Yet Another Project

I'm thinking about starting a new writing project, since the one I started then stopped then started again is causing me nothing but frustration and making come up with reasons to avoid the computer all together.

I thought of a new story idea today that I'm actually itching to get started on. The main character's voice is much clearer in my head than the voice of the character that's been causing me minor anguish for the past month or so. If this new woman wants to tell me her story, shouldn't I listen to her?

The other woman. The younger, more tortured character, whose voice was so sharp about eight months ago when she first came to me, is fading. She's not rattling around in my brain shouting her story for me anymore. Trying to write in her voice when she's barely whispering anymore doesn't feel right. When I read the words on the screen, they don't look or sound right.

So, maybe I need to give this new woman a chance to speak. Maybe it's time for a fresh perspective.

Family Distractions

I'm happy to say that my distraction from writing tonight was family.

My mother invited us over for a spaghetti dinner to meet the mother of my sister-in-law, who flew in from Taiwan to help my brother and his wife welcome and care for their baby, who will be arriving within the next few weeks. We're all very excited to meet baby Lily, especially since it's been nine years and four grandchildren since we've added a girl to our family.

So, here I am, tired from a busy Monday and happy to have a good excuse -- or at least a happy excuse -- for not writing tonight. There's always tomorrow ... except for the fact that I have to spend the rest of this week cleaning since I agreed tonight to host Easter at my house on Sunday. Oh well, it's about time to scrub the toilets and sweep the floors anyway.

Warm, Sunny Day

The weather was too gloriously warm and sunny today to sit in front of the computer and write. And as I've written here recently, I'm alternating between avoiding the blank page and annoying cursor blinking at me and settling in front of the computer feeling nothing but frustration and disgust.

And I've had a few things going on in my day job that have been a major distraction.

Fortunately, I'm settling in to my new role at work and the weather is expected to turn colder, so I should have a few less distractions this week. At home, it looks like I'll be back at it again, trying to determine where to take the story that I'm writing next.

I finished Anne LaMott's "Bird by Bird" this week and "Mathilda Savitch" by Victor Lodato. Loved both of them. Yesterday, I bought Stephen King's "On Writing," which is pretty funny so far, though not terribly useful for writing yet other than a few colorful descriptions of a few selected childhood memories that he recounts vividly.

Later yesterday afternoon I went to the library and picked up "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer. I loved her "Twilight" books, so I've been looking forward to diving in to "The Host." But, science fiction isn't usually my thing and this book is off to a slow start, so I'm not sure yet if I can hang in there for all 600-plus pages. I'll give it a shot.

It'll be hard to concentrate on work tomorrow, with another day of sunshine and warmth in the forecast, but I've got lots to do in the office and "On Writing" in my purse to read over lunch. I'll try to stay on task so that I can leave work at a decent hour and do some writing for my own account when I get home.

A Little Break

Work has been so exhausting the last few days that I haven't written anything at home lately, with the exception of a few e-mails and Facebook posts. I hope to get back on track soon. I'm afraid to even open my latest project for fear of not knowing how to pick up where I left off.

I just finished reading a book called "Mathilda Savitch." I liked it. The title character was fun and sassy and odd. She had a unique voice that she stayed true to throughout the book. I was envious of the way the author carried the girl's voice through the story, helping the reader see her world through Mathilda's eyes, because I have a character I'm working on now and I feel like I'm having a hard time telling her story while staying true to her unique tone and perspective.

Now I need something fun to read after that oddly dark book. Something that might even have a happy ending and might lift me out of the funk I've been in this week. I might just scour my bookshelf to see what old gems I've got lying about.

Five Pages

OK, so I wrote five pages tonight. They're probably not very good and I'm certain they fall into "shitty first draft" territory, but I made the effort.

It's part of the skeleton to hang the rest of the story on. I can go back and put more meat on the bones later. Right now, the story's pretty thin, but at least I got some of what's been percolating in my head typed up before I forget it all.

I still don't feel like I'm getting the protagonist's voice just right, but as I go back and revise I can subtract the bits that don't ring true and add tone and personality traits that suit her and characters that she can interact with.

We'll see how it goes the rest of the week. All I can do is park myself here in the chair and make the effort. Eventually the crap I've written so far will be the fertilizer I need to make trees and flowers and grass take root ... I hope.

Avoidance

I'm not only procrastinating, but I've moved on to avoidance.

I can't seem to force myself to write this weekend, even though I've had all kinds of time to write since we've mostly stayed home to work on potty training. True, I did buy the "New Moon" DVD from Wal-Mart with the footage of "Eclipse" and a behind-the-scenes documentary from when they were filming "New Moon," so I spent most of my free time watching that yesterday, but that's just an excuse.

