The good: I finished Chapter Eight today.

The bad: My article on GenX women and adoption was turned down.

The not so bad: It was the same kind of rejection I always get--"Your piece is good and well-written, but it's just not right for our publication"--which is not entirely soul crushing. But they're giving me an opportunity to revise and re-submit, if I don't decide to market it someplace else. Or they're willing to let me try again with a different project. So now I have to decide what to do. Revising it to their specifications will be more work than I'm sure I have time for right now, plus this editor seems confident that I'd be able to sell it to a women's magazine with little trouble. But this news site pays well and it's all respectable and I really want to prove myself to them.

Decisions, decisions.

I wish I'd hear back from iHero already.

I was right, you know. Hot pink toenails are the key to happiness.

While nail polish shopping yesterday, I stopped to try on jeans and see if I could squeeze my ass into the next size down from what I've been wearing. And I could! And they looked good on me, even!

*wiggles shrunken ass*

Ahem. So. An anonymouse in one of my comments threads (and I use the term "thread" generously here) asked how I manage to sit down and write every day, being as I have ADD. I thought I'd post the answer here in case anybody else cares to know. And the answer is two-fold.

1) Not to sound too trite or Nike-sponsored, but I just do it. And no, it's not as easy as it sounds. It's probably easier for me, for now, because one of the advantages to not having found a job yet is that I don't really have much else to do, or at least nothing that can't fall behind writing on my list of priorities. So I have the luxury of being able to pick a time of day at which I'm the most able to focus and schedule my writing then. Right now this happens to be the first few hours of my day, starting as soon as I wake up, before too much else has a chance to distract me. But the point is that I make writing a daily priority and don't let it get pushed to the wayside by everything else I've got going on. I dont' write all day, mind, or at least not usually. I have a daily goal of 1,000 words, and (when I'm in the groove) spend as much time as it takes to reach that goal. Sometimes it takes an entire eight-hour work day. Sometimes it takes an hour. Sometimes I get hyperfocused and lose all track of time and my word count and whether I need to eat or pee and write an entire chapter or short story in one sitting. But usually it's about a thousand words, and it falls somewhere between two and three hours (the first of which is usually spent reading over what I wrote the previous day and then staring at nothing and trying to will the characters to speak to me). If I take enough short breaks and don't let people or pets distract me, I can stay focused for that long without too much effort. Also, once I get started with the actual writing part, it's usually pretty easy for me to leave it for a while and then come back to it, say, after lunch, or having to stop to break up a (literal) cat fight.

2) To be honest, I don't write every day. For one thing I usually have to take at least one day a week off, usually on the weekend, in order to get all the crap done that I've been putting off all week for the sake of writing, and also just so I can have a chance to relax and have some fun. And after I take a day off, it usually takes at least two or three days to get back into a solid groove. But the rest of the week, I sit down every day, either at my computer or in my "quiet place" with pen and paper, or, if the house is too distracting, I go to a coffee shop or someplace that's conducive to getting myself into work mode (I can't begin to explain why sometimes it's easier for me to focus in a coffee house full of noisy strangers than in a quiet room all by myself). Do I always produce anything when I sit down? Uh, that'd be a no. Generally, the first day after my day off, I sit there the entire time with my head in my hands, or staring at a wall or out the window at nothing in particular, just trying to access the story in my head. Usually, not much gets written on these days, if at all. The second day is a little more iffy--sometimes I wake up inspired and ready to go and the words flow like milk and honey, and sometimes I have to spend half my time trying to dig back down to the story and I only write about half my daily quota, if that much. But usually by the third day I'm back in the groove and everything flows pretty smoothly. And on the smooth-flowing days I usually write enough to make up for the shortage of the previous days.

The point is that I at least make an attempt almost every day. And whether on any given day I only write a word or a paragraph or a page or a whole chapter, as long as I keep at it, pretty soon it all starts to add up to something substantial that I can feel good about. I'm not sure who said it first--probably Stephen King--but if you only write one page a day, as long as you do it every day, at the end of a year you'll have a pretty decent-sized novel to show for it. And one page really isn't very much.

