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Feeling much better than I was on Friday. Very good friends came down to visit. I was actually stressed about the visit, not because I didn’t want to see them, but because all I could think about was, "Need to write. Need to finish book. Deadline, deadline, deadline . . . Ahhhh!" I’d reached that critical pressure cooker boil that I sometimes hit when a book is not going smoothly and the deadline is tight.

We’ve been trying to get Shawn, his wife, Kathy, and their kids, K & P, down here all summer. We finally chose the week that Mary Poppins, the musical, came to the Fox theater here in St. Louis. We got to see Broadway’s original Mary Poppins and Bert, and it was fabulous. But before it was fabulous I was almost beside myself with stress. I reached that want to cry, throw things, or just go completely tharn like a rabbit in headlights until the car crushes me. And suddenly we had a houseful of people. Not a completely good mix. (Yes, that is an understatement of vast propertions.)

Carri and her wife Pili were able to drop by briefly to see Shawn and his family, so we had a lot of very good friends and family in one place at one time and all I could feel was the stress. I think I rallied and managed to be human enough to visit, but the effort ate farther into my reserves. No, that’s not true, I had no reserves left. If I was a car I’d have been on fumes, with that thick chunk-chunk they make when they’re about to stop cold from lack of fuel. Bad enough the mood was that I couldn’t hide it completely from close friends, so I didn’t pretend. I behaved, but I couldn’t camouflage how bad things were interenally. But one of the good things about close friends is that they love you anyway, hell, someone of them love me because we’re all moody bastards and Friday night was just my turn.

Trinity was loving having her cousins down to visit, and it was truly good to see them all, but I went to bed with my mood close to as dark as it gets. That’s pretty damn dark, by the by. It’s about as dark as you’d think it would be for someone who writes what I write; yeah that dark. I woke in the morning to a leaden feeling of the same hopelessness that I’d gone to bed with, which was not a good sign. I thought, I have to find some time to work today, but in the end it didn’t happen. It wasn’t just visiting with company, it was also that I couldn’t face the thought of the Merry book so soon again. Why the serious desolation? Did I mention here, or on Twitter that I cut 70 pgs from the book this week? No, well, I’d hoped that I was wrong. I’d hope that I could save some of them, but by Friday I knew I couldn’t.

What’s wrong with the pages? Nothing. Everything. They’re well written, I’ve reached that frightening point as a writer that I write well even when it’s not the right scene for a book. The dialogue still rocks, the fight scene was great, but it wasn’t Galen, or Rhys, or Frost, or Doyle, who would do, or say these things. This was some darker, pettier version of my characters that I didn’t recognize. It read well, but it was all wrong. I hoped it was my head going dark, that critical sense overwhelming the creative, but I slept on it overnight and found that I was right, so I began to back track to find where it had gone off the rails. It derailed almost as soon as we left the crime scene and the paparazzi feeding frenzy. It derailed as soon as we hit the beach house and the other guards. It was like they’d spent the time between books getting angry and jealous and horrible to each other. What the hell?

I blogged earlier about hitting some of the issues I was raised with and my grandmother’s attitude towards men, sex, so much else, and I finally realized Friday that the men were behaving badly. They were everything my grandmother told me they would be. This wasn’t my voice as a writer, or as a person, this was some evil version of my childhood leaking out into my writing. I find that I often hit the deep ugly issues first on paper, before I can look at them in my own life. They come out all weird and fictional, but somewhere in there is a bit of ugly trying to color my world, both real and ficitonal. I’ve had three different therapists tell me the same thing, "You’re remarkably healthy for your upbringing." Yeah.

If my deadline wasn’t chewing me to bits, I wouldn’t even be that upset. It would just be part of my creative process and I’d deal, but the deadline is chewing my world ever closer to being out of time. I don’t have time to explore my angst to this degree. I don’t have time to wait for my muse to cope better, or for her to spit out the garbage and let my conscious mind see it, deal with it, then join forces with my muse and clean it up. I’m out of time for shit like that, yet, I can’t let the book go like this. I can’t let this darkness eat Merry and her lovers, her friends, her world. I owe them all more than that.

So I sit here, knowing the task before me, and I’m worried, yes, but I’m not scared anymore. The fear left me on Saturday sometime in the afternoon when I was answering e-mails from friends and visiting with the friends in person at the house, some hard, tight, suffocating knot began to loosen inside me. I let it go. Even if Shawn and his family hadn’t been here I could not have worked Saturday. I needed the time to refresh my mind, conquer this mood, fight my monsters. By the time I was getting dressed for the show I was feeling a little better. I’d talked to Shawn in private, and Kathy in private. I’m just as likely to be out by the barbaque grill drinking a hard cider, as Jon is, and he’s as likely to be in the kitchen talking cooking and sewing with the women. Okay, he’s more likely to do the latter. If weapons are a topic we’ll be on that side of the room regardless of boy/girl ratio. We’d talked in a grown up group. We’d spent time with the kids. It had all helped.

We all dressed up, all the girls in heels, including Trinity and her cousin, K. They’re still new to the whole heels thing, and they learned that having an arm, or hand to hang onto was a good thing. Ah, the things we girls do to look smashing for a night of theater. Turns out, Shawn had never seen Mary Poppins in any version. He was raised without a TV, and movies were just not something he got to do as a child, and he’s worked night shifts most of his married life, so didn’t share much viewing time with kids, so he was a Mary Poppins virgin. Which meant he had no idea what to expect. It was too cool to sit beside him in the theater and watch his face. I’d catch Kathy on the other side of him doing the same thing. We’d smile at each other and enjoy this moment. Jon and I knew the music very well since it’s one I’ve written a book to, but we’d never seen the musical. It was fabulous. The choreography, the staging, the acting, the music, the costumes, it all worked. Poppins is played by the actress who originated the role on Broadway, Ashley Brown. She was, "Practically Perfect in Everyway."

We got back home with Shawn’s son sleep walking, so tired by the time things finished. The girls were wobbling in their heels, but we got to the car in safety and home to tuck everyone into bed. Somewhere during the musical the last bit of that knot went away. I just enjoyed my friends, my family, and the show. This morning we had brunch at Jon’s parent’s house. His stepfather, Art, cooked, and it was amazing as always, though he has taken into consideration our dietary concerns and many things were lower calories, lower fat, but stil delicious. The bacon, other than being cooked without sitting in grease, well, it’s bacon, real bacon and it’s the first we’ve had in months. God, it was good. Jon and I have decided that it wasn’t brunch it was brupper, which is what you call it when you’ve had breakfast, lunch, and supper in one meal. But, yum!

It was also Kathy’s birthday weekend so the musical was accidentally incredibly well-timed. And what I thought was just another interruption to my overwhelming schedule was the break I needed this weekend. Goddess and God love me, because they have conspired this year to force me to take breaks when I am about at the breaking point. They shove me out of the deep end and make me paddle around in the shallows and have a few funny drinks with umbrellas, and see my friends, and family, and breathe again. It seems the harder I work the more breaks I need, still working at getting that balance, but getting closer.