Here I sit at a sports bar.  Technically, it is a haven of chicken wings and beer, neither of which I am particularly fond.  With the spastic television screens flashing at every angle, each showcasing a different sporting event, and the thumping, over-loud dance music echoing off the walls that is matched in intensity only by the raucous, half-drunk patrons, one must wonder why anyone could NOT understand why Americans have no attention spans.  I sit here sipping a glass of water with my quiet-natured husband and scrawl my thoughts in my ever-present book so that I can assure myself that I am indeed still capable of having thoughts. This is one of many reasons why I don’t go to bars. Even though I don’t drink, I always end up with a hangover. It doesn’t take booze or beer for me; merely the ambiance does the trick. All I have to say is that this chicken better be good.

So, that novel I was working on? All the way back in November? Yeah.  I finished it.  I. Finished. It.  Are you screaming for joy yet? I am.  I finished it in February–all 110,000 words of it.  Now, they are not a pretty lot, these 110,000 words.  Some are quite homely and many of them are prone to break out in skirmishes between each other when the wrong ones get too close together.  Not good.  However, I have discussed the problem with each and every one of the 110,000 words and we have decided to work out a compromise so that I don’t get a stress headache every time my eyes wander over them.  We have agreed that I shall EDIT them.  Edit them ALL.  I will appraise each for his or her usefulness and fit and move or REmove accordingly.  Thus far I have already shaved 1,100 words off of chapter 1.  That’s only like 1%, but by the time I get to chapter 22, we’re getting somewhere significant with this.  Do you know what I found out? Not ALL of the words are homely! Some are pretty and nice and help old ladies across the street.  I intend to pet those, give them hot chocolate, and tuck them in safely where they belong.  I have more scenes to add, several to move and spread out, a couple to rewrite entirely, some to delete entirely, and a whole storyline to lay in as a seam to the two plots that I have going.  It’s going to be a lot of work, but I would like to tell you a secret about it: It’s not going to suck! When I’m done–I truly think that it’s not going to suck. That is not to say that it doesn’t right now, but the future is finally bright and shining!

Huzzah!

Is this worth the sleepless nights and the multiple overpriced Moleskine notebooks I filled in the process? YES!

I’ve procrastinated enough.  Back to my timeline. Who knew editing was FUN?

*squee*

I generally like to think of myself as a (hopefully) good-natured and (usually) even-tempered kind of person. If I was a horse, I would be the steady sort on which kindly uncles would place children for easy rides around the paddock and afterward they would pat my nose and I would gently lip sugar (sugar is a must!) off their tiny, sticky hands. However, the thing that makes me want to run crazed around the room, foam-flecked and kicking everything into oblivion, is INSOMNIA. (I would like to thank Stephen King for making it a big, red word with raised letters that are coated in a mixture of sulfuric acid and children’s tears. Thanks, Stevie.)

My problem is this. I cannot GO to sleep. I must FALL asleep. My mind generally goes along all day at jaunty clip, getting me through whatever I’m doing with relative clarity and focus. I rather like these happy daylight times. But when the sun sets, it morphs into some evil, werewolf-like thing, ready to seize sleep from my tender grasp with giant gnashing jaws. Suddenly, everything I’ve ever repressed in my entire LIFE comes barreling at me in a slideshow of contemplation, confusion, and worry. I am aware of my tendency to over-think EVERYTHING, so I’ve got a system out to keep the mind-wolf at bay so that I can slip off, ninja-style, into dreamland.

TV. You know how you’ve been told your entire life that TV makes you stupid and rots your brain. All true. I love TV. But, I know the brain-rot theory is absolutely true because the second you put me in front of a rerun of The Golden Girls or my beloved Simpsons, my brain goes completely flat-line. Seriously. Shouting hello in there would bring an echo that would reverberate for miles. This is not to say that TV CAN’T make you think (LOST, anyone?), but, thinking is not necessary. My poor husband, who is of the normal-folk who can just flip off the light and march right into dreamland with waving flags and blaring trumpet, has had to adapt to me crawling in on silent toes, a refugee trailing in on the heels of King of the Hill and Home Improvement.

However. What happens when I wake up in the middle of the night? Oh, you tricky insomnia. You got me. When I had a room to myself, it was no problem to flip on the giant sleeping pill and watch some infomercials (ask me about the Magic Bullet and the Ronco Food Dehydrator. I know LOTS!) until I would be blissfully unconscious again. Now that I’m married, I can’t get away with it. I’ve tried the video iPod with some success, but sleeping in either headphones or earbuds is not recommended. Ouch. Besides, as soon as Boo the Devilcat seems me stirring, she’s in there cooing, drooling, kneading, and begging for me to pet her RIGHT NOW and ALL NIGHT (or ELSE!).

So. Here I am. Victim again of my old foe termination insomnia. What am I doing about it? Whining like an eleven-year-old deemed too young for Twilight. “But all my friends are sleeping! I won’t understand what they’re talking about!”

Good morning, world. Happy to see you.

NOT!

I finished Nanowrimo! Okay, my novel’s got a looooooong way to go, but I successfully crossed the 50k finish line last night.  Woo hooo!

