Hitting the Wall

For the last month I have taken time away from adding words to the novel I started last spring. The holiday season has clouded my ability to focus when I sit down and write. I gave myself a break and focused on day to day mom/wife/household responsibilities. Now that Christmas has passed, I feel ready to pick up where I left off on my story. 

I have come to a point in this writing journey where I need to add public goals to my work. So here they are, in no particular order: 

A. Finish the first draft of this story by the end of February 2019 

B. Have my draft edited and revised

C. Shop for a writing agent or begin the self publishing process 

D. Complete a daily very short story (VSS) on twitter for the month of January 

E. Begin writing out my memoirs/life story to give to my children when they are grown 

There they are. Five writing goals for the upcoming year. As of now, these goals seem slightly lofty, but attainable. I hope I can look back on this in a year and realize I exceeded all of these in ways I could not imagine today. 

Roller Coaster

This year was my first time participating in NaNoWriMo. My goal was to get my first draft to 50,000 words. I ended up with 39,000 words, and I am proud of each word. It was difficult to carve out a section of time to write each day, especially around the Thanksgiving holiday. I got through some critical plot points, and added details to minor characters to give depth to their personalities.

Last May I began expanding a short story, which has turned into a novel. My highest monthly word count prior to November was 9,000 words. Even though I did not hit the 50,000 word goal this year, I did substantially exceed my monthly word count. I am in a rough patch now. My creative reserves are low, and I’m fighting off thoughts of worthlessness. I am not sure what’s triggered this episode, but I’ve had enough times like this to know that if I wait it out things will come back around. 

It is peculiar to go through the process of writing out a novel. I have no clue where this journey will take me. If I could tell the youngest version of myself that one day I will begin to write a sci-fi story, I would have laughed. The longest piece of writing other than this was writing out the first three chapters of a thesis for school. That assignment was 10,000 words. A year ago 10,000 words was intimidating. Six months ago 10,000 words was still intimidating, but it was a word count I wanted to surpass. Five months ago I exceeded 10,000 words. Now I am at 40,000 words. 

This process has been a wilder roller coaster than I anticipated. I am determined to get this draft finished and see it through edits. On more than one occasion, I’ve thought about jumping off mid ride. During those moments, I choose to put the story away for a few days and take time to recharge. 

Does anyone have any advice or kind words to share? I would appreciate some encouragement in the comments. 

I have been away from this blog for years. I am dusting it off and giving this tiny speck of the internet a focused direction. In the years since my last post I have moved from Japan back to the United States. I have also started working on writing a novel.

In 2014 I had a bad year. I got lost in my brain, and anxiety had the worst grip it has held on me so far in my life. My husband was unaware how to help, and at first made insensitive suggestions. He didn’t deter, and one day handed me a book with hundreds of writing prompts. I flipped through the book and found a couple that sparked ideas. There was one story I wrote about a girl from the future writing a letter to our present day. She was in the aftermath of a major attack and was frantically attempting to reach out for help from the people who could help her, us. It was a fun mental exercise to write that short story. When my husband read it, he was hooked. He had to know what was happening to the girl from the future. I sat on this story for a couple years. This year I picked the story up again and it began to grow in size before I realized I was unwittingly beginning a novel. It didn’t take me long to realize I would need to add organizing strategies that worked for me to keep track of the plot. I got a notebook and filled it with character bios, timelines, research, and vocabulary lists. Eventually I ended up with a timeline on a wall and a virtual mind map. I am in the middle of hashing out the first draft of this story. Trying hard every day not to give up on this project. Also knowing that the shadows of editing are looming in the future if I continue with this journey.

Through all of this I am thankful for the unexpected therapy writing has brought me. I am thankful for friends who are filled with positive encouragement and for making new friends in writing groups. Join me in my journey, I could sure use the support.

My hamster sees dead people

If you don't know me then you probably don't know that I am the proud owner of one of the coolest hamsters in the world, his name is Lucky. Well every night I usually open his cage door and pet him for a while, we hang out and catch up on our days, normal stuff like that. Well, tonight everything was going great and then all of a sudden he froze and then bolted into his makeshift house made out of a coke zero box, I mean seriously, I think Lucky is The Flash reincarnated. To make things even more freaky, I picked up his house and took it out of his cage and the poor little guy was frozen in fear, sitting there, just blinking every once and a while. I put him back in the cage and checked on him a few minutes later, but he was still a little blinking statue....so I pull out the house again (with Lucky in it) and bring him into the computer room with me, and what do you know, as soon as he was in another room he was back to his old self. Therefore....I am living in a haunted apartment, well at least the living room is haunted, and I just crapped my pants. 

I wonder if he'll accept his gift and help the ghosts cross over, like Jennifer Love Hewitt on Ghost Whisperer?

<Addendum> I put Lucky back in his cage and now he has used torn pieces of napkin to block the entrance to his house, I have no idea what is going on.....and I crapped my pants again, I'm running out of pants...

