I am writing a first draft.  

 

I understand that first drafts, especially mine, are always a bit messy.  I accept, at least in theory, that this is the way it must be, that the good stuff will only come out by messing around and letting things happen organically, by writing through until the magic happens.  I do get this.  It's just that I don't like this.

 

Part of me, at least.  I just truly suck at watching a mess lie there.  I don't like it in my house, either: if something is wrong, I have to actively not look at it, and it's even worse if someone is coming, because then they will see it, and wonder why I haven't fixed it.  Of course, usually this isn't true.  But I can't be sure, and it bothers me.  With writing, I've been able to fix this: I don't let anyone see it until I'm ready.  Somehow it's okay in a beta draft, even though it's still a mess, probably because I can say, "I know there are messes."  I think right now what I can't handle is finding out that there are messes I haven't ID'd yet, because that would depress me.  There are already so many.  The thought of finding out more would push me over the edge, and worse, if someone saw a mess that WASN'T, I'd be honor bound to stand there and argue with them, and waste time.  And all the while, I can't see it, can't see that there is magic, can't quite believe.

 

When I get to the end of even one draft, I can see the shining thread.  I can't see exactly what the story is supposed to be, but I can see that it is, and once I see that, all it takes is time and work, and for a Virgo?  Whatever, just keep the coffee coming.  But this part.  THIS part, where I can't yet see, where I'm not able to see anything except momentary shines?  Oh, just fuck it.  

 

They used to really throw me, those little shines.  I would think, "YES!  THIS IS IT! PROTECT THIS SCENE, THIS IDEA, OH YEAH!"  But sometimes they're teases, little bits of fey to keep me working.  Sometimes they're the sheen on shit.  I can't find that glowing center until it's all done, and you know, it doesn't matter how many times I find it, I can't ever believe there is one for sure inside, even though part of me is convinced there is.  I'm sure this says so much more about my own psyche than any story.  Whatever.

 

All I know is that this is not the Hour of Virgo, this part of the process.  This is the time of the Scorpion, the time for mad, wild passion and risk, of calculation and manipulation and cleverness that makes your teeth ache.  This is the time for messy, messy sex.  I suppose most people don't think of writing as sex, but outside of the part with bodies, I can't think of what else it is.  It's push and pull, it takes you over, and if you bring too much ego, you ruin it.  What else is that, if it isn't sex?

 

I suppose that's why I write.  Virgo sun, Scoprio rising, Cancer moon. Huge buckets of emotion and sexual energy, all capped under RIGID FUCKING CONTROL.  A mind that wants to try sex with everyone, everywhere, to drink as deeply as you can, and a nun in the background obsessed about all these GODDAMNED germs.  (And a moon aching for the conflict to stop.  Go have some cookies, honey, you'll feel better.)  What else was there to do but write, where the germs are only as real as I want them to be?

 

So, this is a little message to that nun: baby, hit the beach. We've been here.  We've been here a lot.  This is not your show.  You go off and suss out how to make the self-publishing bit work for the big novel series, or watch the market again to make quadruple sure there isn't a publisher that meets your incredible exacting standards. Or--just a thought, just tossing this out there--maybe take a fucking break for once.  Maybe trust that the universe can run without your ruler on its knuckles, at least for a few hours a day so we can get this draft out.  Don't think about the grout that needs replacing in the bathroom or the paint peeling there, or the fact that you haven't vacuumed and company is coming.  Don't think about the things you've promised to do but haven't, or worry about what you have done or left undone.  Even the Lutherans give that up to Jesus, baby.  Let it go.

 

And if you can't, just lie back and think of Mr. Clean.  Shut your eyes and your ears and remind yourself that once this is over, it's Lady Scorpio who hits the beach and it's you, gorgeous, you who gets to go in there and make it right.  Just think of the mess she's going to leave.  But you'll see it then, won't you.  You'll find that light, and you'll polish it until it gleams.

 

I know, you can't see it now.  I know that bugs you.  I know you hate, even more, trusting someone else, even if it's part of the same goddamned head you share.  But honey, this is not your thing.  You can't see this, not until you let go. So let go.  Trust me.  We can do this. Let. Go.

 

And hey, you know, feel free to show up for the sex.  Given the way this novel is going, there ought to be plenty.  And no disease risk at all, just the occasional unclear antecedent.  Even you can live with that.

