Finally!!!

FINALLY I can tell everyone!  I'm a finalist! My novel was good enough to be a finalist!

http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2012/04/finalist-8.html

Imagine if you will, a quiet family tableau.  Gramma is visiting and is happily watching Dancing with the Stars, while drinking Busch Light.  Two Chihuahuas are sleeping in the dog bed.  Daddy is sitting on the couch watching Dancing with the Stars because Gramma is his mother, and he has no choice.  BabyGirl is sitting on Mommy's lap, while Mommy tries to check her email and hold a baby until it's bath time.

Then all of a sudden, Mom flings the baby at Daddy, and proceeds to leap up and go jumping around the house, screeching and whooping, and yelling things like "I don't suck!" and "YEE-HA!"  Because Mommy is from Texas, and that's what happens.

Luckily, Daddy catches the baby, but the chihuahuas are startled awake and start barking.  The cats, who were asleep until Mommy went berserk and the dogs started barking, start racing around the house to fight over the best hiding spot until the Apocalypse is over.  The dogs, assuming the cats know something, start chasing the cats.  The cats run faster because they are now being chased.

Gramma spills her beer, and starts yelling about the waste of beer.

Daddy uses the baby to mop up the beer, and is yelling at Mommy to please explain what the hell is wrong with her brain and is she having a reverse stroke?

Mommy eventually manages to find enough words to explain that she's a finalist in the debut novelist competition she spent two weeks killing herself to enter. 

... Daddy says I'm exaggerating a bit, but it was TOTALLY like that.

Today is officially declared "I Don't Suck!" day.  Have some carrot cake and tea.

Procrastination is Productive

So far, I've made breakfast sandwiches (scrambled eggs with MAE farms sausage on leftover hamburger buns, sprinkled with the Sargento Mexican blend cheese), homemade carrot cake with cream-cheese icing, and Italian wedding soup is simmering on the stove.

I've also made a hell of a mess out of the kitchen that my darling husband cleaned this morning, but he doesn't mind because of the soup.  It's his favorite dish, and I swear it's one of the easiest to make.

Sausage, sauteed garlic, veggie and chicken broth, baby spinach, tarragon, nutmeg, lemon pepper, and sage if the sausage doesn't have it already in it.  Let the soup simmer deliciously until boiling, then add tortellini of whatever variety makes you happy.  Sprinkle with parmesan and serve.

I also did a massive shopping trip to restock the fridge.

I've also managed to procrastinate off most of the day instead of working on the e-pub format for my monograph for pre-seventeenth century pigments, hopefully titled "The Illuminator's Palette."  I'd initially submitted it for publication to the Compleat Anachronist, which is the academic publication of the Society for Creative Anachronism, but there've been "issues".  (One editor passed away suddenly, the other one didn't respond to five emails over 8 months from me.) 

But now I have something else to procrastinate - I.E. cleaning the kitchen, so I can now go happily work on my monograph.  I swear most of my major accomplishments are the direct result of avoiding accomplishing something else.

Free SIGNED copy of a book!

If you're interested in a signed copy of UNRAVELING by Liz Norris see the link below


http://liznorris.blogspot.com/2012/04/april-giveaway.html

Liz Norris is on my definitely-to-buy list, not just because she's getting fantastic reviews from EVERYWHERE, but because she's a super-generous author.  Not only does she have the book giveaway, but she's the cause of the Liz Norris Pay it Forward contest that helped me get my novel finished.  (A fantastic contest by the way.  The winner gets an all-expenses paid trip to the Backspace convention in NYC, and to eat lunch with Janet Reid, literary agent of internets fame!)  Utterly brilliant idea.

Freedom!

Mother-in-law season is over! There are no more chihuahuas defiling any carpeted surface in the house! 

There is no more crappy beer in my fridge!  (She likes Busch Light)

 Peanut butter may now be eaten with impunity! (The very idea of peanut butter makes her twitch. A knife dipped in peanut butter sitting in the sink makes her shriek like she saw a giant cockroach.)

In fact, I just had two peanut butter sandwiches, and a cappuccino.

I found an espresso machine at a garage sale for $2 last week. I figured there was something wrong with it, (and there was - it's missing a $8 filter widget that sits at the bottom of the brewing cup), but I love espresso so much I was willing to try it out.

I jerry-rigged around the missing filter widget by cutting down a paper filter, and hand-packing the espresso powder.  So now I have cappuccinos. (It's not quite good enough espresso to be by itself. It doesn't do the light brown color on top of the espresso after brewing like it should.)

But Mother-in-Law season is over!!  ...  For now.

It's Mother-In-Law Season! (I mean, spring.)

The winter has passed, and with it, the first mother-in-law of spring has appeared.  Flitting down south from Canada, (early this season, most likely due to the mild winter), the mother-in-law appeared a couple of weeks ago. 

The grandchild surely played a strong attracting force for the mother-in-law to roost for a few weeks.  The mother-in-law arrived with two chihuahuas, (scientists suspect some sort of symbiotic relationship), and built a nest in the spare bedroom. Cases of Busch Light appeared in the fridge, along with some Frank's Red Hot sauce, and a special jug of milk.  (Yes, cases. Beer time starts at five o'clock, and extends until she goes to bed, or about five or six beers.)

The guilty party

The chihuahuas have pooped on the bathroom rug far too many times to bother counting. 

The grandchild has been harangued for not walking or crawling yet. (and also played with, cajoled, adored, petted, gifted, and generally treated like the only and favored grandchild that she is.)

Garage sales and thrift stores have been perused and studied. (To great success on my end - new bedroom furniture, mixing bowl, silver platters, table linens, and all kinds of things.)

