Well, I beg to differ.

For a while there, I seriously lost my mojo. I’ve been dragging, cranky and sleepy. Basically just burned out, and needed a mental break from everything. My daily word count has been seriously slacking. I took some time off from my side gigs and relaxed with my family, had a date night with the husband, caught up on some much needed housework and personal tasks that needed attending. Basically, I allowed myself to rejuvinate for a bit.

But after DAYS of 0 words written or too few words written to bother to track, I finally got my groove back yesterday. And with yesterday being a work holiday, I managed to get almost 5,000 words written yesterday. Not just 5,000 crappy words either like the few sad ones that I did force myself to squeeze out earlier this week while I was in my slump, but good stuff! Well as good as an initial rough draft can get, anyways. The point is, I made a note to myself to stop crying in front of a blank screen. I’m more productive if I actually give myself a chance to relax every once in a while and then get back to work.

So it’s 3:40 am, and I’m finally going to call it a night. A long, tiring night, but a good one.

What is interesting to me though is the fact that some people look forward to the opposite: getting away from their family. I’m not talking about your typical I-need-a-break-to-spend-some-me-time kind of getting away, though. That I can relate to. But the people I’ve been meeting with this week all have to travel to do their jobs, easily around 75% of the time. When I casually asked some of them how do they handle family life when they’re always on the go, some of them said that being away from home actually makes it easier for them to deal with family life, because if they had to be at home with their spouse and children every day they’d go crazy. One even went so far as to say that if it wasn’t for the fact that he was mostly only home on the weekends, he and his wife would probably be divorced by now, since spending more than 2 or 3 days together straight is painful for both of them.

I think that is so sad.

But my spouse is also my best friend, I adore my children and I love my house. To me there is no place like home and I am so glad that tonight I get to return to it. I also look forward to not having to get up and get dressed, put on makeup, make sure my hair looks luxurious and drive to an office every morning before starting work like I did this week – since that’s usually when I get most of my productive writing time done. These past 5 days of doing NaNoWriMo during a week when I ONLY had free time to write at night after long, 12 and 13 hour work days were really painful, but I did manage to get a total of 3,246 words written. That’s about half of what I’d hoped to have written by now, but I still have the rest of this weekend to try to pick up the pace.

I hope Day 4 will be much more productive. We shall see, eh?

END GOAL: 50,000 words
GRAND TOTAL SO FAR: 1,603 words
TIME LEFT: 28 days

Day 1: I only wrote about 204 words last night before I feel asleep right on my key
board after typing for about 15 minutes. But hey, 204 is better than 0, and considering that I wrote them after packing driving for hours, I’m going to claim those words with pride!

Day 2: *Whew* this meeting is going to be a beast. It’s only Monday, and I’m already whimpering and ready to go home. I wrote from 9:20 pm until 10:50 pm tonight, and I got 1,117 more words written today. I want to write more, but I can barely keep my eyes open.

END GOAL: 50,000 words
GRAND TOTAL SO FAR: 1,321 words
TIME LEFT: 28 days

Have you started yet?

National Novel Writing Month is meant to encourage people to focus on writing lots of words in a relatively short span of time. Because it is all about quantity over quality, I’ve never been interested in participating before. But looking at how long it took me to write the 2 novels and the 2 novellas I’ve finished so far, I thought it might be interesting for me to join in this year. I figure I could gain a number of things through this exercise, such as:

