Okay, okay… I said that I was staying away from the blog and Facebook until my draft was finished… and it’s SO DANG CLOSE…

but of course, here I am. On the blog. (And lots of inane status updates on FB.) Before the draft is complete.

I’m really bad at grounding myself. Well, I’m okay with saying “Self, you’re grounded”, but then it’s the follow-through that I stink at.

Anyhoo, I’m breaking my silence to post up a link to a hilarious vblog by Jackson Pearce. (She’s down there in the blog roll, if you haven’t checked out her blog before.) It’s about writer’s block. Something that I’ve struggled with like most people struggle with weight or nicotine addiction or Farmville.

Check ‘er out. She’s hilarious, gorgeous, talented, and likes her breakfast pretty… which I totally admire.

Okay, back to my book. Dudes, I’m close. I was up until nearly 4am last night writing the big final fight chapter.

I will now take the opportunity to ask if anyone out there would care to try out a crit reading. My draft will be ready for a read in about a month or so. I’m willing to swap with fellow writers… my first 50 pages for your first 50 pages. No strings attached. If you don’t like my style of writing, or you don’t like my feedback (or vice-versa) we go our separate ways… no questions asked, and with no tears. (Or if you’re a non-writer friend of mine and you just want to give my story a once-over without swapping me 50 pages of your journal entries or lasagna recipes, that’s fine, too.)

Also, completely unrelated: we are rat-sitting while my sister and her boys are camping. And I just had a rat wander over my lap and arms dragging rat urine all over me. My gag reflex is workin’ overtime.

So to sum up: draft almost completed, hilarious video on writer’s block, wanna be a critique partner?, and I’m covered in rat pee.

Can’t get enough of this chick and her voice.

Just wanted to tell you that. And now, I’m grounding myself from my blog and the evil pulls of Facebook until I finish my stinking draft. I’m hitting 50k tonight, and I’m down to the final two chapters. So — DANG! — I’m close. So close I can smell it.

See you on the other side.

This week you can find me doing pretty much one of the following three things: blowing my frickin nose; writing, writing, writing; or blowing my frickin nose. Okay, I know I said the one thing twice, but that’s because it feels like blowing my nose is the thing I do twice as often as anything else. I have blown and/or wiped my nose so much that it looks and feels like red armadillo armor on the end of it. (And this is the point where I realize that I am talking way too much about my headcold and giving you way too much info on nose-blowing. So on to the real topic…)

Writing.

Hi, I’m writing. And when I’m not writing, I’m writing blog posts about writing. Because one of the oldest tricks in the book for writers who can’t think of anything to write, is to write about writing. I think it’s a lame scheme, myself. But I’m going to do it anyway.

These essays are sorta saving my life. I’ve decided that this dude is succinctly genius. He gets to the various cores of why writers give up and fail themselves, and gives a good dose of kick-in-the-pants self motivation. So if you’ve ever wanted to write a novel, or have started a novel (or, like me, several novels) and just can’t manage to get through the whole thing, take some time to read through Timothy Hallinan’s blog.

And now, back to real writing… not just writing about writing. And also nose-blowing. And also, I just paused the writing of this post to pull my toddler’s arm out of the toilet, as he was splashing in it like a kiddie pool. So after I blow my nose, I will disinfect his arm up to the elbow.

Good times. Now go. Write.

I had a curious person ask me what the main character in my wip looks like. I’ve had a very clear mental picture of Calliope for sometime now, so when I stumbled onto J. Corsentino’s site and found a picture that looks so much like what I had in mind, I was ecstatic.

Behold: J. Corsentino’s “Something Wicked”, a pretty dang close idea of what Calliope looks like (even down to the interesting henna-looking tats) :

Calliope is not a faerie (she’s more along the lines of elflike), so yank off her adorable wings… but other than that, it’s close. Calliope is on the side of good, but she has an evil twin sister. So also imagine a character who looks similar, but less “mischievous” and more just dark and evil… like, she’ll stab you without thinking twice… and then laugh at you about how dumb you look when you’re in pain.

