What doesn't kill me...

... has no impact at all?

I realized today that this is in fact how I see things. If I am not completely knocked down by something, then I should be fine. As if there's no middle ground.

I realized this after spending the morning asleep. As I mentioned last week, I've got a cold. It started to get better but then got stuck. I have a stabbing pain in my right cheekbone (thank you, sinuses), a hacking cough, and a sore spot on my right side which I think is from too much coughing and nose blowing.

But enough about me, how are you doing?

I was determined to work today. "I need to." Mr. W said I should rest. "I don't want to." "Well, you should."

FINE. So I lay down on the couch at about 10:30, figuring I'd be bored shortly. Sure enough, I heard the living room clock chime 10:45. OK, I'll stay here until 11 then get up and work.

The next thing I heard was the clock chiming 11:45. Hmm. Then 12:30 and nothing in between. Then 1.

I tend toward the "what are all these random things doing in the same place?" kind of dreams, and this was no exception. First, I had made some major changes to Aardvark's manuscript on paper and was dragging it around with me in one of two backpacks (with, inexplicably, a glass vase in there too). I eventually misplaced it, after a strange scene involving military men facing each other playing flutes and trading the flutes every few bars, and couldn't find it. I wasn't panicking, though; whenever I realized it was gone I just thought, "Well, I did it once, I can do it again."

I think that was the pre-11:45 dream. Later, I was following a man and what I recall as a dancing horse up a steep hill. At the top, they vanished and I was left looking down on a staircase. The thing started out steep, then became vertical, and then actually bent under itself so I couldn't see the stairs any more. At the bottom of that was a huge jump across to a platform that would let me climb back UP stairs and continue on my way.

There were spectators nearby, joking around and insisting I could do it and all that, and then someone yelled, "Make way for the children!" and a herd (pack? bunch? collection?) of penguins came marching around the corner.

The corner that was the alternate to the stairs and the jump and the stairs. Off to the side, where I hadn't looked, there was an easy, even paved, path to get where I wanted to go.

So I went, and eventually realized one of those spectators had my backpack. I turned around to go back and the penguins were following me and pecking at my legs and jumping up to wrap strands of my hair around my neck and try to strangle me, but I kept going.

I wish I could say I triumphantly grabbed the backpack, but I don't remember.

What I DO remember is seeing that alternate path and thinking, "There's another way. Remember to CHECK for one!"

It was after I got up and was making lunch that I realized I'm too insistent on "my way or the highway". This CAN be a good thing but not when my way involves plowing through being sick or refusing to acknowledge that I need a rest. Perseverance in the face of not feeling like working? Bring it on. Perseverance in the face of STILL having chills and a sore throat? Maybe not.

Mr. W was right. I HATE it when that happens. :)

The joys of a politely worded complaint letter

Back in June, I was bemoaning the dishwasher install in which Home Depot's two computer systems had different ideas of what my delivery date should be. At the time, I vowed to write a "strongly worded letter to Home Depot asking for my $50 delivery charge back." I didn't think it'd work but I felt the need to try.

Well, it DID work! I got a phone call from the store manager offering either a gift card or a discount on another appliance. The only appliance we could get at the moment is a microwave, since we are currently using the microwave oven that Mr. W had when I met him (in 1994!). There's rust in it (yes, really) but it still seems to be working well and I think we kind of want to see whether it'll still be running in another .... I just did the math and it gave me heart failure... 16 more years... how did I get so old?? I remember 1994 like it was yesterday. I barely remember yesterday, frankly, but 1994 is clear in my mind. Egad.

Wow.

Anyhow, if the microwave does give up the ghost, it'd probably be easier to just have a gift card instead of a discount on an appliance, so I politely requested such and it arrived in the mail yesterday! The polite but clearly worded letter did the trick. I'm impressed with Home Depot, I must say.

If you'll excuse me, I'm just going to sit over here and mutter, "1994. How could that be?" for a while.

Stoned in the parking lot

Got your attention? :)

So yesterday I went grocery shopping. As I was unloading my cart into the car, a wasp came over to see if I'd bought anything good.

I am not a fan of wasps. Or bees or house flies or anything that goes buzz right as it goes past my ear and makes me jump. So I tried to shoo it away, but it would not be shooed. Perhaps it was the same wasp who ruined my outdoor sit-and-work session at the nearby Starbucks and it was there to apologize? Okay, perhaps not.