<And another one> I tried to take pictures of all of this, but the battery on my camera died....coincidence? I think not! 

Grocery conundrum

Have you ever found yourself at the grocery store when it is really slow, and it's one of your big grocery days...sweet, right? Yeah, it's not that bad, until you get to the checkout counter, then everything goes downhill (well at least in my world it does), because if no one is in line, then that means an automatic competition between you and the checker....you are pressured to keep the groceries coming at a quicker rate than they can scan your items, I don't know about you, but I don't go to the grocery store to compete with the checkers, I go to get free samples, restock the fridge and pantry. That's why I prefer to time my shopping for times of the day and week that are moderately crowded, so that there is a buffer of at least one person for my cart unloading, then I can place my groceries on the conveyor without being judged by the checker, I can't help it if I am ocd about the order I unload my groceries (by density, using very a very complicated formula, it's actually quiteneurotic intelligent, and I wouldn't want bore you with the details).

That's just one of the day to day complications associated with an undiagnosed mild social anxiety disorder......don't even get me started on the 30 seconds at church when they ask you to say hi to the people around you. Is that really necessary? I mean, people are perfectly capable of saying hi to whomever they like on their own time, without being bullied into it by a worship pastor....will someone please bring me my paper bag?!? 

Airport thoughts

I was waiting at the airport yesterday morning, to pick up a friend who was coming back to our lovely island after spending some time in the States. Anyway, I saw a crew of three guys, one with a huge video camera, one with a microphone and the other picking is nose, I didn't see what he did with his new found treasure, but I have a few working theories, I'm still running some labs on it though, I'll let you know in 4-6 weeks, if you're still interested. Yeah, I had no idea what they were filming, you never know with the Japanese....if a guy would have walked out dressed like a cockroach wearing a bomb strapped to his chest, it really wouldn't have surprised me, honestly I was surprised that itdidn't happen. But, I started thinking, what if these guys were doing interviews with people in the airport and they came over and asked me some questions.....for instance if they asked me what my favorite place to visit on the island was then I would tell them that I love spending time at the aquarium:

Then if they asked me what I liked there the most I would tell them that I like watching the dolphins who eat butterflies. I have no idea where this thought came from, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that birds were not doing an effective job as butterfly predators, I see butterflies freakin' everywhere and it's about time they get another predator, so why not a dolphin? Picture this: your backyard is inundated with butterflies and you want a pesticide-free way of getting rid of those pesky little buggers.....then *ding* why not buy a dolphin to keep in your saltwater pool, there are many reasons this is the greatest idea in the history of swimming pools A. you'll never swim alone 2. the dolphin will feed itself during the summer months on butterflies and C. kick ass conversational piece... you're summer bbqs and cocktail parties won't ever be the same again. 

So now all I have to do is check into how I copyright this idea or something, because it's worth millions....at least....and I hope that none of you beat me to that, I have it documented in my blog now, and I know my rights, anything I write on here is legally binding, oh and keep this on the dl when you're hanging out with your PETA friends, I really don't want them to fire bomb my place to try to "save the dolphins" from our backyard saltwater pools, PETA always ruins the fun, I mean the dolphins love jumping up to catch things, might as well solve the butterfly issue while they are doing that....PETA why do you want to make the dolphins unhappy? 

P.S. I'm sorry if this doesn't make much sense, and Jenelle, I totally understand if you want to unbookmark this, I don't do well under pressure...

P.P.S. While I was waiting for my hubby to get his hair cut today, I drew out my dolphin, and I think I'm on to something big, because the dolphin looks totally happy, and not mistreated like PETA assumes, goes to show you that they don't always know what makes marine mammals happy...sometimes they don't know everything....see for yourself:

  

P.P.P.S. Ok the pics in the blog are kind of pointless, but if you click on the ones below you'll see them larger and in charger!

I don't give a ronkey!

Alright, so I'm joining the masses on the blogosphere or whatever....I'm not sure who out there will be interested in what I have to say, but you know what I don't give a ronkey! (Which is what you should tell people when you're at work and you don't want to get written up for saying "ass" to a customer, client, guest, student, etc). I just tried to find a pic to go with all of this so that the two people who read this will think, "damn this is a kick ass first blog, I am so totally insanely jealous of this bitch", but when you search yahoo images for "I don't give a rat's ass" then you get a picture of a cover of people mag with Christina Aguilera and her spawn and another of Rob Van Winkle...aka vanilla ice....aka the main character in the fairy tale about the guy who slept forever and then was woken up by sleeping beauty when she kissed him, yeah, I'm current on my pop culture, that's what happens when you watch a lot of Jeopardy.

Well, that's all for my first post, I don't want to make this one insanely long and set the bar high for how much I write on this thing every time.....gotta start out with the low expectations first, then work your way up from there....it's thinking like that that landed me such a great husband, so single ladies who no longer wish to be single.....you're welcome for solving that problem, and you're lucky I don't charge for my advice....