Game Night

All this week, for some inexplicable reason, Lulu has decided that the half hour after dinner is game time. We've played Uno, Po-Ke-No (my copy of which is older than I am), and tonight I taught her how to play Scrabble. Her comment on finishing her first game of Scrabble: "It takes a really long time to play."

Since we now have a deck of playing cards in residence on our dining room table, I sat down before dinner tonight and dealt a hand of solitaire. Helper Monkey was over on the couch watching the news, glanced over at me, and asked what I was doing.

Me: "Playing solitaire."

Helper Monkey: "Don't you need your cell phone for that?"

Me: "No. I'm playing the old-fashioned way."

Five minutes later, Lulu walks in.

Lulu: "What are you doing?"

Me: "Playing solitaire. Doesn't anyone remember how to do this with actual cards?"

Helper Monkey plays solitaire on his phone all the time. I never do. I'm not even sure I have it installed on my phone. For some reason, I burned myself out on it years ago. I only play if I have real cards.

And I'm glad Lulu wants to play first world games every night. I think we're going for Yahtzee next. I enjoy playing any game that requires you to shout once in a while. I am a natural born shouter, and I'm usually encouraged to tone it down. Anyone know any other games that require loud outbursts? I'd love to know. I'd win those games every time. Or any games that are appropriate for an almost 12-year-old. I'm open to suggestions.

I was preparing to go outside with the laptop to write. It's gorgeous out, and I wanted to take advantage of the great weather. The neighbors stole my idea, though, and have already begun an outdoor hoedown, with a guitar player, a singer, and (gulp) a banjo player. Luckily they haven't played Dueling Banjos yet. I've locked the doors just in case. I think I'll write inside tonight, instead of out in the dark, in the woods, alone, with the banjos...

I bet you can squeal like a pig. Weeeeeeee! *shiver*

Now I bet I won't sleep well tonight, either.

Words: 46,805
Pages: 154

Driving myself to sleeplessness.

Some people are morning people. Some people are night owls. I am definitely the latter. I find that writing during the day is akin to pulling teeth. Through my nose. Once the sun goes down, I'm a writing fool.

To wit, I sat at the computer for hours yesterday trying to crank out pages. I stared at the blinking cursor, reread the last few pages of my WIP, and debated tearing out my hair versus biting off my fingernails. After dinner last night, when the house started to quiet down for the evening (as if it hadn't been quiet all day, too), my fingers finally connected up with my brain and the words flowed.

I thought about stopping for the night when Helper Monkey left for work at eleven. In fact, I stood up, stretched, got a glass of water, shut the computer, and sat on my back porch reading Twitter on my cell phone. I was Preparing For Bed. I never even made it to the brush-my-teeth phase. Five minutes later, I knew what I wanted to write, and sat back down at the computer. Two hours later, I couldn't stay awake any longer. I needed sleep. But I was too wired from writing. I finally got to sleep sometime around two. And after waking up at 6:30 this morning, I REALLY need the sleep. But once again, it's after ten, and I'm just getting warmed up.

So can anyone shed some light on this for me? Can chronic sleep deprivation cause bran dimmage? I mean brain damage? I can't wait for summer vacation from school. I'll be allowed to sleep as late as I want every day, and stay up all night long writing. Last summer, I wrote 15,000 words in a single day. Sure, I spent fifteen hours at the keyboard, and I knew exactly what I wanted to write. Granted, it was a lot of crap that had to be edited to a nearly ridiculous level, but it essentially became the bones of the book I'm querying now. After nearly a year of editing and revising, mind you.

I'm not sure how long I can keep up the late nights, but I hope it's until the current novel is done. HAHAHA! That's funny. So far, this has been the slowest-going novel I've ever written. Getting the words out on paper (or the computer screen) is harder this time around than it's ever been before. (And this is my fifth go at a full-length, 100k word novel.)

I think it's partially the fact that I'm actively querying the first novel in this series. Until I have the approval of an agent, I think my brain doesn't want to cooperate and knuckle down to do the work. I have the second novel in the series ready to go, as well. It's not like I don't have something else to send the glorious angel of an agent who loves the story as much as I do. My brain is practical though. It doesn't want to waste time making words for a book with such an uncertain future. Sure, I doubt myself. All writers do. But that's no reason to let my writing suffer. So I keep writing the best I can.

