Reinventing Fabulous

Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day, she warbles happily. The book is done, and off. A huge weight is off my shoulders.
Unfortunately a huge weight is on my stomach. And butt.
Yeah, I’ve been eating, non-stop. No holds barred. Yesterday I had a muffin, four apricot scones, a couple of bratwursts, some goldfish pretzels. Ah, a health food diet.
Full disclosure time. I don’t want to tell you what I weigh. I don’t, I don’t.
Maybe I’ll tell you tomorrow. It could be worse. Sigh.
So here’s my plan. We’re going down to Crusie’s this week to pick up her extra set of lawn furniture — yippee!!! I have such plans for my outdoors this summer.
But this week I’m concentrating on food, first and foremost. And feeling better. So here’s the deal:
No dairy. As in, zero. I eat pizza and cheeseburgers and spaghetti with cheese without lactaid, and I think even those small amounts wreak havoc on my digestion. so I’ll avoid them completely. Of course, the day before I head out on a trip is unreasonable, so I think I need to do my best till Thursday and then hunker down.
The other thing I’m cutting back on is gluten. I did cut out all gluten for a couple of weeks and didn’t notice any change, but I’m guessing I’m sensitive to it. If I stuff myself with crackers and bread I an get a pain in my stomach. Might just be from stuffing myself, but I think cutting back on gluten (or even cutting it out) might help.
And it’ll force me to bulk up on the veggies and fruits.
And of course, back to my original plan. No fast food, no fried stuff, etc. In fact, if I cut way back on gluten I’ll really be doing a lot better, and it’s easier to think of it that way. Not cut carbs to two a day, but cut gluten.
So anyway, that’s my plan, but since I’ll be on the road Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so I’ll just have to do my best. More about that tomorrow. In the meantime, what’s on your agenda?

What filled your life with sunshine this week?

I have grading I have to finish, so Cottage Saturday will probably show up later this week. Veronica is worried you won’t understand. Please don’t blame her.

that’s the sound of the Bad Wolf chewing on my liver, like they did with Prometheus when he stole fire from the gods. That painting, Prometheus Bound, scared the shit out of me when I was in first grade and went on a field trip to the Philadelphia Art Museum. That sucker is huge.
But I digress.
I’m so tired and burned out I can barely talk. I finished the book yesterday afternoon with over 8k words that day, then went back and saw I’d written 32,000 words in the last five days. That’s a third of the book (which went way longer than it was supposed to. Contracted for 80-85,000 words, came in close to 95,000 words).
And those 32k words are rough draft. And they need it in today. And I can’t do it.
Plus, I’m supposed to go down to Manchester on Sunday to speak at a library and my back is so screwed up I don’t think I can sit in a car for the two hours down and two hours back. I just want to cry.
Chomp chomp chomp.
Tell me what to do, guys. I did everything I could on this book — sure I took the occasional days off, but basically the sucker took a wrong turn and I had to stop and practically start from the beginning, just as I should have sailed into the end. You can’t control books and what they ask of you. I’m miserable, and I want to enjoy my book, and my sense is it’s really good, but I’m too tense and unhappy and overwhelmed to even guess. And my agent isn’t around to save me.
Waaah!
Oh, and did I mention that I need a hard copy to do revisions, because you need to look at it in a different format to see if it works, and my laser printer decided to give up the ghost? So I have to revise directly on the computer, which is faster but not nearly as thorough, and I won’t get it done today, and
WHIIIIIINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Someone shoot the bad wolf for me. Or at least figure out a way to trap him so he’ll leave me alone. I need my liver.

There is so much that I haven’t gotten done. My Bad Wolf has been feasting on it for months now–I’m always behind on McDaniel, I’m not writing, the house needs work, the dogs need walked, the lawn needs mowed, the walls need painted, the laundry needs done, the list is freaking endless. I will never ever, ever get caught up, the Bad Wolf is going to be chewing on my uselessness until I die. [...]

One of the hard lessons we learned early in our construction business is that you’re never going to have a project that goes absolutely perfectly. No matter how good you are, no matter how amazing and talented your employees, no matter how wonderful your suppliers, someone, somewhere along the way, is going to have a human moment and make a mistake. Or two. You just pray it’s not ten, and no one gets hurt, and it’s fixable without losing too much money. The days where everyone goes home, especially with all of their fingers and toes intact, is a good day.

But man, those mistakes can make you a little bit batshit crazy. [...]

From Keep.com – you can totes buy this! We’re not getting a cut if you do, because we don’t do that at ReFab, but I love that you can actually own this pillow.

I think “Be yourself,” is great advice, although sometimes it can be weird because if you know who you are, being yourself is natural, and if you don’t, you don’t know what’s you and what’s not you, so it’s a deceptively complicated motto.

Regardless, I think there are days when we could all use a little time being a unicorn. (And I mean this in the magical, innocent, glittery sense, not in the Dan Savage sense. Although if that’s your thing, then go forth into the world and make people happy.)