Me & mine are taking a vacation beginning June 6.  It will last roughly two weeks.  It will span half the United States.  It will be carried out largely in our family car.  It will take us to relatives and national monuments and beaches and popular attractions.  It will not, despite what my monkey brain is trying to convince me, be the source of my untimely death or mental breakdown.

Part of my internal freakout stems from the fact that this is not only the first trip since being slammed with a chronic pain condition but a major, intense trip that could very well wipe me out even if I were fit as a fiddle; however, I can tell you that most of this is just me pre-trip. Don't get me wrong: I love to travel.  I ADORE traveling.  And once I'm actually out in the field or on the plane or in the thick of it, I do, largely, okay.  But pre-trip?  Gah.  I become a constant mental noodle, usually of things that could go wrong.  I have to resist the urge to shop my way out of my panic, buying things that could potentially save me.  But while excursions with me are best done on the fly with as little prep time as possible, this trip isn't possible to do ad hoc.  And so I am planning, and gnawing more than a bit on my own arm.  

What to pack?  What not to pack? How many lists?  Lists of what?  Snacks?  Timetables?  First aid kits?  Shoes?  Does everyone have proper clothing?  What books to bring?  What music to put on the iPod?  What to pack in the laptop?  What, what, what?  Will all of this shit fit in the car?  Oh, and add to this that our car was in an accident last week, nearly totaled, and is still in the shop until later this week.  And still needs new tires.  And . . . .

Gaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrr.

So I'm getting out of the house.  I'm taking Anna to Des Moines, and we're going to Costco.  We aren't members, and it's going to have to be amazing for me to join, but we're going to go investigate.  We're going to listen to the iPod in the rental car on the way down, and we're going to bond and laugh and have fun, and then we're going to amble around the big warehouse.  Then we'll come home and I'll sew all her shorts which are too big for her nonexistent waist.  I'm not sure exactly what this is going to do for me, but it seems like a plan, and it will probably be soothing to look at bulk items.  Hopefully I walk out feeling well-stocked and prepared, even if I'm actually not.  And then, maybe, tomorrow I can write instead of freaking out.  I have no idea if this tactic is going to work, but I figure it's worth a shot. 

you go to a chiropractor and mid-way through the diagnostic exam they just sort of look at you with a mixture of horror and disbelief.  Not that "oh, yes, many problems, yes, many visits, yes, mm-hmm" look that you know is shit, but the sort that they can't fake.

He also freakishly knew just where to touch and how to move stuff, and then he'd say, "Is that tight?" as I went into orbit.

No idea what, if anything, this will do.  But at least I'm not sitting at home popping vicodin.  Now, if you'll excuse me, someone just crapped in the litterbox and it smells like a toilet in here, and I must tidy up a bit and try to squeeze in some gym before I go pick up Anna.

Body for sale: cheap. 

Earlier this week I made this nice waxing poetic post about how I'm going to be all adult and put down STB and go finish up the work needed to submit TWA, and be present in my life, blah, blah, blah.  I also was thinking of how I would start sorting through the house to prepare for the spring garage sale, put my name in for more substitute teaching, and I would write the several blog posts I was going to, and mail the thing I've been going to mail for a week.  What actually has happened is that I have continued to do my PT exercises and go to PT and struggle through what I thought was a turn into the next level of getting better and quickly took a big step back, added my neck and shoulders into the mix.  When I wasn't doing exercises or hurting or sleeping because I was tired and hurting from not sleeping because I was hurting, then I was usually filled with sudden, strange rage, and the only thing that made it better was another 3-5 thousand words on STB.  

I don't know what the hell is going on here, frankly.  I think I did fairly well with the "be with the family" thing, but I'm not wildly pleasant to be around, and boy to I have a low bullshit tolerance.  Half the time I'm high on Vicodin, which sounds good, but it's not where I want to be, and not what I want to be doing, and I keep looking ahead at when I can even realistically hope to be "normal," and it's MONTHS away.  MONTHS.  

MONTHS.
 
And I still don't know why this happened, and nobody else does either.  Something about weak shoulders and hips.  Why?  Why now?  Maybe I injured them.  Maybe I was cursed by a demon.  Maybe I ate a watermelon slice under the sideways glint of the full moon.  Maybe it was Memphis.  Don't know.  What I know is that I have to pull on wimpy yellow rubber bands and lie on foam rollers and wait in line behind the 90 year olds in walkers to use the Nu Step machine at the fitness center and plan shopping expeditions carefully.  And sleep on a foam dias with a big pillow under my legs, and take more fucking pills than I have ever taken in my life.  Well, I know this, and that, very, very, very, VERY slowly, I'm getting better, and that as far as anybody can tell, I have no dread disease or even a forever condition.  

