Season of Belated Giving

I still haven't started shopping and I can't post pictures of the "big" (as in time-consuming, not as in perceived value or size) thing I'm making - ruins the surprise, you see! - but here are some of our gifts this year:

(The picture on the left is hard to make out, but we made scented gel candles in wine glasses for the girls' teachers et al.)

Also, my favorite Christmas card postmark this year:

On First Drafts

I've written four novels in the last three years. Wow, that sounds cool when I add it all up. Especially when I reread and see that I'm improving and getting faster with each novel I write. Some things I used to have to concentrate on now come naturally. (Other things, well . . . it's a work in progress. Literally.)

But I didn't set out to write four "practice" novels before I started polishing even one for submission to agents.

It makes sense, that I'd have to practice, learn, improve before being ready to create something worth publishing.

But I can't think about that and still write.

When I put everything on hold one November to draft my first novel, I refused to let myself edit or revise. I set aside all my fears and my internal editor. I told myself - as I typed furiously - that my prose sang. I told myself that I was writing The Great American Novel. I told myself that it would sell immediately after I finished it, before the end of the year, certainly. I told myself I'd be on Oprah and The Today Show and I'd make buckets of money faster than I could spend them.

That's what I had to do in order to get the story down.

Later there was plenty of time for doubt. Too much time, probably. I grew afraid to go back and reread. What if it's really really bad? And, of course, some of it is. But some of it is not!

Every step of the way, I have doubts. Is this the right direction for this story to take? Have I chosen the right perspective, style, character to tell the story? Would anybody want to actually read this? I know what's going to happen next; is it obvious to everyone? Does this suck?

One of my critique partners has a very different writing style from mine, and a different taste in reading materials to go along with it.

Earlier this week she told me, "I really like your story, your plot, your characters. I just think you need to work on your prose." She can't stand my pacing, my descriptions, my sentence length patterns, my sentence structures.

Maybe she's right, or maybe we just have different tastes. Either way, it's a bit disheartening to hear that your story and characters are good, if only you could just write.

Best not to think about that during a first draft. During the first draft, every time your fingers hit the keyboard, magic happens. Genius is transcribed. Something is created from nothing.

I Never Call, I Never Write

So, decent blogging has been sparse around here, lately. And my "drafts" folder is filling up with the clutter of posts I start but lack time to develop and finish. The time problem isn't just due to the busyness of the holiday season - by which I mean the holiday season, Thanksgiving to Advent, Christmas, and New Year's, and that's just what we celebrate/observe in our house from late November through the end of the year.

The problem isn't just due to parenting two young children, each of whom has her own "special needs." (Ada with her fabulous two-year-old's desire for attention and lap time, Ellie with her academics and monthly "team meetings" at school.)

The problem isn't just due to my writing and the time it takes away from my family. (That bit of guilt courtesy of my mother.)

The problem is also due to the fact that I've been doing a lot of freelance work for pay lately. I appreciate the work. I don't mind doing it (mostly). And I really enjoy earning money. But this one last thing on top of the pile makes the whole thing wobbly and threatening to fall over. It's an important thing, so I've jettisoned other things to make room for it (Christmas cards, big Christmas open house, exercise).

This is just an adjustment period. And until I get the balance settled again, well, boring and irregular blogging. Alas.

When I write again, some things I want to talk about include Ellie's latest round of assessments and her IEP, a "cure" for Down syndrome, managing finances, what I'm reading and why, what I'm writing and why, and my opinions on the SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE finale. No, wait. I don't want to blog about that; I just want to watch the finale! Nighty night.

How It All Ends

Global climate destabilization or bah humbug? Politics aside, a risk management view assessment of the situation.

Ho Ho Ho!

My mom made the girls a new advent calendar. Isn't it the coolest?!



And we've been busy celebrating all month. The girls are both really into the whole Christmas season this year - all of it.

Mario Brothers Are Back

Sure, I've said that I don't sleep. I've said I'm busy. But I've also suggested that all work and no play makes Sarahlynn a sad, dull girl. So I play, too!

When dinner's in the oven and the girls spontaneously go downstairs to play for a few minutes, I break out the Wiimotes. When the girls go to bed on time and I want to goof around before picking up my freelance project, I break out the wiimotes.

Paul and I are playing the new Super Mario Brothers for Wii. We got it on vacation over Thanksgiving and our first experiences were with four person cooperative play with Paul's sister and her husband. Chaos! Impossible! Also, hilarious. My throat began to hurt from laughing so hard.

Since we've been home, Paul and I are questing together. This is both good and bad. In the hard stretches, it's really nice to be able to rely on someone else. If your character dies, your partner can pop your little safety bubble and bring you back into active play. And when you feel like you can't stand to fight through a stupid dungeon one more time, maybe your partner will stomp the monster and complete it for you.

On the other hand, I tend to play worse in cooperative play because I know I'm not fully responsible.  And with the way the game's set up, your partner tends to kill you a lot.  Inadvertantly, of course.  But say I'm jumping up through a series of sliding ledges.  If I stop or slow, I'll fall off.  But if my partner isn't keeping up and he falls off the bottom of the screen as it scrolls upwards with me?  He dies.

