Progress

Well, even if I haven't had time to update my blog this week, I've spent at least a little time writing. The baby took an exceptionally long nap on Sunday and I was able to duck into my office and bang out 1700 words before she woke up.

It wasn't an official project -- in fact, it seems a little silly, but I've been trying since she was about four weeks old to get down the story of my labor and delivery in as much excruciating detail as I can bear to recall. In the course of trying to cram in every detail, I've been surprised at how much I do remember when I put my mind to it and how much I came close to forgetting. I'm constantly going back and adding some little detail or adjusting the time-line. So even though it isn't anything that I'll likely share, I was very happy to have the chance to get some work done on it. Maybe someday the bambino will decide she wants to read it, after which she will likely decide that she never wants to have children. And I haven't even gotten to the part where I was yelling at Frank about how all I had really wanted was another dog, so why the hell was I doing all the work? Amazing how your hormones try to make you forget all that once you have a smiley, giggly little 6-month old.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to either wrap that project up soon or else I'll have to set it aside, because I have another deadline coming up. My friend went ahead and set up that writer's workshop I had mentioned in the last blog, and we've agreed to submit work on the first of each month. Gosh, that's coming up awfully fast already. Luckily, there's no hard and fast length requirement, and it's not like if I'm a day or two late I'll be kicked out, but it's amazing how that simple deadline can help with motivation. Now I just have to decide which of the ideas bubbling around in my mind that I want to pluck out and set to paper.

As for the healthy living end of things ... well, there's not a whole lot to report there. I do have some thoughts, but they'll have to wait for another blog. The pump calls.

Update: The Nobodies Album

I was reading over my old blogs and realized that I never updated regarding The Nobodies Album writing contest that Frank encouraged me to enter last summer.

I won! I won the Grand Prize!

Granted, there didn't wind up being a large pool of entries, definitely under twenty since it was a limited contest, but nonetheless the publisher chose my entry for the grand prize. So I am now the proud owner of a Bose iPod Sound Dock. It's not something I ever would have bought for myself, but the sound quality is amazing. More than anything though, I see it as some sort of confirmation that I *am* a good writer and I need to push myself harder. Because the truth is, there are thousands of excellent writers out there. Many I'm sure have skills far superior to mine -- but as long as I'm writing and they're not, I'll be the better writer.

As I clearly illustrated with my 11th hour story entry, goals and deadlines are a writer's best friend. Ever since I decided to recommit to my writing, I've been thinking over different ways that I can keep myself motivated. Crazy as it sounds, I do want to attempt NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) again this year after skipping it in 2010, but that's not until November. I do have a neglected writing journal and belonged to an online writing competition that I could try to revive, but I think I might need to ease myself in a little bit before I give myself a weekly deadline. A friend and fellow writer has suggested starting a casual writing group to exchange our work once a month or so. It sounds like a great idea ... but is it normal that I'm still terrified to share my work?

Writing is so unique in that you are in a complete private vacuum while you're creating and then you're expected to just throw it out into the world and hope it can stand on its own. Just a couple of months ago I thought it would be motivating to let my cousin, who is like a sister to me, read my draft of At Setting and the second I sent it to her I started having a massive panic attack. I think I emailed her about five times almost pleading justifications for the imperfections in the draft. When she was done, she said she liked it and wanted to read more, but my nerves were to shot to probe her for much more of a reaction.

I guess the only way to get over that crippling fear is to just make myself do it. After all, isn't the goal to have as many people hear your story as possible?

There and Back Again

I remember reading an article with a list of tips for blog writing. Number one was: Never start off by mentioning how long it's been since you last post. I've stuck to that until now, but I feel like over a year of absence warrants some kind of explanation.

On June 6, 2010 I found out that I was pregnant. Since then, the world as I knew it has been shattered apart and put back together, with many priorities landing in different places -- some more surprising than others. Sadly, my two biggest priorities when it comes to this blog have been shoved pretty firmly to the bottom of the list. I'm hoping that than can begin to change now.

I've learned in the last 24 weeks that when it comes to being a parent, time is the greatest commodity. You're either waiting it out, battling against it and you're always longing for more. Time is what I need to meet my goals, and it's what I'm fighting for, starting today.