(If you don’t know what the Dan Savage sense of “unicorn” is, and you’re about to head to Google, just beware. It’s not that bad, but there are some things you should never search on Google. Like the Dirty Sanchez. JUST DON’T DO IT. Jon Stewart said it on the Daily Show once and now I can never go back to a time when I didn’t know what that meant.)

I’m sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes. Glittery unicorns. Beautiful, elegant, sleek, and yet they’ll skewer you in a heartbeat if you mess with them. For fucked or fab, how were you a unicorn this week?

That’s the dazed look of a woman who works nonstop.
Well, not really nonstop. For some reason I only got 4546 words done, and since Nan and Jill were only 46 words off they both get a copy of the book. Send me your snail mail, miladies, and I’ll send you each a copy of the ARC.
Or I could rip it in half and send half to each one … no, that wouldn’t be fair. Mwa-ha-ha. (Evil laugh.)
Everything is supposed to be back to normal with bank account and fucking IRS. I think I’ll move to the Cayman Islands. Except that since I can’t pay my bills I’m not quite sure how to get there. Hitchhike?

All right, I gotta do better today. We’re having sex today, nice, long, involved, nasty, yummy sex. (I was proofreading this and I realized I didn’t say that I’m talking about the book, not Richie). But I need to shake it up a bit. Not quite sure how I’ll do it, but I’m endlessly inventive, and I even bought a Dummies Guide to Sex a few years ago to see if it would give me some good ideas. In a long marriage you pretty much knows what works and yup, you settle into a routine. However, it’s an extremely nice routine so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But the scene will present itself to me as it should be written — I have faith. We had snow last night, but it’s warmer today with a bright blue sky and the leaves are out and it’s gorgeous. As for me, I’m staying in my little corner, looking out the window and writing until my brain melts.

Someone gave a link to Hyperbole and a Half Yesterday, where she gave a long, very effective description of clinical depression. Been there a couple of times, and it’s really ugly. Poor baby. I almost hate to read about it for fear it’ll infect me. It’s so easy to start going down that dark road.

But I’ve decided that things are going to start getting better. We’ve had some very hard years, I’m tired of them, it’s time to move on. Happiness is a bunch of things. Lowered expectations. Blind hope. Smelling the roses. Letting go.

I know the inability to let go of things has made my BFF and her sister (no, I’m talking literally about my BFF, from the age I was 8, and her younger sister) consistently makes their lives miserable. I know my sister’s inability to let go of her role as grieving mother killed her, though it took her 19 years. Letting go doesn’t mean you don’t still mourn. There’s always a piece of you missing. But it doesn’t have to be your profession.

Obviously I’m dealing with the anger part of grieving when it comes to my sister. I put off dealing with her death while my mother was alive and it’s all catching up with me.

But I digress. I know what makes me happy. Living in a world of books; both the ones I write and the ones I read. I want to get back to the world of A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES (damn, those books are good!). I want to relive ICE STORM. I want to write new ones and discover new writers. Whether there’s a world of beauty and joy out there might be debatable, but there’s a fictional world of beauty and joy that I can tap into. Literally. (tap, tap, tap on the keys).

So, on to a new day. I’ve got a few more ARCs, if anyone wants to make a guess. I’ve got a plan, and writing makes me happy, even though at this point I get so freaking tired.

At some point in my life I will learn balance. I promise. In the meantime I must Write All Things.

So, 7,010 words yesterday, including a long nap, and now I’m so wired I can’t sleep. And it’s a busy week.
Starting when I wake up, I have to deal with the IRS, my bank, a number of creditors, and make some decisions. (Long story short — we made a deal with the IRS to make payments, couldn’t make the payments, told our IRS person and she just let it slide instead of helping is figure out what to do — and there are all sorts of things we could have done. So without warning they froze our bank account and we’d just paid a whole mess of bills with a whole more due and … aiyeee!).
Anyway, it’s a mess, and it’s going to take fuss tomorrow (I was going to say fuss and upset but it’s up to me whether i’m going to let it upset me and I’ve decided I won’t). Anyway, deal with all that crap and get back to work. Just over 10k words left to contracted amount — god knows how much until I finish the book. Probably more like 15. At least the book is revised up until 10k words ago, so the revision process won’t take long and it’ll actually get there on time.
So that’s my life for this week. That and see if there’s anything I can do for my bad back and BB infection, which isn’t getting better, all without it taking much time away from the writing.
So I will write. Period.
And try not to make myself too sick and crazy. Might be too late for that — if I weren’t under such stress I imagine my back would be much better. Argh.
So we’re guessing each day how many words I’m gonna make it through, and the winner each day gets an ARC of the new historical. Wanna play? I’m going to be busy, tired and get up late on Monday, so that ought to slow me down. OTOH, I’m nearing the end, and I come up with prodigious amounts when I’m finishing.
Your guess is as good as mine.
So, what’s on your agenda for this week? Good things, I hope.

First HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO ALL REFAB MOTHERS.

There, that’s done. [...]