Lots and Lots of Reading

I got back the manuscript for the first book I actually finished writing from a friend who was reading it for me. She's a trooper. She read it three times and gave me great feedback.

Now, it's my turn to read through it. I'm picking up lots of little mistakes and finding things that I want to cut. It's amazing the different perspective I have after a four month break from the story. I thought about it from time to time during that period, but I didn't look at it or try to fix anything.

I gave it to a friend who's not a writer, but reads a lot of books and who I thought would have good insights into plot and characters, and pick up on inconsistencies in the storytelling. She did a great job of finding things that didn't make sense and making suggestions on events and people that I might cut (it is harder to kill your own characters, after all).

I'm glad to have had a break from the book so that I can go back with a fresh pair of eyes. It is longer than I think I want it to be, so my friend's suggestions for cuts were just what I needed. Thirteen pages in, I've already cut four or five paragraphs in two different sections. I was going to try to read through it the first time without editing, but I can't help myself. I'm so excited!

A Matter of Perspective

I left work frustrated today, but I was giggling by the time I got home, not only because it's the weekend, but also because I saw a truck with "Shaggin' Waggin" painted on the back. The universe was trying to tell me, "OK, get a grip, it's not all that bad." And it wasn't that bad, just a minor annoyance, nothing new per se.

When I got home, I turned right around and left to do my weekly shopping at Target. I wanted to get it out of the way so I can hang out with my kid and my husband tomorrow. Jack was fine, sitting at the computer playing games on Nick Jr., but when I got back my baby had a fever of 102.2 degrees and he was asking for his mommy.

I'd planned to get laundry started after I ate dinner. Instead, I sat with him on the couch, checking out how hot he was, talking him into taking some Motrin, and trying to figure out what else I could do to make him feel better. Between his bright red face, blazing hot skin and the pitiful look on his face, my heart just melted.

But then he fell asleep on the couch an hour before bedtime, so we changed him into his pajamas, I sat in his bed and read books to him, then turned out the lights and laid down with him until he fell asleep holding my hand. I'm sad that he's not feeling well, but happy that my 4-year-old still just wants his mommy when he's sick.

The really sick thing about it is that at the same time I'm worrying about his fever, I'm thinking, "Woo Hoo! He's going to bed early tonight, which means more quiet writing time for me!" And we'll probably be home all weekend so that he can recover from whatever is ailing him, so I'll have that much more writing time. It feels so right, but yet, so, so wrong. That's mommy guilt for you.

Another New Story

The latest tally of books I'm working on: 4.

I know, I know, I need to focus or I'm never going to get any of them done.

The first project is abandoned until I feel inspired to continue the story. I got stuck and too frustrated to make progress, so it's on hold indefinitely.

The second project was humming right along until I started two more.

The third project is a chapter and a half handwritten in the journal I keep in my purse. I was going to type it up and keep the story going until ...

I started my fourth work-in-progress. I had about 27 pages written and then I decided to start over again. Now, I'm at the top of page 16 and the story flows better. I was giving too much background up front and it was getting boring. I decided that I needed to hurry up and get to the more interesting plot points and conflicts that I'm itching to write.

It's great to have all of these ideas going that I'm really excited about, but at the same time there is a certain amount of frustration that comes with that, because none of the projects are anywhere close to done. If only there were 36 hours in a day instead of 24 and I didn't have to work for a living, then maybe I'd be able to finish all of these stories. If only.

"I Want To" vs. "I Have To"

I want to spend more time with my husband and son. I want to write something for myself. I want more time to relax.

But, I have to work. I have to clean the house. I have to buy groceries.

Tonight, I have to do some writing for work, but I want to write for myself. Unfortunately, it's 9:39 p.m. and I'm too tired to do both. So, unless I get a second (or third) wind, I'll only be writing for work tonight. I want my weekends (and evenings) to be all about me and my family, but sometimes it doesn't work out that way.

There's never enough time or money to do everything I want to do -- or even everything I need to do -- but, of course, I try to squeeze in as much as I can. That's why I don't sleep much.

So, I'm glad I stopped by here tonight, but now I must say, "Goodbye," so that I can get some work done ... and maybe, if I'm lucky, a little bit of fun too.

How Did I Get Here?

Every now and then, I look around at my life and wonder, in the immortal words of the Talking Heads in the song "Once in a Lifetime" -- "How did I get here?"

Today I was dropping my son off at preschool -- rushing in and out in time to get back on the road and make it to work on time, just like the other mommies -- when I couldn't stop wondering how I fit in with these harried women. I have so many different images of myself in my head that sometimes the vision and the reality don't match up.

I often feel like I did in college when there was never enough time or money to do everything that I wanted or needed to do. I had to choose between watching TV or doing homework or between putting gas in the car or buying a shirt. I did both, but I charged the shirt. But now, I sit at my desk writing checks for my first and second mortgages and I wonder how on Earth I convinced not just one, but two companies, to lend me hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy anything. How did I get here?

On other days, I'm at the park with my son watching another mother with her child, feeling completely disconnected from the scene playing out in front of me, and then Jack yells, "Mommy, mommy, look!" That's when I think, "Wait, I'm just like her. Really?"

Of course, I have days when all the images I have of myself fit together perfectly. I get to be a mommy in the morning, a professional journalist all day, a wife and mommy in the evening, and sometimes I even get out without husband and child in tow so that I can be a friend and the kind of independent woman that I still feel like I am. I guess, even at 34 years old, I'm still reconciling all the parts of my multifaceted life.

