Winter fun

Today's Mood: Cheerful. Today's Music: Inner Genius--Creative Mind System. Today's Writing: Revising Black Dragon (down to 230 pages. It needs to be 224 or less)Today's Quote:

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. -Victor Hugo

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Our family hunted down the perfect Christmas tree on Saturday. It was an especially good year because it only took us 10 minutes, which is by far the record for the shortest time spent getting a tree. Usually we have to look at every tree on the tree farm--twice. But this year we wimped out and bought one off a lot. So even though we still looked at all the trees twice, there just weren't that many to look at. And my children were happy since it was next to a playground. Okay, I have to admit I was happy with the playground too. Let me tell you, going down the slide with ski pants on helps you catch some serious air! It's like a rocket launcher! (My daughter pointed out this guy standing there watching me go down the slide. I told her he wished he had snow pants on so he could do it too.)

Anyway, a lot of Anne Sexton's poetry is dark, but a fellow teacher shared this delightful poem with us last week. And I thought I'd pass it along to you.

Enjoy the snow!

Snow

Snow,
blessed snow,
comes out of the sky
like bleached flies.
The ground is no longer naked.
The ground has on its clothes.
The trees poke out of sheets
and each branch wears the sock of God.

There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
I bite it.
Someone once said:
Don't bite till you know
if it's bread or stone.
What I bite is all bread,
rising, yeasty as a cloud.

There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have the pail.

Poem: "Snow" by Anne Sexton,. © Houghton Mifflin, 1975. Reprinted with permission.

Post Holiday

Today's Mood: Merry. Music: Christmas carols. Writing: This is it. Quote: Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

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Merry Christmas!

I just wanted to jot a quick note since it's been a week since I last posted. I'm on my Mac and for some reason there are not as many options (centering, size, color....) as there are on Windows. Generally I don't mind going back and forth between the two platforms, but I do find that each one has its quirks. Just recently I moved my whole manuscript from Appleworks into Word for Mac. I like it. Again, it seems to have a few more options (or at least I know how to use a few more options).

Does anyone use another type of writing software? I've seen different ones offered, but wonder if they would help or hinder when it came to writing.

Anyway, I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas (or like in my case--several wonderful Christmas parties that I am glad are now finished.) and that you are writing. I've missed it and look forward to having some time to write in the next few days.

Balancing Act

Today's mood: high-strung. Music: Tori Amos--Tales of a Librarian. Writing: stared at chapter 16 for a half hour before deciding I need to read chapters 14 through 17 to see how I can fix the time problem. Quote:

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. -Dylan Thomas

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I'm in a quandary. Do I work my keister off trying to get the revisions done on this second MS in time for the Delacorte Press contest, or do I bag it and mess with the structure of the first MS to make it fit the page limit? Or should I skip both for that matter? What first looked like minor changes to the second MS has snowballed into some major rewriting--funny how that happens! But I so want to finish this revision while I'm immersed in it. I just don't have enough time!

I was talking with a co-worker about how to balance writing and life--you know, motherhood, job, cleaning the house enough to not have it declared condemned, even cooking well-balanced meals occasionally. Oh, and then of course this time of year you can add Christmas shopping, wrapping, and cleaning up the talcum powder that my four-year-old spread all over her carpet to make it look like snow. (We need snow for Christmas--that was her reasoning.) Top all that off with dealing with colds and the resulting crankiness, and it's enough to drive a sane woman mad--and I'm not totally sure I qualify for sane on a normal day!

Does everyone struggle this much to find a balance between writing and everything else? I'm starting to think I might just be neurotic. My sister told me I need to prioritize--decide what I really want to do and then make time for that. The problem is that I want to do it all. I want to be a good mom. I don't want to live in a total pit. I do want my kids to remember the joy and wonder of Christmas (okay, maybe not the snow part--but the rest) and I still want to write. Every day. Lots. How do I do that?

On my Christmas list I asked for more time. Do you think Santa will give it to me? So okay, my quote of the day. Dylan Thomas was exhorting his father to fight against dying. I'm way more shallow than that. I just rage, rage against the children waking in the night or against dirty laundry that's in sight, or against the dress that is now too tight, or against the children that do fight..... you get the picture. It's all about the struggle to balance life as a mom, woman, wife, human being--and the life of a writer.