I feel like the universe has pulled the blinders on me.  I feel like it has shut the door to my face, and every time I try to open one, even just a peep, it slams me back against the far wall and hands me another illness or some other screwed up thing to deal with.  And for some reason, every single time I try to even work on starting to submit TWA, it gets really, really bad.  I don't get it, but it's starting to get ridiculous enough that I'm willing to put it down for awhile to see if I get beat up less.  I don't like that, because I really do want to work.  So I'm going to try and submit little things here and there, some to ridiculous they-will-laugh-at-me places, because why not?  Short stories, etc.  Something to pass the time while I work my way slowly up from whatever the hell this is.

For whatever reason, STB is my lifeline.  I spasmed a bit starting, but now it's like my saving grace, this wonderful place I walk into whenever I get a chance.  I pay a little bit to go there, because sitting in the chair gets my hips, but walking is worse, so I figure at least I can be getting something out of it.  And god, do I.  It feels like word painting, so lovely and wonderful, and it's SO SHAPED, first draft out!  Well, this is not the first draft, at all.  But it's a fresh draft, and it is hands down the most formed thing that I have ever done.  Probably because I don't care if it is or not, because I"m not supposed to be writing it, and probably because there are NO RULES this time, and I refuse to let them in.  And the characters are so fun, and so fucked up, just like me.  I have a chain smoker and a meth addict and someone being stalked and assaulted.  No, I"m not enjoying torturing the characters at all--that isn't what I mean.  It's that every time I rage, or feel despondent, they have it worse, and out comes their angst, and it's not mine but it is, but it isn't the same as mine, and yet somehow it's a better release than anything else going.

So this is me right now.  Rather short-tempered and often furious and sometimes despondent, getting regular wedgies from the universe, but writing a lot, and writing Will, so much that when I take walks around the block I can all but see him walking beside me, and he puts his hands in his pockets and smiles and tells me just wait, it's going to be even better than I dare to hope.

Okay.

 I have the plot of my novel in algebraic form.  I don't think it proved anything at all except that my brain is seriously demented.

Well, okay, it's interesting, and not just in a "gee, look, I can do it" way.  Basically it starts with X is in N state and ends with Y in N state.  Which is bookendy.  And it tells me about book two, because clearly X and Y need a Z variable to manipulate.  

Innnnteresting.  

And yet, doesn't do A DAMN THING for the query.

Oh, just hell.  John Forbes Nash and the wall of post-its and newspaper clippings with weird codes is clearly next.

This past week has been strange.  The past few weeks, if I'm honest, ever since I sent out the first query.  There were three days where I was mostly manic, not liking the sea of writing inactivity I had descended into, and then a tip led me into something that has yet to officially pan out, but at the very least got me into writing in some fun and potentially profitable directions.  That, actually, has gone on all week, and will continue.  More on that subject in a bit, probably in a different blog entry.

But the past few days have also seen me combing the pages of the Writer's Digest Guide To Literary Agents.  At first I was casually browsing, but then today I went through and highlighted/screened the entries, arranging them by tiers.  I ended up with 21 agencies, one of which being the one I already queried.  It seemed like good progress.

Now, however, I have sat down and searched some of the websites, and now I just don't know.  Some of them I can already feel the NO coming.  Some of them are just strange, and I don't want to submit to them.  Some strange ones I nixed just by their entry in WDGTLA, but the websites are weeding out more.  A lot of them just feel fantastically wrong.  Some of them I'm not sure.  But I have yet to feel the great YES that I felt with the one that I queried.

Which, speaking of, I got my SASE back in the mail today--always a bad sign.  It was a "dear author" rejection, which I don't mind, and actually after reading their WDGTLA entry I began to wonder if they were for me, and yet, their website sounded like me.  I did find it amusing, though, that this agency that practically had a running banner on everything they entered everywhere saying DO NOT SEND US STUFF THAT SAYS DEAR AGENT!!!!!!  sent an unsigned Dear Author.  I like them less now.  Lots less.

This is such depressing business, submitting.  Utterly depressing.  You read tea leaves to see where you belong.  You guess.  You put on your best dress, but you try to be yourself.  It's dating, but weirder.  And I'm already looking at my list of twenty-one, which seemed so nice and respectable, and wondering if I even have a prayer of making my goal of thirteen.  Well, I only have twelve left.