Paul (aka Luigi) also tends to jump on my head and shove me off cliffs a lot.  This problem happens much less frequently now that we've acknowledged that he simply must lead.  I don't mind following a lot of the time.  And here we are back at my review for The Surrendered Wife!

Seriously, I think it's great for couples to play together, whether it's tennis or board games or Nintendo.   And home-based games are fabulous once schedules are tied to wee ones.  (That was a tiny wiittle pun.)  Maybe this is WHY my freelance project is dragging on so long and WHY it takes me forever to finish editing a completed novel.

Or maybe it's what keeps me sane so that I can continue working.

Is it the weekend?

No, I'm not complaining about a long Monday. Quite the opposite. I feel like it must be the weekend soon. I have that fabulous Thursday night feeling.

Thursday nights are great because there's only one work day between you and the promise of unstructured, fabulous weekend. (By Friday night I'm sometimes too exhausted to experience the excitement fully. And let's not face the fact that weekends are simply not as unstructured and carefree in reality as each looms in my fantasies.)

But back to tonight and my Thursday night/weekend feeling. Yesterday I was exhausted and depleted. I'm no more caught up on sleep tonight, and I'm still tired but I'm rejuvenated. What's the difference?

Book club.

I had dinner one-on-one with a fabulous friend tonight. Then we walked next door to my favorite coffee shop for our book club. A group of wonderful women sitting on couches, talking about a book, sipping hot drinks.

I hadn't even read this particular book (though I will!). It didn't matter. I feel . . . better.

Last week I found myself in an unpleasant conversation with a woman who Does Too Much. We all know this woman, I believe, or perhaps we know her brother. This woman feels guilty if she sits down to watch TV with her husband in the evening because she's not doing something productive. She does a lot of good and useful things in her community. But she's also frazzled, burned out, resentful, and negative.

A few of us were trying to explain the importance of taking care of oneself, saying "yes" to volunteer gigs that rejuvenate but setting down burdens that we're tired of carrying.

"Your group of younger moms is better at that, which is why so much falls on the rest of us," she replied.

Yowch. In this case, her criticism was poorly aimed. (She was talking to a group of very active and involved volunteers.) And I know that her problem is internal rather than external: being unable to say no, taking on too much, carrying others' burdens needlessly at times, and not taking time to replenish her reservoirs.

So tonight I'd like to thank my loving husband for encouraging me to do the things that make me feel whole, and thank my friends who help me relax, refill, restore. I am grateful, and I am well.

Letting Go

I'm not good at letting go. I'm not good at giving up anything . . . except, possibly, sleep and other good habits.

I know my sense of depletion is due to being one week out from NaNoWriMo. I know it, intellectually. After all, this happens to me every year. I hit the ground running in December, frantically trying to catch up with all the things I should have been doing last month but wasn't.

My to-do list this weekend was huge. I worked hard. And I barely dented it. I didn't finish as many chapters of my freelance project as I hoped. I didn't get my novel sent off to an online critique partner as I'd have liked to do. I did a fair amount of holiday baking, but didn't get my mom's birthday cookies baked or shipped. (Her birthday is tomorrow. No, today.)

I did dusting and tidying and decorating, but none of those things are completely done. (Are they ever completely done? Of course not! Because no sooner do you stop dusting than you really should start all over again, especially when there's a soft, gorgeous fir in the middle of your living room.) The tree is up and it looks fabulous. The kids have been into the whole experience this year, from the Christmas story to the advent calendar to the tree finding/cutting/decorating to the baking.

Bathrooms will have to wait another couple of days. (I might be an enemy of the earth, but I sure do love Clorox wipes!) Budgeting will have to wait, too. Holy cow, we're a week into December and still working off November's budget. And December's hardly a typical month! At least we're still OK . . . because I certainly haven't been doing any Christmas shopping!

As we tell Ellie: Stop. Take a deep breath. Relax.

I know I'm depleted from writing an entire novel in November. I know that this is a crazy-busy time of year at the best of times. And I know that it seems unmanageable now because I am (and will continue to be) sleep deprived.

We aren't having a big Christmas open house this year. I've let go of the Christmas cards, too. (We usually send a hundred.) But there's still Christmas present list-making and planning, crafts, things to ship all over the place, and a ton of yard work left to do.

Book club's tomorrow. Today. And I'm supposed to be teaching the Christmas Story to kindergartners and first graders at Bible study Wednesday night.

Stop. Take a deep breath. Relax.

Focus on: Ada coming home from preschool last week and explaining the advent wreath to me. (They took a little field trip down the hall to the sanctuary.) Last week at LOGOS the kindergartners and first graders listened to James Taylor's Some Children See Him and drew pictures of how they "see" baby Jesus. Most of the babies were white, often with blond hair and blue eyes. Ellie's picture was green with polka dots.

Prepare.