the brain game

No writing this last week.  None.  My spouse has been getting up at the time I normally do, hence blocking me from the bathroom, hence throwing off my schedule.  While it has been lovely having him home in the AM, he also likes to talk to me, which further throws me off.  Also this is a really ridiculous week.  I'm just scheduling myself writing time this afternoon and the housework can do itself.  WRITING WILL GET DONE!! 

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.  We were all sick over the Christmas break (upper respiratory flu, bronchitis, then stomach virus) and I was either sleeping or cleaning up messes.  Then I got called up for subbing (I'm a substitute teacher) three days in a row.  Add to that regular daily life, planning for a trip to Ireland & Scotland, and investigating the possibility of going back to school for my master's degree and there's been very little writing worthy to write about: more Sad Poetry, basically, and a few more vignettes.

This weekend was my Writing Retreat with Steph.  We took a condo (really a studio apartment) in Austin, carefully guarding our location so people we knew there wouldn't bother us, and made the drive out there (2 hours for Steph, 5 for me).  We chose the place based on its location to places we knew we wanted to visit (Penzey's spices for appeasing the husbands, Half Price to use my gift card from Christmas, and a couple good restaurants Steph wanted to introduce me to), but planned mostly to stay in and doing writerly things.  Ha.  The kitchen was way too small for cooking, plus we never could locate pots or pans, so we ended up eating out a lot, while discussing writerly things.  

We also perused the writing guides at Half Price and picked up some good ones and read to each other the good bits of those, taking copious notes (well, I did at least) from the good ones.  I also pieced together bits from old story ideas that I thought would go together well in the novel I've been having hang over my head for a while now.  I edited those bits for names and tenses and shoved them into my outline where they belonged (also made the outline, as before I just had one big scene for the novel and that was it).  Then I fleshed some of those bits out (they were mainly just more outlinish things).  In the end I added about a thousand words of actual new writing.  

It was a really great weekend!  :)

My grandma died a few weeks ago, after a few bouts of congestive heart failure that her doctor's thought she'd get through nicely.  I wonder about that sometimes, "nicely."  The fact of it was that she was 93 years old and there's no "nicely" about it.  She died.  So I've been spending a few weeks trying to tie up loose ends of school, grandma stuff, camp,etc.  No writing to speak of, not even blog posts. 

That being said, I have a new writing desk.  I am not to speak of how I got it or what it looks like or where it is kept, but it is, in fact, awesome.  I feel nice and calm sitting at it, regardless of the fact that there are kids running back and forth yelling in the hallway behind me.  I've had a few story ideas come to mind while sitting there, writing out condolence letters to aunts and uncles and so forth, so I've been doing the tiniest bit of scribbling those down before moving on to further letters and thank you notes that need to go out. 

The Summer of Calmness starts tomorrow, now that all things camplike are done and over with.  The two big kids will be working on Scout stuff quite a lot of the summer, so hopefully there will be quite a lot of writing time while they're working on Projects and the youngest is napping or watching TV.  I'm looking forward to writing again.

I've been writing in the car this week, after two weeks of only writing on my Tuesday MDO time periods.  Not that I wasn't productive during all that MDO, because I was extremely productive.  I just found out that if I have my writing notebook in the van with me, I can write during all those little times that I have to show up early for something (like carpool lane at school or to pick something up from someone that's always 10 minutes late).  It's been nice.

I was going to give you details, but my brain is not working and the notebook is, after all, in the van, so no details for you today.  Maybe another day.  :)