I don't know.  This is absolute shit, this process, but it's the only gig in town.  

I also had an energy therapy appointment this week, following a hunch that the recurrent ear problem that the medical doctors swear up and down I cannot be having (because there is nothing in my ears, unless I want to have surgery just for fun) was probably a cousin to the hormone thing the medical doctors swore I could not be having but energy therapy cured.  It turned out that it was.  It's a long (but interesting!) story as to how we figured this out, but the bottom line is there are things I do not want to hear certain people say, specifically in regards to my writing and what I want to write.  I do not want to hear this so badly that I am physically creating hearing loss and invisible (seriously!  no one can see it, but I can feel it!) drainage that wakes me up from dark dreams and gives me a lot of pain--I'm doing this, apparently, instead of hearing.  So I'm working on that.  I wrote a short story on it that I still do not get at all, but it seemed to help.  My ears have been clearer, too, but only so long as I work on the sorts of things I am afraid of people finding out about.  I suspect phase II is going to involve actually blogging it and talking about it.  It'll be like Post Secret, except my name will be on the postcard.  FUN.

(My ears have been draining while I wrote this. It's the damndest thing.)

But I have digressed.  

Right now I am depressed, not because I was rejected (please, this will happen so many more times) but because I am looking at this pool of agents and possibilities and already seeing little but muck.  My energy therapist would scold me if she heard me say this.  I was instructed to meditate and draw good things to me, to envision success.  I believe in this sort of thing--it makes a lot of sense.  If I can clog up my endrocrine system and send myself sideways into menopause because of odd energy I am stuffing into strange places in my body, if I can give myself chronic ear pain that does not register on medical equipment but goes away when an energy therapist "pulls it out," certainly I could sit on my office couch and put out an all-call for success.  I guess right now I'm glad that's an option, because the sea looks pretty crappy from here.

The trouble is this--well, it's not the trouble, in my opinion, but it is what makes it hard: I don't just want anybody.  I want a good agent.  Actually, I want a FANTASTIC agent.  Not the one that can make me the most money or who has a lot of clout.  Not the one that is sexy or chic.  I want the one that is fantastic for me in the way that my husband is fantastic for me.  The one so good that even though there are other good people out there I can objectively look at them, then look at my husband and say, "Yes, but they aren't as perfect for me as you.  No thank you."  I want that, or I want to just email my stuff to interested parties or blog it or find the way to bind it one book at a time.  Because anything else is just a mockery of the thing.  How I am to do this with a few reference books and a lot of search engine work I do not know.  I might as well try meditation and even magic.  

At any rate, this entry is coming to you because it is news, and it's part of the story some of you have been following.  The other reason is that some of you are trying to get published, too, or hope to some day, and it's always good to commiserate.  It sucks.  The searching sucks.  It's as bad as dating.  I will admit I am wishing it could be like I found my husband, that it just sort of fell into my lap, that the right person was just suddenly there, and I knew how to behave and how to dance.  (Mostly.)  That might still happen.  Probably not if I'm being so silent that I am blocking my ears so I can't hear people, though.

So right now I have nothing out there being shopped.  Well, that's not true!  I have a proposal for something else, something very small and different, something at this moment unwritten--that is out there, live.  And you know, I am fantastically excited about that one.  Even if it doesn't work, I'm so excited by it because everything feels right.  You know those moments when there's that golden little glimmer, and you feel the hum?  It feels like that.

I love THE WITCH'S APPRENTICE.  I love every character in it, and I love that world.  I only want the best for that story, and I'm going to find the best for it.  But not today.  Today I waded through that huge book, and did some surfing, and that was enough.  Tomorrow I will meditate and think about magic and wonder and hope, and I'll finish copy editing the thing, and write some more of the stuff that has the golden glimmer on it.  Right now I'm just going to hug myself a little and sigh, and lean my head against the wall and say, it is hard, Virginia.  It is hard.

Hans*, you just want to close your eyes.  Really.  

So.  For my birthday Dan and his parents got me Leopard.  I've been wanting it forever.  Then I decided I didn't know that I really needed it yet, of course right after Dan had moved heaven and earth to get it, so he told me to verify whether or not he should take it back, but in the end we decided to keep it.  I have not been installing it.  I've been nervous.  I was going to back stuff up and be extra sure I had time, and Dan was going to try it on the macbook (what I'm writing from now) first.  All good, intelligent ideas.