1. Explore my writing voice. Even though I have a few finished works behind me and lots of blog posts, I still feel as though I am still only in the beginning stages of discovering my voice. It’s easy to choke the natural storyteller in you with the (sometimes conflicting) information from writing workshops, author and editor tips, style guides and expert advice. A full month of writing fiction fast without agonizing over every single word I put down on the page for a change may be just the thing I need to reveal my true, unadulterated natural writing voice.
2. Establish a new writing routine. Considering how I’ve been falling behind in my personal writing goals past few weeks, I could certainly use a new schedule. This will force me to get even more serious about my writing regime. Breaking down the numbers, 50,000 words in 30 days = 1,667 words a day (if writing 7 days a week). That’s about 6 pages a day. It’ll take some discipline, some creative time-management and changing my wake/sleep times and my chatting /reading / tv-watching / video-game playing habits.
3. Get a productivity boost. Having 50,000 words written by the end of this month will definitely help me make up for some of my slack! Getting a story down on paper is always a good thing in my book – even if it is only in a SUPER-rough rough draft.
4. Have fun. I love writing. It is a release, a hobby as well as dream profession for me. And allowing myself to FREELY write fiction without all of the professional voices in my head saying things like “What those adverbs!”, “Oh no, you wrote that sentence in passive voice instead of active!” and “Are you head-hopping again?” will only up the fun factor.
5. Inspire others to write their story. Just casually mentioning my intention to participant in this to a friend made them want to get in on it, too. Who knows – maybe others will want to join us. Some things are even more enjoyable with company.

Every day this month I plan to post my daily progress. If you’re playing too, please stop by and let me know how you’re doing!

Now, I’m not sure if it’s itty bitty Shirley Henderson’s enormous amount of animated acting energy that enthralled me:

Or how hilariously well Rufus Sewell played the eccentric scoundrel that “tames” her (damn, he’s even sexy in fishnets):

Or if it’s the chemistry between the two that hooked me:

Either way, I found this movie as equally hilarious as it was romantic. Very few recent romantic comedies have moved me in this way. Honestly, as soon as it ended I started it over and watched it again. And then twice more the next day. But then again … I am a bit of a weirdo, aren’t I.

Anyways if you haven’t seen Shakespeare Retold, I think you should, even if just for this segment. If you do, let me know what you think!

I’ve been a bad, bad blogger.

But I’m not going to fret over that. Nope. I’ve recently made a promise to myself to stop fretting over everything so much. You see, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought about blogging. My problem is that I tend to fret way too much about what to post. About what to blog about, how to title a post, how to tag it. I won’t bother to mention everything else I tend to fret over (i.e. EVERYTHING).

Despite my over analyzing, I did manage to make some decent writing progress, though.

I’d received some feedback on my fantasy romance novel from a few of the members of my local writing group about how they would have loved to actually see the foreign elf language that I referred to but never displayed. So over the summer I created a language for my fantasy series. Holly Lisle’s ebook Create A Language Clinic broke the process down into steps that made it easy, geeky fun! Armed with the language I call Linjista Diis, I went back and did another revision of The Beauty of Death taking a close look at ALL of the dialog in the book, reading it out loud and tweaking it all until it sounds just as good outside of my head as it did inside of it.

That was the most fun editing I’ve ever had, actually!

So with that story polished to perfection I’m ready to send it back out into the wild. Let’s see what happens!

This summer I also finished a first and second draft of a science-fiction romance novella, titled The Oma Pursuit. It needs another round of revisions and then a final polishing, but I think I’m suffering from editing burnout because I spent weeks “editing” the same pathetic chapter over and over. So I’ll come back to that one.

Writing Tip: Don’t waste time forcing yourself to finish something you’re really not in the mood too. If you’ve burned yourself out on a task or project, take a break and work on something more enjoyable. You’ll still be productive!

My “break” project turned out to be an adult re-telling of fairy tale that isn’t frequently redone. Since I’m only about 2k words into this novella though, and still working out a couple of plot details, I won’t say too much more about it just yet. I’ll say more about this story when I’m further along in the project because if I post something about it here and I go back to the story and decide to totally change it, I’ll feel bad about having posted wrong info on my blog.

And I really don’t want to fret about that.

If you’re not watching HBO’s show True Blood, you’re missing out. I personally can’t seem to get enough of it. I mean, on Sunday nights I get all tingly when the clock changes from 7:59 to 8.  It’s no Buffy (not that anything was wrong with Buffy). It’s dark, it’s sexy, it’s graph, it’s disturbing and it’s romantic. An interesting combination, I know.This is my kind of show!  Here’s why:

• It has vampires
• It has sexy vampires
• It has sexy vampires having sex
• There’s a telepathic human chick
• It has other paranormal characters, like shape-shifters
• The fantasy world very real
• It has mystery and suspense
• It has a wide-range of interesting characters
• It has a multi-cultural cast

One more major reason I love this show. Even the gay character turns me on. Oooh Lafayette … please, please turn into a vampire.

