Curse of the Interwebs

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I’ve been at 97% for nearly two weeks now.

Twelve days, to be precise, including today. Yeah, it’s one of those so-close-and-yet-so-far things.

I’ve edited, redrafted, rewritten and composed 302 pages of a projected 310. I know — I should be able to finish this in one day of solid work.

Alas.

It’s been a long day for me. Long enough that it’s nigh on midnight on the clock where I am, later by the clocks back at home. And long enough that I started this blog post this morning on the airplane, then decided I should be working on that last three percent instead.

Now I’m at 98%. Which feels pretty damn great.

And my heroine passed the big test in an unexpected way. (No, neither of us had any idea how she was going to solve the current riddle.)

1% on on a three-hour crowded flight to Seattle. Worth the price of admission.

When I landed, happy with my progress, somewhere around 200 email messages had filled my Blackberry. I loop I’m on had blown up with one unhappy person saying wild things — “flaming,” by the current lingo. I ended up in baggage claim with my laptop perched on my lap, my Blackberry in hand, trying to do several things at once on each.

My mom keeps asking me, if the airlines get internet, will I use it?

I’m thinking, over a thousand words written, another 1% closer. Coincidence?

No no no…

Oral Surgery

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This is actually a setting October crescent moon. Held by an unstable hand. Turned out kind of cool, actually. I took this after our first party in the new house, at which I drank a fair amount of wine. Hence the unsteady hand.

The serendipity of over-indulgence.

Yesterday was all about getting ready for the party. Which made a good break for me. No working on the book. No working on work. No blog post, even. No, yesterday was packed with buying food and booze and getting the house clean.

Which, apparently I hadn’t really cleaned since we moved in.

That doesn’t seem like such a big deal, except we’ve been here two months now. And that’s a little long to go. We needed some rebound time from having our house on the market for six months, show-ready all that time. But, that was plenty long enough.

So the mundane tasks demanded my attention and that was okay.

Except for the kitty medical emergency.

I was vaccuming away, only ten minutes behind my intended in-the-shower deadline, when David came in carrying Isabel. I thought he’d captured her before the party, so I nodded and smiled when he said something to me.

“She’s got a cholla burr in her mouth!” He said louder.

Oh. OH!

I turned off the vaccum cleanerand went over to him. Sure enough, there was a big cholla burr hanging off her lip. She was frothing and salivating and I quickly yanked it off.

These things are nasty – big and spiky. Every one of us has stepped on one now. They hurt like hell, but they come out fairly easily. Even Zip, who’s not that bright, has learned to yank them out of his paws with his front teeth and spit them out again.

But, though, the cholla burr came off Isabel’s lip quickly enough, she jumped out of David’s arms, still licking and frothing, and raced for the sanctuary of the bedroom.

“She’s got one inside her mouth, still.” David said.

So, we dug her out from under the bed. I held Isabel on her back on my lap, as I sat on the floor, back against the bed. From my angle, I could see the burr embedded in the roof of her mouth. David held her paws and I tried to grab the thing, but couldn’t get a grip. White fur was flying everywhere.

Meanwhile the guests are arriving in 45 minutes, I haven’t finished the vaccuming and I’m filthy from house-cleaning.

While David fetches the tweezers, I’m thinking about how we could put a note on the door while we take her to the vet, which may or may not be still open this late on a Friday afternoon. Isabel is alternately hissing and pitifully meowing.

I got closer to a grip with the tweezers, but everytime I touched it, Isabel would yank away in pain. So David got a beach towel — the big one we bought in Culebra with the multi-colored giant polka-dots on it. We wrapped her up in it, so only her little white furry face poked out.

This time when I pried open her mouth, we could hold the mummy-cat steady. I yanked that burr right out.

Isabel went to the closet to recover her composure, then slept the rest of the afternoon and evening.

I finished the vaccuming — including a redo of the bedroom — managed to clean-up and cute-up before the first guest arrived.

Fortuntately, no one was right on time.

Well-Conditioned

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I have this theory about hotel air-conditioners.

One can’t hep these things, really. When one travels way too much. Like I do. Don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, in the last three to five blogs or so.

Anyway, the state of the modern hotel room is this: you must run AC. Most of the windows are sealed shut, if they ever opened at all. And if you do open them, it’s usually too loud from all the 1) airplanes, 2) people screwing around in the parking lot, 3) traffic, 4) air conditioners.

No, really.

The roar of air conditioners outside the hotel forces one to close the window and…run the air conditioner.