So I'm off to make the pages, out on the back porch where the rain patters gently against the copper roof and reminds me of what my characters are going through at the moment. It's raining in the novel, and it's raining here. It's as good an atmosphere for writing as I could hope for. Hopefully I'll get to sleep before midnight tonight!

Words: 45,092
Pages:  148

Random weekend update...

First of all, Happy Mother's Day to any mother reading this. And that includes other writers whose only children are their word-babies.

Notable things I've seen/done/heard this week:

I saw my first copperhead of the season. Finally it's warm enough for all the snakes to come out of hiding, and we see a lot of them in my neighborhood. I live in the woods, so we see a lot of wildlife, including reptiles, but too many of them succumb to traffic. The first copperhead I saw was sadly flattened on the road. I hate seeing that. I have no desire to get cuddly with venomous snakes, but they're great at keeping the rodent population in check. It's a real concern out here in the boonies. There's nothing worse than a family of mice taking over the inside of your walls. *shiver*

I spent my birthday jumping in glow-in-the-dark moon bounces with a bunch of 12-year-olds. Oddly, this was a FANTASTIC way to spend the evening. I had cake for breakfast, lunch, AND dinner, and got to sit in an inflatable throne.

A truly awful picture, red-faced and disheveled from moon bouncing, but the pizza was good.

We worked a sold-out baseball game yesterday, and by the time I left, I was so soaked in beer and soda, all the way up to my elbows, that my hands were sticking to things. For reference, the stadium is across the street from the cemetery where Francis Scott Key is buried. You can see the top of his monument from the road. I finished work before the stadium had time to empty out, and there was a bottleneck trying to leave the parking lot, and trying to get back out to the main roads from the stadium's smaller street. I turned on the car radio while I sat waiting for traffic to move along, and made myself laugh when the next cd in line to play was White Zombie. It seemed an irreverent thing to blast while staring at a spooky graveyard after dark. I hope Mr. Key didn't mind. I was so tired I had a momentary panic attack that the zombie apocalypse would start any second, and the undead were about to crawl from their graves. I just turned the volume down a bit and rolled up the windows. Thankfully the cars in front of me started moving, and I got the heck out of there.

So this is what I'm doing instead of writing my novel today. Stupid, eh? I've been complaining for the last two weeks that I don't have enough time to work on the writing, and when I finally have a whole day to write, THIS is what I end up writing about. Now I've made myself mad, which is probably a good thing. I need to write a fight scene, and I hate writing fight scenes. So feeling tooth-grinding mad should help, at least as far as the emotional content of the fight is concerned.

Oh, and I'm seriously looking forward to the 24th. The folks running the Writer's Voice competition (which I failed to submit an entry to because I'm incompetent at filling out online forms) are having a Twitter Pitch contest! Pitch your novel in 135 characters or fewer (leaving room for the #WVTP hashtag). It's terrifyingly difficult! For details, see this post from Cupid:  http://cupidslitconnection.blogspot.com/2012/05/writers-voice-twitter-pitch.html

On that cheerful note, back to work! :)

Happy birthday to me!

So, today's my birthday. Yesterday I worked a double-header baseball game, and stood up for about 10 hours straight. I was so tired I couldn't even think about driving BACK downtown for my birthday dinner, so we stuck close to home and found a place to eat in our neighborhood. It was a relief to sit down, and dinner was good. And we had cake!

I stood in the kitchen, lit a candle on it, and sung happy birthday to myself while the Helper Monkey sang from the couch and Lulu sang from her room. Very personal and loving! At least they sang. They came out when they realized all the singing meant they'd be getting cake, though.

In more upsetting news, the little nose-pincher dealie broke off my glasses at the game yesterday, so I'm stuck with my emergency glasses today. Now I remember why I don't wear them more often. I miss my light, nearly non-existent glasses. These are heavy, and the thick plastic frames are incredibly distracting. Still, they're not as distracting as being blind would be, so small favors, eh? Now I just have to make an appointment to get new glasses. I was due anyway.

