Once Again

1221 words written. 1 entire chapter thrown out. All that equals 1 very, very happy writer.

Odd I know.

I read a blog today about writing and it said “the story chooses us.” My current WIP is Lucifer’s Angel. It started from a dream I had about 10 years ago. I wrote the dream down because it was one that woke me up in the middle of the night fighting an imaginary demon. A few months later, my thoughts drifted back to the dream. I built these characters around the dream and wrote about 100 or so pages and then quit writing it. I let someone in my life lead me down a path of disbelief in my own talent and in my own strength. I let them tell me my writing was shit and that I should give it up. This person was the complete opposite of my parents who let me take a year off of work to write. I was naive at the time about the publishing world. I just thought if I wrote something brilliant, I’d be published. I wrote. It wasn’t brilliant, and I wasn’t published.

So while Lucifer’s Angel always sat by my side as I started and stopped various stories, it was always there like a trusty crutch. It was my baby that I could go to and work on. It’s been reincarnated at least a dozen times. Characters have left and come back. I’ve started from scratch countless times, scrapped hundreds of pages, and deleted scene after scene.

Then one night while listening to NPR a name slithered from the speakers and into my ears. It landed in the middle of my brain and sat, smiling at me with a mischievous grin. My secondary character had been born. He was everything I needed to compliment my main character. The stars had aligned and my story was alive once again.

Once again...that’s what Lucifer’s Angel should really be called. I had my characters just the way I wanted them but once again, the story got set aside. Pick a reason, any reason and that’s why I set it aside. None of the reasons are going to be valid enough, but I had just grown tired of trying so hard to write this story. This one story that had become a battle of me against paper.

In late last year, around November, I decided to focus again on my writing. Writing has always been a salvation for me and it has always been away for me to escape. I can escape my own thoughts and fears and just play in a world of make believe for a while. I rejoined NaNoWriMo again and failed again at completing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, but I was writing and I was happy with that even if I didn’t write 50,000 words. As wrote on The Dumbing Down of Love, I decided in January of this year that I was going to finish that damn book by February 28, 2009. Even if it killed me, I needed to finish that book, AND I did. I finished it on February 22, 2009 @ 7:41 pm.

I edited, edited, edited from that day until May 31st when I sent out my first query letter. While I was editing, I had decided to let Lucifer’s Angel go AGAIN. I had changed it from this to that, back to this, and then back to that. I had too many fiction elements, I had too many myths, I had too many blah, blah, blah. I had just had enough.

So now that I was finished with The Dumbing Down of Love, I knew I needed another project to work on. I started about half a dozen stories, not all fleshing out to be good ideas or even decent ideas, and in the back of my head, there was a slight tug from my old crutch Lucifer’s Angel. I decided to look at it from a fresh perspective and a change of main character. My little mischievous grinning secondary character had become my main character and like a domino, things started falling in place one by one. My main character was now a supporting role. My villain had turned from male to female and then completely did a 180 into something else. My supporting characters dwindled from a long list to a short list. Hallelujah, the writing grove was back and I was going to finish this novel by September.

<Insert life>

Life didn’t like my life plan and made up it’s own. I took a writing sabbatical during July which extended into August, September, and 95% of October. I tried to set goals for myself but couldn’t keep a commitment to my dream.

I’d bitch at myself, scold myself, try to inspire myself, make myself write, rewrite, read, etc. Nothing. The passion for my writing was becoming an ember in a dying fire and it made me sad and heartbroken. I knew I would be lost without my words.

Last week, I set new goals and new challenges and life threw up another brick wall. I just wanted to yell at the top of my lungs to the Universe “GIVE ME FUCKING BREAK ALREADY!” I took a deep breath, remembered the words of Randy Pausch “The brick walls aren’t there to keep us out, the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough.”

I had made a commitment to myself for this week. Write in Lucifer’s Angel. Rejoin NaNoWriMo and write in Lucifer’s’ Angel. Even if I didn’t finish it in 30 days, I just needed to write. Sunday, I wrote. It was pure crap. Yesterday, I wrote. It was also pure crap.

Today, I once again started from scratch. (I know, crazy, stupid, etc.) After reading the blog and a tweet from an agent I follow, I sat down with a fresh mind and a rainy night to write.

I wrote 1221 words. I found my characters. As old as they are, they were new exciting characters. The story was new and exciting.

The passion for writing is back. My muse is lingering in the kitchen with a glass of wine. I’m feeling more like myself tonight for the first time in many, many months. It’s the first time since I sent out a query letter that I can call myself a writer proudly.

My new goal is to finish Lucifer’s Angel by the end of the year. I’m shooting for at least 80,000 words. I’ve written 1221 and only have more 78,779 more to go.

Listening to “Can’t Fight This Feeling” by REO Speedwagon

Inspired by Stephen Fogg

So today was the start of a new agenda & goal which is technically an old agenda & goal. Confusing, I know.

I did write today, scrapped every bit of words I typed last night and started over. Gave me a word count of only 200 plus today. I stared at my word count chart in disbelief. Yes technically I wrote more than 200, I can’t erase last night’s word count. Again, I stared at my word count chart in disbelief. I threw my hands up in failure.

