Hamstermanity

It's a good thing I didn't make any New Year's resolutions this year. They would have run to the usual: exercise more, take more time to relax and take care of myself, write more often, say no to the things I don't truly want to do. By that measure, I might get half a point on the last one, because I'm getting a little better at distinguishing the categories of Things That Are My Responsibility from Things That Are Someone Else's Problem. I've even gotten better at keeping my sticky little fingers off of the things that fall into the second category, because I have found through oft-repeated experience that when one jumps in to help with such items, they then have a tendency to migrate permanently into the first category. But on the whole, except for starting the year with an unusually clean living room and dining room, I have failed to start 2014 on the right foot.

It hit me on a particularly busy day this week, when I had scarfed down my second Balance bar of the day as a poor substitute for lunch. The first had been a poor substitute for breakfast, consumed at my desk midmorning. That day I had worked my three hours, run home, finished a freelance proofreading project, taken it to FedEx/Kinko's to ship to the client (I passed my unusually long time in line making up a back story for man ahead of me, who sported a plethora of CCCP, hammer-and-sickle, and other Soviet-oriented tattoos), and then dashed back home. It was around this point, a few minutes before I had to head out again to pick the kids up from school, that I realized I hadn't put "lunch" on my to-do list, and therefore it hadn't happened.

So I downed the second bar, did the usual round of elementary and middle school pickups, dropped Sons #2 and 3 at home so I could take Son #1 to his therapy/social skills group in the equivalent of East Jesus Nowhere (seriously, it takes 45 minutes one way to get there in the carpool lane on the freeway), and headed out again. And it was on the road that it hit me I had, at least for one day, morphed into a human hamster--eat my pellet, run on my exercise wheel, eat another pellet, run on my wheel some more.

Actually, the minivan is my hamster wheel.

I spent a lot of time mouthing off toward the end of last year about all of the things I thought I should do this year--primarily grow my freelance business and finally edit at least one of my NaNoWriMo novels and get serious about trying to get published. I went around talking about these things as if I only needed to decide that now was the time, and somehow they would happen. But somewhere in the post-holiday letdown that accompanies taking down the decorations and realizing that you've got another couple of months of sunshine deprivation in your future, I started wishing some of those cocky things unsaid.

At some point, though, I have to stop dreaming of doing things and just do them. Honestly, after 5 successful years of doing NaNoWriMo, I think I've proved that I can pull a 50,000-word rough draft out of thin air (and I mean seriously thin air--I've never started a NaNoWriMo with more than a first scene and a vague concept of where the story is going). It's time to start the hard work of actually crafting a novel out of one of those drafts. Saying "I'm busy" just isn't enough of an excuse to avoid it. I have a college friend with young three daughters (the oldest is my youngest son's age) AND a full-time job whose second novel will be coming out this year, so I think it is safe to say that I've got something on the order of negative excuses on the "too busy to write" front. "Too busy" is a big fat euphemism for "too afraid no-one will want to read what I write" or "too afraid to admit I haven't got the first clue on where to start on getting published."

My fears for my freelance career take a different form: I pride myself on careful work, and I've never wanted to take on more than I could handle at that high standard. This caution made a lot of sense back in the days where mothering duties included diaper changing and keeping little fingers out of electrical sockets and the cat's ears. Nowadays, when the kids can get their own snacks and my job is generally training them not to be jerks, I have more time to devote to proofreading and editing, particularly since my husband's new business venture means he isn't gone 12 hours a day any more. But I approach each new client with a certain fear--am I really as good as I think I am? are they really going to like my work?--that makes me hesitant to seek out new work. Knowing it's irrational doesn't make it go away.

But there was a reason I was mouthing off so much about all of this stuff, and it's because after 41 years in my own company, I think I know myself reasonably well. I'm very good at inundating myself with things that "need" to be done because they make a plausible excuse for not facing the things that I am scared to try. And then when I commit, I need to follow through, because god forbid I flake out. (Mind you, having three kids has given me a fair number of necessary humility lessons on the subject of flaking out, but I still don't like doing it.) So talking often and loudly about my writing and work ambitions was my way of trying to push down my fears and commit to finding the time for those things.

However, while I'm frustrated, I'm also kind of glad. It took me less than a month into 2014 to realize that the path I'm on will not take me to where I ultimately want to be. That gives me the opportunity to step back from the wheel/pellet/wheel/pellet cycle of hamstermanity. I suspect that even if I don't succeed, I'll enjoy the view on my journey quite a bit more.

No excuses. Plus cool goggles.

