post-cleaning, buffing purposes, of course). Once, I went to visit her and talk came around to her favorite hobby. She went through her weekly cleaning schedule with me. One day a week, for example, she emptied her kitchen cabinets and dusted them. Another day she washed out her washing machine. That was interesting to me.

I confess that I have never cleaned my washing machine. I guess I trust that it happens whenever I wash a load of clothes.

But I was feeling the pressure of my ethnicity several years ago when my Italian aunt came to visit. I went on a cleaning rampage through my house dusting corners that had never been dusted and scouring nooks that had never been scoured. It was then that I noticed that the mini blinds in all of the windows were filthy. (Possibly because I had never cleaned them.) This wasn’t the kind of dust you could simply Swiffer off.

I got online for mini-blind cleaning tips and the very first website I came to recommended throwing out your dirty mini blinds and buying new ones. Well, the half-Italian in me had a hearty laugh about that.

The next site was more helpful. Soak them outside in a baby pool was the advice. It happened to be like 100 degrees when I did this. I had sixteen mini blinds soaking and then drying out on my driveway. It took me all afternoon. It was a major sweaty production, to put it mildly, but I was committed. When they were all dry, I went to hang them and found that several of the mini blinds had broken during the process.

Long story short, my husband bought replacements that didn’t match the color exactly of the others, and in the end we bought ALL new ones.

They were only a few bucks apiece.

I don’t know what the moral of this story is. But I suspect my writing-a-blog-to-delay-cleaning tactic is drawing to a close. So with that I will sign off and begin the search for my dust cloth.

Between Projects: Reading Books and Cooking Vegetables

So my sweated/bled over manuscript has been sent out to my first First Readers, and the champagne and chocolate martinis have been drunk. Hooray. But now I’m faced with What To Do Next.

I don’t know what other writers do at this point. Some, like Stephen King, start right in on the next book. God love the guy. Apparently he writes 2000 words a day, every day, including birthdays and Christmas. Me, I need to give my mind a break. Plus there are all the nitty gritty things like cleaning toilets that I’ve put off and now are begging to be done. For example I’m sitting in my kitchen right now looking at a mound of papers spilling off my counter. Mostly these are college brochures stacking up for my son to sort through. But there are also movies and books to return, bills to pay, and another smattering of papers to sign, fill out, toss, etc. Then there are the other counters. And the other rooms (I just now noticed my Christmas dishes are still on display in the dining room. Also I’ve got a collection of candles on the table leftover from our power outage a month ago). These things will keep me busy for a while.

But I know myself well enough by now that cleaning alone (although necessary) is not going to cut it for me. In a few days my house will be spotless but I’ll be floundering, sitting in my pajamas at noon and putzing around feeling like there’s no point in my life and why am I not out there working a real job? Etc. It doesn’t help that this is the Cloud Season in Columbus. The gray and rainy days are relentless. They mock me when I’m not engaged in something productive. I NEED a purpose. And this purpose has to involve writing. Also some kind of goal helps too. One year I painted all the trim in my house. But now that's done. The point is I need something to occupy my time until the critiques of my first readers roll in and I can start Draft Three.

So here’s my challenge for myself during these potentially floundery weeks ahead:

1. I’m going to write every day. Something. Anything. Of course, every day I write my “Morning Page”—basically a journal of the junk that’s floating around in my head. I also resolve to write more on this blog. And I’ve started a project with my best writing friend, a back and forth middle grade novel with two points of view. (This is REAL writing, I suppose, but it’s not a daily thing because I have to wait for her to write the next chapter before I can write mine.)

2. I’m going to read more. Besides stacks of papers on my counters, I also have piles of books I’ve been meaning to read. This is the perfect time.

3. I’m going to work more vegetables into my family’s meals. I know this seems like an odd goal for a writer to have. But I’m also a mom and the primary cook in the family. Plus I’ve got all this FREE TIME now and I feel a tad guilty about the many chocolate chip pancakes I’ve served lately. I’ve got the latest Cooking Light magazine (also on the counter) and it features some interesting things you can do with brussel sprouts…

Which may make the kids yearn for the chocolate chip pancakes. I’ll keep you posted.