No answers to my submissions yet. Having a bit of a down day because of it. But I've somehow become convinced that the cure to all my woes is to go out and procure myself some hot pink nail polish. So away I go.

Is it just me, or does Sitemeter's spinning logo look like the flagship in a Borg Gay Pride Parade?

My closet, she is clean!

"Big deal," you might be saying, but you must understand that this is the scary closet into which I've been randomly shoving crap I don't want to deal with since I moved in here. It was one of those cliched messy closets in which avalanches happen when the doors are opened and then you have to fight to get them closed again.

But no more!

Probably a third of what was in there went in the trash. Another third is standing by waiting to either be eBayed or carted off to resell shops and/or charity. And the remainder is neatly organized and easy to get to. I even fit all my knitting supplies in there, and! I think there's room for my comic book boxes. Or at least there will be after I go through those and take out what I want to sell and condense the keepers down to fewer boxes. That's probably going to be tomorrow's project.

I feel so accomplished. Cower before my organizational might, mere mortals! Or, y'know, not.

No, I haven't gotten off my rear and started doing the eBay thing yet. Shut up.

It's raining, complete with thunder and lightning, and I'm trying to decide whether to try burning some CDs while I work. 'Cause it would suck if the power went out and I ruined a whole non-rewrite-able CD. But I think I'll risk it. I live on the edge, yo.

I also just had a bit of an epiphany about something I really love about guys, and that is the faint outline of whiskers you can see, especially on dark-haired guys. No, I don't mean stubble. I'm talking about the faint ghost of a shadow that shows you where a beard would grow if they didn't shave. That's just so... so male, and it is yum. Mmm, beard potential.

So I finished chapter seven. Yeah, seven. I miscounted before when I said six. Or misread the chapter header. Or something. At any rate, it's done, and I'm further along than I thought I was, and there was much rejoicing.

Eight and nine are pretty much already written in my head, so those should go quickly once I get to them. And ten will consist mostly of the first scene I ever wrote for this thing. After that I'm going to have to do some thinking about What Happens Next. That should be fun.

This weekend, though, I need to be all about going through my crap and deciding what I can part with and either sell on eBay or unload at Vintage Stock to raise some spending cash for my trip to Oakland at the end of August. No, I can't really afford the trip, but I'm going anyway, dammit. Just you try and stop me. I'm so freaking psyched about it, and I'm already putting together schwag to exchange with my friends once I get there. Whee! MiniCon schwag is the best kind of schwag.

The eBay thing should be interesting, as I'm basically an eBay virgin. And just getting everything prepped to sell sounds like a lot of work. I think Tulsa has one of those eBay stores, so I might just haul my crap there and let them deal with it. But then again I might have just a tetch too much control freak in me to leave it to strangers. So we'll see. Right now I probably shouldn't be thinking too far beyond surviving the excavation through my scary closet and deciding what to sell, lest I get completely overwhelmed and just scrap the whole idea the way I usually do. And that won't happen this time. Nope. This time I'm really gonna do it. Really. Yes, really.

Oh, shut up.

Catching up...

What an unexciting, uneventful week this has been. Well, that's not entirely true. From a writing standpoint, I finished and submitted both a short story and a non-fiction article; but the exciting thing will be if/when they get accepted and published.

I'm feeling a little out of touch because, aside from those projects, most of my time has been spent holed up in the guestroom downstairs, trudging my way through chapter 6. I'm still trying to get a picture in my head of what this world I'm writing in looks like, and that's what's taking so long. Well, that, and I [guilty]keep getting distracted by fanfic ideas[/guilty]. But I have high hopes of finishing the chapter tomorrow, or at least getting the rest of the way through a really rough draft/detailed outline of the thing.

