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.  :)

I had a bad couple of writing weeks there for a while.  My RA has flared up and writing just didn't seem like fun any more.  Well, nothing seemed fun any more.  So I sat on the couch and watched reruns of Sabrina, the teenage witch and had a pity party.

Then on Monday there was a miracle in my brain and I felt like writing again.  So I worked on my novel a bit...and again on Tuesday (which was the day when nothing made sense in my head)...and again yesterday...and today I'm catching up on blog posts because I've gone a ridiculously long time without doing so.

I have a new desk chair, which has armrests & back support, and something to put my feet on when I'm feeling short (sometimes I don't mind my feet dangling, but sometimes I do) and a place close to the computer to put my writing notebook so it doesn't get lost on the floor of my studio (under all the kid stuff, naturally).  So I am all prepared to be productive again.

On Tuesday this week I spent all day writing or staring out the window thinking about writing or doing research on something so I could then write some stuff that required actual knowledge of the subject at hand.  After all day in a sitting position, my RA started screaming at me.  Back pain, knee pain, wrist & hand pain, shoulder pain, you name a part, there was probably some effect.  It took a solid 15 hours to get back to feeling relatively normal again.

This is what I hate about writing.  It's the thing that keeps me from doing it, time and again.  Even if I try the dictation software, I still have to sit close by the computer and be able to speak clearly enough for it to understand me and be able to handle the keyboard enough to fix the words and phrases that the computer can't understand (will vs. won't seems to be this week's problem area).

How do y'all overcome the pain of long daily stretches of sitting?

I've drifted off course, writing-wise, lately.  I started off doing very well writing in the paper journal daily, but sometime last week I just...stopped.  I didn't write daily personal stuff or daily fiction or anything else at all outside of my To Do list.

What did I do in the meantime?  I watched the entire Cranford & Return to Cranford & Little Dorritt series' on Masterpiece Classic.  That's about it.  It's amazing to me how good television can suck you away from priorities.

Anyway, I spent yesterday afternoon working away on the novel.  I completed homework for 2YN through week 7.  I like to stay ahead, just in case life intervenes one week and I get nothing done.  Staying three weeks ahead gives me lots of wiggle room.

There was something else, but I've once again forgotten it.  Maybe later.

I seriously don't have a better title for this at the moment, but oh well.

Here's the expanded story idea, from my 2YN homework on Forward Motion:

Amanda* and Charles* had a fabulous honeymoon on an isolated island. Upon returning home, they received stunning news: Charles' brother & sister-in-law died in an accident while they were gone Even worse, to Amanda, her new niece & nephews were coming to live with them. Charles traveled a lot for work, so he inevitable left Amanda home to deal with the kids, but then they stopped hearing from him altogether. Amanda has to explain to the children that she & Charles don't really live in the real world and that they must search another world for their uncle.


*placeholder name


(Oh, and this progress bar only updates every 1000 words, apparently. Right now I'm up to 400 on this project)

Part of the reason I've not felt like blogging has been this overwhelming busyness combined with a general ennui caused by the everydayness of said busyness.  So I've let my brain know that I don't necessarily have to post life things any more if I don't feel like it.  I mean, that's what tweets are for, right?  Hehehe.

In the future I'm going to use the dreamwidth account for the writing/projects/brain stuff only, and the livejournal for more personal stuff.  I'm awamiba either place.