Well, Nanowrimo is rolling right along and I’m way ahead of schedule! My novel is coming along pretty nicely, albeit with some gratuitous word padding and descriptions.  I think I like it enough to actually go back and edit after I’m done, instead of becoming phobic of its little icon on my computer desktop like last years.  I haven’t really opened that thing since Nano ended last year.  Eek!

I’ve still been having some issues with my feet. I’ve been seeing a podiatrist, and I just went for an MRI to see what the heck is going on with my right foot. I’m hoping that it is a fracture and not a ruptured tendon, which would mean surgery. I do not like to have my body parts cut open. Not no way, not no how. We’ll see how it goes! For now, I have an immobilization boot on my right foot. I have named it Charlie. I don’t know why, maybe it’s to endear it to me instead of ripping it off and throwing it out the car window while I’m speeding down the interstate. Still, the boot is better than surgery. Oh yeah. Definitely.

I’m about to start reading March by Geraldine Brooks. It was the 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner and we’re doing it for the store book club. I’m hoping I can get through it by meeting time on Friday, but its a short novel and it shouldn’t be too hard. If only I could stop writing on my own long enough to read it!

Well, with that, I’m going back to jump in to MS Word. I’ll resurface later when it’s time to eat or something. I have band tonight, but the anti-inflammatory meds I’ve been taking make me feel pretty lousy, so I don’t know if I’ll go. We’ll see.

Okay, back to the novel!

I am faithfully typing my fingers to the bone for Nanowrimo, but I just wrote a passage that may not work great in the final draft of this novel, but I thought it made a fine blog entry. Where better to post a blog-like novel excerpt? Just to fill you in on the background, this is a novel about what I know–working in a bookstore. Yes, I have to admit that a lot of the main character’s point of view is very autobiographical. I can’t seem to separate her from myself in many respects, and this passage is as much from my heart as from any fictional character. Anyway, here is the opening of chapter 2: (Read on …)

Okay, did that last post actually say July 12? I don’t think so.  I think that the blog monster just devoured the rest of my posts and truly doesn’t have a taste for summer.  However, being a greedy blog monster) he ate half of it, leaving us only up until July 12.  Right? Right? It could happen.

Well, I’ll skip reupdating on the stuff the blog monster got–my time on the high seas battling pirates, the time I watched a guy spontaneously combust, purchasing my own private island where there lives a master breed of dog who run free there and govern themselves, and my very cute new haircut. Sorry, it’s just lost to the ages. Blame the monster, not me! (Read on …)

Well, since the last time I wrote, there has been much water under the bridge. The concert with the Memphis Symphony trumpeter has come and gone, and it was a blast. Scott Moore is a class act and a mighty fine trumpeter. It was an honor to play beside him, and I might give him a call for some lessons. It made me feel pretty good when he told me he was very surprised when I said I’d never had a private lesson. I’ve still got a long way to go, but that’s a grain of hope, for what its worth.

The church gig with the quintet went well as well. I only hit one major clam at the beginning of Wachet Auf after switching to a cold flugelhorn almost hour into the service without playing. I pretty majorly fracked the first note of the piece, but I recovered and the rest of it hung together, though I kept fearing that my heart was beating louder than I was playing. It all just adds up to a thicker skin though, and that’s definitely what I need when it comes to performing.

In other news, this past week a dear friend came to stay with us for a few days. I was sorry that I didn’t get to spend more time with her since I had to work two of the three she was here, but it was a delight to see her and hopefully she can come back soon. Currently a different friend is staying the night since she had to be in town to correspond with a school here. She stayed with us for a week a while back and was a delightful houseguest. I must say, sometimes people think of house guests as having a reputation for being burdensome, but the people that have come to stay with us here have been the best. Ever. They can sleep on my couch anytime! It’s just great to have old friends around again, even if only for a little while.

I have been trying to catch up on some of the reading I’ve been needing to do. I’ve been working on getting more reviews up on that area of the site. Still, with trying to get caught up with that, I haven’t written on any of my own pieces in a good while. I miss it, but I always just feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. Speaking of which, I’ve got work tomorrow so I guess I’d better hit the hay if I expect to be awake!

P.S. I have a couple of ideas for Nanowrimo this year. I think I know the one I want to do, but I need to get some outlining done soon if I’m going to have everything I need in time for November. If there’s one thing I learned from last year, having a tentative road map definitely cuts down on all nighters!

Some interesting things have been on the horizon of late. First of all, I’m OH-SO-EXCITED because I have a concert this Saturday night with my community band, but I was VERY, VERY freaked out because I was going to be the only first trumpet in an hour-long concert just chock-full of Sousa marches and high notes (John Williams Olympic Fanfare, anyone?). I do NOT have the chops to keep up with that kind of program for that long by myself. So, I’ve been praying for a ringer. (Read on …)

So, Boo has decided that she needs to lay across my computer, so typing isn’t as easy as I had planned when starting this blog.  We’ll see what we can do, shall we?

More or less, things have been going the same around here. I have been working getting my books into some semblance of order. I will illustrate the need to do so with a little dramatization of an actual event: (Read on …)