Given that I'm nursing, my options for health and fitness are limited, but in this case limited is far from non-existent. I can still make as many healthy eating options as possible and try to squeeze in exercise -- whether it's taking the stairs, parking farther away, or strapping the baby on for an early morning walk -- whenever I can. The most important thing is to not lose sight of my goals. They seem farther away now than ever, but this is not a race. I have the rest of my life to work toward them, and the goals of healthful living will never really be met, they'll only change and grow with me. I'm looking forward to the challenege!

"Writers write. Period." -- I remember reading this as the tag line of someone's blog a couple of years ago, and it's stayed with me. The statement is deceptively simple, and utterly true. Even if it's twenty minutes twice a week, even if it's from my smart phone in carpool, even if it's in my head while I'm changing the baby, I'm a writer and I must be writing. Right now, my goal is just to start carving out a little time to myself whenever I can and be constantly choosing action over apathy, something I battle in all aspects of my life.

And yes, it's been a while ... but I hope that you'll be seeing more of me from now on!

The Nobodies Album

It's late and even though I'm off from work tomorrow I'm ready for bed. Even so, I had to update quickly because I'm feeling so accomplished and I wanted to share.

I'm a member of GoodReads.com and one neat thing that they do is having drawings to give away Advance Reading Copies of upcoming books. Well, since it was obvious from my profile that I was a lover of the works of Carolyn Parkhurst, I was selected to receive an ARC of her upcoming novel, The Nobodies Album. When I received the book, I also received a letter telling me that the publishing group was running a contest for readers to rewrite the ending of the novel in 500 words or less. Since the novel centers around the idea of a author rewriting the endings of her novels, I thought I was a pretty neat contest. Plus 500 words would be incredibly easy to bang out. The prizes aren't anything fabulous, but the grand prize is a $400 Bose iPod Sound Dock and there are are four runner up prizes of $50 iTunes gift cards.

Anyway, fast forward to tonight. The contest deadline is at midnight. Only five entries to the contest have been posted, so the odds are looking good. But it's a quarter after ten and I'm sleepy, so I say to Frank, "Eh, I don't think I'm going to do that writing contest after all. I have less than two hours and I don't know, I just don't feel like it." Usually Frank doesn't give me a hard time about stuff like this, but tonight he insisted, "No! You have to do this! I believe in you!"

Alright, I know that last line is exceedingly corny and I'm pretty sure he just wanted to play Dante's Inferno on the PS3 in peace for a couple of hours while I worked. But nevertheless, what he said was enough to send me grumbling to my office where in a little over an hour I had written 475 words that I was extremely proud of. I posted my entry with 45 minutes to spare and I'll know by the end of the week if it was good enough to win a prize. But honestly, I don't care if I win anything or not, just meeting a deadline and writing something that I felt was quality gave me a great boost that I needed.

Now if only I had managed to get a workout in today ...

Memorial Day Weekend

I'm up early this morning and for once I decided to put my writing goals ahead of my fitness goals. It also doesn't hurt that my iPod is out of juice so I'm charging it in anticipation of my workout once I'm finished here.

I hit a rough patch at the beginning of this week, but I'm proud to say that it didn't veer me off course with my exercising and eating. It did make me pretty sad and frustrated though. I guess we all have our moments where we let our self-doubts and the pressure from some imaginary course we're supposed to be on get to us too much. Some days I feel happy and really content with my life, but a lot of the time I'm struggling every day with feelings of not having accomplished enough in the last twenty-seven years and of severe hatred for my body. Even though I struggle with these daily I can usually overcome them, but every once in a while it breaks through and I have a rotten couple of days. Luckily, I'm always able to pull through thanks in large part to some wonderful, thoughtful friends who always seem to lift me up. I'm thankful I got through this bump in the road and hopefully it will be a while before I have another one. In the meantime, I've decided that I need to make a better effort to work on my terrible self-esteem, so I'm going to check out a book that a friend recommended to me and see how things go. Just one more thing to work toward to make a better, happier me!

This is a pretty quiet holiday weekend for Frank and I. We had planned to go away to Vermont to visit an old friend of mine for the weekend, but Frank got stuck working second shift for a couple of nights so we had to postpone. We were invited to a pot-luck picnic thrown by a family friend yesterday and we had a really great time. In anticipation of all the wonderful food that I knew would be there, I got up early yesterday and did an hour of cardio on the treadmill and an hour and a half of strength training with my balance ball. All in all, I burned 1,055 calories, so I was pleased. I'm sure I ate way more than that at the picnic, but we didn't wind up having dinner so I'm hoping it will all be okay in the end! I will say though that my eyes were much bigger than my stomach - after eating all that delicious food, all I felt was sick!