However: Not all thermostates are alike. This is my theory, earth-shattering though it may not be.

This morning I had a conversation with a guy in the fitness room. Which is a hotel euphemism for “really small extra room into which we’ve jammed random pieces of exercise equipment.” We talked aobut how all treadmill s are not alike. That 4 mph is clearly not 4 mph for all treadmills.

This may seem like a minor, even obsessively nitpicky, point.

But you get accustomed to running at a particular speed. And the fact that the exercise machine has a digital readout implies a certain level of scientific accuracy. As if, in our common physical universe, 4 mph might be the same in a hotel in Georgia as it is in a hotel in California. Which is demonstrably not true.

And so it is with the thermostat.

One would think one could find a particular temperature, say 68, that might be one’s ideal room temperature. But 68 in one hotel in another’s 64 is another’s 74. Perhaps, I’m meant to think it’s just me, but three hotels in five nights provides pretty clear empirical evidence.

I suspect it has to do with the individual hotel’s AC system. And the motion-sensor deals kind of stop the thing running at night. Either that, or they tone down the AC at night, to save on money, you know.

Just goes to show, there’s no such thing as a sure thing.

Either that or hotel physics are as questionable as restaurant physics.

Entirely possible.

Fiddle-Dee-Dee

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I’m in Fresno.

Which I guess isn’t that bad.

The last time I was here, in 2002 by my electronic file dates, they told us it was the intravenous drug-use capital of the U.S. A dubious distinction. I’ve asked a couple of people now if that’s still the case. They act like they have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.

Such is the fleeting nature of human perception.

Tonight, I’m hanging back. So many things I could be working on, not the least of which is the Ruthless Revision. And all the emails. I’m not tired, but I’m not feeling the burn tonight. Maybe there’s been enough burn lately. I told Allison maybe I needed a night off and she agreed.

Which meant a lot to me.

I mean, David and my mom both tell me it’s okay to take a break, to relax, that it all doesn’t have to happen right now. But there’s been a trend lately among some of my friends, of them asking me for more than I feel I can give. Some have become angry with me for not meeting their deadlines, for not doing what they thought I should. I feel like I’ve been letting people down. Which is something that doesn’t always show in me, I think, how much I don’t like being that person.

And yet, more, I won’t become what someone else wants me to be.

So, this is a random post. Not meeting any rules or requirements. Probably not advancing anything in particular.

Tonight I’m watching a romantic movie and drinking wine.

Tomorrow is another day.

So Scarlett assures me.

Birds in Reverse

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We saw a robin yesterday. The first robin of Fall, as it were.

No, I know this isn’t a robin. I took the picture to show David this unusual bird that visited the feeder and so that we could identify it. We decided she’s a black-headed grosbeak.

It’s a funny thing, being on the southern end of the Front Range now, because the birds appear in reverse order.

When we arrived, it was all about the hummingbirds, thrashers, bluebirds, jays and towhees. Now the humingbirds have all gone, even the last couple of intrepid ones that stayed to milk the feeder and the butterfly bushes as long as possible.

Then the jerichoes arrived. They stayed a few days and moved along.

Now the robins.

I know it’s unlikely, but I feel like these are birds that have left Laramie when the first snows hit. They’ve migrated down the Front Range, just as we did. They stop here to fuel up on their way to Mexico or farther.

Hi and bye.

Don’t Touch That Dial

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One of the interesting things about the online community is the window you get into people’s lives.

Some people post to Facebook or Twitter once or twice a day, little stop-ins to the break room. Others post more frequently. Some in bursts of activity. Others in near-constant streams of updates.

What is striking to me is how often people refer to what they’re watching on TV.

Disclaimer: I’m weird about TV. I really don’t like it. The sound of TV chatter irritates me and I hate hearing it going in the background. I’m psycho enough about this that we don’t have cable or satellite or other feed. We have a television set that we use for the DVD, to play Netflix. But I’m just not a live feed kind of gal. It even bothers me when I click on an article link and discover it’s a video news story. Okay, so there’s that.

So I didn’t “see” any of the Balloon Boy saga yesterday, which was a “a media spectacle of nightmarish dimensions, stunn[ing] viewers nationwide.” The article goes on to say “It began mid-afternoon, and we watched for almost an hour…” Okay, I’m naive, but how is the entire nation watching this for almost an hour? I thought everyone was working then?

I suppose everyone is watching video on their computers. I know Hulu is big — I hear many people reference losing hours to watching old TV shows on Hulu. People also talk about watching movies during the day. Things like “settling in to watch all three original Star Wars movies – yay!”