Life Gets in the Way: NaNoWriMo Edition

[Before I get started on the subject of this post, I just want to say a big thank you to the voters of California. For those of you who read my last post, you know I was somewhat pessimistic about the possibility of Prop 30 passing, and feeling a bit worn down after years of cuts to K-12 education in this state. So thank you. I know that we're not nearly out of the woods yet, but I finally have hope that the hard road ahead will lead upwards.]

November is a terrible month in which to write a novel. I know this, because I have done it now three times, and am working on the fourth, and every year I curse the timing. Surely, there must be a better month. One where the kids are in school more (24-7?). One where I am not cleaning up after Halloween and ostensibly planning for the holidays. One that features vistas of spare time just waiting to be filled up with brilliant writing sessions where I effortlessly craft reams upon reams of deathless prose.

If you're wondering, this is what people like me do with their Novembers.

Yeah, right.

I first got introduced to the madness that is National Novel Writing Month by my dear friend and college roommate, who not only participates every year but has her middle school students do the Young Writers Program. The idea is to write a 50,000-word novel in one month, no excuses, no inner editor, just the pure fun of writing at top speed. I watched with envy and awe as she blogged about it in 2008. I was an English Writing major in college, and in the many years between my graduation and that date, had managed to confine my writing skills to business use, grocery lists, PTA fundraising appeals, and the like. She encouraged me to try it myself, so in 2009 I did.

I had forgotten how much fun writing could be. Make no mistake about it, when you're trying to stick to writing 1,667 words a day (approximately 6 or so pages), you're not anywhere in the neighborhood of crafting deathless prose. If you're like me, you've gone into the month with something that looks like an idea, maybe a reasonably well-formed first scene and a few incidents that you know happen somewhere in the middle to drive that shapeless, amoeba-like plot in a vaguely forward direction. But after you've exhausted that meager reserve, you're making it up as you go along, inventing characters, settings, and scenarios on the fly.

In order to have even a prayer of finishing on time, you have to accept that your writing may be bad. Really bad. That later you will look back through scenes you wrote and hope that there's a pony in there somewhere among all the horseshit. On the upside, you will also surprise yourself with bits of clever writing that seems to come out of nowhere, because your brain will spit them out before your internal censors have a chance to shut them down. If you're lucky, you will also have a family that quietly leaves you alone when it finds you giggling over your computer at a phrase or scene of your own that you particularly enjoy.

Save a full rereading for December. Trust me.

That first novel (first draft of a first novel, really) was exceedingly lousy. For that matter, so were novels two and three. But I had fun writing them.

Yes, November is a terrible month to write a novel in. That first November, my husband went out of the country for a week and got go-directly-to-the-hospital-do-not-pass-go-do-not-collect-$200-grade food poisoning, two of the kids got swine flu, the computer died, and all sorts of other hell broke loose. I still dragged myself across the 50,000-word finish line on time. I learned three very important things that year:

• If your novel is feeling really flat and you hate it, try killing off a character or two to get things rolling. You can always borrow the Traveling Shovel of Death.
• Back up your novel. It's not fun to spend five days with your computer in the shop, wondering if you're ever going to see the first 11,000 words of your crappy novel again.
• I can write 50,000 words in a month, even when my life is turning into a domestic disaster movie/farce.

This year I am the furthest behind I have ever been in my word count at this point (I should be at 18,337 and I'm only at about 13,300). My obstacles have included, but are not limited to, hours of following the presidential election, particularly onerous chauffeur duty (soccer practice, rehearsals, therapy appointments, more soccer practice, lather, rinse, repeat), school meetings and more school meetings, and knitting. (Note to self: the next time you think four pregnant friends need cute little items for their babies, plan ahead. Start early, like right after they pee on the pregnancy test. My right shoulder may never be the same.) This doesn't even get into the more routine domestic duties that can make it seem easier to put off writing until tomorrow. Or the next day. I'm bored to tears by my novel and haven't the slightest clue how I am going to eke another 37,000 words out of this story. But since I'll be damned if this is the year I break my perfect streak of finishing NaNoWriMo, I'll keep writing. If I have to throw in an alien abduction, I will.

The truth is, November is a terrible month to write a novel in, but so are all the others. There is no time when life will politely step out of the way and let you write a novel, or start whatever creative endeavor you think you're going to get to "one day" when things settle down. So if I don't return your phone call right away this month...if I don't get to the laundry right away, or the dishes...if I seem distracted and have an odd glint in my eye as if I'm sizing up what's going around me for possible insertion in the World's Worst Novel...I promise I'll be back next month.

I also promise I won't make you read my novel. At least until after the first edit.

It's Alive!

