I just went from……

….. nervous as Hell to laughing my ass off.

That infamous Golden Ring is two days from my grasp. I can FEEL it.  Anyone who tells me “we’re kinda brain damaged” is ok in my book. I can work with brain damaged. LOL!

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In the words of Pat Sajak… the puzzle is ‘What are you doing?’

It’s not a prize puzzle, so I get nothing for answering, but I’ll tell you, anyway.

I’m taking a Xanax.

In less than one hour I need to make a phone call that could be a life changer. I’m not getting my hopes up just too high, in spite of the little thrill of excitement. Really, I am scared to death. I’m a nervous wreck and second guessing myself. Wow. I just might see a pattern there. Yes, that was sarcasm, because how many times have I second-guessed myself on this book?

The bad thing is, I know I’m perfectly capable of seeing it through and the expectations from the opposite side seem to be very clear. Still, I’m sitting here with sweaty palms and questioning the wisdom of it all. Chuckling a little because who woulda’ thunk that an unexpected call at nine o’clock on a Saturday night would lead to something like this on a Sunday.

Ah, geez. *face rub*

Well, if it goes well, you may get to see my second squee of this blog. If it goes badly, you won’t see anything at all because I’ll be too mortified, too crushed, to admit that it fell through.

Cross your fingers, shake your chickens, rattle your beads. I really WANT this.

Thank gods for Xanax.

 

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39, 617

The headache battle was a bitch, but I made it through a few chapters today. I’m now – according to the outline – about six chapters away from the end. That seems to be a problem for many reasons.

I was a lazy writer before I started it and now I’m falling back into the same habits. If I wasn’t, the word count would’ve jumped higher than it has at this point. The first few chapters are blistering cool, IMO, but the last few have been *bleh*. I’m losing my drive for this.

The plot bunnies aren’t gelling. They gel in my head, but they’re not translating well.

I think I need to step back, print it all out and look at the big picture. I’m rushing to the finish too. damned. fast.

Maybe tomorrow’s blog will be more entertaining, but I’m afraid that’s all you get right now. I’m not plotting covers – ok, so I do have an idea on that and have had one for some time now – or sharing stories about my editor yet, so there’s just not much to talk about.

Ta!

 

 

 

 

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This will not be entertaining….

However, it will be brief.

My brain stem is currently trying to explode out of the back of my head, but I wanted to state something for the record! Thing is, now I can’t find where I blogged about doing it in the first place. If I ever did. Maybe I just thought I did. Sorry, my head hurts. Anyway….

I did, in fact, as I knew I would, wait til the last minute to send off a short-short-short story to a publisher for an anthology. It was only about three double-spaced pages. They had a max, but no minimum, and it was originally written for something else. Then *boom*, I saw a call and it fit the same bill. One-dollar and eight cents later and it’s on its way.

That is all. Meds taken, I am going to rest.

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I’m being assimilated……

Pity-party from the other day over, I started back writing Monday afternoon. I’ve slammed in some good numbers since then. Word count is ….

Oh, holy HELL…. I put the Cruzer in the drive and my file wasn’t there. I about shit six tons of bricks until I noticed it defaulted to a different drive. Christ, gotta walk that one off. LOL! And email it to myself just so I can get my lungs out of my nose.

*WHEW*

Word count is 37, 539. *breathe* Not great progress for three days, not bad considering I wasn’t writing during the week for a while.  But then Facebook became my enemy…. and my friend.

My writer friends throw links at me, I follow. Follow. Follow. Screwing around and not getting any writing done. One thing leads to another and I end up among a group of people who have either self-published, have an E-pub, whatever. And I started reading. And reading. Annnnnnnnnnnnd reading. Not only their experiences but their links to this place, then that place. My FB wall is now jammed with links I gotta go BACK and finish reading. I’m slammed with information and trying to process it all. Like I told Nia earlier, if I’m gonna do something I have to find the way to do it that most tortures me.

I’ve learned a lot in three days.  Among those things…

Make your blogs short and entertaining. *snort* No, I am a verbose bitch.

Answer everybody. *snort* I’ll try. I’m lucky I blog at all.

The perky factor seems to be high. *snort* I’m screwed on that end. I’m a lot of things, but perky is reserved for my fake-ass day job.

Carry a notepad because you’ll need it to make blog notes and for the sudden Plot Bunny attacks. *waving the notes*

Better yet, get a micro-cassette recorder. *holding that up for tomorrow*

Brand yourself. Wtf? (don’t answer that, I know now)

NETWORK.  *snort* Have I ever mentioned I’m anti-social?

But above all….. be yourself. In your writing and your interactions. Don’t be afraid of what comes out of your fingertips.

So… that means I can still be a sick, twisted and anti-social individual that writes fic that is not for the squeamish? Cool.

Um… but it also means I gotta cut this short now according to rule #1. Bye!

(LOL!) 😉

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***zzzz*** Oh! I’m suppoooooosed to be.. what?

Writing. Yeah, that.

Um. No.

