I know things have been relatively quiet out of me lately. There’s a perfectly good explanation and I will kick it off with the fact that I am sick as hell. And I am quite possibly the world’s biggest baby when I am sick. Ok, maybe not the world’s biggest but I am certainly in the Top 10. I don’t like feeling like shit. I don’t know anyone that does but I tend to be rather whiny about the whole experience. I have had headaches my entire life and that I can deal with. I cannot deal with my body leaking fluids from various places in my head. It’s gross and I don’t want to do it anymore.
My other problem is my A.D.D. I feel like I am juggling approximately 8,542,416,571,572.8 things right now. I know realistically the number isn’t actually that high but sometimes it feels like it.
First issue – I have 3 “jobs” right now – my day job, writing and Pure Textuality (my book blog). And this is where the A.D.D. becomes a serious problem.
My day job takes up approximately 55 hours of my week when you include travel time. I am one of the lucky people in the world that actually likes my day job but I am finding myself more often than not thinking about 1 of my two other jobs when I am at my day job. Whether it is what needs to be done on PT or a scene I need to get written out, my mind is spending more and more time wandering to the others when I should be focusing on the job I get PAID to do.
In regards to Pure Textuality, I think I may have created a monster. Not in a bad way. Just in a distracting way. My little book blog has become rather large. I have a large following now, a positively huge team and things just keep getting busier and busier. I was looking at our calendar the other day and with the exception of a few days scattered about, PT is booked for the majority of January. We have something scheduled to go live almost every day this month, whether it be a review or interview or blog tour and WHATEVER. Do. Not. Get. Me. Wrong. I’m not complaining. THIS is what I wanted. THIS is what I hoped would happen. Consistent content being posted. It’s fantastic! It’s just…..distracting. I am always worried about making sure I get all the posts up on the site or making sure the information on the site is always up to date when I should be writing. Before I even know what has happened, I find that I have done a complete overhaul of the site and even though it looks great, it’s hours I could have spent writing that I didn’t.
And that ties into my 3rd job. Writing. I love it. Oh my GAWD do I love it! Enter another problem of mine – perfectionism. I write and write and every single time I open the document to work on the book, I spend more time editing and rewriting what I already have done. The upside to this is that when the book is finally finished, editing SHOULD be a breeze. In the meantime, it feels like it is taking forever to get to the end. The other side of it is my A.D.D. It never fails. I sit down to work on The Devil You Know and inevitably, I get distracted. Either I remember I have something that needs to be taken care of on PT or I get an idea for a book cover for future books (the cover of Speak of the Devil – book 2 in the Demon Legacy series – is already done and I haven’t even finished TDYK!!!) or I start screwing around with formatting…. You name it, I get distracted.
Then there’s the other stuff. I’m a mom of two. I have a daughter named Kaylee (she’ll be 12 on the 14th of this month) and a son (he turned 3 on Halloween). No matter what, my kids come first. Well, my daughter lives with her father during the week and comes across town to my house every weekend. Since she’s not with me all week long, I spend as much time as possible hanging out with her on the weekends. Since I work Monday through Friday, this means that writing is at a minimum on Saturday and Sunday because by the time my kids are in bed, I am completely out of the energy it takes to focus on writing and am more concerned with curling up with my pillow. Although the quality time with my kids probably qualifies me as a good mom, it continues to prolong TDYK getting finished.
On another note, I am also going through a divorce. Most people would see that as a positive thing in that no longer having a partner in life definitely frees up the schedule a bit, it didn’t exactly put me in a great frame of mind to write. I literally spent the month of October in a state of non-functioning and didn’t write one single word. November was a little better and then December, not so much. With the holidays and the impending divorce hearing, I wrote but I didn’t write as much as I wanted to. Well, the papers are signed and now we are just waiting on the judge for approval. The upside to this is that I can finally accept that it is over and move on with my life. The downside is I find myself staring at the wall sometimes, not really sure what to do with myself. He was my person and a lot of the times, he was my encouragement and now he’s just not. I have taken the whole divorce thing a lot harder than I ever thought I would and at times it has felt more like a death than a marriage coming to an end. That has been the biggest distraction of all.
Then there’s all the “stuff” that comes with getting divorced. I now have to manage our entire house by myself. Since I live in New Hampshire, this means dealing with winter – shoveling and firewood and keeping the house warm so the pipes don’t freeze. Plus, I live out in the woods….alone….so every noise I hear late at night makes me jump. Needless to say, I have started locking my doors at night, something I never did in the 5 years we lived there together. Also, since my son lives with me most of the time, I don’t have a second adult to pick up the reigns when I need some “me” time. It’s been a huge adjustment and one that I am still working the kinks out of.
All of this being said, I am really looking forward to 2013. Once I get myself out of the funk of dealing with the divorce, I have great things ahead!
I started out by kicking off the new year with great friends! Heather (a good friend, reviewer over at PT and owner of Soleful Reader) and her husband (who is a DJ) threw a big new years bash where we danced, drank champagne and generally had a fantastic time. One of my best friends, fellow author (and my bizz partner over at PT) Ginny Lurcock was there with her husband and we had a big ol’ blasty blast. I haven’t danced that much in a LONG time. By the time I crawled into bed in the wee hours of the morning, my legs HURT. But it was so worth it. I had an incredible time and I can’t wait to go out dancing again.
From left to right:
Ginny Lurcock, Yours Truly and Heather
2013 has a lot of things to be happy about! Among that list, here’s a couple of highlights that are fast approaching….
I am going to be publishing The Devil You Know (Demon Legacy #1) and I will be getting started on Speak of the Devil (Demon Legacy #2). I never thought I would see the day that I was published and getting Burning out there was step one to me realizing that it really could be done. I have already taken a good step in the direction of getting this shit done by scheduling 3 consecutive days off this coming week. From January 8th – 10th, I am off from my day job to focus 100% on writing. Tonight I will be drafting and scheduling all of next week’s posts on PT so I won’t have that to worry about. It will just be me, my book and (hopefully!!) my dear Ginny Lurcock (at least 1 day) doing nothing but banging on the keyboards to get our respective projects done. My plan is to have The Devil You Know published in mid-late February so I need to bust my ass to make sure it will be ready on time.
I am also going back to the fabulous Las Vegas! In August 2011, I went to Las Vegas for the Toastmasters International Convention. The unfortunate side of this is if you’re going to Vegas and really want to see Vegas, you cannot have your schedule eaten up by a convention like that. I saw a lot from a distance last time and this time, I want to take it all in. I want to relax and just be there. See the sites, see the people, start a collection of prostitute business cards. You know. The normal stuff you do in Vegas. This time, I am also not going alone. My mom and my sister are both going with me so it should be a blast. As of today, the countdown is at 74 days until my ass is on an airplane headed for dryer air! I can’t wait!
I will leave you all with that. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and I hope that 2013 has amazing things in store for you as well!
Here is one of the many shiny objects that has been distracting me from writing. You can thank Ginny Lurcock for this one…
Yes, you’re right. That IS a Death Star disco ball. I want one for my bedroom soooooo bad! lol