Today, we went out for breakfast and I could've sat down at the computer to write afterward, but I let my son play games while I read the newspaper instead. Then I went shopping. Then we went out for lunch. Then we came home and put Jack down for a nap and I've spent the past hour or so at the computer, but I've been shopping and reading e-mail and Facebook. Not exactly a productive writing day.

But as soon as I finish this, I'm going to work on my writing. So, OK, here goes ...

Not Feeling It

How do you know when you should keep going with a story or just cut your losses and stop writing?

The project I've been trying to restart after a couple months of not working on it and only thinking about it occasionally is floundering. I've added about 10 pages to the first 15 pages I wrote but it feels like a long, slow journey ... through mud ... and rain ... uphill ... with my 3-year-old son clinging to my leg.

I'm just not feeling it.

Do I take another break from it? Do I take a break from writing altogether and read some good books instead? Or, do I keep dragging my feet through the muck and hope that it stops raining and assume that the clouds will part and the sun will shine through, eventually?

For now, I think the answer is to take a break from it for tonight. I'll see how I feel about it tomorrow when I have more time and when I'm not too tired to think about it.

Revisions, Revisions ... and More Revisions ...

OK, so I made a little progress last night on my latest project. Sort of.

The problem is, every time I go back in to the story I start reading at the beginning and revising bits and pieces as I skim through to where I left off. Then by the time I make it to the end so that I can start adding to the story, I don't have much time left before I need to go to bed. It's a vicious circle.

Tonight I'm going to force myself to start at the end instead of the beginning. Fortunately, I felt like the story was getting clearer in my head once I stopped writing for the night last night. The characters and plot felt more formed.

That's progress, right?

Procrastination

After spending most of my day in the office writing about commercial real estate, I'm having a hard time getting in the mood to work on my own projects at home.

In all honesty, that's never stopped me before. Usually when I've spent the day writing about complicated financial or legal issues, it's a relief to come home and work on something that's a lot more fun than commercial real estate investment. Well, it was more fun when I wasn't stuck.

Since I got home from the office three and a half hours ago, I could've sat down in front of the computer and worked for 20 minutes here and a half hour there. But then my son went pee on the potty, so I let him play some games on the Disney Web site for a while.

And there was that article on Tim Geithner in Vogue that I wanted to read. Then I had to run out and get milk at the grocery store, where I browsed around for a few more things until it was time to come back home and cook dinner.

How do you spell procrastination? M-A-N-D-Y

And here I am, procrastinating even more, writing on my blog when I don't have anything terribly intriguing to say. OK, I admit it. I'm stalling. And I'll also admit that by putting off work on my latest project I am delaying the frustration that I'm destined to feel as I stare at my last few sentences and wonder where to go next, but I'm not making progress either. So, here I go, off to muddle through the muck again.

Agony of the Feet

We're still potty training our 3-year-old son with very small amounts of success. Whenever we take a step forward, soon after we take another step back.

Tonight, my husband put Jack in underwear before they walked across the street to the park. Our son stayed dry while he played and even made it home without wetting himself after my husband refused to let him pee in the disgusting public bathroom next to the playground. Jack held it in while they walked home.

He stayed dry until we were eating dinner. But he was so excited to tell us some story about his day that he stood there and peed all over his legs, feet and the floor while looking right at my husband. Jeff stripped him down while I cleaned up the hardwood floor, explaining to Jack why couldn't have his new toy.

That's why today we felt the thrill of victory and the agony of the (pee on the) feet.

Muddling Through

I'm wading through a lot of muck as I continue to look for a transition from point A to point B with an old project that's been on hold for a while. As much as I like to get things right the first time -- or as close to right as I can -- I keep reminding myself that this is still just the "shitty first draft."

Maybe I'd feel better about things if I stopped reading Anne Lamott, but I digress.

It's pretty frustrating slogging through the mud trying to pull words out of the goop that look fresh and shiny on the screen. So far, all I see is turds. Big, fat, smelly turds.

I wrote to the end of my first chapter and attempted to start the next one, but all I typed was a big no. 2 before I gave in. So, now that I only have a half hour before it's time to sit down and read books to my son before bed, I'm getting ready to take a shot at the next step in my story.

That's the trouble with writing, just when you pull your foot out of one pile of poop, you step in another one.

Diving Back In

I'm wiggling my toes and getting some feeling back in my body as I emerge from the paralysis of indecision that I've been wallowing in for a couple of days. Otherwise, the longer I sit around trying to decide what to do next, the more frustrated I'm going to get with myself.

So, now I'm back to working on a project I started last summer. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to transition from where I left off to where I want to go with the story next, but I'll never figure it out if I don't plant myself in front of the computer and start writing again.

As Anne Lamott says in Bird by Bird, everybody starts with a "shitty first draft" before they get to the good stuff. The only way to make progress is to take a figurative dump before I get constipated and the whole process gets blocked.