But anyways, it wouldn't leave me be, and it was still dancing around my cart's handle when it was time to drive it back to the cart corral. So I didn't want to hold the handle, in case the wasp touched me, but I hate people who leave their cart littering the parking lot and I won't be one of those people.

A plan struck me, and I pushed the cart ahead of me and let it roll, then pushed it again, making sure each time that I wasn't anywhere near the still-hovering wasp, until I got to the corral, where I then nudged it into place.

But the wasp, maybe aware that I was about to run away, landed on my arm!

In my best dignified fashion, I threw my arms around and scurried away, and the wasp decided to stay behind. Hurrying back to the car, I kept brushing at my arms and I actually muttered out loud, "Don't touch me."

That's when I saw the sweet old lady standing by her car staring at me in a "I've dialed 9 and 1, don't make me do the other 1" kind of way.

Not stoned. Not covered in imaginary spiders. Just afraid of wasps and a little paranoid. I was going to try to explain it to her, but I figured it would just make things worse so I drove home snickering to myself. (Which, now that I think of it, probably looked weird too.)

Oh, well. At least I didn't get stung!

You may notice two things:

a) I haven't been posting daily. I missed one day because I forgot until I was about to fall asleep and I wasn't going to get up to post, and then the whole chain just fell apart. I am working on a philosophy of "no berating myself", so I won't apologize or beat myself up. I'm back now, though!

b) I've turned off the comments field. This doesn't mean I'm not interested in your opinions, though, so feel more than free to email me through my profile. I've noticed that a lot of my favourite blogs don't have the comments enabled and I'm going to try it myself and see how it works for me. If it works, or doesn't, for you, email and let me know.

What to believe

This is about romantic relationships, but I think it applies everywhere.

I read (too often... SUCH a time suck) the forums at www.etiquettehell.com. During a recent discussion about how to handle someone that you see as a friend but know has a crush on you, one of the posters said that her philosophy for relationships is:

Watch what the person says. Watch how s/he acts. Believe the most negative one.

I think this is probably a fabulous way to keep from getting wildly hurt during dating relationships, but I do think it also makes sense for other relationships.

I, of course, think about getting a literary agent. If agent X says she adores me and my writing but never returns my calls... what does the most negative interpretation say?

On the other hand, if agent Y is somewhat less effusive with her praise but is hugely responsive to me and puts tons of time into finding my books the perfect publisher, the interpretation is somewhat different.

I am going to keep this in mind from now on. Compare actions and words, and believe the most negative one. Makes a lot of sense!

Spring cleaning my life

This has been rather a strange week, filled with both creative success and sadness/frustration.

On the happy side, I finished Aardvark on Thursday. Now, it's only 32,000 words, which is nowhere close to being a novel, but it covers the essentials of what I wanted to say and I am pleased with that. I'm going to let it rest for a few weeks and then decide what, if anything, to do with it.

I've been trying to convince myself to start the next book's planning on Monday, but I just feel so gray these days. Do you get that feeling? Nothing's wrong but nothing feels hugely right either.

I did some free writing this morning to try to get at the source of the dull feeling that's lying over me, and I think it's coming 90% from doing the same old things over and over and 10% from obsessing over things I can't change and can't do anything about.

I'm bad with the "same old same old". I often won't even watch a new movie (even at home for free) because I haven't seen it before. Well, DUH, that's the point of watching a new movie. I know, but I just get these blocks about not enjoying it and then I don't watch. Same with books, although I am doing much better there since I switched almost exclusively to eBooks on my Palm.

So this week, I will spring clean the house AND spring clean my mind and creativity by doing something new every day. A movie I haven't watched before, a new author, coffee at a place I've never been (yes, I am one of those tedious people who doesn't like to try new restaurants :)... every single day! And I will blog about it.

That should at least help with the 90% part. It's so hard to get out of a rut, I find, but to be able to write with excitement and joy I need to be living those things, right?

Which takes me to the 10%. I love writing. At the moment, I don't love the industry side of it too much. I'm worrying far too much about things I can't control and obsessing over hidden meaning in rejection letters and all that sort of foolishness.

Therefore, I've gone through my blog roll and made some serious cuts. I will now read only one agent blog (Janet Reid's, because I find her both hilarious and informative) instead of the vast collection I had before, and I'm simply not going to worry about Raoul as it goes through the submission process. I have my procedures in place to send out queries as they're needed, and that's all I need to do.

