Author: Jonathon

I opened up, had a lovely idea for a blog, and now I can’t remember what the heck it was. I think that’s a sign that my blood sugar’s falling, and I need lunch, and also that I should get some pages done before the blog. Didn’t I just say that yesterday? Happy Lunar New Year! It’s the year of the dog, which Trin is thrilled about because it’s her Chinese Zodiac sign. Some of our friends would say it’s always the year of the dog at our house. Hard to argue that, since we have four dogs. I’m outta here to find food and get some progress made.

I feel I have to apologize for not having given an entry for awhile, but strangely, I find, sometimes, that writing the blog feels like writing to me. Which means that some days writing the blog seems to take the edge off that compulsion I feel to write. So, instead of doing the blog first thing before I write on the book, I started writing the book first. I did four pages, eight pages, twenty pages, thirty-one pages, nine pages. Merry 5 is over two hundred pages, and moving very nicely. Yea! I’m not a hundred percent certain that the blog is the problem. Maybe the book just needed to reach a certain point to take off. But the blog entries may be fewer and further between, and definitely the blogs will be at the end of the day and not the beginning. Book first, then blog. So now that all the explaining is over, on with the blog.
It’s Saturday, the weekend, but I got up determined to Do Things! Jon and I were going to do the big workout, because we missed it on Thursday. I was going to work, a little go keep the momentum going on the book. Homework for Trinity. And, if time, a movie. It turned out Trin finished her homework at Grandma Mary’s, except for reading. We finished breakfast, and I was ready to work. Jon and Trin wanted to watch the newest Mythbusters, where they revisit the Archimedes Death Ray. We’d Tivoed the show from Wednesday night. I said, “I’m not sure it’s a good use of time for us today.” Jon said, “It’s the weekend. The weekend isn’t about a good use of time.” Strangely, I couldn’t argue with him. We ended up sitting on the couch, all three of us, plus the four dogs, and watching Mythbusters. It was a big, warm, comforting pile of family and puppies. The show was fun, as always, and it was special time that we got to spend with our daughter. Somewhere while she was snuggled up against me, so happy, I realized that maybe, just maybe, Jon is right. Maybe the weekend isn’t about a good ‘use’ of time. Maybe it’s just about a good time. Having said that, Jon and I did exercise. So that was accomplished. But I have yet to work. Yeah, maybe I’ve earned a day off, but . . . I don’t do day’s off very well. It just seems to make me more tense later. So on one hand, it’s been a good day, and on the other hand, I’m all up tight about not working. I know from experience that sometimes even a day off without progress can impede the flow of a book. So, it’s not a fear without foundation. But I also know that it’s 6:00 on a Saturday night and my chances of working are nil and nothing. We’re prepping for dinner. Part of me is wondering if I’d feel better if I did steal away to my office for a few minutes. I finally realized that my writing is my time alone time, my me time. My work is stressful and deadlines are a bitch, but it is my alone time, and I value it. Other people watch soap operas, or collect stamps, or ski down mountains; I write. I finally realized that my job that started out as my hobby is still my hobby. Nice to know.

No pages today. Jon and I exercised with Keath, as did Darla and Mary. Again, in the afternoon my fever came back up. I thought I was better. I’m beginning to think it’s that whole not resting enough. Maybe. Me, push myself, never. Trinity is doing remarkably well. I can hear her singing in the other room. When I finish this it’s off to read a chapter of Nancy Drew. I’d like to say the morning will be productive but our contractor has finally told us that we must pick out the rest of the lights and plumbing stuff. Must. So tomorrow morning instead of writing I’ve got to do that. We were going to do it this afternoon, but Mary was delayed, and I had to pick up Trinity from school. But dance class was a no, her jaw hurt, and we had three tests to study for, for Friday. We were all tired. Jon is under the weather, too. It was nearly seventy today, and tomorrow will be around forty. No wonder we’re all sick. Such weird weather.

It’s official, not just allergies, but a low grade fever. I’m still on antibiotics from the sinus and middle ear infection, so it must be something viral. Great. I had two pages done, half way to the four page goal when Mary brought Trinity home from her dentist appointment. Trinity had found a bump on her gum and wanted her dentist to see it. It didn’t look like much to me, but I told her to tell her dentist. She did, and good that she did. The tiny bump was an abscessed tooth. Eek! The tooth had to be pulled. Once I heard what had happened that was it for work for the rest of the day. I sat on the couch with the kiddo and watched Danger Mouse. She loves the show. Mary says she was very brave, and that the tooth fairy should give extra for this one. Grandma said this in front of the kiddo, but Trinity has informed us that she wants us to tell the tooth fairy that he doesn’t need to stop by, because she wants to keep the tooth. It’s a whopper, with a whopping good story to go with it. When Jon went to pick up her medicine for pain, he also got a get-well card and a little Valentine’s day toy puppy. She wants to take card, puppy, and tooth to school for some impromptu show and tell.
Unfortunately, among all the other unfortunate stuff is that there’s a math test tomorrow. Frankly, I’m such a wimp about the dentist that she could have charmed me into just saying no going to school tomorrow, but cooler heads have prevailed. I’m not even going to tell her, let’s wait and see how you feel. I know how she’ll feel if she thinks she has an option. She was stuck on part of her work sheet, and Jon asked her, “What have you been doing a lot of in math lately?” Trinity thought for a moment, then said, “Whining.”
I laughed out loud, completely lost it, and with the laughter all my parental authority went bye-bye. I had to leave Jon to manage the homework while I got my giggling under control. I got myself under control and sat back down with them, but truthfully on the math he’s much better at explaining it than I am.
I hear the kiddo. I’m going to go read with her. We’re doing Nancy Drew: The Thirteenth Pearl. I’ve taken something for the fever. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

