Deleted!

No, I'm not talking about my WIP.  But I am talking about all the videos from my children's lives over the past five months, which is actually more tragic than had it been my WIP.   I'm still not entirely sure how it came about that I completely erased (as in not even Geek Squad could find them) those five months worth of videos.  Actually, I deleted the last three years but thankfully I had all but the past five months backed up.  But they are gone.  And it makes me tear up a bit every time I think about it.

That's my excuse for my late post.  I was scrambling frantically all day to find a way to restore those files and have only just in the last few minutes admitted defeat.  So here I am to blog and apparently to mourn some more.

On the writing front I'm approaching 25,000 words on my WIP and am reasonably satisfied with what I'm turning out.  I know it needs A LOT of work but the skeleton is there and what is revising for if not to put the muscles and flesh on the bones? 

And now the children are sleeping all snug in their beds and I'm off to add some more words to my WIP.  I hope you've all had better days than I did today and if I may offer some advice BACK UP YOUR FILES!  That is all.  Goodnight.

Writing during a rough week

In the past week both of my kids got their second cold of the cold and flu season and it's a doozy.  Despite humidifiers, baby rub, homeopathic cold remedies and everything else we could think of they've hacked their way through every night, waking up multiple times, sometimes coughing until everything in their little tummies come up.  I took them to the doctor and he said it was nothing that could be helped by antibiotics.  They're miserable.  I'm miserable.

On top of that I got my wisdom teeth removed on Thursday and started hacking and sneezing myself on Friday.  Then my poor husband got his dose of the crud on Friday.  It hasn't been a great week.  But here's the funny thing I've written more in the past week than I've managed to put down on paper in a long time.  I'm not sure how it happened.  I know I had a lot of time to think about my WIP while I was laying in bed at night wincing with each little kid cough, waiting to see if my kiddos would settle back to sleep or need me to comfort them.  Apparently that translated into a high word count.  I'm glad the gray cloud that hovered over last week had such a great silver lining. Now to see if any of the stuff I wrote while sleep dazed and drugged up is any good. 

Writing vs. Reading

Yesterday I was laying in the tub getting a rare hour of relaxation while my husband took the kids.  I was also reading (as a mother, multitasking is a must even when relaxing) and I kept thinking how I should be writing my own book instead of reading someone else's.  Don't get me wrong, I know being well and widely read is as much a part of good writing as writing is.  However, lately my reading to writing ratio has been heavily skewed in reading's favor.

I started thinking about how much easier it is to read than write and how I wish it were the reverse.  But that, of course, isn't going to happen because the difference is this; reading is the equivalent of climbing into a car on a roller coaster, dropping the bar to hold you in and that's it, that's all that's expected of you.  The coaster does the rest of the work to take you on (hopefully) a great ride. 

Writing is the equivalent making your own coaster.  You sit down with a great idea, sketch a bit, then realize you have no idea how to do what you want to do.  So you go hunting for tools to educate yourself.  Once you've done that you design and engineer your own coaster, then badger family, friends, recent acquaintances, perfect strangers to test ride it for you and tell you how to perfect it.  Then you spend countless hours working out the glitches, sanding out the rough spots, doing everything you can to make it a smooth, seamless, enjoyable ride.

It's a lot of work and it's hard work.  It takes self-discipline, fortitude and an almost pathological ability to believe in yourself despite all the rejections and criticisms and better roller coasters than yours.  But it also brings it's own sort of satisfaction and enjoyment.  After all if you're the one who makes it you're the first one who gets to experience the ride.  And though it's sometimes a hard slog, there are always those loop de loops and twisty turns that make you laugh and screech in delight and think wow, I created that.

No new is good news, right?

I found out last Friday that Authoress over at Miss Snark's First Victim has already made her way through the adult entrants in her Baker's Dozen Agent Auction and notification to the finalists is going to be going out today rather than next Monday as originally planned.

I hoped this morning I would wake up to a bright shiny finalist notification in my inbox but there was nothing.  So in the best tradition of an internet stalker I popped over to her blog to see if there was anything there stating she'd sent out the notifications.  There wasn't.  Crap. But no news is good news, right?

Now I'm having horrible flashbacks to my first days of querying when my email inbox was open ALL THE TIME.  Getting more than twenty feet away from my computer caused heart palpitations, sweating and slight nausea and getting close enough to actually look at it caused light-headedness, graying out of my vision and extreme nausea.  Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but I just hope my kids are okay with the fact that we're not leaving the house today. 

On a different note, I just read The Raising by Laura Kasischke and loved it.  Other than the conclusion, which was a bit abrupt and ambiguous for my taste, it was a really excellent book. I love the author's use of language and the little details about human reaction that ring so true and are so well and uniquely described.  Also it was far creepier than anything I've read in the horror genre in a long time and it wasn't even horror.  I'm definitely looking forward to reading more by this author.