So, now that my son (and my husband) are napping on the couch, now's my chance to enjoy some peace and quiet while I can and get the blood flowing to my fingertips again.

Writing is Breathing

"You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up around people who make you hold your breath." -- Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird

I read this today in a chapter about finding one or two people you can rely on to read your work before you submit it to an agent or editor. She was talking about writers not being able to fill the emptiness that writing satisfies if the people who do the first reads of their work criticize just to be mean and not to offer constructive advice.

I worked for a couple of editors early in my newspaper career who made me hold my breath every time I turned something in until they read it and offered their typical harsh words instead of useful guidance.

I once quit a job that I would have liked except for the fact that my editor would find something wrong with every single thing I wrote and ask for the impossible -- facts that were not available or interviews that couldn't be gotten. You never knew what kind of mood she was going to be in whenever you asked the simplest of questions. She could be nice one minute and rip your head off over nothing in the next minute.

But most of the time, I've worked for great editors. These were editors who set me loose to do my own thing, but pointed me in the right direction whenever they saw me headed down a misguided course or offered tips to help me connect point A to point B and C or did something as simple as read my lead sentence and nut graph to tell me if it worked or not.

They let me know what I was doing right and what areas of my writing needed more attention. I'm a better reporter and writer, because of that kind of advice. I tend to rebel when people make me miserable.

So, now that I've finished my first big writing project that isn't part of my full-time gig, I have to identify a couple of people who can read it and give me great feedback, whether I like it or not. Hopefully, these will be people who fill my writing cup, rather than smash it to pieces.

Just Stewing

I've been stewing in my own juices for a couple of days, torn between working on a writing project that's been on hold for a while, continuing with something I started and don't feel ready to add to just yet or taking a break from it all for a bit while I read other things.

The problem with the no-writing option is that I have itchy trigger fingers and a schizophrenic reading habit. I can't decide which novel I want to spend time with and my fingers would rather be plucking away at my keyboard than holding a book. When I got home from work this evening, I compromised by reading a magazine while my son played games on my computer.

I love magazines, but I rarely read them, because I want to spend a lot of time with them, looking at all of the pictures and reading all of the articles. But I ordered Vogue with my husband's credit card points, so I've had two months worth of catalog-thick periodicals sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks.

With one of my new magazines read and Tina Fey covering the March edition of Vogue staring me in the face, I'm going to compromise again tonight. I think I'll sketch out some characters and plot lines in my journal and see what kind of inspiration I can stir up.

Then again, I still have to finish reading Ann Lamott's Bird by Bird ...

Balancing Metaphors

I'm trying to teach myself to balance out the use of metaphors in my writing. I'll set up a visual representation of a concept or theme at the beginning of a story. Sometimes I successfully weave it throughout the story, but most of the time I feel like I'm going back to the same metaphor so many times that it gets repetitive or I'm not repeating the theme enough to make it effective.

I do take comfort in the fact that other writers seem to struggle with the same thing. Reporters and columnists probably use metaphors most effectively, because they write short pieces and refer to the same concept enough times that the reader remembers it without getting tired of the repetition.

Novelists must struggle with metaphors as they write, because they're writing such lengthy pieces that they have to remember to repeat the theme. Then again, their readers have committed to sticking with them for hundreds of pages, so authors have to try not to annoy them by going back to the same literary device over and over again.

But that's life, I guess. We are creatures of habit, so we see the same themes in our personalities and habits every day of our lives. Some people will always struggle with their weight. Others will have trouble staying in relationships for the same reasons each time they go through a breakup.

I suppose I will never figure out what I really want to do and will fall into something that I like for a while just because an opportunity presents itself when I least expect it. That seems to be my pattern. Like this blog, for instance. I started it with no goal other than giving myself a space to write every day. I don't know where this opportunity will take me, but eventually the road will lead me somewhere.

Dead Battery

I woke up at 4:30 this morning to go to the gym before work only to discover once I was dressed and mostly awake that my car battery was dead. I could've exercised to one of my yoga DVDs, but I decided to go back to bed instead.

Now, normally a dead battery first thing in the morning would be a sign that the rest of the day wasn't going to go very well. Fortunately, that didn't prove true this morning. After my lovely husband jump-started my car for the second time, I left for work a half hour late, but traffic wasn't any worse than usual.

At the office, I braced myself for my phone to ring off the hook so that I was constantly missing calls. Or, I was afraid it wouldn't ring at all, leaving me without the interviews I needed for stories I have to turn in by noon Wednesday. Instead, I had a manageable stream of phone calls and enjoyed a relatively relaxing day in the office during which I felt like I got a lot of work done at a sustainable pace.