Which in no way explains why I spontaneously decided to install it on the iMac FIRST and WITHOUT BACKING ANYTHING UP AND WITH LEAVING VITAL FILES, LIKE, SAY, MY FUCKING SCRIVENER FILE OF TWA ON THE DESKTOP.  Well, it explains that I'm not intelligent, I guess.

Anyway, I did it, and it installed and then failed and now is half on, half not.  The iMac is seriously fucked.  I have no finder.  I don't know how to explain that to non-mac people: essentially, it's like if you couldn't access start and had no icons on your desktop.  Which I don't.  And no menu bar.  I do, however, have my dock, so if a program or document is there, I have it, and Leopard has a documents folder, so I know that the documents are there.  At least the ones sensibly organized in folders.  Not, however, the stuff littered on the desktop.  That I have no idea what is going on.

I had my second negative Apple Care experience trying to solve it--this one was very bad, so bad I wish I had her name so I could write in and say FIRE HER NOW.  I hung up on her, sobbed and nearly threw up, then decided whether I wanted to drive to Des Moines or try again.  I wanted a live person and the nice shiny store, but it's not practical, so I tried the phone again.  This time I had Jesus, I swear.  Or his cousin, at least.  He was kind and soothing and a little bit slick, but i didn't care because he was making me feel good.  He walked me through and found a way for me to reinstall (I had to go get the old keyboard and do it from pressing "c" after the chime).  So now I am waiting.  He says I might still have my stuff from the desktop.  I might not, but he's hoping I do.  He even helped me archive and install so I didn't lose anything further and saved everything I had not lost, which was hopefully everything because hopefully I lost nothing.

If there were cigarettes in the house, I would be chain smoking them.  I"m thinking of whiskey.  I'm such an idiot.  I don't know why I did that.  There's nothing vital in that file, just the stuff I'd done in the past few days which I was going to have to redo anyway.  Still.  It feels like I'm waiting to see if I had a fire.

Worse, while the failed install was going I went out to Best Buy to buy Season One of BSG with my birthday money but it was so expensive I couldn't do it.  I'm going to order it used through Amazon (60% savings), but right now I could really do with some soothing Cylon nuclear bombs and Odama saving the day.  Instead I get to wait and see if I am stupid and lucky or stupid and crying all night.  Worst case scenario the install fails AGAIN and tomorrow I have to drive to DM to the apple store.

Actually, the biggest reason I'm crying is I"m not going to have this redone by Friday, which I really wanted, and if I have to go backwards and possibly have LOST data, too, and lose time driving not to mention money in gas--I will be really, really miserable.

So stupid.  So, so stupid.







*My brother, computer guy.  He doesn't need to see this shit.

It isn't the physical withdrawl.  That doesn't bother me at all--never has.  It's the mental loss.  It's the fact that when you are desperate to show someone very smart and helpful your draft and just want to get through the last bit of the act only to discover THIS is the part where the pacing goes to shit, to find out you have to invent three-way conflict on the fly, to cut scenes and shift them and still remember to go pick up your daughter at 1:45--THIS is when a pack of Dunhills sounds really, really good, because you know DAMN WELL that it would open your mind up just enough to make everything perfectly, miraculously clear.  It's just that they also give you lung cancer and set a bad example for your child.

And yet, I REALLY WANT A FUCKING CIGARETTE.  ABOUT FOUR OR FIVE, ACTUALLY.  RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

That is all.

Openings suck.

They suck donkey dung at high noon in Baghdad.  In summer.

There is too much that goes into them.  They are either incomprehensible, full of infodump, or stitled from overwriting.  Or, when you're lucky, they make the whole story hum like a 57 Chevy.

Openings suck.

My opening sucks. 

But I'm working on it.

There's going to be sinning while this happens.  Plenty of it.  People are going to have to deal.

I'm also going to kick this opening's ass, just so you know.  Eventually.

The earth will also fall into the sun.  Eventually.  Except this is my horoscope for the day.  Yesterday I did not believe in the daily horoscopes, because mine was crap, but today it is good so I believe that daily horoscopes are absolutely 100% spot on.

VIRGO: Your analytical ability is even more finely tuned today as an exacting Mercury-Saturn conjunction in your sign focuses your mind like a laser beam. But don't undermine others with negativity by harshly criticizing their work. Instead, use this aspect constructively to describe what can be done next.