Today I took off and went to run errands and buy stuff, some of it necessary, some if it slightly frivolous, but all of it justifiable. I went by Hobby Lobby to get material to finish off a couple of knitting projects I just finished, and ended up also buying new yarn to make two new purses. But if they come out looking like they do in my head, they'll be superfunkycool and will make fabulous gifts. Or just keep me in purses for the rest of the year. Whichever. After that I came home and watched Big Brother 5 (Scott + Jase = OMGHATE!!!!1!), then it was an oh-so-thrilling evening of walking the dog, working out, and playing with the nephew, who is here whilst his parents work on renovating their new house. Which brings me to now, wherein I'm in extreme need of a shower. Clean up, Stinky Jean.

I'm completely useless today. Thanks to allergies, this morning I had a choice between taking Benadryl or not breathing, and breathing seemed like a really attractive prospect at the time. So I took the Benadryl. And now breathing is about the only thing I can muster the energy or brain power to do. Blah.

Yet more non-job-having whinging/thinking out loud about the future:

I set up a Guru profile a little while ago, and when I go to search for jobs in my category, it tells me that I can't bid because my profile doesn't match. So screw you, Guru.

*ahem*

I got up and looked at the help wanteds first thing, as I do every Sunday these days, and the pickings made me want to cry. The whole reason I went back to school was to not have to be a secretary, but right now that's about all that's available to me. That, or call center customer service rep, and those don't pay enough to make my commute worthwhile. There were a couple of social service jobs that I'm qualified for, but those are low pay and on call and I know that if I get into social work I can kiss any hopes of a writing career goodbye because I won't have any time or energy left to write.

This week, I've got a short story ready to submit to an online 'zine (I just need to give it one more quick proofread and then it's ready to go), and my adoption article is due this Thursday. If both of these pay off, they're going to give me some really good credits for my resume. Hopefully in turn that'll help me get more freelance work. I'm giving serious thought to backing off on the job search and just trying to freelance full time, but I think I should see how these two projects work out before I start counting any chickens. But hell, I might as well, with the way the job market is right now. I've still got six months before I have to start making student loan payments, and by then my novel ought to be finished and ready to market. And maybe in six months I'll be able to build up enough momentum to be working pretty regularly in the freelance market.

I guess what I'm basically saying is, screw it. Screw looking for a job to support my writing, and just be a frickin' writer.

Wow. That's like a huge load off and a whole new batch of pressure all at once. Um, yay?

Tales from the Cute:

Ash is here (which naturally means that nothing is getting done). Mom had to go run an errand, so she asked me to watch him for a while. I've been putting together a mixed CD for him--a pretty eclectic mix so far, including some Muppets, some Animaniacs, some Brak and some Wiggles alongside the Beatles and the Kinks and the Rembrandts (oh how that kid loves the Friends theme). I thought about putting some Ramones on there, so I decided to play some of their songs for him to see how he responded. Oh my Lord. There was dancing, and clapping, and spinning in circles, and attempting to jump (and falling down), and running, and whooping, and more dancing, and throwing himself on the floor and crying whenever a song was over. I think it's safe to say that my nephew is a Ramones fan, which is not too surprising, considering who spawned him.

I also think that he sorely needs to have this.

Romero still gives good zombie.

The tech writer job is not to be, alas. At least they were nice enough to send me a letter and tell me so instead of leaving me hanging.

Back to the classifieds. I've decided that between temping and freelancing, I'm doing okay enough to get by for a little while longer, so I'm going to keep looking for a job in which I'd stand a chance of being reasonably happy. As much as it sucks to be broke, the thought of continuing to be so until I find the right job doesn't make me cry and cause me to wake up at 4 AM in a cold sweat the way the thought of settling for a suck-job that I know I'll hate right off the bat does.

I come bearing links:

Alien in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies. There's also 30-second bunny The Exorcist, The Shining and Titanic. I think I just heard both halves of Anya Jenkins rolling over in her makeshift grave.

This makes me want to run to a comic shop and buy me some Batman. Someday, Batman, I will have a regular paycheck and we will be reunited. Oh yes, we will.

For some strange reason, it makes me happy that Neil Gaiman lives in exactly the sort of house I've always imagined him living in.

