I feel like a little kid again, hoping for a snow day. : ) I have to work tomorrow, no matter what, but it would be a treat not to have to fight through all the snow and the traffic to get there. Brought my computer home just in case.

Stuff going on:
-Greg and I went to the gym on Tuesday, and my right arm is so sore that I can't let it relax by my side because whatever muscle that is HURTS.

-Still working on revising the draft of book II and backed myself into a logic problem. Seems like an obvious thing that I should have caught when I was writing, but it's okay. I'll find a way around it--especially because I've called in the calvary (thanks to Becky and Stacy G. for agreeing to let me ramble both aloud and in email!) for help. : ) The good news is that I think it will rather significantly change the first few chapters, which dragged a bit anyway, in my opinion.

-Here's something weird...a couple of entries ago, I mentioned a good YA book that I'd read called Glass Houses. I called my sister to tell her I'd found a good book, as we sometimes like the same books. But she insists that I never told her the title, and I don't remember one way or another. Anyway, my brother was visiting home last weekend and Susan called to tell me that she sent a book home with him for me. She starts to describe it, telling me how great it was. And, of course, it turns out to be the same book. She found it, too, the exact same way I found it. By checking to see if Holly Black had anything new out yet. And it's a short jump from Holly Black to Rachel Caine, the author of Glass Houses. Weird minds think alike, I guess. : )

Okay, I'm too tired to be doing this. All my sentences sound stunted and stupid...time to stop!

Good night. : ) If you have to drive tomorrow (as I may), take your time and be careful.

Thanks

Okay, so I'm a little late with the Thanksgiving post, but here it is nonetheless.

According to my new dermatologist (my former dermatologist left her practice to start a new one, and I'll be following her as soon as her new office is open), the cream stuff worked on my nose. The weird pre-cancerous spot on my nose is gone, she says. Yea!!! Actually, I found out that the cream they gave me to put on my nose is considered topical chemotherapy. I'm really glad I did not know that at the time.

So, I'm extremely grateful that it was caught in time and that the treatment seems to have worked. I will still have to be careful and monitor my skin for ever, but I was doing that already.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Hope you find that you have much to be thankful for this year.

: )

Twice in one week!

I'd forgotten how therapeutic writing my blog entries could be. ; ) Need to do this more often! Actually this week at work has so far been a little easier--thanks to the vast majority of people already being out of the office. Which means I'm not quite as exhausted when I get home at night and have some brain power left for this.

Random stuff:
-Really, really hated this week's Battlestar Galactica. The concept was interesting--that the colonies could have been in some way responsible for triggering the Cylon attack. But the major guest star, playing a POW, was Dixon from Alias. The actor's name, I think, is Carl Lumbly? He's a fine actor, but I can't look at him without seeing Dixon, and it was extremely distracting. I kept expecting him to break into that bad, fake Jamican accent--stupid, stupid bank managers always falling for that. : ) It just kept reminding me that it was a story, you know. I couldn't lose myself in that universe this time. *sigh*

-High heels are stupid. And they're pretty much an easy way to guarantee that women are helpless at any given time when wearing them. When walking in the parking lot tonight in a new pair of heels, I found myself a little uncomfortable with the dark corners of the lot, all shadows potentially hiding someone or something. And here's me, just like the ditzy heroine in a horror movie, wearing completely impractical and uncomfortable heels, virtually guaranteeing that I'll be monster lunch.

-I'm working on revising the sequel to The Silver Spoon, and I'm stuck on an issue in chapter two. AAARRRGGGHH! The beginning is always the hardest because that's where I flounder the most. But still, it's irritating to hit such a spot so close to beginning my edit. Oh, well, I'll keep working at it. It makes sense plot-wise and everything, but the tension needs to be ramped up in order to cut out some pages. Dragging stuff out kills the tension and the momentum and in reading it through again, I realized that it takes too long to get to the real action (in other words, for those who've read it, to get to the cellar at the abandoned school in the ghost town--I'm such a tease!)

Hey, it's me again...

Thanks to everyone who commented, either here or on the livejournal version of my blog, about my writing dilemma. It really helped. I've not abandoned that project but definitely set it aside for the time being. I have plenty to do with the sequel to The Silver Spoon in terms of giving it a final edit and getting it ready for publication--soon, I hope.

I think part of my problem is I've been down a little lately. It's been hard knowing that The Silver Spoon is out of print (or will be shortly), and I'm getting ready to head into the new year without a new book available or even the first one in print again. I worked so hard to get to that point, and it feels like I'm just sliding slowly backward. I know that's not the case, but it's frustrating because I just want to make SOME progress somewhere, you know? It feels hard to justify the time and angst I put into this without some result. And I know that's dumb because the work itself is the result. So maybe it's not the results but the feeling of going backward. I don't want to write just to get something published--I want to write because I love the story and somehow I feel like I'm losing that. Or maybe it's just that the way I measure success has changed. Now instead of just writing a story that I love, I want it to be a story I love that is also publishable. I mean, I'm still writing the story I love, but that is no longer the single qualification for it. Is that wrong? I don't know.