I'm just glad I'll finally have some time to write again, either today or tomorrow, come hell or high water. I don't have to get up in the morning, so I think tonight is going to be a word marathon. At least, I hope so.

So for now, it's back to work-work. Then, when I'm done, it's back to writing work. It is work, but it's a heck of a lot more fun than any other work I've ever done. On that note, toodles for now.

I'm a Victim of Miss Snark's First Victim

That's right! I have an entry in the MSFV Secret Agent contest this month! If you'd like to pop over and leave a comment, I'd really appreciate it. Plus, you get a chance to read the first page of my novel, formerly titled DRAGON HUNTER, which I've recently changed to RUNNING DOWN THE DRAGON! Wheeee!

If you want to read my entry, it's right here: http://www.misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com/2012/05/may-secret-agent-17.html

While you're there, check out some of the other deserving entries, and leave comments if you enjoy them!

Thanks much!

Now that business has been handled, back to regular life. I was supposed to work the baseball game tonight, and I technically worked something, but the only thing on the field was a big wet tarp. Folks turned up to see a game, and quite a few of them were hungry, so we cooked. Still, it's always disappointing when we get sent home early. And working in the kitchen for a double-header to squeeze in a make-up game kinda stinks.

On that cheery note, I work a double-header tomorrow, since last night's game was also called for rain. Gar!

Before the rain started, I thought it was odd the way they were lined up against the wall practicing their chorus line kicks.

After inhaling ballpark food fumes all day, though, we're going out for Indian food tomorrow night, and I can't wait. It's technically my birthday dinner, since we're going somewhere fun on Friday (my actual birthday). We're taking the girl scouts to an indoor park where they have a berjillion moon bounce thingies, and ADULTS GET TO BOUNCE TOO!!! Wheeee! I can't wait!

Now that all that's out of the way, I'm going to try to write some tonight. It's my last chance until tomorrow night, so I gotta get some words out. Good night all!

Coffee fixes everything.

Well, coffee certainly fixed my sagging mental capabilities when I dumped Coke and Dr. Pepper as two of my main food groups. So, I guess everything else that got better in the last 48 hours can be indirectly credited to the influence of a good cup (read: pot) of coffee.

What's the most interesting thing to happen in the last few days? Something I'm not allowed to talk about. Sorry folks. Nothing writing related, but I promised to button my lip, so I'll shut up now.

Second most interesting? Finding out I correctly diagnosed the problem with the Helper Monkey's Jeep. I am now renaming myself Grease Monkey. Helper Monkey SWORE he thought the problem was in the exhaust system, and I swore up and down it was a spark plug misfiring. Of course, when plugged into the diagnostic machine at AutoZone, it spat out a cylinder 4 misfire code. Which means I WAS RIGHT! :)

So there. This is why I never get taken advantage of at car repair places. And why the Helper Monkey makes me take both cars in for repairs. You can't fool me. I know engines better than some mechanics I've met. So when my writing career fails to materialize, I think I'll go into automotive repair. Now I just have to find a few hours in which to give the Jeep its tune up. Oh, and buy spark plugs and wires. Gah! Too much busy!

I actually wrote for several hours last night, which is a vast improvement over the complete wasteland my WIP is becoming. Last time I opened it up, a few tumbleweeds rolled out. So now, I have 30 minutes to write before I have to think about dinner, and then another few hours to work again tonight. Busy busy busy...

At least the baseball game I was scheduled to work tonight is getting rained out. I'll get back on track someday. I swear I will. *boohooing over lack of writing time*

Words: 41,435
Pages: 137

This Week versus Last Week

Last week was a real doozy.  The only day in my schedule book that wasn't blackened with "to do" items was Monday. And Monday was just Monday, so it was bad enough on its own without getting bogged down with anything else. Needless to say, my writing suffered last week.