I have an affirmation that I got from Carolyn See's "Making a Literary Life" (fantastic book, by the way): "Everything always works out for me, more exquisitely than I ever planned." I do believe that I'm meant to be writing, and I further believe I'm meant to be published eventually. The timing of it is not up to me. What is up to me is how hard I work and how much life I bring to my writing.

Next week my "work" is getting the life back in my life. The following week we can worry about the writing. :)

Spring is (finally!) coming. What are you going to do this week to enjoy it?

The Joy of Doing Things Badly

I would personally be a prime candidate for writing a book called, "The Joy of Doing Things in an Extremely Uptight Fashion While Striving for Unnecessary Perfection", but that wouldn't be a fun read, would it? I've almost never been able to relax and just enjoy what I do.

When I started reading Veronica Chambers' "The Joy of Doing Things Badly" this morning, I honestly wasn't expecting much. The description at www.fictionwise.com made it sound a little fluffy, but it was half price so I figured I'd give it a try, maybe have a few giggles, and move on with my life.

But look at this quote:

We think everything we do has to be up to snuff, and we forget that the pure, uncensored joy of living in our own skin comes when we are not attached, 24/7, to either our fans or our critics.

It's on screen #44 of the 1209-screen book (remember, for me it's an eBook :), and it stopped me cold.

Joy? I work hard. Most of the time. Although rarely 100% to my own standards. But even when I DO meet my standards, I tend not to find much joy in it because I always figure I could have done more.

To take just one of the many examples I could give, last May I ran two half marathons, two weeks apart. The first was a lot of fun. (I do realize that for non-runners, 'fun' and 'half marathon' don't go together, but they do, trust me. :) The second was agonizing, and I nearly quit on several occasions.

Here is a picture of me at the finish of the second race.


Do I look happy? Compare me with the woman behind me. SHE looks happy, doesn't she? I look like I'm finishing a death march. Which is exactly how that race felt. I was utterly exhausted and miserable and right at the edge of quitting for at least half the 13.1 miles.

So what changed? For the first race, my first race of the year, I just wanted to have a comfortable race and feel like I'd done well, like I'd given a good solid effort. For the second, I decided (based on precisely nothing) that I had to be five minutes faster. The entire race, I was fighting myself to go faster than I could handle. And I had a terrible day.

I think, I hope, that "The Joy of Doing Things Badly" will help me learn how to NOT do things like this to myself.

I am a planner and goal-setter and I will always be one, and I'm fine with that. Everything I've done that I'm proud of has come as a result of my planning. But I also have to accept that a) not everything will go as I've planned and b) damn it, I have to have fun along the way.

In the first draft of Aardvark, one character says to another, "Whether life is about the journey or the destination doesn't matter, because you don't seem to be enjoying either." We need to enjoy our lives, my friends. We really do.

I'm doing a 14 km training run on Sunday morning, and I am going to run that thing with a "I'm so freakin' lucky to be strong and healthy and able to run" attitude, and I will relax and have fun. Then I will go out for lunch and have dessert. :)

Do something this weekend (or next week if you don't see this until then, or next February if that's when it works for you) that you really enjoy. Just a little thing or a big huge thing. But do something.

It's your life. Enjoy it!

Psychic? You should have known.

I went to Starbucks this afternoon to write, not because I needed to but because I felt like it. (So there. :)

I wrote just over 5000 words today, which I think may be my highest one-day total ever. My brain feels... odd. Have you ever written a three-hour exam? Then you know. It feels all stunned in there. (Yes, this is different from usual!) But I LOVE that feeling.

Anyhow, I finished writing, mostly because the laptop had only 10 minutes of battery life left since I could have kept going, and headed out to the car. Once in the car, I realized someone had tucked a flyer under my windshield wiper.

The right thing to do, of course, is to get out and remove the flyer. (Firefox's spell checker is insisting I want 'flier', but that totally doesn't look right. Is this another American/Canadian spelling thing? Well, whatever. I'm not changing it, eh?)

Did I do this? Somehow it didn't even occur to me. Instead, I drove off, flyer/flier flapping in the breeze.

When I got home, I pulled it off the wiper. It's for a local psychic. I didn't read the whole thing but it talks about getting rid of bad luck and dealing with someone who's put the evil eye on you.

You know who I want to put an evil eye on? People who stick fl*ers on my windshield.

And if this person were really a psychic, they should have known they were wasting their time, 'cause I balled that thing up and threw it out.