A lot of these folks are full-time writers.

Which is, of course, my personal brass ring. And when I dream about having that much time to write, I imagine the complex novels I could produce — the ones I can’t quite seem to get my head wrapped around in a couple of hours a day. I think about how much more I could produce.

When I mentioned this to two of be wanna-be-a-full-time-writer friends, about how many writers seem to be watching movies and TV during the day, they both said “I wish!” Which surprised me and, when I said so, they said “Well, I’d like to have that opportunity.”

Of course, I already work from home and they both have the cubicle/commute thing, which I would also hate. And I come from a family of women who don’t fritter away valuable daylight hours. Maybe we all think we’re still desperately tilling the hard Texas soil, but the only time any of us would watch *gasp* DAYTIME TV is if we were sick. One exception: my grandmother religiously watched Days of Our Lives, but for that hour and that hour only. And she always had some sort of mending task set aside, so she could continue to be productive in that hour.

So, I’m wondering now. Is that part of the Writer Dream?

I know plenty of gals who are on various “writing grants” — whether it’s the husband with the well-paying job, the Stay at Home Mom whose kids are in school enough to give her some time to herself, or other kinds of support. I know one gal who left her DC career and lives on her late grandmother’s land and takes care of the property in return for the family’s financial support.

I suppose it all comes down to quality of life. Something unique to each of us.

Hope Is a Thing with Feathers

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Allison asked me recently why I thought we do this, the writing thing. If we’re fundamentally insane to think that we could get that brass ring we’re seeking. I said “yes.”

Crazy in a good way maybe. But still crazy.

I recall some of the writers at the UW English Department throwing around the statistic that there are as many writers making a living at writing as there are pro-football players. Which sounds plausible. And no, I didn’t even attempt to fact-check that one.

It’s probably a decent analogy in that the miniscule proportion of football players who make it to the pro ranks does nothing to deter the dream for millions of football-playing young men.

But that doesn’t make it a rational thing.

If you want to play the odds, you become a civil servant. Once in, you’re set forever. And that’s exactly what you get. If you’re willing to work hard and want money, you go for the big money businesses. Those are rational, sane choices.

Which is why most writers have other identities: teachers, professors, HVAC marketers, IT professionals, university book buyers. Even environmental consultants. We’re playing it safe, working the day jobs, keeping the finances in order.

Nobody sees how crazy we are inside. How we obsess and fret. How we nurse our dreams in the dark confines of our hearts. Feeding them little bits of hope now and again. Nursing them back to life when they get crushed and bruised.

The dreams belong only to us, after all.

A Time to Every Purpose, Heaven or No

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It’s coming up on that time of year.

No, not Christmas, despite the rumored store displays. Fortunately I haven’t been to a Target or like store recently, so I haven’t been bombarded yet. I’m a strict holiday-orderist (yes, I just made that up). All holidays in their proper order. No Christmas activity of any kind until after Thanksgiving. No Thanksgiving discussions until after Halloween, All Saints Day, Day of the Dead.

Part of moving to a new place is learning the new rhythms.

It’s been odd to me that I haven’t wanted to get the Halloween decs out yet. Some of that is where my focus is, on finishing this revision. I haven’t done a number of things I normally spend my time doing. And being out of my normal patterns, feeling like this is a vacation house and not my usual life at all.

But a huge part of it is the weather, too. The leaves are starting to turn on a few trees now, but we haven’t hard a hard freeze. Certainly no snow. David and I are out on the patio in the evenings, having cocktails and watching the sunset, which would just NOT have happened in Laramie.

So, part of me — the Denver girl who had to wear a parka over her hula dancer costume one year (I wised up and picked WARM costumes after that) and the Laramie girl who associates high chilled winds whipping dead leaves around with Halloween — thinks it’s still summertime. After all, the flowers are still blooming.

But now I’m starting to feel it. Like a whisper in the air. The veil is thinning. The restless dead are teeming in the wings.

The coyotes yipping at night could be the first yelps of the Hunt.

Mierenneuker

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Yesterday, David told me the Dutch word for editor.

He wrote it down for me in class, because he figured I’d be amused, given how I’m spending my life editing lately.