Every time I sat down to write, I had to go back and try to remember what the hell I was writing about. Scatterbrained. Addlepated. I ended up wasting a lot of time going over the disjointed few pages I managed to hack out in a futile attempt to make them work. By the time I caught up and felt ready to dive in again, it was time to rush off somewhere else. I nearly cried several times. I did engage in a little primal scream therapy, with mixed results. It frightened the cat, which was good for a laugh, at least.

I also had the stupid idea, in the midst of the cuckoo schedule, to cut back on the amount of soda I was consuming. I was feeling mighty unhealthy about my diet, since I had several meals at the ball park (one of which consisted entirely of hot dog products), and I was coming to rely too heavily on my souvenir-sized drink servings. That, and I couldn't button the black shorts I wear to work at the games.

At first, I tried to go cold turkey from the caffeine. The first day, I couldn't remember why I had a headache, why I felt so damned tired, and why I was so fuzzy and unable to concentrate. After a few cups of coffee, when I started feeling better, I attributed my precipitous drop in IQ to caffeine withdrawal. It got easier to cut out the sodas if I dramatically increased my coffee and tea consumption. Problem solved. Though I'm not sure it's really any healthier to suck down coffee like it's going out of style, at least it's not full of sugar and calories like the Cokes and Dr. Pepper I was formerly addicted to.

So that was last week. This week, there are only two things in my schedule book so far. Thursday, we're going out to dinner, since my birthday is Friday. Going out to dinner on Mother's Day weekend is against the rules around here. At least my birthday doesn't fall on Mother's Day itself this year. That really sucks. So we're trying to find an Indian or Thai restaurant somewhere within twenty miles of our house that's worthy of Birthday Dinner status. Friday, my actual birthday, we have our final Girl Scout meeting of the year, and it's actually going to be a ton of fun. It's more of a party/fun time for the girls, at a local warehouse that's filled with moon bounce contraptions. And yes, the adults get to bounce, too. So I'm making the Helper Monkey come with us. Birthday privilege.

And I forgot to mention today's events (but since I have a Moleskine planner, which counts Monday as the first day of the week, today is still technically "last week." Now I've hurt my brain thinking about that.) I have to buy groceries, since we've eaten nearly every edible item in the house while I ran around last week. Lets put it this way: I had Cheerios for dinner THREE TIMES last week. Before we hit the grocery store, we're going to a scavenger hunt competition at a local mall. It should be fun. I'll probably get suckered into buying ice cream or a pretzel, but I won't complain.

The rest of the week will be devoted to a research project, and writing. Finally, blissfully writing.

On the up side, Lulu had her chorus concert last night. The thing ran more than THREE HOURS!!! It was a little excessive, if you ask me, but luckily they saved the most interesting, audience pleasing songs for the end. Choral music, in my mind, was not designed for interminable concerts. I'd rather have watched three Broadway shows back to back, but I had to be there. Not only was my kid singing (and she did a brilliant job, by the way), but I was on the Puke Crew. It sounds more disgusting than it was. If they had a medical emergency, I had to be ready to assist the sick child. I crossed my fingers that no one actually got sick, and apparently that worked. I got a front-row seat out of the deal, and had a primo viewing spot for the show.

Glad I snapped a picture of the ticket, because they confiscated them at the door! Yay, Electronic Scrapbook!

On the even upper side, Lulu has decided that next year she wants to take a musical theater class, instead of just a singing class. This bodes well for next year's end-of-year concert show, at least.

All this being said, what have I done with my free morning thus far? Ha! I slept until 9:30, had M&M's and coffee for breakfast, and caught up on bloggy things. Perfect Sunday morning (other than the fact I haven't even glanced at the WIP yet). Now I'm grabbing my pickaxe, and heading out to the word mines.

This is why I lost on Jeopardy!

I stink at pushing the button. It's my major downfall in life. It's why I only managed a single win on Jeopardy! The Stinking Button. (For anyone who doesn't know about the whole Jeopardy! thing, you can read about it here and here.) (And yes, when referring to the game show, if you leave of the exclamation mark, you've spelled it wrong.)

Despite the obvious nerd credit involved with just being on a show like Jeopardy!, I obviously lack some basic nerd skills. I'm not great at video games, because I have a slow trigger finger. I never mastered the darned buzzer button, and I only won a single game because I lucked into a couple of Daily Doubles and wagered big. As soon as I had to face another contestant with a faster thumb than mine, I lost.