***

In other non-news, I've been kinda lazy this week, especially in re: the job hunt. I'm blaming I Love the '90s and the new seasons of TAR and Big Brother. I got a lot more done when there was nothing entertaining on TV. Plus there's still hope that I found my job and they just haven't gotten around to calling me and telling me yet. *hopehopehope*

The current chapter of this novel is turning out to be a long, tedious labor, too. I think this is because this is the first chapter where I didn't know what happens in it before I started it and I'm having to make it all up as I go, which involves a lot of sitting and staring at nothing in particular and trying to imagine what happens next, punctuated by brief stints of scribbling words down. I also keep getting distracted by the next two chapters, which are all written in my head and should be a breeze once I get to them. I'm tempted to just jot down a placeholder outline of chapter 7 and move on ahead to the stuff I'm sure about. But I'm not gonna. I don't think.

Friday

2 PM - Arrive at Hilton. Find pageant guy. Get told to have a seat and hang out in lobby until they're ready for me. Find other temp and make small talk, then sit and read for forty-five minutes while pageant people get their shit together.

2:50 - Succumb to hunger and boredom and sneak off with other temp to find vending machines.

3:00 - Arrive back in hotel lobby and just get started on bag of chips when pageant MC decides it's finally time to tell us what our jobs are. Get handed written instructions for my job, then sit and wait while other temp gets quickie training. Sit and wait and read some more while MC and other temp register pageant contestants.

4:00 - Follow MC upstairs. Get handed stop-watch. Proceed to check contestants' names off list, explain interview procedure to them, send them in to judges, time room, knock on door after two minutes, knock again after 3, explain to girls where to go next when they come out. Rinse, lather and repeat for next five hours.

5:00-ish - Nurse sore, purpling knuckles. Politely laugh at ten thousandth joke about how my knuckles sure must hurt. Start making waiting contestants do my knocking for me.

7:00 - Realize dinner break won't be happening and thank Jesus that I still had an old Slim-Fast bar in my purse.

9:00 - Usher out last contestant. Sit and wait while pageant coordinator explains stuff to one group of judges. Explain to second set of judges suddenly bombarding me with questions and wanting to go home that I'm just a temp and I don't know anything. Listen to them whine. Tell them coordinator has more instructions for them. Get assured that he's told them all they need to know and get handed their judges' notes to give to coordinator. Watch them leave seconds before coordinator dismisses first set and heads in to debrief second set. Explain to coordinator that they took off and gave me all of their notes. Watch coordinator have meltdown. Get dismissed, but asked to come in forty-five minutes early next morning. Blink while inwardly cringing at how early this would mean I'd have to get up, but smile and agree. Get the hell out before he starts cussin' about absentee judges again.

11:00 - Arrive home after stop at Wal-Mart to put money on gas card and get some cash, both of which took ridiculously long time to do, stop at gas pumps, and stop at Sonic for food, glorious food. Take melatonin and get in bed. Take an hour and a half to fall asleep.

***

Saturday

6 AM - Wake up. Try not to be stunned by early hour. Get dressed, get shit together, eat breakfast, leave.

8:10 - Arrive at pageant auditorium five minutes early. Wander around for ten minutes trying to figure out exactly where I'm supposed to go. Ask cop on pageant security duty where the pageant people are. Find out he's as clueless as I am. Feel really safe and secure. Happen upon pageant photographer and follow him to rest of crew. Stand about while they decide what to have me do first.

8:45 - Get taken to backstage storage room with several boxes full of trophy parts. Commence unpacking and assembling pageant trophies.

9:20 - Watch pageant coordinator's face fill with joy and relief upon mentioning that Tulsa does indeed have a Starbucks. Get handed wad of cash and coffee order. Decide I don't so much mind getting coffee for the menfolk when it involves getting to leave and go to Starbucks and getting to put a caramel latte for myself on the tab.

9:45 - Arrive back with coffee to find Miss Teen (and Jr. Teen and Pre-Teen) Tulsa Pageant rehearsals underway. Hang out backstage and watch whilst enjoying my latte. Think that this temp gig sure beats labeling file folders.

