Taking Myself Seriously

I bet millions of people have checked out this blog in the MONTHS since I last wrote on it. And then they left.

Yup, they read the title, realized I was serious about this whole not writing stuff, and left.

I don't blame them.

One could say that I took my own words too seriously. Yup. I seriously decided I wouldn't write anymore (dammit!) and seriously took steps to make sure I didn't.

But one would be wrong.

You see, I didn't write here because I didn't take my writing seriously. I had decided NOT to be serious about my writing. As a result, I didn't write. Day after day, night after night, opportunity after opportunity, I let the voices in my head talk my out of writing.

Not anymore.

I vow, from this day forward, to take my writing seriously. Seriously, I do. I changed my profile. I quit my job. I have been slowly weeding all sorts of distractions out of my life to make sure I have room for writing, to make sure I have time to take writing seriously.

So, if you've checked back here a few times, come again. I'll be here. And if you just happened on this blog by chance, come back.

Or don't. Either way, I'm seriously writing.

Why the Hell am I NOT Writing?

I'm not writing.

I know you know that.

I know that you know that I know that you know that. Yet I keep repeating it all over the 'Net. Ad nauseam. Yup, you're probably gagging at this point. I know I'm gagging.

Yet I'm not writing.

It's hard to write and gag at the same time. If you don't believe me, go try it for yourself. You'll see. Besides, at least then you'll be off doing something instead of reading about me not doing it.

Let me tell you what else it's hard to do AND write at the same time:

1. Eat. Peanut butter mushed into a laptop does it no good. And I can't type one-handed, either. When, oh when, will somebody invent an automatic feeder?

2. Sweep, mop, clean the shower, do laundry, or any other type of housework. Not physically possible.

3. Write Christmas cards. Sure, I have a pen in hand, but I can only handle one form of writing at a time, and it's no good to get ONE Christmas card done a day. I need LOTS of Christmas cards done. And fast. Now would be good.

4. Drive. Now we're moving into dangerous territory--like smash-the-laptop-into-my-face-when-I-slam-the-car-into-a-tree territory. Please DON'T go out and try this one. I promise, even without attempting it myself, that it won't end well.

5. Grade papers. I don't have much longer on this one, since grades are due Thursday, but it still eats up writing time.

6. Help kids with homework. And, no, I don't mean DO the kids' homework. I'm pretty strict about that. But I'm continually amazed at the perception of my kids. As soon as they think my mind has wandered somewhere else, they suddenly need my help. How did they get that intuitive?

7. Attend stuff--whether a play, a party, a meeting, or anything else where human interaction is expected. Hosting a party is even worse! Why couldn't I just make myself a recluse this time of year? I could be Emily Dickinson. Though I wouldn't wear my hair like that. Talk about homely!

I could add more, but the truth is that EVERYTHING I'm doing right now--or needing to do--simply doesn't allow me to write. The problem isn't all the stuff. It's that I'm allowing it to take the place of writing. I'm placing writing at the bottom of my list, under "clean out the fridge" and "donate clothing to Salvation Army."

Until I make writing a priority, it won't happen.

Hopefully I'll move it up soon. I've got some deadlines coming up, and I'd love to think that once they are over, I'll get to writing, but I know better. I'll have two classes to prep for January, books to read, housework to do (forever!), and I probably will still put writing off.

It's all my fault, and I know it. And if you're not writing--or doing the things you say you love doing but never do--then you're at fault, too.

I just wish KNOWING this stuff made me stop doing it... and start writing again. Maybe for Christmas I'll get some free time. And I'll use it more wisely. I'll let you know.

What do you want in your stocking this year?

OMG, I'm POSTING!

I believe my last post was in APRIL! I so suck! No, please don't comment that I don't suck, for I won't believe you. This is not the blog where people are supposed to be all nice to each other and say polite things. Nope, not the place. Give it to me honestly, or don't comment.

Fine, then, don't comment. Who said I wanted your comments anyway...

Besides, I'm posting, so nobody should complain. I'm sure you're so giddy that I'm here again that you almost spilled your coffee on your new pajama pants. And I'm only posting so that you can know why I'm such a non-posting goofball.

You see, I pretty much took four months off. Yup, May to August, to be precise, and now that I'm back on a roll and as busy as it is physically possible to be, I'm posting. Weird, huh? I had far more time during the summer, and I managed to accomplish absolutely nothing. Also weird.

