I am pleased to say that I did manage to write for an hour today, Saturday. While I have always managed to write during the week when the kids are at school, trying to do so on the weekend presents a few more challenges, not the least of which is a nagging feeling that I shouldn’t be taking any time away from our weekend family time. My solution to that problem is that I am trying to limit myself to just an hour on Saturday and Sunday each. We’ll have to see how that goes as the weeks go by.

The work is starting to slow down a little bit now. I think that the pent-up creativity and energy has now dissipated enough that I am approaching once more a more typical speed and ease of work.

But the real interesting and unexpected development is this: the main character of my novel is a chronic smoker. Now, I used to be a smoker a loooong time ago; I quit when I was just nineteen years old (For those of you scoffing that at that age, I couldn’t possibly have been a smoker, not so fast: I was already up to two packs a day by then.) Occasionally, over the years, particularly during periods of duress, I have experienced a mild craving for a smoke, but I’ve never given in. I think that’s largely because I also occasionally have nightmares where I dream that I’ve given in and am smoking like a fiend; I awaken from those dreams panicked and sweaty that I gave in, and inevitably sighing with relief when I realize it was just a dream. Strange, I know, but who can account for dreams?

The  real strangeness here is not in my dreams, it’s in my waking thoughts: This whole week, as I’m losing myself in this character who actually does smoke like a fiend, I have been experiencing cigarette cravings! How weird is that? We walked out of a bowling alley today, picking up our son from a birthday party, and someone was standing outside the entrance, smoking. That usually makes me grumble and grouse, often giving a very loud and very obvious cough so that the smoker will know just how much I hate having to walk through their secondhand smoke. But today, it was all I could do not to walk over to the guy and ask him for a hit! My, my, my…think I am taking my writing a bit too much to heart. Hopefully I can finish this revision before the cravings get any stronger! Interesting, though, very interesting…

Well, I made it: a whole week of my “butt-in-the-chair” approach to improving my writing discipline, and I’ve done it! I worked on my revision for a whopping ten hours this week (two each day) and spent an additional three or so hours working on other writing (my youth novel, this blog, some freelance editing, etc.)

The revision is going smashingly, I think, although hey, as my daughter pointed out, it has not yet been accepted for publication anywhere, so we shall see. The work at hand right now is just to finish this revision, then the submitting process begins all over again, first to volunteer readers (anyone interested?) and then to publishers and agents.

But revision can be a dangerous thing: When we went to Mt. Rushmore this summer, there was a display in the visitors’ center about how long the sculpting process took, and I remember reading something about artists’ general inability to say definitively that a work is DONE. You can keep at it and keep at it, chipping away a little bit here and a little bit there, adding a splotch of red here and a swirl of blue there, until you drop dead–artists can tinker with their works indefinitely, so you just kind of have to agree to agree with yourself on what that point of completion is. How much of this revision is real, how much of it am I doing just because I’m tinkering? I have no idea.

So this time around, once I get to the end again, I’m going to give it to a couple of people who I didn’t let read it the first time around (one of whom is my husband, which scares me to death–his opinion carries far more weight with me than it should, but I can’t seem to relax about the thought of him reading my work with a critical eye; I respect his opinion too much.) After he’s done with it, I think then I will finally feel in my heart that I can do no more with it, and I will declare it done. Then I will submit it to a second round of professionals to see what happens.

Then, and only then, will I know if the work for whichI’m sticking my butt to the chair right now was worth it in conventional terms, but right now, I am loving every minute of the process. I love it! And that is another way of describing success, isn’t it?  Loving what you do? (Too bad love won’t cover college tuition, though…)

Okay, I know it’s only been four days since I made my resolution to write every day, but so far, I have–I’ve actually been doing it. I’ve sat, butt-in-chair, for two to three hours each day this week, and my only gripe at this point is that it’s hard to tear myself away because the work is going so well. I should have done this months ago!

I am so into the rhythm of my book right now, that sometimes I come out of it and don’t recognize the life around me for a few minutes; it feels strange and foreign.