Don't get me wrong, I type quite well. I used to be a medical transcriptionist, and you have to type fast to scrape a living doing that. Obviously I lack any other button-pressing skills. I've managed to get quick enough on the Wii to beat an 11-year-old at Mario Kart, but I don't think that skill translates 1:1 into button pushing.

To wit: I failed TWICE to make it into The Writer's Voice multi-blog writing contest. And they even added an extra 25 slots to the second round of entries!

REPRIEVE!!! The four blog owners who are running the contest graciously opened up a third entry window, with only 25 additional slots, today at noon. Maybe the third time's the charm? I can only hope so. My internet connection has been wonky lately, with extra-slow loading capabilities. It's been a nostalgic few days here, hearkening back to my old dial-up connection. I've got to call Verizon and figure out what the problem is.

So I've got one last chance. Let's hope I'm a little quicker on the draw today. Since I don't have the ridiculous schedule I had to battle yesterday (where I was only home for an hour, and running around like an idiot for at least 14 other hours), maybe I can go all zen and miraculously come in under the wire this time. Here's hoping!*

And May the 4th be with you today, this fine Star Wars day.

With the crazy schedule this week, I haven't been writing much, but I feel the need for an update here, if only for my own records:

Words: 39,064
Pages: 130

* And no, I failed again. I kept hitting the refresh button waiting for the widget to appear, when all I needed to do was scroll down to the bottom of the post. I came in at post #206, and they capped the entries at 200. Once again, how the hell did I ever managed to qualify for Jeopardy! in the first place?

**And edited to include this photographic evidence:

Me, as a blonde, and the Trebekster

30 seconds to say hi

Hi there. Since I only have enough free time to blink, and hopefully shower and eat at some point in the next three days, I figured I'd check in here now so I won't feel guilty for my lack of an online presence until this weekend is over and done with.

And so it begins...

I survived the MVA

For those who live in any state other than Maryland, that title would probably read, "I survived the DMV." But oh, no. Maryland's got to have the Motor Vehicle Administration. Either way, it's always a pain when it's time to renew your license.

The worst thing was I forgot to bring a book. Luckily I found enough distraction on Twitter to keep me from going nutso while I waited. To be fair, we only really waited for about half an hour, anyway. The Helper Monkey needed his license renewed by mid-June, so he came along and took care of it at the same time. He was reading on my kindle, and I can't find the paperback I started a few weeks ago and misplaced somewhere, but I'm going to dig it out tonight, and I promise to sit down and read it now.

I usually hate my license photo (doesn't everyone?). They didn't do too bad a job this time, and I'm only marginally undead looking, which is pretty good when you consider I'm so pale I practically glow in the dark.

Me, all corpsey and smirking about it

So then we headed out to the mall to get a pretzel, and to check the Barnes and Noble to be sure Liz Norris's UNRAVELING was shelved in the correct section of the store. Apparently there was a mix-up in the computerized inventory list for the novel, and it was accidentally being shelved in the children's section in some stores. Yikes! But everything here was hunky-dory:

Unraveling is in the center of the third shelf from the bottom. You should read it, by the way. It grabs you up and won't put you down until the last page!

Once we assured ourselves that everything was satisfactory, we decided to walk around the mall for a few minutes, since we'd bothered to drive all the way over there. We walked past Pac-Sun, and heard something surreal. They were playing an XTC song on the radio, The Mayor of Simpleton, from which we derived one of the cat's nicknames, the mayor of stinkleton. It's a great little song, but it might be the first time I've ever heard an XTC song at the mall. We actually stopped in front of the shop and listened to the song. We are such dorks.

Then we came home. Big fun! But due to the wheels of bureaucracy crushing me down today, I haven't actually written any new words. I wrote a few last night, but I'm looking forward to the 3 hours of chorus practice this evening, during which I'll write up a storm. Hopefully.

Back to the races! But at least we're down to the last five weeks of school. *aaaaaaahhhh* (that should read like choirs of angels singing, by the way).