10-ish - Stand back and watch as girls who still needed to pay fees filed in to do so. Watch one girl's working class mama cart in armload of envelopes and plastic bags full of coins and singles. Sit down with mama and help her count all the money out and hear about how her daughter went out every day to raise sponsorship money to cover her fees, canvasing neighborhood, selling candy outside grocery stores, etc. Watch mama almost burst with pride as she goes on about what a good kid and great student her girl is. Start rooting for this girl to win.

10:30 - Receive quick tour of dressing rooms and route contestants will take from stage doors to get to them. Proceed to give same tour to groups of contestants as they finish rehearsals and exit the stage.

Noonish - Finish showing girls where to go. Hang out and watch as MC finishes explaining pageant rules and procedure to girls and parents. Wonder when lunch break will happen. Stop wondering when handed more cash and list of Quiznos orders.

One-ish - Return from Quiznos to find pageant folks missing. Hang out with stage hand and trade pageant stories and discuss Showbiz Moms & Dads until pageant folks return. Listen to more pageant stories and mocking while eating.

1:30 PM - Set out snacks on judges' tables.

2:00 - Help arrives in form of second temp. Give her tour of backstage and dressing rooms. Start hauling trophies from storage room to table hidden off stage right. Get abandoned when other temp decides to go out to car and change into more sensible shoes. Haul rest of trophies across stage myself. Grumble grumble.

2:30 - Get in position to direct girls and their mothers to dressing rooms in case they already forgot how to find them. Watch as cop lady is assigned security post and given instructions on who to let into dressing area.

2:45 - Stand out of the way as girls and mothers file in. Laugh at deer-in-headlights look on cop ladies face as she tries not to get trampled. Boggle at how many girls have to be re-shown where dressing rooms are. Run around like chicken with head cut off trying to help girls find bathrooms, straight pins, lost contestant numbers, lost mothers, etc.

3:20 - Start wrangling girls toward stage and lining them up to go on. Have time to watch pageant during casual wear competition, between having to go round up more girls.

4-ish - First pre-teen group finishes, has to change for formal wear competition. Start to lose all track of time as things start going to hell. One girl decides her dress doesn't fit right so she's going to quit and go home, but doesn't tell anyone. I run all over building, check every nook and cranny, go outside, everywhere I can think to look, trying to find her or her parents or anyone who might know where she went. Am on the verge of panic when friend finally informs us that she left. Somehow manage to get all other girls out on stage on time. Starting to feel exhausted and harried, legs and back are sore, ready to start smacking some teenage girls around if they don't stop talking backstage when told for fifth time to do so. Ask cop lady to please trade jobs, will even go to police school if I have to. Get turned down with a wide-eyed "No way in hell am I going in there."

8:00-ish - Formal wear competition is over. Wrangle all girls back onstage for final bows and judging. Finally get to sit down and watch as ten finalists from each division are revealed and sent backstage. Try to get sqealy finalists to keep it down while stuff is still happening onstage. Escort eleven year-old who is so nervous and excited she's about to pee to bathroom, then hustle her back before anybody misses her. Herd losers off stage and back into dressing rooms. Go back to help get finalists back on stage. Stand back and watch as runners-up and then winners are revealed. Watch "oh shit" reactions from pageant directors when Pre-Teen and Jr. Teen winners turn out to be sisters. Get happy when girl who raised all her own money wins Teen title. Get sent to keep parents of winners from rushing stage long enough for publicity photos to be taken. See Teen winner's mama crying, and start crying myself. See Teen winner crying, and cry some more. See eleven year old who almost peed herself crying her eyes out over not winning anything and feel really bad for her.

9:00 - Get time sheets signed by pageant director and dismissed. Leave thinking that was one of the most fun jobs I've ever had, but also the most exhausting, and hope to never have to do anything like that again. Drive home, manage to eat something, crawl into bed and proceed to sleep for twelve hours.

***

Sunday

Crawl out of bed around 11. Settle on sofa and proceed to watch VH-1 all day. Knit. Think that Axl Rose sure was purdy and it's a damn shame he had to get all bloated and kinda psychotic. Eat occasionally. Boggle at how sore my feet and legs still are. Go back to bed and sleep some more.