I stayed up way late (for me) to watch the Lifetime TV movie about J.K. Rowling and have only now gotten out of bed. I’m a true wuss when it comes to sleep. I have to have it or I do not function well. Staying up late and sleeping late means I won’t go to bed on time tonight and I’ll be off schedule with sleep for the rest of the week. Damnit.

My eyes popped open right on cue at 6:30 as per usual, but instead of getting up I looked out the window into the dark and snerked. No. And rolled back over. Usually, I’ll just groan and get up because I know I have pages to do. No.

The movie was about as good as you could expect out of Lifetime, so one can’t complain. I liked it because of scenes like the chess board in the coffee shop because I’ve done that; found inspiration in little off-handed things. There were a lot of things she did that I’ve experienced, like leave your husband when your child is little and one of your priorities being getting your writing out of that house. In my case it was my laptop and not a box, but still. What was it? Three years or something and she went from welfare to movie premiere? Just wow. I’ve always thought Rowling was the shit, I think more so now.

I mean, give Stephanie Meyer her due, she created a monster in Twilight, but who the Hell can top Harry Potter? You can compare Twilight to The Vampire Diaries. What would you attempt to compare with the Potter-verse? Nothing. Ok, so nothing I know about, anyway. And if you can find something, I’ll lay money that it only bloomed into existence after Harry. The originality of it all…. Rowling is the shit.

What does any of that have to do with me NOT getting out of bed? Simple. I was tired and I know Esteban Marquez is no boy wizard. I will not go from bean counting and killing bugs to movie premiers in three years if only I would have gotten up this morning to write. Not that Rowling’s story wasn’t inspiring, it was, but I’m being realistic. I love Este, but he’s no Harry. So, I slept.

My grandmother turns 86 tomorrow, so we’re taking her out to dinner today to celebrate. I have the next chapter on my brain NOW, while the house is quiet, but I can guarantee you I won’t have leisure to run with it once the house wakes up, which will be any second – and there goes my grandmother’s voice drifting up the hall, so I’m not even gonna try. Sometimes, it’s just not worth chewing through the straps of aggravation.

I’m going out for the Breakfast of Champions and ten minutes with my iPod. Self-torture because it wakes the vampires.

Lisa shared this gal’s blog on FB. I like her sense of humor, so give her a read.

http://jennifertalli.wordpress.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

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*blink*blink*blink*

I do believe I have screwed up.

My intention in the beginning had been to write a little every day, every day that I could, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Instead, I pop up on the weekends at the crack of dawn and write myself into exhaustion in an attempt to play catch up. Not only is it making me tired because I don’t get any sort of break from ‘work’ on the weekends – because make no mistake, this is work – but it’s also screwing up my flow. I needed a break, so I tried not to think about Este and Lien all week. MISTAKE.

This morning I had to read everything I had already written to get back into the game. Once done, hours of time blown because you know good and well I did some editing while I did that, it left me staring at the blinking cursor.

*blink*

*blink*

Go make a note on another chapter.

*blink*

*blink*

What the Hell is stuck on my toe?

*blink*

*blink*

Give the dog some water.

*blink*

*blink*

Need to call Sandra this weekend.

*BLINK*

*BLINK*

Really?

Yeah, I can’t do it like this anymore. It’s too hard to dive back into when you walk away from it that much. I even had a moment this week when I questioned the sanity of trying to finish. I smacked myself pretty hard over that one and got over it. Now if only this chapter would start moving. I still have no idea what was on my toe.

 

 

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33,925

Fought tooth and nail today for those 3-plus-k in words and still have one bitch of a chapter to get through. After that, the outline is pretty smooth sailing. Relatively. Get me through this and I feel optimistic about my self-imposed, end-of-August-wanna-be-deadline. Maybe.

I toyed with the idea of rebuilding a character to fit my needs within this story, but once I got to really looking at it… nah.

I find it amusing in a way that the easiest parts, that I thought I *knew* like the back of my hand, have become the hardest part to write, while what were once the hard parts are now easier.  Go figure.  That’s how it’s been for the last few weeks, anyway.

My head hurts. I’m done.

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Sometimes it’s worth it.

I’m sort of glad I was avoiding writing yesterday. My kiddo came over and we ended up spending the entire day bullshitting and painting together. I’ll trade pages for time like that any day of the week. She’s a great kid, a buddy beyond compare and proof that I’ve done at least ONE thing right.

But now….

My only email of the morning has been sent and the wireless is going OFF.  I’ve outlined the rest of the book, so let the word vomit begin.

 

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Procrastinating…..

I’ve done maybe a paragraph of my own writing and ended up on FB plugging everyone else’s on Goodreads, so why the Hell not? (one of my friends shared a Goodreads link and it snowballed)

Lisa Kessler’s book, Night Walker, comes out August 2 – I think.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11557788-night-walker

Marlena Frank’s got her story in an anthology.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11521410-rapunzel-s-daughters-and-other-tales

 

Now, back to procrastinating.

 

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