Right.  And what can be done next is nail this fucking opening scene.  Once and for all.

Amen.

At this moment we have a rather significant storm coming at us from the northeast.  In my nearly 36 years of existence in Iowa, this could possibly be a first.

In other news, I think I finally have my head on straight.  Almost.  Spent the day reading the opening salvo and chapter into Garage Band, listened to it, and think I have what I need to square it up.  Got a bit frenetic and took a walk around the park.  Wrote down what I think will work.  Then got rather edgy and a bit weepy because I really want to be done and yet I also want it to make sense.  Had a talking-to from Charles, and everyone who lives in my head said he was right.  No, I'm not above psychoanalysis from my characters, actually.

Anna has a playdate for a significant portion of tomorrow; I'm thinking of waking earlyish and working hard so that by the end of the day I can say that I Accomplished Much.  The goal right now is to have all of act one ship-shape by August 29.  I mean, REALLY ship-shape, all beta comments assimilated, all my own musings sorted, and the pacing vastly corrected.  Everything past that should be a lot more manageable, and there's a contest I want to try to prep something for in the meantime.  I really, really want to be submitting by mid-September.  I had originally intended another round of betas, but I think, actually, I may stick with where I am for the moment. I just want to do a round of submissions.  I'll feel so much better.  If it really, really sucks, then I'll find a wave two to help sort out the chaff of that.  But I want to submit so much I ache.  Signing would be lovely, but right now I just want to submit.

That sounds so sexual.

Anyway, off to watch this storm come in backwards.  Maybe the rain will come up from the ground and seep back into the clouds to go with the wrong-direction.  You never know.

Going to sit in the chair and listen to the ipod so I don't have to hear the screaming children playing Wii?

My headphones just went out in the left ear.  Again. 

SFJEIWROUEW@##$#@%!@$#@$!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sword.  Death.  Now.

Randomly.  Because that will make it more fun.

It has been one of those days.  There were a couple of moments where it was really good I wasn't allowed to run through the streets of Ames armed with a broadsword.  Though I am now really, really wanting to live somewhere I could run through the streets with a broadsword.  I want to go somewhere tonight with a pack of cigarettes in my pocket, a flask of whiskey in another, and my sword sharp and ready to cut people.  Random people.

Sigh.

Anyway, it's getting better, largely because I went and bought mineral water with Anna on the bike, and it's really hard to stay bloodthirsty when riding double with a six-year-old on a bike, because she sees the whole world and the time with you as a miracle of god, and the sharp edges on you begin to dull.  Which is good. 

That and I spiked the mineral water with flower essences, specifically ones named TRANSFORM ANGER.  Even though secretly I wished to leave it untransformed and just ride it.

You don't want to hear about what made my day crap, honestly--especially since it isn't any longer.  What you want to see are the CA photos, which I have just now uploaded to .mac, which I suppose is actually now "mobile me."  That still seems silly, but it's what it's called.  Anyway, it's going up, but it takes awhile.  Hopefully the next post will have a link, and maybe someday there will also be captions or explanations, etc.  So far, no.

One good thing I did today was begin to read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which the library emailed me early this morning to tell me was in.  I am just at the part where Mr. Norrell is going to remotely perform magic, and I'm very much enjoying it.  I plan to go enjoy it more thoroughly in the brown chair here in a moment.

There has not been much writing, though there has been much attempt to do so.  There has not been much that isn't flying at ninety and running other people or pets to appointments or making sure everyone has clothes and shoes and agreeing to playdates.  I'm torn between ARG GODDAMN IT GIVE ME TEN FUCKING MINUTES and knowing that excepting the days I substitute teach there will be acres of peace beginning next Thursday.  It's just that IF there's a day Dan isn't working until September 1, it's booked with something, and Walter has a very infected tooth, and Anna needs to get to Adventureland. 

Which is why the broadswoard, I suppose.  There is a lot of shit going on here, and I've been putting on Mary Sunshine's face, and would still like to, but there's a lot of Kali energy running around here.  I can be maternal, yeah, but mostly it's the broadsword.  Because I'm going to blog about California, I'm going to revise that next scene in TWA and put act one back together.  Maybe, maybe, if it goes well I will put the revised opening up here. 

Maybe.

(I am also back on the Daily Plate, too.  But I am giving up on catching up on email and groups.  There a couple I will make sure I get to, but the rest are going the way of the broadsword.)