***

And that would be my weekend. Monday was a day for hanging out with family and running errands. Not much got done in the way of writing, but I did manage some more faerie research. I also worked out despite still being sore from all that running around I did backstage at the pageant, so go me. Tomorrow -- er, today, actually; damn, it's late -- things should get back on track, so long as I can get myself up early enough to start writing before any of the day's business has a chance to distract me and completely blow my focus.

So. Job interview this morning. I was pretty trepidatious going in, because I wasn't really sure what the job would entail or whether it would be worth the extra-long commute. But I found a shorter, alternate route that makes the commute a non-issue. And after learning more (such as that it is indeed the technical writer position) and meeting some of the people and getting a glimpse of the work environment... we wants it, precious. Oh yes, we does.

Afterwards I drove around downtown a bit and found yet another totally fabulous little coffee shop in one of the many totally fabulous little urban neighborhoods that I tend to forget are hidden away all over Tulsa. When I find these places I think that I really could be perfectly happy living my entire life in or around Tulsa, if only it wasn't so dismally hard to meet new people (read: guys) here. For the most part, I really do love this town.

Anyway. While there I finished Chapter Six, and got a brief start on Seven. So progress has been made. Hopefully I'll be able to get up early enough tomorrow to work on it before I have to go to an afternoon temp job; otherwise it'll be Sunday before I have time to work on it again. Also on the writing front, and you already know this if you read my LJ (and I'm pretty sure the five of you who read this blog also read my LJ, so I'm being totally redundant), but yesterday I wrote a whole short story. It must have been divinely inspired, because I woke up and it was just sitting there in my brain, basically waiting for me to sit down and take dictation. This afternoon I'm going to type it up and send it to a couple of my beta readers, and once it's all polished up I'll submit it to iHero and hope for the best.

And now I'm going to talk a bit about last night's dream. If you hate reading about people's dreams, then now would be the time to make your exit. The part I really remember is that I was on top of a tall building--the tallest building in the world, in my dream, though I know it was neither the Sears Tower nor those funky towers in Malaysia or wherever. I couldn't tell you where it was, only that it reached astronomical heights, and it had a flat roof with no railing or raised ledges, and I was stuck on top of it. And even though the roof was about the size of a square city block, I was so terrified that I lay flat on my back and refused to move for fear of stumbling off. It's funny. I'm not normally afraid of heights, but in my dream I was paralyzed. So I'm thinking... fear of success? Like I'm subconsciously afraid that I'm going to achieve new heights only to fall flat on my ass? Or is that too obvious? I tend to think that I'm not normally afraid of failure. For one thing I'm pretty used to it. And not to sound too coporate office inspirational poster, but I've always seen failure as a learning and growth experience. But right now I'm on the verge of getting to live my dream, or at least a scaled down version of it, and that is both scary and exhilarating--kind of like visiting the roof of a really tall building. So I guess the message is to not let fear sabotage my success, as I've been known to do in the past. Huh. I guess I'm not really that blasé about failure after all.

One of the funnest things about writing is the feeling you get when you're writing a scene with no thought to what comes later in the story, and suddenly you realize that you've just provided some really cool foreshadowing for something that will happen later on. It's a very good feeling.

Novel update: I finished chapter 5 last Thursday, and then spent Friday morning working out plot stuff before taking the weekend off. Today I made really good headway on chapter 6. *pats self on back* I have a job interview on Thursday, and I might have a temp job on Friday and Saturday, so between that and my article I probably won't get through 7 this week. But finishing 6 should be no problem.

I still don't know how many chapters the book will be, but I do know how all of the plot threads will eventually tie together, and that's a good thing to know.

I need interview subjects for the article I'm writing for What We Now Know. I'm looking for single, childless women between the ages of 25 and 45 who have ever considered adoption as a backup alternative to more traditional means of starting a family. If you think you fit this description and are willing to be interviewed (your name can be withheld if you wish), please e-mail me at jeanjeanie@gmail.com.

And please spread the word.

Thanks!

Cross-posted from my LJ.