Anyway, now that my kids are back in school, I find I have a TON of new work to do. These are my current jobs. I've put a dollar sign by those jobs which actually pay money, but don't believe for a moment that this is why I've added them to my weekly schedule. I'm a month in to most of them, and I'm a bit out of breath, but I finally feel like I have stuff to get up for in the morning, stuff that makes my heart beat wildly with excitement. I've also marked stuff that's new for this year. So, here's the list:

1. Director of the Bainbridge-Decatur County Center for the Arts (New)($): I was on the board last year, but everything shifted over the summer, and now I handle publicity for classes and art shows for a beautiful, historic Bainbridge Firehouse downtown which has been turned into an art gallery and meeting center.

2. College Instructor (New)($): I'm only teaching one class, but it's English, so it still gives me plenty of grading.

3. Director of Children's Choir: As I did last year, I'm directing 2- to 11-year-olds in my church's annual musical for Christmas.

4. Mother and Homework Helper: I'm on kid duty every afternoon, sometimes all afternoon and evening. The hardest part of this so far was getting my kids to realize they were back at school, and homework was a requirement.

5. Zumba instructor ($): I've cut down my classes a bit, but I still teach this two days a week. Many people want me to teach more, but I'm determined to leave my evenings free.

6. Author/Researcher of Spirits and Legends of the Chattahoochee Trace ($?): This is one of those projects that hopefully will pay off in a little bit, but I'll have to put in all the research and time and travel first, most likely. I'm excited about it, though, for I love research into legends and ghosts, especially when the research involves both.

7. Editor/Ghost Writer ($): I've done three of these projects over the last few months, and I just received another assignment. This latest one is just for editing, though, and I could not be more pleased. She's a great person and a great writer, and I am grateful not to be ghost writing, for that is a far harder task to undertake, as I have discovered through the past year. Editing is also great for my own writing, so this is good practice.

8. Organizer/Board Member for Women's Shelter: This is just starting up in our town, and we're busy collecting furniture and donations for it, organizing fundraisers, and, in my case, creating brochures for it, editing policies, and figuring out ways to get the whole thing going. I am by far not the most active board member, but that is only because the other ones are SOOOO hard working!

I'm also busy on other continuous projects--things like sewing for my kids and myself, painting and drawing, framing projects, and my continuous list of chores to keep the household going. I may very well have missed something, but I can edit this post (Thank God!).

So, what have all of you been up to?

Not Writing--Tending the Sick

This week my free time has been spent on something more serious. Mary Jean, a dear friend of mine here in my new hometown in Georgia, was diagnosed with cancer, and, given her health, was unable to go through treatment for it.

Instead of writing, I spent several mornings and afternoons with this sweet woman, reading to her, talking with her, fetching her grape juice and ice chips, and holding her hand as she explained to me how sorry she was. She was ready to go, she said, but she didn't think I was ready for her to go.

She was right. I wasn't ready. But I was so grateful to have these hours to spend with her.

On Friday they brought her husband from his nursing home to visit her one last time, and her house was filled with friends and relatives. And late on Friday night, dear Mary Jean passed away.

I didn't waste a moment. Not one second of that time was a waste. I worked on my son's comforter while I was there, and for the rest of my life, when I see that quilt, I will think of Mary Jean.

And I did write. I wrote a poem for her, while she slept:

FOR MARY JEAN

The birds are calling

For you

Mary Jean

You will fly

Away

Soon

Too soon for me

I promise

I won't forget

The patch of sunshine

Lighting your angel hair

The books

The stories

The breaths we shared

As our two lives

Connected

For that too short moment

Before you flew

Away

Before you followed

The birds that called for you

Into the sky.

Not Writing--Cooking

You knew this one was coming. I just wasn't sure when I would post it. But it was the evanescent Natalie Whipple over at Between Fact and Fiction who brought it up, with her delicious-sounding recipe for lime cupcakes. Yum. I can taste them now, and I don't even need to bake them to do so.

Despite being a staunch pescatarian (vegetarian with fishy leanings), I really enjoy cooking. It isn't nearly as time-consuming as grading papers, but it also has some pretty fantastic advantages:

1. People get to eat what I cook, and tell me it tastes good.

2. I get to eat what I cook.

3. It's one more lovely thing to do to keep from writing.

4. Did I mention that I get to eat it?

Since Natalie already handled dessert, I'll take care of the main course:

Kid-Friendly Potato Chip Fish

Ingredients:

several fish fillets, any kind, thawed

mustard

mayonnaise

salt

pepper

2-3 cups salt & vinegar kettle style potato chips (they are a bit thicker than regular)

1. Lay the fish flat on a spray oiled cookie sheet.

2. Mix mustard and mayonnaise together in a little bowl, two parts mayo to one part mustard.

3. Salt and pepper the fish filets, then spread the mayo-mustard mixture on the fish. (Oh, look, I even used alliteration!)

4. In a sealed bag, crunch the chips until they are broken into pieces. Then drop the pieces onto the spread mayo-mustard mixture.

