LET ME EXPLAIN: my #WriterFriendlySolution TO FIND THE TIME TO BLOG
#DontKnowWhenIWillBeBack
#MyBooksNeedMeMore
See, I have this plan. Admittedly, its all of my own making. And yes, that makes it my fault. I take responsibility for my actions and yes I own this, my life. I choose my boundaries, in fact I make life changing decisions everyday. Their validity isn't always open for discussion unless it's a definite game changer [ BETA READERS ROCK].
No one person understands it but they hear me reference it all the time, this PLAN. Yes, I am the boss but understand, I have muse[S], so I am not always really in charge LIKE YOU THINK. And there is nothing wrong with me loving these muses just because you can't understand them or their ways. Trust me, they have never left me alone to my own devices while they go off into the world to live their lives. Oh no, they are content to see if they can drive me to madness with their never ending demands for attention. [Bwahahha, I thought I would be lonely. NOT!]
*Life enters - stage left*
LIFE, goes into these tantrums where you're forced to be at odds with what you want to do which is be pulled along by your heart to embrace your dream with the total focus of a child at play, where time stands still and your only limit is your imagination. [Life likes attention ,too.]Over the past few years, hours and hours spent doing my thing only spoils me for more. Decades spent caring for and nurturing others, young and old, means Now is really the time for me.
I have raised my children to raise their own and feel satisfied [code for AMAZINGLY PROUD] with the result of my efforts. They have a somewhat skewed understanding of me, the writer. The mom they would find working away in the wee hours of the morn, distracted and blurry eyed. If the coffee pot was empty they searched me out feeling anxious that something wasn't right if I was not in the kitchen bathrobed and embracing my brew. Painting, drawing or scribbling away, even just staring blankly at a screen, it was their norm. I never put it before them and I am sure the pristine sport uniforms made them think I had been up all night making sure they would look good on the fields of their choice. Looking back, all those late nights and early mornings just prepared them for the real me. The moment of reckoning came when they read my first published book that wasn't a children's book for them.
The look of 'I always wondered and now I know' is a priceless thing to behold.
One seemed to figure it out early, even though he kept the secret. There toward the 'end', [EMPTY NEST SURVIVAL, another post for sure] he was the one who put sandwiches on my desk and when he had to wake me from a binge induced coma, it was always with a cup of coffee. Then the period of unsupervision began and I bounced off the walls with story boards, no wall in any room of my home was safe from plotting and scheming and diagrams and graphics and social medi-
*loud needle scratching on a vynal record sound*
The present hits my desk with a thud.
My phone is ringing faintly from somewhere in the house. A loud knocking begins on the sliding glass door sprinkled with muffled expletatives.
I embrace the situation with my usual positive snark for being ripped back into reality.
"Ring a damn ding ding, knock knock knock.... who the hell can't read today?"
Frustrated that my sign on the door has lost its power, I cringe the mother of all cringes.
It could be an adult child or friend so I feel a little guilty. It could be my 'crazy neighbor friend'. [that's a whole other post] So, I open the blind anyway. You know, I am really shocked when life just barges up to the door like this.
I hold up one finger in a universal sign and dash to my office knowing I have no real knowledge of the time or date. That is the truth of the level that my creative binds me. Leaving me the only surety, at times, of it being daylight or dark.
Yes, I am not beyond refusing entrance to someone who impedes my creative process. My characters need me, otherwise the warrior angels will be torturing poor hapless victims or the homeless will be dressed in finery and dining in a haunted victorian mansion. I have characters to kill, worlds to build, demons to slay, dragons to dance with, edits to make, files to format and on any given day I am doing battle, creating havoc for distraction or embracing research-
There it is, scrawled across the schedule page I didn't turn to:
SHOPPING FOR _________.
I make a note: CANCEL EVERYTHING THRU JUNE
I rip out the offending pages through JULY 1st and pin them to the board, just to be sure.
I am going full HERMIT for awhile.
I will post the sign first, WHILE getting estimates. For those who ignore it in the beginning, it shall be a rude awakening. Once I am forced to call a contractor for the installation, things should get pretty hot around here.
Electrifying the fence and gate are seen as a plausible preventative measure and a very
#AuthorFriendlySolution.
OG out.