Frank's Hot sauce has been put on everything I've cooked. Omelets, pork chops, rosemary and salt-crusted lamb chops, savory crepes, corn chowder.  She really does put that shit on EVERYTHING.

The mother-in-law has also spent quite some time "scratching" in the yard, along with the robins and the brown threshers.  [Scratching in this connotation = raking up the leaves]

The baby's interactions with the mother-in-law, known to her as "Nana", appear primarily positive, though I am unsure about teaching her to play hockey with her toys and a wrapping paper tube, or having her hold the reins to the chihuahuas when they're in harness, and she's in a stroller.  Luckily one of the chihuahuas is ancient, decrepit, and not pulling anything anywhere, no matter how furiously the leash is whipped around.

The mother-in-law is already showing signs of preparing to wend her way back up north for the summer.  Cases of dog food (significantly cheaper in the states than Canada) have been purchased and stowed, the beer is showing signs of depletion, and the mother-in-law can be found muttering to herself about which stores she wishes to visit before leaving.

Mother-in-law season can be an entertaining time for all concerned, as long as proper care is taken to ensure that there is enough beer and meals at regular times. Oh, and that the bathroom is acceptably clean at all times.  

First novel finished!

Thanks to Janet Reid's phenomenal Liz Norris Pay It Forward contest, I got the push I needed to get the novel done.  It's been a couple years coming, and I wanted to write the process down in case I ever wanted to come back and see what the hell took so long.

When I got RIF'd from my job in 2009, I decided I'd take some time, and try to write. I bought a laptop, made a little desk area in a sunny spare room, and over the next four months, I struggled to write. I learned things along the way, like the fact that I needed music on while I wrote. I worked best between the hours of 11 and 4 in the afternoon, but at night I could write for hours.  I learned that if I didn't know where I was going, I couldn't write a single word, and trying to force it with the butt-in-chair theory was a miserable failure.  I also had a bad bout with depression over being fired for the first time in my life.

The only way I could get past the writer's block was to go do something else for a few weeks. My brain would chew on whatever had me stuck while I did housework, or read umpteen books, or wandered around in a daze.

I finished the first draft early 2010. It came in at about 45K, which is too damn short for the mystery genre.  I gave it to a couple people to read, and they all agreed that the book had one really major problem.  I'd started with one case, and then switched to another one as the 'main case' and they kept waiting for the first 50 pages to be relevant, which ruined the next 100.

And I knew it was a problem. I did. But I couldn't figure out how to fix it, so I tried to ignore it.  I spent the next eight months wrestling with how to resolve it, until inspiration hit like a bat to the head.  I also took a creative writing course in the fall semester of  2010, intending to go back to school and get a degree in English.


The going back to finish school plans derailed when I got pregnant mid-semester.  And I got a job with a place I used to work.  And I started a writing group in January of 2011.  I wrote on the novel here and there as I could, but between preparing for the baby, having the baby, simultaneously getting let go from the new job, and adjusting to the new world order, it wasn't much. I also lost my writing desk in the spare room, as we turned it into the guest room, because the guest room was now designated baby's room. Luckily, laptops mean writing wherever you want.

I managed to get back to the computer regularly by the end of 2011, and started regularly pushing words out.  I was hoping to get it finished before my 32nd birthday on March 8th, but on Feb 28th, Janet Reid posted the contest for debut authors. And I decided I was going to go for it. Not because I thought I would win, (though hope springs eternal) but because I work better with hard deadlines.
 
I managed to get the final bits done by March 3rd, 2012.  I gave the final draft to my beta readers, begging for a quick turn-around time. All of them, fantastic wonderful people all, got it back to me by March 10th, 2012.  I spent the next five days almost constantly editing.  My husband and I lived off freezer food while I worked. I slept only 5 hours a night every night, because my most productive time was between 10 p.m., (after the baby was definitely asleep) and 2 a.m.

While I was waiting on the beta readers, I worked on the query letter that had to go with the finished draft.  It was brief.  QueryShark recommends a max of 250 words, and I came in around 170.

Right now, I'm theoretically ready to submit to lots and lots of agents. But I'm spending the next two weeks catching up on all the chores I neglected, in preparation for my mother-in-law coming to visit. Whee!

I need habits, not resolutions

Every year, the arbitrary "Buy a new calendar day" strews the internet with Resolutions, and Tips for a Better Year, and other unhelpful hope-raising-subsequently-guilt-deepening ephemera.  I've tried making resolutions.  It doesn't work for me.

The last four years, I've carefully sat down and planned out how I can exercise more, and eat six small meals instead of two large, and will shop for local produce, and write every day, along with possibly starting a small side business, becoming a better heavy combat fighter, as well as fixing up the house.  It all seems reasonable on paper.  And then, like Hyperbole & A Half so eloquently/visually puts it, the wheels come off about a week later, because I am exhausted.

So I've decided to avoid the congratulations part of this cycle.  I'm just going to take each day at a time.  There will be no yesterday.  There is no tomorrow.  I will decide each day what I'm going to try to do.  Maybe I'll succeed at all.  Maybe I'll succeed at some.  Maybe I'll fail at all.

But if I fail, the really hard part to implement will be no castigation for failure.  No guilt.  No spending the evening feeling horrible about all the things I didn't do.  No patting myself on the back either for abnormal bursts of productivity. 

What I'm going to be proud of, is trends, and building habits.  If I manage to go to the gym 3 times a week, for an entire month, then I can pat myself on the back.  If I manage to write my words every day, I can be proud of myself. 

I need to build habits.  Habits are hard to build, but they're a lot harder to break.   By the end of 2012, I hope to have at least two new habits.