I just hope my good Monday will spill over and I won't wish for my car to die again so that I can get out of going to the office later in the week.

Rewrites

Out of all the options I was considering yesterday, I decided to begin typing up the story I started writing in my journal about a month ago. As I type, I'm leaving out certain details and embellishing other areas. In some parts, it's a pretty substantial rewrite, but I'm glad I jotted it all down at the end of January and beginning of February, because the main themes are intact.

It looks like it's probably going to be about 20 single-spaced pages typed, but I also have written up a fairly extensive outline for the rest of the story, which I've started adjusting too. I've added a few more details in the tiny amount of blank space left on my journal pages, which reminds me that I need to fill a little less of the pages as I scribble things down, so that I have space for additional notes.

It is highly satisfying as I type up the story that it still seems to be heading in a good direction that I should be able to sustain for several more pages. The real question will be whether or not it still seems like a good story by the time I get to the end and begin reading through the finished novel, novella or short story, whatever the case may be.

Too Many Options

It's been one of those Saturday mornings where I've felt really motivated. But now, here I sit not knowing what I want to write.

I woke up at 6:15 and got on the computer to check my e-mail (not that I expected to have any messages that early on a Saturday, but it's part of my routine) and read the newspaper. I got in the shower at 7 a.m. then made breakfast for my son and myself. Afterward, I played with Jack in his room and got his diaper bag, snacks and milk ready to go so we can leave for the Children's Museum at 9:30. That means I have a half hour to write. But, about what?

I've finished my big project and now, while I wait to give it to a friend to read, I'm conflicted. Do I work on the project I started a while ago and put on hold while I finished the other one? Do I start something I scribbled down in my journal that seems like a good story idea and see how far I can take it, since I'm still sorting through some of the technical aspects of the one I've got on hold? Do I take a break from writing for a while to read a couple of books by other writers? Or, should I finally start reading the big book I bought on getting your work published?

I can't make up my mind, so now I'm in a holding pattern. I'm paralyzed by indecision. I suppose my problem is that I have too many options and not enough time to really work on any of them. Oh well, since I am the master of procrastination, I guess I'll spend my time this morning and afternoon hanging out with my son and trying not to think about writing or reading at all. Easier said than done.

Done

I'm done. My big project is done. I just need to find my first victim to read it. But now I'm tired, so I'm going to take another quick writing break and do some reading tonight. I'll read something other than my own work and something fun and light -- after I read half a dozen picture books to my son before bed, anyway. Good night.

Gut-Wrenching News

When 17-year-old Chelsea King from Poway went missing on Thursday afternoon while out for a run at a nearby park in Rancho Bernardo, I hoped her disappearance was just a misunderstanding with her parents.

On Friday, when the cross country runner and straight-A student still wasn't home, the news that her cell phone had been found inside her locked car at the start of the trail where she frequently ran by herself made me uneasy.

Over the weekend and on Monday, her parents thanked the volunteers who met each day at the park to search for Chelsea in hopes of finding her alive. The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach intensified as I, like many people, saw the chances of a successful reunion with her parents decrease from slim to none.

By Tuesday, with a suspect in custody and with search teams focused on Lake Hodges and the surrounding area until they found Chelsea's body buried in a shallow grave along a tributary for the lake, I began to feel ill.

That's why today I was sick to my stomach as John Albert Gardner III entered a not guilty plea to answer the charge of murder during the rape or attempted rape of Chelsea and assault with the intent to rape a different female jogger in December.

I suspect that the gut-wrenching agony won't end for weeks or months as Gardner, a convicted sexual predator, appears in court on the charges against him, especially while investigators try to determine if he is responsible for the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl from Escondido.

Amber Dubois has been missing for slightly more than a year. I can't imagine the torment that her parents are going through as they wait to find out if they'll finally have some closure while dreading the news that their little girl might have been raped and murdered in the same manner in which Chelsea was attacked six days ago.

Either way, it will take a long time for our community to heal, whether we find out that the psychopath responsible for the deaths of two young girls is behind bars for good or determine that one bad guy is in jail while another attacker, if someone else abducted Amber, is on the loose in San Diego County. Our collective hearts are broken and there's no doubt in my mind that we'll be sick with worry about our children for years to come.

A Little Writing Hiatus

I took a couple of days off from writing here. I was going through a writing cleanse, of sorts.

You see, I finished my second read-through of the big project I was working on. Then I needed to take a hiatus from it before I go back in and make the cuts I now envision at the beginning of the story. The more I got into the meat of it -- to the real conflict -- the more I realized it was taking too long to get there. Now I need to go back and cut some things and tighten up the first half.

So, I'm breaking my fast tonight with a blog post and tomorrow night I'll be back at my project, cutting what's unnecessary and polishing what's left. I think there's a gem in there somewhere.