Although now I regret it, because I don't know in which direction to send my evil eye.

Why do women do this?

I was at band last night (I play clarinet in a concert band) and we were working on a new piece. One of the women who sits near me was having a bit of trouble with a particular section at first but then got it figured out. Shortly after she got it, the conductor went through that section again, and a group of people in the back completely lost track of the correct speed and basically made up their own.

This, of course, made the piece sound like a bunch of instruments falling down the stairs instead of anything musical, and the conductor raised both arms to cover his face in an "it's exploding!" kind of gesture.

And the woman near me, who'd played her part perfectly, calls out, "Sorry!"

One of the topics I have already worked into books and plan to focus on more directly in the future is this tendency of women to assume things are their fault when they are clearly not. It drives me insane to see good strong women belittling themselves:

• "Yeah, I'm doing the best I can at work, but my boss isn't happy and I keep beating myself up over that, trying to figure out what the boss wants that I'm not providing."
  
  
• "I exercise and eat right at all times but I don't lose weight, so I'm a failure."
  (Gee, Heather, sound familiar??)
  
  
• "My husband/boyfriend/whatever isn't perfectly happy and I must make him so, no matter what it does to me, and I'm wrong because I haven't made that happen yet."

My friend at band was NOT at fault for the problem. And frankly, even if she had been, there was no need to apologize. That's what rehearsals are for: to fix the problems.

When something truly IS your fault, of course it's fine to apologize. But if you're spending time and energy analyzing everyone else's reactions to everything you do and struggling to solve their problems even when you're not sure those problems have anything to do with you, perhaps that time and energy could be better spent on things that matter to you.

Ironically, I find myself wanting to end this with a "I hope this doesn't offend you" message. But I won't. :)

Have a great day, folks, and do at least one good thing for yourself today!

Sweatin' at the shoe store

I am obsessed with soft/fuzzy clothing. I am currently wearing a velvet skirt (one of three that I own, and I'd love to have more) despite the fact that it has WARMED UP to -10 degrees Celsius outside. (And yes, I WAS outside, I went to Starbucks.) I nearly always have a shawl on, of some degree of fluffiness. And my newfound obsession with fingerless mitts fits the trend, as those are also always made of soft yarns.

But the showpiece of my fuzzy stuff collection is my big blue coat. It is big (could nearly fit another one of me in it) and wow, is it ever blue:

See what I mean? This picture is actually a good representation of the colour and texture: this thing is a rich cobalt blue and PLUSHY. I hardly ever wear it without at least one compliment, and I have been mauled by more strangers than should be legal.

Now, when one has a coat of this calibre of "wow, holy coat, Batman!", one needs boots that do not detract from it. Unfortunately, one is also cheap. Therefore, I have been wearing these boots:

These boots were $20 from Avon like three years ago. They are also:

a) not that warm
b) salt-stained, as you can see
c) not exactly the right colour for the coat
d) leaking
e) all of the above.

Clearly, time to replace the cheap crappy boots.

However, the shoe stores, to my surprise, are now filled with sandals. I had heard of this whole "can't buy stuff in season thing", but this is the first time it reared up and bit me. It is February. It is Canada. It is COLD here, people. Why can't I buy boots?

Actually, I COULD, if I didn't mind four-inch spike heels and no treads. But I did mind this. Quite a lot. As well, due to my past blood clot, my right calf is a good inch bigger than my left, which makes high boots tricky, but my skirt-wearing self can't get away with ankle boots.

And then I saw boots. In the clearance area. Tall, with fake furry lining AND fur sticking out the top. Black fur. SO soft. But the boots themselves were an odd nylon, almost greyish instead of black. (You're understanding why they were in the clearance, yes?) I tried them on, and they looked strange with the coat. And they were insanely warm. But they did fit both calves, and they were furry. And I likes me furry clothes.

Even just standing in these boots, my feet started to get overheated. I can't imagine how I'd survive wearing them for more than five minutes. But, as mentioned, furry.

I continued the hunt and eventually found another option:

Not furry, but also a lot classier. I guess this is a sign of maturity, because I bought the classy boots instead of the cute furry ones. (If this is maturity, someone come pick it up, because I did NOT order it. :)

The boots are a bit loose on my left calf and a close (but not over-tight) fit on the right, and I think they look not bad with my skirt.


I just hope they don't leak. Because I am NOT trying to replace them any time soon!

