A mysteriously leisure day

I am caught up.

I hesitate to say that, but I think I am. Oh, I have chores I COULD do. I've been meaning to canvass the local bookstores & drop off promo info & info about me. But I'm thinking it's better to mail that instead. Or maybe I'm just being lazy. Ditto for libraries: promo drop-off/chat with head librarian, but... maybe mailing instead?

Other than that, my calendar is clear. Gardening is as done as it's going to be done. My WIP is written & I'm in review on it. Office has been weeded out & tidied. Christmas presents are being delivered from catalog shopping. I even balanced my checkbook (well, kind of. I forced a balance, but hey -- a balance is a balance, right?)

Leisure... what a concept! I'm going to go out & do a bit of shopping, then come home and take a nap. I'm going to ENJOY this day!

Uses for nasty work

Our landscaper is no longer in the business, so Hubby & I are doing our garden chores ourselves this year. It's been about 3 years since we had to do the fall clean-up, and I can tell you right now, we didn't pay our landscaper NEARLY enough for the amount of work he did. This is truly back-breaking work, but we're taking it in chunks, so it's going along okay.

As I was tussling with dead plants in the yard, I crafted a chapter in my WIP. I've been tussling with it, too, trying to work out how to get the hero there in time for the heroine to save his butt. And lo & behold, while tearing out some thistles (VERY carefully since I am allergic to them and my hands swell up like puff fishes if I touch one), I had :: eureka!!::

Isn't it great when you're doing something icky & something good comes of it?

(This picture is just a reminder to me of why I'm doing all the tussling)

Back to normal, kinda

I'm slowly but surely getting back to normal. I went to the gym today for the first time in a week and discovered I gained 2 pounds -- not bad when I consider my erratic diet for most of the week. I'll whip those 2 pounds off my body soon.

I'm caught up at the Paycheck Job and am almost done with my WIP. It's gone very fast but this was mainly a rewrite, not a 'write', so I expected it to be quick. I got info out to the agent who's interested in my work (whew) and my Icky To Do list is whittled down to 3 things for the weekend ("Icky To Do" are things I continually procastinate about until I can no longer postpone).

We're off to a musical play this afternoon, then dinner, then hopefully more writing tonight & tomorrow. I would love to wrap up this WIP this week and let it sit on the back burner as I consider another book that's popped into my head. I think it's doable. Let's face it -- all things are doable when you're home among familiar things. There really is No Place Like Home.

On the road...

I'm leaving town in a few minutes to go to see my Mom, who's in the hospital. It's pneumonia and she's 90, so this is a non-trivial illness.

I've been getting my affairs in order (so to speak) so I can stay with her as long as needed. Got ample clothing packed, bags of Stuff to work on, 2 computers, chargers ... it looks like a trek across the country not a 4-hour jaunt to a civilized place (yes, Iowa is civilized, no matter what those Left Coasters think!)

Along with all of this are deadlines at the Paycheck Job. I have an exceptional boss, and she's told me just 'go, do whatever you need to do, check in when you.' Thank you, Lord, for good bosses. That being said, I still put in a few extra hours to wrap up some things so others on my project won't be behind the 8-ball because I'm gone.

I've had 5 books release this year, and I'm trying to be a good soldier and do promo for those. Tricky when you're juggling so much else, but I dip in now and then and promo. Not enough, but it'll have to do.

And I had edits for a book which were, thankfully, amazingly light. Done in an hour and out the door. I have a request from an agent for more info about me, my marketing strategy, my books, my sell-through -- all good and all stuff I can put together while sitting in the hospital room with the drone of machines beeping nearby.

As I did all these chores this week, I thought about the old Need vs. Want vs. Should triangle we often find ourselves trapped in. As I did things, I thought, "I should do this, then that'll be finished and I can get on the road" or "I need to get that done so..." or "I want to check that, if I do...."

I finally realized that when Need, Want, and Should all come together it's the right thing to do.

I need to be with Mom. I want to be with her. And I should be with her.

So I'm on the road again...

a fading away

I have a group of 7 friends we call The Ladies Who Lunch (although we usually dine these days). We've known each other since the early 90s and used to work together. Through layoffs, etc., we now are at all different companies.

For years we've gotten together frequently to stay in touch with each other. It used to be lunch once a week. Then it was dinner twice a month. Lately it's been randomly, whenever we can get together. I feel as though I'm losing touch with them but there's nothing to be done about it -- we all have hectic schedules & getting together is hard. We do stay in touch, somewhat, via email, but not as closely as my other mainly-email-friends (out of towners like Kelly & Cai and Ardath).

It's hard to see friendships fade like this. It's still strong: I could still call on any of them for a favor and it would be done, pronto. But it's fraying around the edges. I have the terrible feeling this is one of those things I'll look back on and say "I wish we had tried just a bit harder to stay in touch more" or something like that. Or maybe not. Maybe it's strong enough to handle the lack of presence.

Only time will tell, I guess. ::sigh::

I'm dreaming of a white Halloween

I'm not sure if this will work, but I'll put a link right here of my garden and how it looks before and after snow.

Yep. Snow. We got about 1/4" of snow last night. And man, was it cold today! Since I've lost weight I'm really susceptible to cold, and I could NOT get warm today until I got to my office and turned on the fireplace. Of course, it was a bit overcast & gloomy, too, which didn't help.

Winter is a great time for me because I get a ton of writing done. But first, I've got to get ready for winter -- yard work, get the coats dry-cleaned, dig out the mittens ...

And make a pot of chili. Yep. That's definitely right there at the top of the list.

What a difference a story makes!

I'm working on my current WIP and I can't help but compare it to the last one I just finished.

I wrote that one in the summertime and it felt like pulling teeth to get it on the page. I knew the characters well (this was the 3rd book with them), but the plot felt choppy to me & I wasn't sure it was going to work. I had to do a lot of backtracking and layering in the clues to make it all work out.

This current WIP is totally different. I'm still doing backtracking, but I'm doing it to layer in character details. I'm basing the book on an old draft, so I'm cutting a lot but I feel a real connection to the characters. What's the difference? This one is a 3rd-person book and the other, earlier one, was a 1st-person book. I'm having fun doing 2 points of view.

NOTE TO SELF: intersperse the occasional 3rd-person book in among your other ones. It's a lot of fun!

Funny how that works

I didn't get as much writing done while I was on vacation, but I did the story and the characters seated firmly in my brain. That's really important: sometimes when I start a book, I just have a general feeling for the people & the plot. Then I go back and layer in the details.

But the best books are the ones where the characters are always there, in the back of my brain, and that's what happened while I was out of town. I had ample free time to just muse about them, imagine them in different situations, and get them firmly in my head.

So now it's just a matter of writing down their story!

Oh, and yes: the kitties missed us. Opie is very needy and won't let me out of his sight (he's on my lap now), and Pandora is even being affectionate. And Houdini followed me around yesterday until he was sure we were home for real. Then he lapsed back into his usual unconcern. Mia has bounced around from place A to place B, always coming back to check that we're still here.

So nice to be missed.....