One of Those Days

Yeah . . . I mean THOSE days.

It doesn't matter what predicated it, but I had one of THOSE days. I've had insomnia for a few days. I'm tried (in the extreme), in pain most of the time, crabby, there's too much housework. And did I mention my ceiling is ripped out in my kitchen? Oh, yes, those Demon Baby floods have finally taken their toll. There is dust everywhere, even in my coffee pot, and in the midst of this, my new editor requested some changes, and I realized he works very differently from my last editor. Not worse . . . or better . . . just different. And as a writer, I must adapt. Did I mention no sleep?

And so I wondered. Why the HELL did I want to be a writer anyway?

Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . you're sort of born a writer. You can't give it up. It's in your blood. Blah, blah, blah. But am I having fun?

Um, yesterday? No.

Today? Not so much.

But I am reminded of a great quote by Shaw:

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.
- George Bernard Shaw

Oldest Daughter came into my room last night. I was distraught. And she said, "Why don't you conisder all this stress a positive and see what you learn about yourself and being a better writer out of it."

Well . . . damn her. You would think she was raised by some Buddha-spouting mother or something. Go figure.

So today . . . I am having one of THOSE days. You know the ones. The type where I LEARN something about who I am.

How about you? What kind of day are YOU going to have?

Gifts

Today is my birthday. I wasn't going to mention it, but my Facebook page is insanely flooded with comments, as is my inbox, so . . . the secret is out.

And I am totally cool with aging. There was a time when I wasn't, but I grew to appreciate my laugh lines and my gray hairs (though I color my hair) because I earned them. I earned the circles under my eyes. I earned a lot of things through life. If you live, you get badly hurt sometimes, and you have tremendous victories. Kind of like roller derby. Gotta watch out for the well-placed elbow to the ribs. But go ahead and circle the rink again.

But what I was really thinking about today was gifts. Not presents. But the fact that I will not have a day off. Demon Baby will still wake up in about a half-hour. I made lunches and sent the two middle ones off to school. I have to clean the kitchen and empty the dishwasher. I have about five loads of laundry to do, plus Oldest Daughter's laundry she brought home from college. I have beds to make and bathrooms to clean. And oh, yeah . . . chapters to write.

But instead I will find gifts in moments. In the day spent scrubbing the screened-in porch Saturday so I could sit outside in the spring air yesterday and knit, and play Trivial Pursuit, and try to take a nap (didn't happen). In the little moments when I have a sense all is right with the world, usually just before I realize Demon Baby has taken all of my bras and made slingshots with them. In the laughter. In my friends, my bare-all-my-soul and they still like me friends. In opening my work-in-progress and being sure I have something there. In words. In happy memories. In Oldest Daughter, Baby Girl, Demon Baby, and me ALL sleeping in my king-size bed last night, Demon Baby's head on my belly for a pillow.

Then I started thinking about all the good news I've heard lately. Like this. (Go Travis!) And so I thought I would just start the week off with . . .

Tell me some good news. Something positive. It could be writing. It could be life. For my birthday, in the immortal words of Rufus and Chaka Kahn:

TELL ME SOMETHING GOOD

P.S. As for the peach pie . . . I don't like birthday cake. So peach pie is my fave. Sadly, I will not be with my best friend today. Pammie is the only person in the world who makes me peach pie OR pineapple upside-down cake for my birthday. So I'm having virtual pie instead.

Optimism in the Face of . . . Crapatage

I don't know about any of you, but things lately . . . well, I feel like Demon Baby's sidekick has been here. (And I SWEAR that kid may end up to be a writer yet, what with his gift for words. Even if all the words have "crap" in them.) Yes, the economy has been engineered by Crapatage. Then, you can read things like this and it's enough to make you run for this. Or this.

And I have to admit . . . it's been pretty tough to be optimistic when I spend fifty bucks at the grocery store and come home with this. I'm being facetious, but when a gallon of milk costs more than a gallon of gas, and you have three kids at home to feed and one off in college . . . what am I say . . . I need this.

But actually, I don't think that way. I'm stressed . . . don't get me wrong, but when I was fifteen and my dad and I were talking about that old "what should I do with my life" thing, and he said, "You know what? You should be a writer," I remember saying, "But how would I earn a LIVING." Dad, a firm believer in education and writing said something like, "If you're a writer, you can do ANYTHING." He was of the opinion smart people ruled the world. Given him, I have to wonder.

But out of that conversation, I decided to be a journalist. Until I found out I would have to ask really, really intrusive questions of people. Now I write profile pieces sometimes, for magazines like this one. But I don't have to be "mean." It's a good type of journalism for someone with a Buddhist bent.

Along the way, too, I became a book editor. Then, after a few years, I got really, really, really sick. And I couldn't work. Finally, I did return as an editor, but I had this view of life being really, really, really short. And I wanted a baby, even though it was really, really, really dangerous. When Oldest Son was born, I wanted to stay home with him, because . . . well, I just couldn't imagine leaving him in daycare. So I decided to be a freelance book editor. That worked out very well. So well, in fact, that I wrote this book. Then I wrote a novel. And here we are. I have a blog, I have my books, I have a Demon Baby--plus three others. Life is good.

Except when it's not.

But even when it's not . . . I keep going back to when I was with my dad and we were talking. It seemed ABSURD that someone would want to make a living as a writer. Didn't they live in Parisian attics and starve? And it's been a while, but I remember him saying, "SOMEONE has to have that job. SOMEONE has to be a novelist. SOMEONE has to write articles. Might as well be you."

As I said on her blog yesterday, I'm not afraid. Bring your A-game and keep writing. First of all, someone has to. Second, as numerous people around this blog have commented, if you could do anything else, you wouldn't be a writer. It's some kind of calling to do this insane career. Since you can't do anything else BUT write (because something drives you to write), then you're simply, my friends, screwed. You're going to keep doing it anyway, so you might as well do it with abandon. And finally, I don't talk about it much . . . he does more than I do, but if you write to make a living, there are many avenues that let you work from home and have this pretty cool gig whereby you can sit in your pjs and pound your keyboard all day while still writing fiction consistently. There are ways to ride out this fiction storm.

Maybe I am hopelessly optimistic. Or maybe it's because really? No one would hire me for a REAL job. But I'm not freaking out.

Thoughts?

How Full Is Your Glass?

I was raised by a glass half-empty father. And a "the glass is what it is" practical mother.

What they ended up with is a "glass more than half-full daughter who veers toward glass is what it is when circumstances suck."

I go through periods when my glass starts feeling utterly drained. Right now, for example. I could give you a laundry list--sister and her children moved, Oldest Daughter leaving, strange bruising on my stomach making me think Crohn's is acting up, too much to do, not enough time, and that dang laundry pile. But in the end, I always feel terribly selfish for ever complaining. I don't feel I was created to complain. I feel I was created as a child of joy. And when the joy is missing, I need to push on through and find it again.

I love the following quote:

The dream is not up there in the sky or the stars. It's right here in your heart.~Dan Zadra

Most writers I know are dreamers. It's how we're hardwired--why else to pursue a career with impossible odds. BUT, within our ranks are the half-full folks and the half-empty. Sometimes we're both--just at different times.

And all this got me thinking about yesterday's post on horror books. I wonder if our WORLDVIEW, our glass, determines what we like to write in some ways. Think the world is an inherently hopeless place, and you have Cormac McCarthy. Think the world a place of optimism, and you have my November release, Freudian Slip, in which hope trumps all.

So how full is your glass? And do you think that determines what you gravitate toward writing?