J. Corsentino is a photographer who does faeries, angels, and vampires living in settings of urban decay. And I love them. I have his first book (which sadly, in my humble opinion, doesn’t have some of his best shots in it. I think he’s gotten better as he’s gone along.). If you’re into fantasy, his pictures are pretty creatively inspiring. Here’s the link for his site.

And that is all… carry on. (btw- word count is now nicely above 40k.)

This is my favorite pen. Fave-o-rite. I honestly dislike writing with other pens.

I’m sort of a pen snob.

My pen is my favorite color: kick-in-the-pants-green (though the ink is not green, because that’s a little tough on the eyes). It is smallish in size, perfect for my hand. It writes smooth lines, and always on the first try; there’s never any scribbling of circles to get the ink going.

Perhaps best of all: It’s an astronaut pen, dude. It writes upside down… in zero gravity ! So if I ever find myself stuck upside down in a tree, or marooned on the atmosphere-deprived surface of Pluto, I can write down my game-plan for escape. Or just draw pictures on my jeans.

Also, this is the official pen of my wip (that’s “work in progress”). This pen has written outlines, doodles, kissing scenes, and monster decapitations.

I know… this pen has seen some action, right?

No, you can’t borrow it. Get your own.

This is my new mantra. Because lately I’ve caught myself being sad quite often… while catching myself being awesome much less often.

But no more!!

Starting now, I will be awesome!

True story.

(also, Neil Patrick Harris is my gay boyfriend.)

(also, I totally stole this pic from another blog. but I deserve it.)

My replacement Kindle, it came. Finally. I’d been sitting on my front porch, wringing my hands, thinking of all the books I wasn’t reading. (Okay, not really. Like I have time to sit and wring my hands… thinking about anything.)

And now it begins: the super-fun process of downloading each of my, like, 85 archived books… one. at. a. time. I had no big plans for the weekend anyway.

Current reads (in case you’re interested) :
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (our bookclub book for this month)
…and my newest download…
Life of Pi by Yann Martel

And tomorrow I begin the task of finding sneaky hiding places to keep my new (unbroken) Kindle from my toddler’s hands. And from glasses of spilled water. And from hitting the tile floor in the bathroom. (Thinking back, I’m pretty impressed that my first Kindle lasted as long as it did.)

On January 1st, I set some goals for myself for the year. One of those goals was to have draft zero of my novel completed by June.

Hi! It’s June 1st.

Here is where I am with that goal:

And here is how I feel about myself as a result:

And I could make all kinds of excuses for myself… make some lame attempt to make myself feel a little less lousy.

I could blame it on this cute distraction:

or this sad/anxiety-inducing distraction:

But the honest truth is that there will always be distractions. There will always be an excuse if you look hard enough for one. And I’d really hate to get to the end of my life and know that I never finished what I really wanted to finish… even if I had a good excuse. I’m too depressed to add up my current word count (plus, I’m bad at math… even with the aid of a calculator), but my last count was somewhere over 30k. That’s not nothing. I have to take what I’ve already completed, clutch it to my chest, and press forward…

Like a resolute turtle…

(I know, I know, my lame-o drawing skillz… another thing I really don’t have going for me…)

30 days, that’s what I’m giving myself. 30 days to finish my draft. I will sleep less, feed my children infrequently, ignore the smell coming from the laundry room.

I will stock up on writer’s fuel:

And the hammer stays on the kitchen counter, close at hand. If I’m not finished in 30 days, come over and smack me in the head with it.

An old school vid… by request. (Could not, for the life of me, figure out how to properly upload this to Facebook… so you get it here again.)

The kids played Cops and Robbers with the neighbor kids this evening (yes, I guess kids still actually play that). Every kid was either a cop, or a robber.

Except Zoe.

She designated herself the “Idvice Guy”.

Capitalizing on her natural ability to boss people dish out helpful advice, she wandered around the yard and shouted things at the other kids as they ran past. Things like: “They went that way!” And: “Run faster!”

Because everyone heeded her helpful advice, neither team had a clear advantage and it ended in a stale mate. The cops and robbers just decided to agree to disagree (plus, they wanted popsicles).

Zoe’s final piece of helpful advice: Now’s the time to invest in real estate.