5. Bake at 400 degrees F for 15-20 minutes, or until the chips are a little browned.

And that's it. Of course, the whole prep for this, including oven time, is only about a half hour, so I'll have to make those lime cupcakes, too. Anything to avoid dragging out that novel!

What favorite recipes do you use to keep from writing? If you have them posted somewhere, give me the link. And don't worry, if you hate cooking, I have plenty of other ways to keep from writing.

Not Writing--EDITING

When I taught classes full time--which accounts for most of the last 18 years, even while rearing babies (yes, the term really is "rearing," an appropriate term for at least the first 2-3 years, when caring for the baby's rear is one of one's primary tasks)--I often used grading papers as an excuse to NOT write.

The excuse worked. Really well. Anybody would believe me. All I had to do is show my husband the ream of papers I'd brought home to dissect, and he'd shake his head sympathetically. And grading had to come first, too. After all, I got paid to grade papers. And writing, at least at this point, pays very little.

That knocked writing out all over the place. No way I can possibly do NaNoWriMo with all of this on my plate. Nightly quizzes, rough drafts, final projects, mini-essays. I was an English teacher, after all. Couldn't exactly run my papers through a scan-tron machine. (Any of you students and teachers should know what those are, the machines that read the sheets students fill little dots on. And they read tests zippingly, digesting and scoring 30 of them in a minute.)

I felt just like Cinderella, unable to go to the ball until I could get all my work done, find a suitable dress to wear, etc. So I sat around in my ashes, with my little purple pen out, grading away whole weekends at a time.

It was nice.

Only now I'm not teaching. And my house is pretty much all remodeled. Sure, I have a few excuses, but nothing nearly as good as grading. I've been reaching out, scrambling to find anything to keep from writing. After all, writing is a waste of time, isn't it? Hardly anybody ever sells a book, and even if they do it won't be successful, right?

I had to find some other way to fill the time. And now I have. I'm editing. For pay. This will be the third novel I've edited for money, though I have worked on many a friend's novel free of charge. Editing's a bit different from just being a beta reader. It's more in-depth, for it may be the last time anyone besides the author reads a book before it's published. Important stuff. Wouldn't want to miss a single typo or extra comma. What if characters close a door three times on a single page, but never open it? What if the ending is confusing?

And editing is FUN. No grade to assign at the end, and I know the author is serious enough to hire an editor, so I know my comments will have a positive effect on the final project. Nice. Rewarding. Time-consuming.

So I have finally found something to keep me from writing. I'm just sorry it's a temporary fix. In a few weeks, at the latest, I'll be done with the edit. I'll just have to find some other way to wallow in the ashes a bit more. Any ideas?

The Hazards of Not Writing

I was slapped in the face this morning. Not literally, but I'm stinging from it just the same.

And it's all my fault. And it's all because I haven't been writing.

For YEARS, ever since I took freshman composition, I've been in love with the idea of writing a play about Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, whom I suspect wrote Shakespeare's plays. But over the past many years (too many to mention, believe me), I didn't write. I have tons of research for it, a huge collection of books on it, and I'd even made an outline of the major events so that I could someday write it.

Only now I don't have to. The movie is coming out in October, and it's called Anonymous. I've missed my opportunity.

Fiction writing is one thing--sure, J.K. Rowling has made the one and only Harry Potter, and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings only happens once, but other fantastic characters can still lead beautiful lives on paper. I noticed, too, that yet ANOTHER production of The Three Musketeers is coming out. (How many versions are we going to get? The book is better than any of them.)

But Oxford's story should only happen once. I just hope it's done beautifully, that it is better than I can wish for, that people can see the irony, the tragedy, the poetry of the whole situation. Either way, whether it sucks or holds audiences spellbound, it's too late for me to write it. I've missed that chance because I haven't written it. Hell, I am probably still a decade away from having the skill to write it.

Then again, I'm not really writing anymore, so what do I have to complain about?

Fighting Writer's Block

This post is really for all of you guys, not for me. Since I'm not writing. Not again. Not ever.

Seekerville has a pretty in-depth article on writer's block, and I've realized I have many good reasons to not write--more than I'd thought. Rather than work hard to eradicate the reasons (or get therapy), I've decided to just let my writer's block become permanent. Writing, after all, is just a waste of time, and I don't have the time to waste on creative play when I could be doing the laundry instead. Laundry, after all, is never a waste of time. People need clean clothes.

People need clean dishes, too. What are they supposed to use, paper plates? People need me to clean up after them, too. It's not like they should be bothered with picking up after themselves. Isn't that my job?