Gahhh.

Brain gone.

Plane tomorrow.

Hold earthquakes, please.

No context.  Just GAH.

Can you drink at 12:20PM?  Probably not when you have to take your daughter to a library event in less than an hour . . . .

Forecast for Ames for the week:

And, in a realization that I can only call acid-reflux reducing, I'm not going to be able to tell if it works or not until I have some beta readers get through it.  The whole thing.  All the way to chapter 12. 

Did I mention this thing was 150k long?

It's really metaphysical, which could be really good or really, really suck.  I alternately think, "Damn, I am GOOD!" and then "This is fucking LOONY."  I either created a cool new myth which will make people ache and cry and run out in a frenzy to proclaim OH MY GOD, THAT WOMAN IS AMAZING! or I have written a book where readers may or may not swim along happily, then will get to chapter twelve and say, "What the FUCK?!'

Just hell.

I build to it, so it could work.  I keep panicking and thinking I need to go back and feed that end, to make it less WTF, but then I think back and it IS there.  I could, maybe, MAYBE add a bit to the intro.  But I am reluctant.  I will very probably trim some of it down.  But there is no escaping that the denoument and conclusion is either "Whoah!" or "What the FUCK was she smoking?!"

Believe me.  I so wish I were smoking right now.  In fact, there is extreme temptation to run out tonight, buy a pack and a fifth and sit on my deck and cry.  Hell, I'd like to do it now.

Why, you ask?  Well, that's easy.  Because I think, actually, that it's pretty good.  Because if I'm really honest, I think it is very, very good, and I am proud of it and think it is the best thing I have ever, ever, ever written.  Because I have given up a lot of my life and a lot of people to do this, and right now it feels like it was worth it.

But I also fear, not really even secretly, since I talk about it here all the time, that I am not good enough to carry something like that.  I"m afraid it's just a phantom, and that it will never translate, and it will, in fact, turn into WTF, and I will not know how to fix it, and it will have been, while not in vain, not exactly what I had hoped for.

I am not talking about publishing.  I am talking about other people just plain liking it, of feeling moved and excited by it.  Specifically, this chapter twelve. 

Though, as I think of it, this all fits in well to the next scene, because it's a character who's sort of fighting the same thing, and he's got to get over it to get what he really wants.  So, writing, once again, is really whacked out therapy.

Really, it will be okay.   Because I'm going to finish this thing and then immediately go back to the beginning and start reading through, because I want to see how it plays.  I read fast.  Just being able to read THROUGH will make me feel better.  I'm also thinking seriously of recording it on audio, me reading it, then playing it back to myself.  That will be a little, "Gah, hate my voice!"  But it would be good for the writing, too.

Anyway.  Neurotic breakdown over. 

Chapters 1-12 revised.  One chapter to go.
142,688 revised
147,022 total

I nap, and then I wrap it up.  The verdict it still out on the cigarettes, but I already know that when it's done, I will break down and sob.  Because then I will have to fess up and admit that I have finally written this novel--for the last time.

Send chocolate.

Cedar Rapids, where my grandparents live.  Though they do not live in the evacuation area--so far.  I think they're safe, but god, who knows anymore.

Be sure to watch the video in the sidebar taking out a railroad bridge.  Water.  Not to be fucked with.


Des Moines water looks okay for now--but I don't blame people for not trusting their word.  Last time it was very bad.

In Ames, the worst thing that could happen is we get turned into a weird sort of island with all roads leading out of town cut off.  Which isn't great.  But I think we get to keep water and power.

I think.

And by the way, all this flooding is because of the water that we have here NOW.  Look what is on the way.

Whoever is doing the rain dance, KNOCK IT THE HELL OFF.  Redirect your antenna to California.  I know there are a bunch of weddings coming up, but we have to think of the bigger picture here for a few minutes. 

But I"m not having that, either.

I have chapter eleven done, and there's just twelve and thirteen and the coda thing to go.  It's blowing my mind, and I want to keep writing until it's done, but I don't know what will happen to my brain if I do   . . . . .


Yeah, these are going to keep happening.  You're going to have to look away, lap them up, or be annoyed.  It's my little oven that I talk to when I feel mad--it just happens to open in the back to the entire internet, but it never seems like it when I speak into the door, so I keep opening it and peering into the comforting black.

Right.  Chapter Twelve.  Let's see what happens to Emily . . . .

But man, would a shot of Jameson's taste good.