(This picture also provides proof of yesterday's "25 things" list - toenails are painted. :)

Aardvark is coming along but is not yet at a point where I can explain it to anyone. But it IS coming along, and that's good! I hope to be able to articulate it to some degree next week, and when I can, I will post here AND make it a page on my web site.

Unless I'm too busy taking pictures of my feet. :)

Heather

30 posts in 30 days?

November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), in which approximately a gazillion people write a 50,000 word novel in a month. As Raoul's 86,000 word first draft took me 52 days, and didn't feel stressful, I don't think I need to do NaNoWriMo.

However, today I discovered NaBloPoMo, the National Blog Posting Month. THIS we need to do. The odd picture of a LolCat and a promise to post more does not a blog make, and I want a blog. (Am I the only one who's not always sure WHY I want a blog? I like rambling, but...)

So, today is November 3rd. By one criterion I am already a failure since I missed the first two days of the month. However, I will post for 30 straight days, thereby fulfilling the spirit of the thing.

It's breakfast time, though, and I don't know what else to post! I will think up some brilliant topics (brilliant to me, anyhow... your mileage may vary) and use them later this week. In the meantime, here's what I'm up to this week:

Monday:

• stretch class in the morning (wherein I attempt not to feel bad about being utterly out-stretched by ladies old enough to be my grandmother)
• editing Raoul in the afternoon (FYI, Raoul now has a title! SHINY.). This will likely take place at Starbucks as today is 'test the fire alarms throughout the condo building and drive Heather mad' day.)

Tuesday:

• someone has actually considered me capable of holding employment, so I'll be working at her pet supply store. (Poor kid... perhaps I dropped her on her head one too many times when we were little).
• groceries shall be purchased.
• Raoul will be edited if there is time. I hope there will be.

Wednesday:

• the good: I will spend the morning editing Raoul
• the bad: I have to get my teeth cleaned in the afternoon.
• the ugly: I chipped a tooth last week, so there will be another appointment. Urgh.

Thursday:

• Raoul in the morning. (Incidentally, I love saying stuff like, "I'm hanging out with Raoul" or "I'll be doing Raoul all day." Is that pathetic?)
• unless I was fired on Tuesday, another afternoon at the sweat shop

Friday:

• hehehe. I'll be doing Raoul all day.

And of course there will be a daily blog post, and I will also update my 101 things in 1001 days list and my books I've read list, as progress has been made in both areas even though there's been no tracking. It looks like rather a lot all written out. Especially since "doing Raoul" often involves spending twenty minutes or more on a particular sentence, until the back half of my brain feels like I've slammed it repeatedly against a wall.

Oh, well. Now that I know what I'm doing, I'm off to do it.

After breakfast, of course.

Nice... nothing, then lolcats!

I AM still alive and still doing stuff... posting here just isn't part of the 'stuff'.

I plan an update in the next few days. In the meantime, know:

- Raoul is my favourite book ever.
- I will continue in this opinion, most likely, until I'm midway through the next one, at which point THAT will be my favourite book ever and Raoul will be "that book I did that I liked". (This is the relationship I now have with Seven.)
- I have a blinding headache. 2.5 hours of concert band practice tonight? Do not want.

Heather

Sapphire the LOLCat

I love my cat. She's always doing something new and different. Or at least sleeping in a different place. Which is close enough, right?



The first two bears were the reason I took the picture - just thought she looked so cute with them. When I brought the picture into the computer, I spotted the third sneaky-looking bear.

Is it a bad sign that three stuffed polar bears linger in one corner of a room, and they're by no means the sum total of my bear collection? Nah. :)

Vacation: I could get used to this!

The first few days were surprisingly rough. I played a lot of video games because, frankly, I couldn't think of anything else to do. Raoul seemed to be pulsing in its Word file, calling, "Come on and edit me. You know you want to." And it was right, I did.

And I still do, but now I can wait. :) This week I've become less slug-like. I spent 2 hours yesterday deep-cleaning the big fish tank, which I've meant to do forever but haven't had time. Well, I have the time, so I took it, and enjoyed it.

My fifteen minutes of reading a day is continuing, and I'm gradually returning to my old "just pick up a book and read it, don't worry if it's in your genre or relevant or going to be any good" style. Welcome back, old friend. I have so missed you.

The 101 tasks are ongoing but I'm not blogging them because I haven't felt like it, and I'm on vacation. :) But I AM progressing, and maybe this weekend I'll report.