I finally feel like it’s coming together, the way I always wanted it to. I thought I was finished with it, and sent it off for all kinds of submissions. I did, in fact, get a few tantalizing nibbles of interest here and there, but nothing more (and what’s worse, no constructive feedback to work with from anyone who rejected it).

I think that was what was probably blocking me, was feeling like I didn’t really know in what direction to take the book next, since there wasn’t any feedback from the “professionals” out there. The readers I’d already had go over it for me had nothing but praise for it (and given that they’re editors themselves, I took them at their word).

So all the while that I wasn’t actively revising it, the book sat in the back of my mind, stewing, fermenting. I think the break from it was good, because there was so much more to the story than even I’d realized; I feel like I’m only just now starting to see all the different layers of it that I’d been missing, and I love peeling them back, one by one, to see what’s coming next. It’s a really cool process which no normal human is likely to understand, so just take my word for it.

Unfortunately, the proof is in the pudding (or in this case, in a written contract) in the writing business. Even my very own daughter yesterday informed me that she’d told her friends that I wasn’t a writer yet–ouch. I said, “What do you mean I’m not a writer? I write, I get paid to do so–doesn’t that make me a writer?”

She shook her head disparagingly. “Mom, you’re not a writer until your novel gets published. When are you going to do that?”

Ouch again. Good question, indeed–when am I going to do that? Not sure if this was wisdom coming from the mouth of my babe, or if she was just ticked off with me because I left her hanging when I took a break after Chapter Four of the youth novel I’ve been writing for her.

I can see where one might be annoyed by waiting too long for a cliffhanger to be resolved, but wish she wouldn’t take it out on my poor, battered self-esteem. (Writers spend too much time alone–it’s really easy to beat up their psyches.)

So, I’ve got about half an hour left before the kids get home. I already put in my two hours on the novel revision, so now, I’m going to try to placate the world’s harshest critic (my daughter) and see if I can’t get her back down off the cliff where I left her four months ago when I stopped work on her book.

A little bribery never hurts…

No, it’s not what you’re thinking–that was just the phrase that popped into my head as I looked at the clock and realized that another two hours of writing time has flown by. I thought this second major revision was going to be a real slog, but I’ve been working on it so intensely inside my head these past few weeks of my hiatus that my words are overflowing, pouring forth faster than I can type. (Thank God I gave up doing my writing longhand!)

Honestly, I’m in another world when I’m writing, a world where I don’t eat, I don’t sleep, I don’t drink–I just write. After several weeks of not being able to be in that world, I think my writer’s soul was starving, but now that I’m back in it, I find that my appetite is not even close to being satiated by the measly two hours a day I’m allotting myself. I could write all day, and still beg for more.

But I know that I must stop writing now and return to the real world, because there are things that must be done that are based in the bricks and mortar of my everyday life. But tearing myself away from that other life–well, it does: It hurts so good. It hurts, because I don’t want to stop, but it is good because my writing is flowing so easily these last couple of days. Yes, very good, indeed.  

Can’t wait until tomorrow morning (or maybe later today, if I can whip through all the mundane tasks that await me now). Wish me luck, because Chapter Three awaits, and it’s a doozy.

Okay, so today, I got off to a pretty good start on one of my resolutions, which is to spend at least two hours writing each day (well, at least Monday through Friday. On days when the kids are in school. And I don’t have class. And I don’t want to work out. And it’s too cold to walk the dog.)

Just kidding. My resolution really is to spend at least two hours writing each day, no matter what. It will be a little more difficult, I admit, when the kids are home and the weather gets warmer, etc., etc., etc., but I have also admitted to myself that discipline will ultimately either be my key or [the lack thereof] will be my downfall. To that end, I decided that I would begin practicing the “butt-in-the-chair” philosophy I’ve heard touted by other so-called [more]successful writers.

So today I came in from the bus stop, planted my butt in the chair,  and disappeared into another world. When I looked up next, over three hours had passed. Looks like this could be a dangerous resolution for me to keep.  And while I don’t think I will ever be as insanely focused as the one writer I heard of who ignored the pile of dog vomit on her living room floor in order to stick to her self-prescribed writing regimen, still, I can’t wait to see just what kind of literary havoc I can wreak with a little discipline and (let’s face it) a really flat butt.