Uck, my head is such a mess right now. : ) Some of it, I think, is because I have so little time these days. So I feel all this pressure that I have to accomplish something significant everyday because otherwise I'm not going to make any progress anytime soon. That's a stupid idea, obviously, because it's just a little bit everyday that makes a difference. See what I mean, messy head here, all the time!

Anyway, done with the whining.

Fun Stuff:
-Read a great YA novel called Glass Houses by Rachel Caine. I have a couple of YA ideas, and this is a great example of what I hope to do.

-Love that Carrie Underwood song, "Before He Cheats." I'm so not a country fan, at all. (Even though this one is listed as pop, it is definitely country, in my opinion). But the lyrics are awesome, and it's great example of how specificity really adds to the quality of the writing. With writing stories, we're always told to be more specific because it helps paint a better word picture. It's the difference between "an old car" and "a 1982 powder blue Chevy impala with rust patches on the passenger side door and a sticky patch on the dashboard where a Virgin Mary statue once reigned supreme."

Here, to the best of my ability to figure them out, are the lyrics to "Before He Cheats":

Verse One:
Right now, he's probably slow dancing with a bleached blond tramp and she's probably getting frisky. Right now, he's probably buying her some fruity little drink cause she can't shoot whiskey. Right now, he's probably up behind her with a pool stick, showing her how to shoot a combo...and he don't know...

Chorus:
I dug my key into the side of his pretty, little souped-up four wheel drive, carved my name into his leather seats. I took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights, slashed a hole in all four tires. Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.

Verse Two:
Right now, she's probably up singing some white-trash version of Shania karaoke. Right now, she's probably saying, "I'm drunk," and he's a-thinking that he's gonna get lucky. Right now, he's probably dabbing on three-dollars worth of that bathroom Polo. Oh, and he don't know that...

Chorus:
I dug my key into the side of his pretty, little souped-up four wheel drive, carved my name into his leather seats. I took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights, slashed a hole in all four tires. Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.

I might have saved a little trouble for the next girl...cause the next time that he cheats, oh, you know it won't be on me...no, not on me. Cause...

Chorus:
I dug my key into the side of his pretty, little souped-up four wheel drive, carved my name into his leather seats. I took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights, slashed a hole in all four tires. Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats. Oh, maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.

Love it!!! And to think I might have missed it because I don't (or didn't) like country. Dude. : )

Yeah, I should already be in bed, but I got caught up in buying some new music with my birthday iTunes gift cards.

Lately things have been really stressful between work and everything else I'm trying to do/keep up with. Haven't felt very creative and I feel scattered all over the place. It's like there's this little voice in my head telling me that whatever book project I'm working on, I should be working on something else because clearly "this," whatever "this" happens to be at that exact second, isn't going to be good enough for anything. I know this is just another form of self-doubt. Most writers (heck, most people) experience this in one way or another. But right now, it is just KILLING me. I love writing. It's my escape, my favorite thing to do even when it's difficult. And it feels like the peace I normally find in doing so is slowly being eaten away by my own stupid worries and fears.

I want to write the stories that speak to me. And yet, I know that to try to be a success as an author, you probably have to be a little more directed. Like not genre-hopping as I'm wont to do. Or, sub-genre hopping, as the case may be. Some kinds of stories may not be popular right now, but if you're desperate to write said story, go for it. But if you do that, you take the chance that what you've written, what you've spent XX months working on, will just hang out in a file on your desk for years or whatever. But I'm so sick of worrying about that, you know? When I started doing this, I thought about things like that, but I didn't let it bother me. Now it seems to haunt me all the time.

I have a project that I started last year or the year before (not a Zara or Rennie story) and I've been working on it pretty regularly for the last year or so...and I'm so bloody sick of it. I just don't want to do it anymore. It's in a way over-crowded subgenre, so selling isn't a likelihood and I'm not enjoying it, so what's the point, right?

I can't stand the idea of all that time being a total waste. Plus, I always promised myself I would finish what I start because that's how self-doubt wins when you're a writer. "Well, this sucks so much I shouldn't even finish it. But the next one will be awesome. Huh, this one sucks too? Well, the next one..." And so on. All books suck in the middle of the writing of them. Or, to put it another way, books ALWAYS sound a lot better and exciting before you actually go about trying to put them on paper.

I've finally got a working synopsis, so I've got a pretty good idea of how it all comes together. But I don't feel like the spark that holds these things together is there. But perhaps I'm just too close to it. My goal was to have three chapters of the revised draft finished as well so I could send it to various sources who've volunteered to read for me. But I'm struggling with that too. I feel like I'm just retreading everything that's already been done by other writers and better than me too. This is not my home "genre" so maybe I just feel self-conscious because of that.

So what do you think? Keep plugging away and get the three chapters done, perhaps by setting an enforceable due date? Or just be merciful and shoot this thing in the head (metaphorically, of course)?