I have not spent any serious time on writing-related stuff since the end of July. All my industry-related blogs are on hold, I've done nothing on Raoul or on coming up with the next book (well, not much... I occasionally ponder something as I fall asleep, but I love doing that so I think it's okay!), and I am beginning to feel less tired and less overwhelmed.

So far, the month is a success!

Heather

Reading every day

Those of you who know me well will be shocked by this: I haven't been reading much lately. In fact, I've had to force myself to read.

As a child, I once (once!) told my parents I didn't feel like reading. They took me to the hospital. I had to have my tonsils out. I have always been a voracious reader.

But as a writer, I've been finding it increasingly hard to read. I see things that don't make sense, badly written passages and so on, in a different way than I used to, and I miss my old style of just tearing through books.

I've been trying to fix this by telling myself to read a book a week, but it hasn't worked. It's made reading a chore, and that's even worse.

So, I've made a resolution. I read a new novel for 15 minutes a day. I can read longer, of course, but 15 is all that's required. It can be an author I've read before, but only books I haven't read before count. I started the day after my birthday, and I will continue until my next birthday.

In those two weeks, I've read three novels and am partway through the fourth. True, some days I got the 15 minutes in right before bed (and I set an alarm on the Palm to make sure I truly did the full 15!) but I haven't missed a day.

Related, I'm also planning a 'three strikes' policy. I've always been one to finish books even when I hate them, but now that just doesn't seem to make sense. So, a book gets three strikes. If there are three separate instances of ridiculous characters or insane interpretations of situations or "too stupid to live" behaviour, the book is no longer worth my time.

My current book is at two strikes (one for a character, in one paragraph, going from "OMG they're demons you can't even be friends with one" to "you're pregnant by one? congrats" and being genuinely happy. urgh) and based on how it's going I anticipate the next one coming later today. :) SO then I'll just admit that this woman's best-seller status makes no sense and move on with my life.

I know I'm not the only one who'd like to read more than I do. Perhaps this resolution would work for you too? 15 minutes isn't that hard to find, but if it is make it 10, or even 5.

But do read.

June 27, 2008: Heather needs help (seriously)

Just read a blog post from Lauren McLaughlin (written back in April) in which she talks about needing time off, needing a six-week vacation.

I commented to Mr. W this morning that, while I am still loving Raoul, I'm finding it harder and harder to drop myself into that chair and make it happen. Once I'm there, it's great (really... I love the writing process) but getting there is tough. I HAVE been getting there, haven't missed a session, but the crowbar required to get me there is getting larger and larger.

I expect Raoul to be done by the end of July, and then I'd planned to spend August working on finding the next book. But what if I took a break instead?

I have been writing full-time since 2005. I finally dealt with a crippling fear of success/failure (not entirely sure it wasn't both) in early 2006, and since then there's been no time off. Since 2006, I have:
- completed the two half novels I had been stuck on (Polar Bear and a children's book I wrote for the volleyball team at the last school I worked)
- written four full first draft novels (Seven, Seven's ancestor, one that's never seen the light of day codenamed Gillian, and "The House of Her Dreams", a moderately creepy suspense I wrote for my sister). All of these also had a planning phase of 1-2 months beforehand.
- revised Polar Bear at least ten times (possibly more like 15)
- revised Seven's ancestor twice
- revised Seven twice
- spent a month fighting for Raoul's concept
- written half of Raoul's first draft

That's basically 1.5 years. I feel a wide variety of emotions re-reading this list: a little pride, mixed with awe, sprinkled with shock. HOW can I still not feel like I'm getting enough done?

Because I haven't sold yet? I don't think that's why. I've come to terms with the fact that the selling part isn't under my control and I accept that I'm writing the books first for me because I love them, and second for however many readers I can get. That's how I fixed the 2005 fears, and it's been working.

I do need a vacation. But I genuinely don't know what I'd do with myself for all that time. Taking a trip someplace for the month is not an option for a variety of reasons, so I'd be here. And how would I be here and not working?

Would reading and re-reading writing books, and taking courses, be a vacation?

How can I possibly not know what would constitute a vacation?

But I don't.

If you do, especially if you're another crazy-driven type like myself, let me know. Because I need one. Badly. Or at some point, the brain and creativity will give out and then I'll have nothing.

I get the rest concept on the exercise front. Training for marathon running makes it painfully clear - you can't just keep building. But here it feels different.