A Long Way From Equal

There's nothing like checking out a book from the new release section at the library to make you speed-read your way through a good book.

On Tuesday, I picked up Kathryn Stockett's "The Help" from my local library. I only had seven days to read it and I couldn't renew it online. Fortunately, it was only 444 pages and not 600-plus like the last novel ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson) that I read.

Also, fortunately for me, "The Help" was a fantastic book. It's set in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s, which really isn't that far from most towns in Alabama in the early 1980s. I was born in Mobile in 1976 and moved to Fairhope two years later. Both towns are as far south as you can get in Alabama without drowning in Mobile Bay along the Gulf Coast. My mom moved my brother and I from Fairhope to San Diego a few months before I turned 10 years old.

I haven't been back to Fairhope since my grandmother died in 2001, but I have a lot of very vivid memories about the time when I lived in Alabama and the times that I've visited my former hometown and my dad's house in Remlap, a rural town in northern Alabama near Birmingham.

Stockett's book brought a lot of those memories rushing back, from the stifling humidity to the miles and miles of cotton fields lining the highways to the big white plantation homes that stand as monuments to the way things used to be -- the good, the bad and the very, very ugly.

After acknowledging her family, friends and editors at the end of her book, Stockett goes on to explain her pride and shame about her life in Mississippi. My family didn't have a black maid, at least not in my lifetime, and we never talked about race. But you could feel the tension in the air, the tension that hovers over everyone and keeps people "separate but equal" even when they attend the same schools and work in the same buildings.

I don't believe there was a single black family in my Fairhope neighborhood called Rosa Acres. If there was, the children did not play with me and my friends. I vaguely remember a few black students in my elementary school classes, but I don't recall one of them spending the night at my house or coming to any of my birthday parties or joining my Girl Scout troop. Somehow I knew that we just didn't do that without anyone ever specifically telling me so.

To be fair, I probably met just as many bigots living in the Midwest and Southern California as I did in Alabama. Racist people are everywhere.

I'd like to think that we've come a long way since the time Stockett wrote about in her book, but I don't think we have. The same economic, geographic and class separations exist as in the past, but the lines are blurring slowly over time.

It takes a book like "The Help" to show us just how far we've come and how much farther we have to go. After all, black people have only been able to sit where they want on a city bus for about 55 years, but we had slavery in the United States for three centuries.

Another Exciting Friday Night

Before we had our son, my husband and I would've gone out for dinner and probably would've seen a movie on a Friday night, but now that's when I usually make my weekly run to Target for groceries, toilet paper and the like. Tonight, my husband tagged along with our son and I. And for a special treat, we ate dinner at a Chinese fast food restaurant. Normally, I'd pick something up for dinner on the way home.

Now it's 10 p.m. and I'm sitting in front of the computer in my sweats, eating a popsicle, checking e-mail and writing on my blog, after reading to my son and putting him in bed. My husband's watching nature shows on TV. We're both waiting for the dryer to stop spinning so we can fold the first load of laundry of the night and put the next load in the dryer. Parenthood sure makes for a glamorous life!

I readily admit that I miss being able to go out for dinner or see a movie whenever I want. Now, we have to gauge how likely it is that our 4-year-old will sit through dinner at a restaurant or else we have to line up a babysitter days in advance. Not that I'm complaining, just pointing out our current state of affairs. I'm actually looking forward to a trip to the Children's Museum in downtown San Diego tomorrow. It's one of my favorite places to hang out with my son.

While he's in bed and I have some peace and quiet, I thought I'd stop by here and say, "Hi." I could stay in front of the computer a little while longer and work on one of my writing projects, but I'm tired, so I think I might read while I wait to fold laundry.

I suppose that's one of the best things about having a kid. I now have so little access to the TV for something I might like to watch that I spend a lot more time reading. I have read some great books during the last couple of years.

Reading and More Reading ... and a Little Writing too

This weekend I finished reading Stieg Larsson's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." This book started out slow for me, but I stuck with it and plowed through the middle and some slow spots after that before racing through to the end.

At the library today, I picked up "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. I was tempted to get Larsson's "The Girl Who Played with Fire," but I wanted to read something different. I'm also trying to resist temptation to reread Sara Gruen's "Water for Elephants," which I just read a few weeks ago but LOVED, LOVED, LOVED.

About a dozen pages in to "The Help" -- I'm on page 2 of the second chapter -- I like it already. I like the voice of the initial narrator, a black maid in 1960s Mississippi. From what I understand from the book jacket, Aibilene, another maid and a young college-educated white woman named Miss Skeeter are the main voices of the book. "The Help" was recommended to me by a friend and I've been wanting to read it for a while.

I'm on a bit of a reading binge that started even before I went on vacation. Even though my own stories are tickling my brain -- always when I'm at work or shopping or anywhere but sitting in front of my home computer -- my impulse to read has overpowered my need to write.

Then again, most of my reading during vacation happened on the flights to and from Iowa. Otherwise, when I had free time I was checking e-mail or writing a new story in my journal. Hand writing a book is a much slower process than typing at the computer, so I would've written more while I was on vacation, but I was being anti-social and hogging my hosts' computers enough without getting absorbed in writing a new story.

And then tonight, for the second night in a row, I made the mistake of drinking wine with dinner after a long day, so now I'm too sleepy to write. Sounds like a good enough excuse to read "The Help" instead of writing my own book, right?