In which I chronicle my time-management failure

A wise man once asked, "Where does the time go when it's not around here?"

OK, so it wasn't a wise man, but my favorite group of all time, the Barenaked Ladies. One thing you should know about me - everything in life can be related to lyrics from a BNL song. EVERYTHING. I even have a novel that was inspired by one of their songs. My love for this group (and especially Ed) borders on pathological. I once saw them in concert and I touched Ed's bum. I literally cried the day I learned Steven left the group. Far too many important events in my life relate to them and their music in some way. See? Pathological. It's pertinent you know and accept this about me now.

ANYWAYS.

(Disclosure: I know someone out there is reading this and thinking it, so I'll just point out now that yes, I am aware of the irony of me wasting yet even more precious writing time on a blog post when I could be working on the novel. In my defense, my daughter pooped herself awake at 5 am today and I've decided blogging will happen on those mornings where she has me up before the ass-crack of dawn.)

Where the eff does my time go? Specifically, my writing time. I wake up every day, full of honest intentions to finally get that heap of clean laundry on the floor folded and put away, the fridge cleaned out (I can't even begin to speculate on what that tupperware container of green goo once used to be), some QT with each one of my muppets, a couple of chapters of some book read, and some uninterrupted time with my WIP.

You've probably already surmised that none of this ever happens, or at least not all of it.

No, instead I usually flail my way through a handful of chores, running the muppets around town, counting to 10 to swallow my rage when one of them dumps the ginormous bin of Legos all over the floor AGAIN, obsessively checking Facebook and my email, watching re-runs of The Big Bang Theory, and staying up much too late sucked into whatever book has my attention.

Lots of those duties are necessities, but I'm aware that plenty of them are not. They're mindless diversions, and they steal my soul time.

The truth is, I just need to learn to unplug from all of those distractions so I can plug back into my story. Sounds simple enough. So why is it so hard to do? The internet is a timesuck of epic proportions, and I know better, so why do I let it lure me in every day?  Because I'm lazy (my disaster of a home is only one example of this). Because the internet is how I connect with grownups (I love my children dearly, but let's be honest, conversing with the under-4 set on the regular can sometimes be equivalent to waterboarding). Because I'm afraid (fear is a topic for a future post I'm working on).

There are obviously many, many writers who juggle life with small children and manage to be disciplined enough to get words on the page on a regular basis (one of the gals in my writer's group is one such goddess). I should probably read some of their blog posts telling me how they do it. This would, however, require me to drag my attention away from my latest spanking in online Scrabble, the always fun discussions on my online book club board, the most recent text from my friend Becca filled with delicious eye candy, the juicy plot point about to be revealed in the book on my nightstand, etc., etc. I'm anti-discipline personified, so this isn't exactly something easy for me to do.  But, I *want* to be a writer. More importantly, I want to be a *good* writer. A *published* writer. Those things won't happen if I don't buckle down.

:::heads off to open WIP but instead gets sidetracked by videos of BNL on youtube:::

What's The Story?

(And now I've got that Oasis song stuck in my head...)

So, here's the low down about the writing project I'm working on and usually will be referencing as my WIP (Work In Progress).

A few years back I was reading the fascinating NF book "Stiff" by Mary Roach for my online book club's monthly discussion, and a section about people who believed they began taking on new personality traits after receiving an organ transplant was the genesis for a plot bunny. I instantly wanted to write a story about a girl who becomes endowed with the empathic abilities of her donor after receiving a heart transplant. I'd been wanting to attempt YA SciFi with a mystery element, and this was the perfect vehicle to do that.

I began drafting this story during NaNoWriMo 2010. I wrote just over 52K that November, but the story was not complete. After NaNo I was forced to take a break from writing, finding that the endurance event known as the third trimester of pregnancy had completely sapped me of all my energy, both physical and creative.

The WIP lingered, untouched, for many months. Occasionally I would open the document, sometimes to re-read parts, sometimes just to stare at the blinking cursor, trying to will new words out onto the page. I constantly was thinking about my story, making mental notes about problems that needed fixing and whatnot, but no actual progress happened for months. OK, the truth is that nothing happened for a year.

Enter NaNoWriMo 2011. I desperately wanted to participate, having done so for the past 3 years. But, I couldn't in good conscience begin drafting a new story when that other one was dangling out there, unfinished and still full of promise. Despite a year away from that novel, I still loved it, still wanted to fix it, still wanted to finish its story.

I became a NaNo Rebel - I decided to use NaNo 2011 to finish the draft of my novel. This past November I finally dug back into the story, slashed and hacked out sections that needed to go, and drafted the remainder of the story. Between the deleting and the new writing, I added roughly 25K to the novel. It is by no means complete, but it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. (This is where I admit that this is actually a huge accomplishment for me - seeing one of my attempts at a novel through the drafting of the entire main story arc.)

So, what's the plan? Basically, a LOT of revising and still quite a bit of drafting. The mystery element needs tweaking to raise the stakes, the swoony boy (there should ALWAYS be a swoony boy, right?) needs his character development moved out of my brain and onto the page, the logistics of my protagonist's new abilities needs fleshing out (pun intended), and some plot points necessary for potential sequel development need to be sprinkled throughout. Lots of work yet to do, I'm afraid.

Only, I'm not just afraid (fear will be a future topic I'll write about), I'm excited. More than a year after putting the first words of this story on the page, I still feel a compulsion to finish this. To tell this story. And to do it well. My passion for this story has sustained me through long droughts of inactivity, but I always knew I'd come back and finish it.

So, that's my story (morning glory)...