Today and tomorrow we don't really have anything planned yet. Frank has to work this evening from four until midnight, so I'm letting him sleep in a little. I'm hoping today that I'll be able to mow the lawn and maybe take the dogs for a walk in the nature preserve for some extra exercise. Tomorrow, I'd like to break out the canoe and take it out for the first time this season! It should be a beautiful day for some paddling!

Well, my to-do list is growing in the back of my head and it's heating up outside so I'd better sign off and get started with my day!

Well Rounded

Today was quite a balancing act, but I’m happy because despite the day being busy, I was able to accomplish everything that I wanted to.

This is my busy time of year anyway, and that coupled with the fact that two of my bosses are going to be out tomorrow and one will be out for all next week too made my task list expand exponentially. Because of all this, the attendees of my permit approval meeting somehow unanimously decided that I was going to move my meeting up 24 hours to that afternoon. What? Is that even allowed? But I knew that if I didn’t want applicants hounding me all week that I’d better hustle my butt and get my applications together. Of course in the mean time I had other requests – some urgent enough to sidetrack me and about 20 that are now sitting on post-it notes until tomorrow – to divert my attention, but I’m happy to say that I finished up my meeting preparations and sent the agenda to the printed moments before the meeting began. Also, we finished up the meeting just at 4 o’clock – I love it when there’s exactly the right amount of day to match the work that you need to do! I felt like I had conquered the work day. I even got a really nice compliment about how attentive I was to my permits from the regional supervisor.

Even though I probably should have worked through lunch with the mess I had going, I went for a power walk with Judy and Carmen. It was a beautiful day and we walked from Broadway up to Lark Street, through the concourse and looped back down. Even though I was huffing and puffing, I was pleased that I got my workout in. I’m pretty sure that I got a boost of whatever chemical I needed to get me through the rest of the day too.

I got home and had about 45 minutes before Frank got home and I knew we had to go grocery shopping, so I relaxed outside and read on my deck in the sunshine. I’m reading Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann – it’s a little slow and the prose is a bit heavy-handed for my tastes, but I’m enjoying the plot so far so I’ll stick with it and see where it goes.

Even though I was exhausted from grocery shopping and we didn’t get back home until close to 8 o’clock, instead of swinging through a fast food drive-thru or gobbling down something easy but not so healthy, I stuck to the plan for dinner. We had baked parch with broccoli and brown rice – delicious, although the next time I make perch I’ll leave it in the oven just a little bit longer.

So now that dinner is over and even though my bed has been calling me since around 9 o’clock, I’m sitting down to write to you all and now I’m off to spend some time -- at least 500 words worth of time – with At Setting. It’s been a long day, but I feel once again like I’ve conquered the day.

Hard Work

Everything worth having is worth working hard for.

A cliché, it’s true, but as I like to say -- most clichés are there for a reason. And this one becomes less cliché the more that you really consider it in your own life.

Up until recently, I knew that it applied to getting in shape. After all, I’ve traveled this road before, put in all the hours of exercise and the months of counting calories. Only recently have I realized how true this is for being a successful writer too.

It’s no secret that becoming a successful writer takes a lot of hard work. And of course, that work involves writing: completing the necessary research and outlining, sitting down and making yourself write a terrible first draft, editing that into something beautiful that people want to read, being torn down, reworking parts – or the whole thing – until it finally becomes a well-crafted and whole piece. That’s all there is to writing, right? But the work doesn’t end there. There are so many more steps after the hard work of getting the words down on paper is done. Depending on your intentions for the piece, there’s finding reliable people to critique your work, locating competitions to enter it in, drafting a query letter, researching agents, marketing yourself. And don’t forget making time to keep writing every day, because the ideas don’t stop coming.

But as the saying goes – if it’s worth having, it’s worth working hard for. It’s what I have to tell myself when I struggle to find the time to balance everything in my life – this is what I want. I can’t let At Setting go by the wayside any longer. I have to work hard, first to complete the novel and then to find out what the next stages of its life will be – even if that means that it sits, unpublished but whole, on my hard drive.

Let the work begin.