I woke up feeling less than my best today. I just thought my allergies were acting up, and maybe they were. But sometime this morning I sat at the island in the kitchen, and laid my head down on the computer there. Like laid my cheek down firm and closed my eyes. I continued to talk to everyone, then realized that it felt so good to just lie down and close my eyes. It was not a normally comfortable position, but it was the closest I’d allowed myself to resting. I said, with my head still pressed to the computer, “I think I have to embrace the fact that I don’t feel well, because this feels really comfortable.” Everyone thought that was pretty funny, because they’d all figured out long ago that I wasn’t feeling well. Admittedly, my allergies are severe enough that many mornings are full of nausea, and other vague flu-like symptoms. Then sometime after lunch I’ll ‘recover’. I’m beginning to think we’re going to have to switch some of my allergy medicine around again. It just doesn’t seem to be keeping up. Sigh.
Yesterday ended up being so productive and this morning was a total loss on page count. I did look at some e-mails, and make a business call, or two, but frankly, I still only count pages. I know that the rest is work, too, but the writer in me just doesn’t really count anything as work-work except pages. Anyway, I’m at my desk, and the musical of choice is on the player. Just four pages. I can do it. Just four pages. It’s not so much. If I get more, great, but the goal is only four. Gotta go make the count.

My goal was just four pages for Merry today, but I managed to do fifteen. Yea! Early in the day, before lunch, the pages were dragging out of me. I was counting progress in lines, not pages. I had a page and a half done when we broke for lunch. Lunch out of the house was a welcome break. I had forced myself to keep at it an extra half hour in the hopes I’d do those last page and a half, but no go. Then lunch, and back to work. Again, it was dragging out by lines. I thought, only eleven more pages for this page, then one more page. I wasn’t sure I could manage it. Then, finally, I had four pages. To finish up my thought I did just a little more onto a fifth page, then the next thing I knew I was pages past it. I’d worked all day. All day, and it had been slow, dragging, agony. Then at the end in less than two hours, after hours of slogging, I did more than I’d done all day. I have no idea why it works like this sometimes. Why all day it’s awful, and then suddenly the muse strikes and you manage to do a glorious rush of work. The question I’d like to know is if I didn’t drag my butt through all those hours of nothing, would I get the rush of pages? Do I need the slow, agonize, sitting to work through to that rush, or would I have been better off doing something else instead, until afternoon. Okay, wait, I can answer this. If I don’t put my butt in the chairs I don’t get pages, period. So, yes, unfortunately, I have to sit and not get pages, to finally have that page count at the end of the day.
I finished work, called down to Jon, and away we went to exercise. Our trainer, Keath,from Shark Fitness, was here yesterday. He worked us all very hard. I left a sweaty imprint of my body on the new floor of the new exercise room. Yesterday was our first day in the new room. We worked out together just the two of us, without Keath standing over and making us. We try to do that, but admittedly, Darla is more consistent about it on the days Keath is not with us. One of my new year’s resolutions was to change that. So far, so good. Other resolutions; to cook more at home, less take-out, to read with Trinity more often, and to exercise more. Anyway, dinner is ready. Soup for the cold Winters night.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Let Freedom Ring!

