My Boring Life

FIRST, Matsui, I love you! GO YANKEES!!!! What a game! Demon Baby ended up sneaking into my bed around 11:00 p.m. and watched the last of it with me. I taught him, "The men in the blue and white stripes, those are the good guys. The men in the red helmets and hats? They are evil." According to Demon Baby, that makes the Yankees "dragon warriors." And indeed they are.

Second . . . ever stop to think about how much time you spend with imaginary friends? Today a film crew is coming at 10:00 to make a video about me for schoolchildren in Virginia. All well and good. The producer said, "I will interview you for a few minutes, and then we'll film you working." Actually, she emailed me that, because had she said it over the phone, I would have fallen out of my chair, laughing.

How uninteresting must it be to watch me write? First of all, my desk is a mess. But I think I am going to leave it that way since I want students to see that a messy desk can still mean you turn out fine.

Second, I stare at the screen. I click on files to look at my research. I lean back. I take a sip of coffee. I write ten sentences. I stop. I stare at the screen . . .

And the amusing part is the time I'm staring? I AM working. I really am. I'm in my head with those fake people.

So how do I make it look more interesting? Should I talk to myself? Take up chain smoking?Wrap my son's python around my neck to seem goth and eccentric? (Note: I hate that snake, so that's not happening). Wear a clown nose? Let Demon Baby run through the shot doing kung-fu kicks and then playing air guitar, then climbing on my back and kissing me? Be seen "taking a call" from someone who pretends to be a Hollywood producer?

In short, aren't we terribly uninteresting? But if I could introduce them to my FAKE people. Well, now we are talking interesting! In fact, one of my characters just spent time in Chernobyl . . . and then Nagasaki.

Thoughts? What is the most interesting thing about how you work? Give me some ideas.

What My Life Looks Like

For a variety of reasons too complicated yet boring to go into, my father decided the day before yesterday (at 11:00 p.m.) to come stay with me until sometime in January. He booked his and my mom's flight for . . . TODAY. See Jackson Pollock painting at left.

That is what my life looks like right now.

My father is blind, so getting ready for him is a little more complicated yet boring than getting ready for . . . oh, Cliff Huxtable. All my leaves? Must be picked up because they represent a slippery possibility when you can't see said leaves on the driveway. Children's toys? Ditto. Not to mention for THAT length of time, I had to go buy a new bed for him yesterday. While at the bed store, the man selling me said bed (and promising me delivery today, thank the Mattress Gods!), asked, "Why aren't you working today?"

I was so tired and shell-shocked that I didn't spin off my usual lie: "I am an actuary, but I took a personal day." Instead, I said, "Um . . . I'm a writer, I work from home."

"Really? What do you write?"

I thought of stating "Nonfiction books on the plight of the tapeworm"--but opted for "novels." To which Mattress Man said, "How interesting."

I refer you to Pollock painting.

I "get"--in many complicated yet boring ways--why I do what I do. I simply can't function in an office. It sucks the life out of me. I like blogging in my bathrobe. I like writing with Django Reinhardt playing on y iPod. And most days, I even love that Demon Baby occasionally jumps on me and licks my face. But there's something about being a working writer--however that looks for you--that is very messy, at least in my world. It's fitting writing in here and there in bursts. It's manuscripts spitting out of the printer with Post-in words and reminders all over the desk. It's mothering four children while keeping up (HA!) with the housework while plotting my next book while waiting in the dentist's office for the kids to get their check-ups.

I have come to this huge paradigm shift. The myth--especially for women--of having it all . . . it's a myth. Balance? I have no idea what that even looks like. I "think" it looks like the life of Oprah or the life of Rachel Ray . . . or the life of the Hollywood "It" mom of the moment. But really? Oprah and Rachel Ray don't have kids, and the Hollywood It mom has a staff of six. It looks serene, but that's achieved with smoke and mirrors. Every magazine that promises balance to me just heaps more guilt and bullshit on those of us who really know that balance probably is akin to Big Foot. Just a myth.

BUT, I do have it all. I live life in HUGE COLORFUL GULPS. I love most days. I feel joy most days, in between the heavy sighing that sometimes goes on (and one of my New Year's Resolutions was to STOP SIGHING and I only have two months left to work on that!). My life looks like someone vomited paint on a canvas. I have it all--if I am willing to accept my canvas.