No, he’s not studying Dutch. He’s learning basic Chinese for his acupuncture certification and the teacher happens to be Dutch. Which makes for an interesting class, David says. Added to this that among the other students are a guy from Liverpool and a gal from Texas, with their associated thick accents, plus gals who are native Japanese and Portuguese speakers. The interchange of language leads to all sorts of back and forth. At any rate, the teacher told the class yesterday that he was very nitpicky about the pictograms, because that’s what an editor, mierenneuker, means in Dutch.

The literal translation? “Ant-f**ker.”

What an image.

That’s partly the copy-editing idea. But even with a substantive revision, there’s a fair amount of ant-f**king going on. Back and forth over the tiny details. I’ve rounded a corner on mine and I think I have things stacked up so the rest will fall into place. Birds flying high? You know how I feel.

All the while I’m doing this, I’ve been following the tweets of a Famous Author. She has been working to complete her book by a deadline. She tweets and blogs about it quite profusely — it’s interesting to have a window into her angst. She’s been working with increasing frenzy, churning out 10-20 pages in a sitting. She stayed up all night to finish, went to bed at 5am, slept four hours, got up and finished the book by the end of the day.

She’s exhausted and triumphant. Happy to have sent the book off.

That’s right. She sent it off already.

Now, this Famous Author is one who has openly declared that no one edits her anymore. She’s one of those, like Anne Rice, who has reached a level of fame and money-making that she believes she doesn’t need an editor. The publishing house doesn’t care, because they make money anyway.

Oh yeah, I personally stopped buying her books some time ago because they got so truly terrible.

And now I wonder — are her all-night outpourings going straight to hardback? Writers talk about the virtues of the “vomit draft,” where you just pour it all onto the page. The point being that you then go back and shape it. Not pack it off for publication.

It doesn’t bear repeating that this isn’t fair. Of course the Famous Author can do this — she’s already made it. She says her sales continue to go up, so she’s not interested in her fans complaints that the books have gone downhill. Of course I can’t do this, because nobody yet knows if anyone will ever buy my books.

But I swear to this now: I will always have an editor, no matter what. Somebody has to take care of the ant-f**king!

Working Hard or Hardly Working?

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I had this teacher of Taoist philosophy who insisted that, if you were working with the Tao, then things would feel easy.

It’s like the joke about the Rabbi, the Priest and the Taoist approaching the raging river. The Priest kneels down and prays to God for safe passage across the river. The Rabbi divides the water and walks through. The Taoist steps into the current and gestures for it to keep going in the same direction.

Okay, it’s not a FUNNY joke.

But it does illustrate a principle that, while some religious philosophies seek to control or change the world, Taoists try to find which way things are already going and ride that wave. So, the corollary to this is, if what you’re trying to do is really difficult, you’re fighting the current. If you’ve found the current, things are easy. Just float along in your inner tube and drink your beer.

I’m not sure if I agree with this or not.

There are certainly good examples in our lives of things falling into place, not the least of which our recent serendipitous switch to moving to Santa Fe instead of Victoria. That was certainly the case of knocking on some doors and seeing which one opened. And every-damn-thing fell into place. It was truly amazing to watch.

I have long been accused of taking the easy way. Of cruising.

I was a naturally good student, so rarely studied. I read books in class because I could always answer the question the teacher’s asked, no matter how they tried to catch me out. I could get A’s without trying, so why try? In college I had to try harder, but I didn’t kill myself by any stretch, to my advisor’s dismay. My PhD advisor was even sharper in his disapproval, often castigating me for not pushing myself, for doing just enough to get by.

So, I can see it. I’m not a hard worker. I’m a grasshopper by nature and generally at peace with that.

But with this ruthless revision — the one you’re undoubtedly sick of hearing about — I’m trying really hard to take the time to do it right. I’m working HARD at it. And feeling a bit sulky about it, to tell the truth. I want to see if it’s true, that if you put in all that effort that all the theys want you to put in, will it really result in a hugely better product?

I’m at this point in the book where I got stuck when I was drafting it. It’s about 80% of the way through. I solved the problem then by jumping in the river and letting the current take me. Turns out we meandered past some neat scenery, but ended up in a stagnant pool.

So, now I’m consciously directing it. Thinking thinking thinking. With lots of second guessing. And it’s making me tired. I know that sounds silly, but I’ve been doing this writing a couple hours every day/working full-time career-type job all day deal for years now and this push is draining me. Sleeping 11 hours a night draining.

Which makes me worry that I’m fighting the current.

Maybe its my Catholic ancestors, whispering in my ear that I should confess, purge and pray. Maybe its the Pagan ones before that, telling me to sacrifice to the spirit of the river.

Maybe I should just get back to work.