It has been my holy grail this week to try and find something to read. It’s not like there’s a dearth of reading material in my house. Indeed, the leaning tower of To Be Read books is alarmingly high, but there hasn’t been anything in it that struck my fancy. I picked up at least 10 books over the last several days before finally settling on The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid, which was one of the books from my goodie bag from Lynn Viehl. One of the characters has my rather unusual last name (which was also featured in Becoming Jane, oddly enough), so I figured it was a good enough reason to read it. 🙂 It’s not a burning, I can’t put it down kind of read, but it’s snared my attention enough to occupy my evening, which is more than anything else has at this point. So far it reminds me of A.S. Byatt’s Possession, but not quite so high-brow-academic sounding. I had a bath, but got too hot. I’m wishing for good cold weather so I can curl up with a book and some hot chocolate–lots of marshmallows. But instead I had a bowl of cocoa pebbles and a glass of milk.
I had delusions that I would have time to write today. In point of fact, I have been tied up with my class. I teach 2 sections of general psych online as a second job and it is, by turns, gratifying and aggravating. I love it when they have their lightbulb moments and suddenly “get it”. But their grasp of spelling, grammar, and critical thinking leaves a great deal to be desired, and I don’t always have the patience I need to get through it. Hence, no writing and a great deal of metaphorical beating of my head against a wall.
I did, however, get through my husband’s comments and suggestions on House of Cards. He’s really good at catching missing words, and giving info on police procedure and such (given that he works with law enforcement), so that was really helpful. Still waiting on my betas though.
It’s been my weekend for catching up on things domestic: mending, laundry, cleaning, projects, cooking, etc. I’ve felt thoroughly like Little Miss Productive, which is good, but I’m very much ready to get back to creative pursuits. I just haven’t made up my mind on what yet. Logic dictates that I ought to get back to Totem, as it’s half finished. Or to pick up Wanderlust, which I was all fired up about after posting those snippets for Blurb File Friday (here and here). But I still have that opening line knocking about in my brain “It always rains the day a good man dies.” Of course I have no idea who’s dead, how they died, why, who the heroine is, what the story would be, nothing but that line. I have to have something else to go on before I start something new. And of course there are thirty odd other beginnings floating around in the nether regions of my laptop, waiting to be given voice. I am suffering from a rare and bothersome case of indecisiveness. I want to get back into my writing routine, but not until I’ve decided what I want to devote my energies to. One of the reasons I paused on Totem back in May is that I wanted to tour the university’s archeology museum to get a feel for ambiance, size, etc., as such a museum is where the next scene takes place. Our museum was closed over the summer. It’s now open, so I need to run over one day on my lunch break and take a little tour. Maybe I’ll do that this week. Perhaps it will inspire me to pick back up with Totem and finish it.
3 thoughts on “Weekend Domestic”
my two cents is that whatever you do right now doesn’t necessarily have to be “the thing” you’re going to work until it’s done next. If you decide to pick up any one of those thirty-something blurbs and write a little on ten different ones this week, there’s nothing wrong with that. If you write three chapters into one and then visit the museum and get inspired to hit Totem again, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that the perogative and the joy of the unpubbed writer?
God bless you with the online classes. I know my son has taken a few in college and he has a tendency to write like he texts. It’s awful. Of course, he’s had a couple of unpleasant learning experiences with his writing. One of which is the history class he’s re-taking right now because of his poor grade on a paper where the professor plainly states his content presented a worthy argument but he didn’t follow the format in the syllabus. *sigh* At least I hope it’s a lesson learned. I was stupefied he did something so, well…dumb. How much easier can it get than to just follow directions?
Evidently it’s a skill that many people never learn…