I cursed myself for being so hard on myself, knowing I have to write every day. I haven’t written every day. In fact, I took almost two months off from writing. I knew the muse wasn’t going to be ready just because I was.

I took my 200 words and was going to be happy with them. I wrote and that’s all that mattered right?

Wrong. Oh so wrong in so many ways that I wasn’t even aware of it until I read a friend’s blog.

My friend Stephen is fighting cancer and before he started chemo he was telling me about the idea to blog about it. It was something he wanted to do to let others know what was going on and that it was something he wanted to share. I thought it was a great idea. I’m a huge fan of writing your feelings down in a journal for personal reasons or in a blog for the world to see. I think it’s therapy that’s relatively cheap and the feelings are bottled inside like some festering sore. My aunt died of breast cancer that had spread through her body and her bones and I can’t tell you what she went through except for her hair loss and mastectomies. My cousin-in-law, Randall, died of leukemia and again, I couldn’t begin to tell you what he experienced either. I knew that through Stephen, I could finally understand what my aunt and cousin went through.

I finally got to catch up on Stephen’s blog called “Fuck You Cancer” tonight. I downloaded all the entries into my RSS feed so I’d have something to read at home since I don’t have internet. Let me tell you something, I felt ashamed that I was yelling at myself for words when he was fighting against one the toughest things in the world cancer. As I read, I became inspired by Stephen. He’s not letting chemo get him down. He’s not letting the weight loss, nausea, pain, and so on keep him down. He gets up every day and forges on. He blogs, almost daily sometimes more, through it all.

If a man who is too young to fight cancer can write through a battle that’s as he said “getting sick to feel better,” then I could suck it up and quit bitching about a mere 1200 words a day, not finding time to write, and so on.

If Stephen can write while taking chemo treatments, then the least I can do is remember that and let him inspire me while I’m writing. From this moment on, when I write, I will think of every word count not as a goal that cannot be reached, but as a universal healing power that I can send towards Stephen to beat cancer, to say fuck you cancer.

He’s inspired me to write with a purpose to heal, just like the blog he has will help him heal.

Thank you Stephen. You’re an amazing soul and you’re inspiring. You’re not letting Satan’s hell keeping you from sharing yourself with the world.

Just Be

It’s Wednesday & it’s 9:46 pm.

I was suppose to go see Social Distortion tonight, but I’m mentally drained & really just too freaking exhausted. A load of laundry is drying in the other room and the ice maker is spitting out ice into an empty holder.

Ah...the life of a single a lady...also known as being a big girl

I set all these goals for myself this week. Work out, write, focus on me while working & making sure my mom and dad were okay since I was now going to be out of the house.

The goals I set seemed realistic, but life has a way of going “WHOA, not yet!” That’s what it did this week. My mom was put on nerve blocker pills and they sent her into a drug induced state of drunkenness and the inability to walk. My sister and I have been tag teaming with my dad on calling my mom every hour on the hour and my sis has been with her when she can. We’ve reduced the pills to see if it will take her off the edge as we call it. So far so good. I’ll know tomorrow evening for sure. She’s still in pain but at least she’s not crying and begging for it to stop. It’s a tolerable pain and there’s nothing I can do for her. That part breaks my heart & puts a hole in my spirit. So being up & worrying about whether or not my mom was in the floor military crawling herself to the bathroom or not but a big road block on getting up every morning to work out. Take four tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get up, maybe I won’t. I won’t beat myself up if I don’t. I’ll pat myself on the back if I do.

Work is fine. Surprisingly, I’m all caught up. All the ducks seem to be in a row and I as type that, I’m closing my eyes, making a wish, and praying it stays that way. It has been hectic in radio-land. A good hectic but a type of hectic that leaves me exhausted and feeling as if I have lost my mind sometimes.

Writing life...any excuse I make for myself isn’t good enough. I haven’t written and frankly, I don’t have the energy or inspiration too. I’ve had the creative & writing wind knocked out of me and I hope to gain that back. I had hoped to gain that back this week, but alas, life, you crazy muse, didn’t want to be on the same page as I wanted it to be. It’s all good though, I know I’ll come back with a vengeance.

As I drove home from my mom’s tonight, I wished on the stars, the planet, & Miss Luna as I always do for myself to “just be” and for the health of my mom to return. I tried not to worry and I tried not to think about anything negative. I reflected back to Ryan Star’s song “Breathe.” Just breathe I told myself. Just breathe and let the weight of the world rest on someone else’s shoulder tonight.

The world will spin madly on tonight and I’m now going to let the weight of my world rest here in this blog I just typed. I’m leaving it here. I’m letting it go because tonight, I’m going to be a big girl with a glass of wine and no problems for a few hours. I’m going to stare at this unexpected refund from a doctor bill and let the Universe amaze me, inspire me, and bring me to my knees.

Tonight, I’m just going to be. I’m just going to be me.

Listening to “You Can Dance” by The Cinematics