I write, therefore I am

Do you have any idea how hard it is to write? I'm sure some of you do. The ideas are playing out like a movie in my head. I can see them very well. They're there, it's just so hard to abstract them into words and sentences in the right order.

So I write Christmas cards. I answer email.

I blog.

Wait. Blogging is like writing, huh. Something like writing. Yeah. So is answering email. And writing Christmas cards.

It's like it's hunting me down.

We've got a fire in the fireplace tonight, and I'm not in the room where it's blazing. I'm here, sitting at my computer, typing in more words.

That's it. Wall has been hit.

Pajamas await.

How do people do it?

I'll just say it: I'm tired.

I have a job. I mean, a regular, pack my lunch, get in the car and drive to work kind of job. When the day's over, I'm beat. I didn't used to be that way, but I didn't used to have this many revolutions around the sun under my belt.

I've got ideas. Book ideas. Illustration ideas. Painting ideas. Stuffed animal ideas. Resin figurine ideas. I just don't have the time or the energy to get all these ideas out there.

I'm totally slacking.

I've been spending tons and tons of time writing my novel, and I haven't spent enough time finishing my mailing list, and my postcard mailing is months behind. I have a long list of promo stuff I need to be doing with my Twisted book, but the list is collecting dust in the pile of all the other things I've started lists for.

My office space is a mess. I haven't cleaned in forever because, well, I've been writing a novel which, apparently, consumes a vast majority of one's life.

I've started a list of things I absolutely have to get working on tomorrow. Unfortunately, none of them involve creating anything. My mom used to write to-do lists for herself all the time. She died with a list sitting on her kitchen table.

I have a feeling I'll never get finished either.

Thanks for listening.

Photos while bike riding

Yeah. It probably isn't a good idea to take photos while you're actually moving on the bike, but I couldn't resist.

Great Allegheny Passage from Confluence to Fort Hill. Cleared the cobwebs. Got me focused.

A few days ago I had written about 12 important pages for the end of my latest novel, and they felt like I just wanted to get it done. I thought about them on the trail, about what the problems were, about what questions really needed to be solved better (or solved period) and about what needed more explanation. When I sat down after I got home, I started handwriting ideas out that I didn't want to forget on scrap paper. After the third sheet and I still wasn't finished, I decided to finish up on the computer.

Two pages single-spaced later, I've got problems solved that I didn't even realize I had.

Tomorrow, we write.

Five impossible things before breakfast

The last thing I saw before I went to bed Saturday night was the very end of Alice in Wonderland. I found it on ABC Family just as the White Queen and Hatter were standing outside the queen's castle waiting and hoping Alice would show up to battle the Jabberwocky.

That last paragraph doesn't really matter much except that, when Alice first gets a look at the Jabberwocky, she tells Hatter that sometimes she "believes as many as six impossible things before breakfast." So I'm sitting here before breakfast thinking of the things that, until yesterday, I would have thought were impossible, and I'd like to share five of them (I'm lazy, it's early, and I'm pushing it to find five).

1. I am (apparently) a writer

Growing up a reluctant reader makes this one all the more impossible. I guess now I've become what might be considered a "reluctant writer."

2. I would write a book

I did write the Twisted book so I would have something to illustrate, but in the end there were words involved and I did write them. That, and they were bound in a book.

3. I would be reviewed in Publishers Weekly

I'd like to think that only happens to real writers.

4. Writers would accept me as one of their own

I spent the weekend at a writer's retreat trying to convince everyone there that I was actually just an illustrator, not a writer, and that I didn't really like to write. They convinced me otherwise.

5. Editors wouldn't laugh and point when I read them my manuscript

At that writer's retreat over the weekend? Yeah. I got to read to two different editors from Scholastic; Grace Kendall and Mallory Kass. I personally witnessed them laughing over the weekend, and they both seemed to have complete control over their index fingers, and neither of those things were directed at me as far as I could tell.

And I believed all of these impossible things before breakfast.

But you know the thing I'm thinking about as I'm writing this? Not only am I going to have to accept all of the above, but I'm also going to have to update my website.

Oh, and 6. Slay the Jabberwocky.