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Hey, everybody. It’s my first solo stab at a blog since the change in viewer interface. Jonathon is off gathering breakfast, and I sit alone staring at this alien looking little box. Technology is like fire. Tamed and well cared for it will make our lives better, safer, easier, but neglected, it is a danger that could destroy all that we love.
Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what to put in this blog. It will take me a few more weeks to truly be comfortable with the interface, so until then, it’s a nervous thing to do a blog. So what to say?
Let us pretend it is merely a typewriter, one of those old fashioned ones that made that nice, comforting clack sound, and that was hard enough to use that you worked muscles up in your forearms and hands. Let’s pretend that I’m writing on a summer’s day with no plane trip tomorrow. Did I mention that? Did I mention that Jon and I are getting on a plane tomorrow for vacation? I suppose I didn’t. We will be flying, and I don’t like flying. Nope, not one little bit. I suppose that’s part of the nervousness today. Yep, probably.
Okay, if I wasn’t stressing over the interface, the dawn plane trip, what would I write?
The rewrites went away, and the front end of the copy edits came back. Jonathon and I did a record turn around so that they were back in New York Friday morning. Yea, for us! The back end of the copy edits will be waiting for us when we get back from our five day vacation. We tried for a week, but there just wasn’t a week in the schedule. But, hey, five days off is five days off. Five days away from the office, and all the business. One of the few downsides to working in your own home is that you never really get away from the office. Your office is right there so you think, well, I’ll just make a few notes. It’s almost never just a few notes and quit once I step through that door.
Some books are harder than others, I’m not always sure why. I know that the last few books have been hard, progressively harder. I realized that even my love for my work, my writing, my characters, everything, cannot survive finishing a book one day, and starting the next book twenty-four to forty-eight hours later. Starting with Cerulean Sins, Seduced by Moonlight, and now Incubus Dreams, that’s about what my downtime has been between books. No wonder I’m tired.
If Jonathon had not sat up here in my office with me, making me work, or rather being there to reassure me on the rewrite of Incubus, that it was alright, I was alright, I don’t know if it would ever have gotten done. People ask if he’s my muse, but that’s not it, he’s more security blanket, and touchstone. I had so many different notes on the rewrite that went in seemingly everywhere, that I was overwhelmed. He helped me make lists and put them up on the big white board (one of my newer office thingies). A list for what was in the research folder, a list for what was in the rewrite note folder, a list for sticky notes. Three big columns, numbered, so I could look up and cross them off as I went. We take turns helping each other make order out of our individual chaos. Working through the rewrites, I would call from my smaller rewrite desk, “Did I use this phrase twice in this book for two different character’s?” He would be at the big desk with the computer on it, and he would search for the phrase and tell me yes, or no, and I’d do a change accordingly. Without him to help me do that kind of thing, it would have taken twice as long, even if my nerves and courage had been up to slogging by myself through the mess.
So we’re almost packed. We are getting ready for Trinity’s very first ballet recital. We did the dress rehearsal yesterday, complete with full stage make-up. The skills I learned both in my brief youth in theatre, and doing my own make-up for tour, most of the time, came in handy. She looked great, and grown-up, too grown-up for our comfort. She’s only nine, but there are moments now when she turns her head a certain way, or says something emphatically, that we get a glimpse of what she’ll be like at sixteen or twenty. The shadow of who and what she will be is already there. That shadow grows more solid with every passing day. It is the way of things, and we are not parents that mourn her growing up. I applaud it. I want her to grow up happy, healthy, full-filled, whatever that will mean for her. But there is a certain sadness to the process, watching it, a nostaglia as she vows never to leave us, and asked last year to bring her husband home to live with us, too, when she gets one. When she is all grown-up and has that husband, I doubt seriously she’s still going to want to live at home, but I did not disillusion her. I do not argue with her. I merely say, we’ll see when the time comes, how you feel. Or if she’s feeling particularly emotional about it, we just agree. But Jon and I both know the days of her seeing us as her very best friends, and thinking we are cool and smart and wonderful, are most likely limited. Some kids never go through that phase where they’re embarrassed by their parents, I didn’t, but I’m trying to prepare myself for the day when she’s more embarrassed than pleased at what I do for a living.
Though let me say this, there will be no taking her to the mall, and dropping her off, so no one sees her with me. There will be no walking behind her and her friends in the mall, only to be spoken to when the kid wants money. I see mothers and fathers doing this, and I am shocked. The level of disrespect that the children are showing their parents is just unbelievable, but what’s more unbelievable is that the parents are allowing it. You are your child’s parent before you are their friend. They will have friends their whole lives but you are their only shot at a parent, remember that, and act accordingly. And may I just add the whole movie theatre thing. If I drive someone to the theatre to see a movie, yeah, they have to sit with me. Them and their friends, or they can simply not come to the movie with me. They’re teenagers, they’re old enough to sit home while mom and dad go to the theatre without them. Shame on the parents for allowing the kids to get away with this, and shame on the kids for even asking. No such disrespect of my elders would have been tolerated when I was young. Going out for movies or the mall, or shopping is a privilege not a right. Remember parents as you send your kids off into the world what messages are you teaching them? That the world owes them something? That people will cater to them, and give them things even when they are behaving badly. Will these messages help them get jobs, go through college? Will it help them keep working hard when the work is very hard, or are you preparing them to give up, unless it’s easy?
Life is hard folks. Life isn’t supposed to be easy. You don’t get a free ride. You have God given gifts, but what you make of them is your choice, your move, your decision.
For the teenagers. I recently met one of the teens I grew up with. She disrespected her elders, and did the whole I’m embarrassed to be with you bit. She made fun of me for reading so much, for turning down trips to the beach, the mall, because I owed myself a story. I had a deadline, self-imposed, to meet. I was collecting rejection slips in high school. She recently saw where I am in my life, and she said, “Maybe I should have read some books, too.”
When you hit your late twenties, or thirties, are you going to look back and wish you’d, read some more books? Are you going to wish you’d been more serious about where you wanted to go in your life? Where do you see yourself in five years? If you don’t know, then most likely, you will end up somewhere you don’t want to be, doing something you don’t want to do, married or divorced from someone you found out you never loved, or who never loved you. Plan your life, and don’t blame anyone else for how it turns out. This last goes for the adults, too. I am tired of people blaming others for why their lives don’t work. I know a handful of people that truly do everything right, and make good choices, and their lives go to hell through outside forces, it does happen. But the vast majority of people are where they are through bad choices. Make good choices, and realize that it’s never too late to decide to turn it around. It’s never too late to start making good choices. Just decide, and do it. Make a difference in your own life, because if you don’t, who will?
A passing friend has pointed out that some parents do not want to sit near their teens in a theatre, because the teenagers’ conversation is boring to the adults. they are happy that there are seats between their kids and them, so that neither party is bored by the other’s company. To those adults and children, be happy in your coexistence. But this is not what I’m seeing at the theatres, for the most part.
Well, I’m off to finish packing. Maybe when we get back from vaction, I’ll be a little less grumpy.