I’ve been sick this week. A double infection; sinus and middle ear. I hadn’t had a middle ear infection for almost twenty years, but I remembered the feeling. It’s like having a storm tossed ship inside your own head. Your own little private motion sickness experience, like some kind of vomitous ride inside your head. God, it was awful. Antibiotics are a wonderful thing.
Yesterday was the first day back to work for me since doing twenty pages on Monday the ninth. Twenty pages, then next day so sick I couldn’t stand up without help. But yesterday, Friday, I went back to work in the afternoon. I still wasn’t a hundred percent so my concentration wasn’t up to snuff. Any noise seemed to interrupt me, so I went to my new office in the still unfinished addition. My office only needs lights, shutters for the skylights, and drapes for the windows. It was done enough for government work, as they say. Jon had set up a small desk in the office and worked on the script days ago. We’ve both discovered that some days we need more privacy to not be distracted. This need was one of the things that prompted the building of the new offices. When I asked, why he’d put the desk in my office, and not his own, his reply, “You have more windows.” No lights, windows are important if you want to see what you’re doing. But Friday, I used the desk. It is light weight and I was able with Jon’s help to move it so that an entire bank of windows was my view. It started to snow in the afternoon, and it seemed to energize me. I’d forgotten how much I like to work when it snows. That whole hibernating inside warm, while the world is cold, I think. Truthfully, I don’t know why, but something about that swirling snow just made me want to work. I didn’t argue, but I did find that I needed the extra quiet. So off to the new office, and God, it was quiet. That empty office building after hours quiet. It was great. The snow, the silence, and me rereading the first hundred or so pages of Merry 5. Truthfully, the twenty pages on Monday had been the new Anita book, not Merry, but it was Merry that I needed to reread. I’d tried to just take up where I left off, but it had been too long since I read it over. I read, edited, then was done for the day. Tired. But I made notes for, and outlined the next three hundred or so pages of the book. I had my map.
Today, my ex-husband called saying his new wife’s sister had called. They were coming to town, and bringing their little girls. He wanted to know if it would be possible for Trinity to join them on a trip to the Science Center to see the Titanic exhibit. I knew she wanted to see it, and that Jon and I weren’t going to be doing anything that fun today. I’m still not well, and Jon made a breakthrough yesterday on a scene in the script that he was finding it difficult to take from the book and convey in script format. Since we’d both made progress we wanted to do at least a little work today to keep the momentum going. (Jon taught me how to relax a little and play more. I’ve taught him how to work harder. Not sure it’s a fair trade, but there it is.) Jon actually suggested working before I did. But only after we’d gotten our girl off to her visit to the Science Center. I hear her now, so I’ve got to go. I got six pages new of Merry done today. I’m tired. I had ambitions about working on Anita after I’d done all I could on Merry, but I’m done for the day. Even if the kiddo hadn’t come home. So I made progress. I’ll find out if Jon did, and I’m going to take the dogs down and see how Trinity enjoyed the exhibit.

Well, I’ve got a little over a hundred pages for Merry. It was originally the beginning for A STROKE OF MIDNIGHT, but I felt like we needed to back-fill some story issues. I also felt the need for a stronger mystery plot. I did that, and found that the original beginning no longer worked for the book at all. It was all important stuff and necessary, but not yet, not here. Well, unless I change my mind again, it’s the beginning for book five of Merry. I think it is. I’m almost a hundred percent sure. So, suddenly, I’m a hundred pages ahead. Cool. Weird, but cool. Last time I thought these hundred pages were the middle of a book, but they are the beginning. They just are.
Beginning a book is like getting into a body of water. You can dab a toe in, test the temperature. You can wade in slowly, adjusting. You can throw yourself into the deep end of the pool. This beginning is definitely deep end of the pool. Actually, it feels more you were peering over a cliff edge at a river far below, and someone comes up behind you and shoves. We’ll hit the water screaming together, I guess. Welcome to the deep end, ladies and gentlemen. It’s pretty much where I live.

I got a migraine coming back from Illinois last night. I won’t talk about my family here. I haven’t decided how much to share. So we’ll skip that for now. Maybe grief should be private, and sharing doesn’t make it better. But I got a migraine on the way home, and didn’t realize in time what it was. I hit the door and ran for the bathroom, very sick. I hate migraines like that. I woke up this morning with a migraine hangover. It means you feel like crap, light and sound sensitive, and that if you don’t take care of yourself you can have another migraine. I spent most of the day wearing dark, wraparound sunglasses, and avoiding loud noises. Late in the afternoon though I couldn’t stand it anymore, I had to do something, accomplish something. Jon wasn’t feeling much better than I was, so my plans for errands together made him give me the look. He was content to embrace the fact that he wasn’t feeling well. I was the only one feeling restless, so it was my problem to deal with. He was right, but I was still bitchy about it. What to do when you’re feeling bitchy, and taking it out on people you shouldn’t? For me, it means go to the office and try to work. Put that grumpiness to use. I find that anger and most strong emotions translate to energy on paper.
I was worried that the computer screen might make the headache worse, but I have a good screen. No flickering, because I can’t stand flicker. It was a nice overcast day, and I turned on only the smallest of lights in my office, slipped my prescription glasses on, and went to work. I had a few pages in my notebook to transfer to paper. I really wasn’t thinking I’d get much done today. I felt like shit, but I thought a few pages, a little progress, and I knew I’d feel better when I got up tomorrow. Well, thirty pages later, I’m done for the day. Thirty pages from around 2:00 to 6:30, or so. That’s a lot of pages. I wrote earlier that this Anita book is ready to go, and I was right. I’ve got seventy-one pages of it. All from days when I just mean to do a few pages, just enough to help me do the outline. Yeah, right.
I chose to try and work on Anita because I knew if I could work on anything with my head feeling this miserable, it was Anita. I was right, but I’ve got to figure out a way to get Merry 5 going. I may try to work morning’s on Anita and afternoons on Merry for awhile, until I get Merry up and running. I’ve still got to finish reading the last Merry book and make notes. I have over a hundred pages, but it’s not the beginning of the book. I need to figure out what chapter one is going to be. Until I figure that out, I won’t be able to get a lot of pages in a row. Any way, I’m tired, but my head feels much better. I guess work helps me relieve stress.