Here, I feel afraid. Afraid of what, I don't know. But deeply afraid.

Feedback, please. Here or on facebook or via email or via carrier pigeon or even by phone if you must. But I needs the helps.

May 13, 2008: Too much tea?

I didn't believe it was possible to have too much tea. It's like having too much happiness or too many polar bears. (That last one could be just me.) But it is possible to have too much tea, and, as the LOLcats say, "I has it."

The picture shows an entire shelf in the kitchen cupboard I organized today, full right to the back. There's also a single box in a different cupboard because I just couldn't make it fit. Several are duplicates (I have three tins of strawberry tea, which I do like, but as far as I know we're not suffering a tea shortage so I could likely have bought more later) but most are different flavours. I drink one cup a day, two at the most. Egad. Still, it's nice to have options, right?

This week, I'm working through Margie Lawson's emotions course, about writing emotions and non-verbal communication. I've made some changes to Seven as a result, and am working on internalizing this material so I'll automatically write Raoul that way. Interesting stuff!

Writing Project: Raoul's planning - nearing the end!
Time Planned: 2 hours
Time Spent: 2 hours
Favourite Part: Recognizing the 'big decision point' that should have been near the end of the book was too early, and fixing it by just dragging scene titles around. Ah, outlining. :)

Exercise: scheduled rest day
One Fun Thing I Did Today: changed my Facebook profile picture and my Blogger picture to be the one taken after the race. I'm holding my race medal (although not facing forward for some reason) and wearing a plushy blue sweater I crocheted that I love.

April 25, 2008: Branch out, baby!

I spent the better part of the day at a crafting show. Yarn galore, and lots of other things that (thankfully) I'm not into. I am now the proud owner of:

a) lace-weight wool (basically, thick thread) in a gorgeous mix of purples, blues, and greens. Just like my wrist tattoo, basically, only in yarn. This will be a shawl one day. Pattern not yet decided, but oh, the fun I'll have trying to pick one! :)





b) a small skein of recycled silk. This is apparently spun from snippets of sari fabric, and it's stunningly beautiful. Mine is similar to the blue shade but with more purples and greens. Absolutely no clue what it'll become, but it refused to stay at the show and insisted on coming home with me. Cannot argue with yarn!





c) 16 balls of Bernat Black Lites, a beautiful black yarn. Mine is like the picture but with blue strands through it. It was $0.97 a ball and I sort of went crazy. I also bought a pattern book for $0.97 and this yarn will become a knit cardigan once the first cardigan is finished. Sometime in 2098, I'm thinking.


d) Five balls of Bernat Haven in a soft green. This is going to be a snuggly little wrap.



Why am I posting all of this? Besides the fact that yarn is purty? Because I have developed an unfortunate tendency to stick to the patterns in crafting, especially crocheting. I don't seem to just pick up a hook and some yarn and just play. And just playing is probably the best thing I can do, at least sometimes.

I need to play with the books too... some of my favourite scenes in my own writing are the ones where I just thought, "Okay, this is weird but let's try it out"... and being just a bit off-kilter made the scene amazingly interesting. Now that writing is my career, it's tougher to do that, and it's also probably more necessary. So I will do more of it with the yarn as well, and perhaps it will carry over into the writing. And if not, at least I'll have a neat shawl or something to wear. :)

Writing Project: none - considering today a 'weekend day' because of the craft show
Time Planned: zilch
Time Spent: exactly as planned
Favourite Part: driving along to/from the show and having bits and pieces of the book form themselves in my head - 'weekends' don't really exist when a book's trying to figure itself out!

Exercise: 45 minutes elliptical - which is great, except it was SUPPOSED to be 30 minutes and 30 minutes of weights, but I forgot and just did the elliptical. Oh well.
One Fun Thing I Did Today: petted some seriously gorgeously soft yarns, and got to see some yarns 'in person' I've only ever seen on the Internet

April 18, 2008: Last long run before the half-marathons

I ran for 2.25 hours today. It's been quite a while (too long) since I did a run longer than about 1.5 hours. That last 45 minutes... harder than the entire rest of the thing.

That's life, though, ain't it? Putting the finishing touches on a book is often harder than writing the first draft, doing the last few bits of a housework task seem harder than doing the rest of it. I'm working on being the kind of person who finishes what I start, and the running can train me to do that.

And now, because I ran 2.25 hours, I'm off to bed. :)