And the cat. Who else could possibly fill his bowls with food and water? And who's going to check the mail if I don't? Or sweep, or scrub toilets, or reorganize the storage room? I mean, really, why waste time on a bunch of rubbish that won't ever get published?

I guess it's okay to write, though. IF you get all your work done, and IF you've given all the time you can to your family you can, and IF they don't need you for anything. And IF you've exercised until you're gasping. And then taken a shower so you don't asphyxiate people when you sit near them. And IF you get all the other tasks on your list done first. IF there's nothing on TV. IF you've called all of your parents and friends this week, so they aren't wondering whether you've died. IF you've posted all your recent events on Facebook diligently.

Lots of IFS. It might be a long time before any of us get back to our work in progress. I know it'll be a long time for me. I could probably keep adding to the list, too, if I give it more time.

But I don't have time. I need to dust. Dusting... now THAT'S a worthwhile activity.

Not Writing--TILING

This summer I spent most of my time not writing. I did it really well, too. I hardly wrote at all! The main way I managed it was by filling my life with other projects to keep myself from writing. In other words, every day I listed out things I could do to avoid writing, and I prioritized them, making them more important than writing, so that at the end of the day I might manage to get most of those tasks done, but my writing remained unwritten.

I don't like to brag, but I did a fine job of it. Laundry alone helps, as do the ever-present dishes, sweeping, paying bills, grocery shopping, vacuuming, cleaning out the litter box, and other lovely chores. But I couldn't have done it without the bigger projects. One that took up most of the month of June was TILING. If you're looking for a way to avoid writing, this is one I suggest.

It does have drawbacks. My nails are still horrible, I got grout in my hair, on my clothes, and stuck to my arms, my house was trashed the whole time, and I hated cutting tile, but the finished product is undeniably good.

I was even more fortunate that I had a butler's pantry and hutch area to tile as well. Here's the completed butler's pantry wall, which I coordinated with the kitchen tile.

So there it is! Don't want to write! Tile instead! It'll take forever and make a big mess, and your fingers will be too scraped up and sore to write. It sure worked for me!

I hope to be able to post a bunch of other things I've been doing to avoid writing soon. I'd do this more often, but I'm not supposed to be writing, after all....

Not Writing--READING

In my quest to find stuff to do besides write (since all of you know I'm just NOT going to write anymore), I've come across an AMAZING pastime! Really! In fact, it's so great, you all just got to try it!

It's READING. Yup. Picking up an actual published book, opening the cover, and reading it. Amazing stuff, really. Even sometimes brilliant. Take, for instance, the series I've begun lately. It's a middle grade set of adventures, one I've been planning to read for a while. Cressida Cowell's HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON. And it's good. Funny, silly, imperfectly illustrated, but I read the first chapter of the first book to my kids, and my son tried to read the rest of it in one night (he's seven, but he reads more at the third grade level). I wouldn't let him, either, not until I was finished with it. I haven't been this possessive with a book since Harry Potter.

I've got a whole list of other books I'm waiting to read, too, including the rest of this series (I'm now halfway through book 2, HOW TO BE A PIRATE). I also want to reread all my SHINOBI LIFE books my sister sent me, along with a whole list of books other people have been recommending to me for years. Anything to keep from writing again!

I know what you're thinking, though. "If I read, I won't have time to write. And writing is the most precious thing in the whole wide world to me." Then again, if you're here, reading this awful blog post, you aren't writing either. And wouldn't you want to read something better?

So many writers don't do it, though, for OH so many reasons:

1. That thing I said before--it will take precious time from their own writing. (And they've already cut out exercise, eating, and sleeping.)

2. Nothing compares to the brilliance of their own writing, so when they read some published book they find themselves repeatedly disappointed in the author's lack of talent.

3. Reading just gets their panties in a wad because such a craptacular book was published, while their manuscript remains unnoticed and rejected, even though it's infinitely better.

4. They fear they might like something in another book and accidently imitate it. And their ideas must be original or they aren't real writers.

5. They've misplaced their Kindle, and nobody reads real paper books anymore. Do they even sell real paper books anymore? Maybe at Goodwill, or something, but that is way too low class for a real writer.

6. They can't afford it. Every spare penny goes to copying and sending manuscripts by snail mail. Or alcohol.

7. Reading might make them forget, even for a moment, how miserable they are as writers, and true writers are never truly happy. Alcoholics, maybe. Happy? Never.

So, I guess I'm not a real writer. I don't even have the alcoholic thing down, dammit. I'd wallow here, of course, and make this blog entry twice as long, but you don't want to read that.

Come to think of it, I don't want to read that.

I'll just comfort myself with a good book instead. And maybe I'll learn how to be a pirate while I'm at it, thanks to Cressida Cowell.