That's what my life looks like.

How about yours?

P.S. Feel free to post what YOUR life LOOKS like on your own blog and comment with a link.

Snap Out of It

One of my favorite films of all time is Moonstruck. I consider it one of those perfect little films. First, it was written by John Patrick Shanley,who also wrote the play Doubt. When that film comes out--with Meryl Streep, no less--it will be a must-see film! I also love Moonstruck for the casting--dead on and perfect. I love the scene, especially, between Olympia Dukakis and John Mahoney. But what I especially love is Cher telling Nicolas Cage to "Snap out of it!"

I ended up recalling this scene because I was interviewed yesterday for an article in a magazine on "people to watch in 2009"--and with three book releases, apparently, I am worth watching go stark raving crazy. But more importantly, I was asked how I manage my time. I mentioned him and said there really is no such thing as time management in my life. But then I thought about it seriously. And I reached the same conclusion I often do.

Snap out of it.

You see, somehow, by virtue of writing being in the arts, I think I used to get invested in what I "needed" to create. I needed candles and music, and a quiet place. A room of my own, so to speak. I needed uninterrupted time. I needed to be in the zone. I needed to be free of emotional pain. I needed to not be worried about anyone in my life. I needed . . . I needed . . . I needed . . .

One the absolute blessings of being 40 years old and pregnant--with three other children to care for--is you find out pretty damn fast you don't need any of that. I turned in a book two days before giving birth and one four months after.

One of the blessings of Demon Baby is his ability to give my life a clear-eyed and sharp-edged reality. It was as if he were born specifically to tell me, in craptastically clear terms, "Snap the crap out of it, Mom." (For lurkers who are not regular readers, he is three, brilliantly diabolical, and his favorite word is crap. Preferably said VERY loud and in the vicinity of old ladies in the grocery store who look at him like he is the anti-Christ.)

In fact . . . I work. Relentlessly but not tirelessly (BIG difference). I work and work and work my craft at odd times, in stolen moments, before dawn, at 3:00 a.m. I work it that way because I have to and there's nothing heroic or different about it simply because what I do is in the arts and what someone else does is nursing or teaching or slinging hash or building a road. There's no huge mystery to the creative process. I mean, yes, there is. Like I really CAN'T tell you where I get my ideas from or why I have a Muse who lives on cocaine and cigarettes if the sheer volume of ideas she gives me is any idea. But there's no mystery to the WORK of it. You sit your ass in a chair and snap out of it.

Well . . . I've got to run. That Muse on cocaine and cigarettes just phoned in a new idea.

Thoughts? Ever feel like you need to snap out of it? Ever feel like you have to tell someone ELSE to snap out of it?

And on the 7th Day . . .

I've had the flu for the last 48 hours. Fever of 103 . . . an alien emerging from my stomach (I'm serious!), the whole nine yards. My children were left to largely fend for themselves, occasionally coming in to make sure I was still breathing. Demon Baby had a look of real alarm, like I finally killed the poor woman. Periodically, he would come stand by my bed, pat my cheek, and try to shove a graham cracker cookie in my mouth as "medicine."

When I finally crawled from my cave this morning, it looked like a pack of rabid wolves had ripped apart my kitchen. I want to crawl back in my cave.

While this is a mother's lament--moms don't get sick days--it's a writer's lament, too. Full-time writers also don't get sick days.

Mark Terry recently blogged on myths about working from home. He says one myth is you can work in your pjs (Mark opts for sweathshirts and jeans). Post-flu (or really, how I feel today, semi-flu . . . the semi-flu writer), I am here to tell you, the myth is reality. I am in pjs. Another myth, Mark says, is you write at your own convenience. You write when you want to write and kick back when you want to kick back. Um . . . not if you want to earn a living. There are no sick days. If you're not writing, you're not making money. There are times when I think I want to get a "real job" just so I can take a vacation where I don't have to check in to my home office, or so I get sick days and don't have to feel guilty about them. But . . . real jobs have their own negatives, so I don't think I'm getting one any time soon. And really, if I had a real job? My kitchen would STILL look like rabid wolves had ripped apart everything in it.

So I am starting to think when God invented mothers and writers, it was with the idea that there was no day of rest. That 7th day crap is for the rest of the world . . . .

Thoughts?