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted anything here. It's not that I didn't think about it--I did. It's not even as if I didn't write anything--I sat down one day and started not one, but two posts, both of which failed to gel into anything that I cared to finish, much less inflict on anyone else. Now I'm at the point where the weight of guilt, or the sense that I now have to post something brilliant to make up for my sloth, could possibly crush the remaining impulse I have to post anything, so I'm just going to jump in and hope a loyal reader or two will forgive me what is sure to be a fairly haphazard post.

First of all, for those who read my last post about the baby squirrel we found in our back yard, I have good news. Chopper, as he has been christened by the woman who has been taking care of him, is alive and well and thriving, as you can see in the video below. I've actually been a little surprised at the number of our friends who have been asking about him (thanks to Facebook, pretty much everyone we know seems to have taken notice). It's nice to know that even grownups have a soft spot in their hearts for a little beady-eyed fuzzy. (Except of course, for one college friend, who has a long-standing loathing of squirrels. I suspect he understands the rescue but the multiple pictures of Chopper that keep showing up in my Facebook feed courtesy of Chopper's new mama are probably giving him a twitch.)

Secondly, I have not been trapped under anything heavy. I have not fled the country. I have not even locked myself in the bathroom with a bottle of vodka and a straw, even after having to coax Son #2 through finishing not one, but two projects this week that would have been a piece of cake had he not procrastinated on them. (There are days I wonder if he's conducting a scientific experiment to see if he can literally make my head pop off just by raising my blood pressure. He came close this week.)

Instead, I've been muddling along in a fog as my family's routine slowly settles into place for the fall. We did, in fact, end up with a soccer practice every single day of the week, and between that, religious school, Son #1's therapies, Son #2's play, and Son #3's theater class, we're running quite a bit of the time. I've gone in to volunteer in Son #3's classroom and in the school office a few times. I've made a couple of half-hearted attempts to work on the garage, though the weather is still so hot that it is hard to be in there for very long. My dad is having so much fun giving me crap about it, though, that I almost hate to clean it up now. (And that is officially the excuse I will be using for my slow progress until further notice.)

Safety first!

I couldn't quite put into words why I was feeling so aimless until I was talking to my friend L today.* She was complaining that she felt like there was something she was supposed to be doing, but she couldn't put her finger on what it was. For the last two years she was the treasurer of the booster club while I was the president, and she got to deal with all kinds of fun stuff (such as submitting all the required documentation necessary to get the state of California to un-suspend our nonprofit status). I told her I didn't actually think that she was forgetting anything--it was just that she was used to being so swamped with things to do for the booster club that it was like she had phantom limb syndrome now, her brain insisting that there was a to-do list there, where in fact there was none.

If I had been a clearer-minded thinker, I could have applied this diagnosis to myself a couple of weeks ago. And no, I don't have any good answers for her. I suspect the feeling will fade away, given time and some distance from the things that used to be our responsibilities. One of my friends, whose son is in kindergarten with Son #3 and who manages the wrapping paper fundraiser for the booster club, told me that our numbers were up this year. And even as I congratulated her I realized, I don't need to worry about this. It is no longer my responsibility if the numbers for the wrapping paper sales are good or bad.  We have a very capable president this year who can handle that responsibility, and all the others that go with being president, without me hovering.

I've also been talking to my sister-in-law, who is still a member of the co-op preschool Son #3 attended last year. I've been pumping her for details on what is going on there this year, even though with 2/3rds of the members graduating in Son #3's class last year, the co-op is now mostly full of people I don't know. A lot of my time last year was also taken up with my duties there, volunteering once a week and being the treasurer. I even miss some parts of it, though not the long meetings or the plethora of information-free reply-to-all emails. I feel the lack of that responsibility in my life too.

Don't miss this part. Not even a little bit.

So now I have to get used to a new normal in my life, one that does not involve simply lining up to-do list items as if they are hurdles to fling myself over one at a time until the school year is over and I get the summer to pause, catch my breath, and prepare to do it all again. I do have time to write (however meanderingly or badly), time to maybe go get a cup of coffee with a friend and talk about something other than school fundraising strategies, time to rediscover old hobbies, time to clean my house. And even time to still help at school, because now that I feel that it isn't consuming my life, I'm actually starting to remember why I liked volunteering in the first place. The trick will be not filling up my schedule with things that seem critical to distract myself from the frenetic tedium of everyday life, and depriving myself of the time to do things I like.

So now that I've gotten over the delusion that I need to be brilliant to be on the internet (doesn't stop anyone else), I'll be trying to write regularly again and to ignore the phantom limb of last year's to-do list. And if you see me trying to volunteer for something new, tackle me, please!

*Since "my friend who took the batteries to the household hazardous waste recycling" is a mouthful, I'm going to use her first initial, L, to identify her from here on out.