It is based on the Sookie Stackhouse book series (also known as The Southern Vampire Mysteries) by Charlaine Harris. Season 2 just started, and I am already hanging on the edge of my seat waiting for the next episode.

HOT RATING: 5 out of 5 flames
If you haven’t been watching and missed the entire first season, I highly recommend you buy it. (click the picture for the link to purchase the Season 1 DVD set)

** Is The Kitchen the Woman’s Place? **

I know a couple that recently got into a bit of a tiff.  For the majority of their 30+ years of marriage, they shared the chore of preparing dinner. He cooked on weekends and at least once during the week, and she cooked the other four or less days. All was well until a few years ago when he just stopped cooking altogether, unless he was throwing a dinner party for family and friends.

The wife was bothered by this, but not enough to make a fuss about it, and so she carried on. Until last week when he had a day off work and she didn’t. She came home after a long day and went to her bedroom, thinking she could relax for a little while. Her husband came in and asked him when she was going to cook dinner.

Now mind you, this man is a WONDERFUL cook. And he was off work, had been home most of the day, and was in the other room watching television when she arrived.

So the wife blows up. She asks why he couldn’t cook dinner himself? She’d had a big lunch and wasn’t even hungry. His response?

“You’re the woman. Anything that is done inside the house is your job, and anything that is done outside of the house is mine.”

Now here’s the thing. I’m a modern kind of gal. Self-sufficient.  Educated. Holds down a job in the corporate world.  But I also still hold onto a few traditional values myself.  Although I don’t completely subscribe to the idea of gender specific roles, I can understand them (to a certain degree) and have no issues with either men nor women who do.

But if this man truly believes that everything done inside the house is women’s work and outside the home men’s, why does his wife go to a job she can’t stand 5 days a week to help pay the bills? She has told me before that overtime at his job is available, but he doesn’t take it. They don’t have any young children, so he could also pick up a part-time job or look for a position with higher pay so his wife wouldn’t have to work and could fully embrace this “woman’s role” he wants her to take on. It is not fair to ask her to adhere to old-fashioned rules if he’s not willing to work harder to do the same.

He says:

“Well since I shovel the snow and mow the lawn, she should be the one doing the cooking and cleaning.”

But she says:

“He mows the lawn once, maybe twice a month, and it only snows a few weeks out of the year. But meals need to prepared and dishes need to be washed every day! Floors and toilets need to be cleaned weekly. He doesn’t help with any of that.”

It is my belief that in a healthy marriage, the husband and the wife function as a team. There should be little fretting over which sex is supposed to be the one doing what. If there are things to be done, they should simply be done by whichever partner is able and available to do it. If this means relying on traditional gender roles, then so be it. If this means completely reversing them, then so be it that way. So long as somehow, some way, it results in both parties applying close to equal effort (or at least their best efforts), then all is well. In a healthy relationship, the husband would feel masculine, needed and respected even if he bakes a casserole and vacuums the living room. The wife would feel feminine, appreciated and taken care of even if she’s the one painting the fence or making sure the bills are getting paid.

** Does The Man Wear The Pants? **

Maybe. Maybe not. I think that a good man who knows what needs to be taken care of and how to get things done should be in charge … right along with his good woman. I think it’s less about gender and more about the individuals and their relationship.

A married couple should be a team, a dynamic duo!  A healthy one wouldn’t have  gender-based power struggles. Let whichever one of you is best equipped to handle a specific aspect of your lives manage it, while respecting the input and wishes of the other. Simple. That just might result in one person being more vocal than the other. It could also lead to completely equal levels of this perceived “power”.

But either way, it should be about what makes the most sense for that couple to get things taken care of properly, and not about gender or being in “control”. In my marriage, I manage our budget and my husband manages the yard and landscaping, but still we always consult each other. I can’t think of anything we don’t collaborate on to some degree. It works great for us.

I say save the superior/subordinate roles for work. And maybe for some role-playing in the bedroom.

Whoops, I forgot to come back and give an update, didn’t I? I’ve been so caught up in fictional world-building and writing that I’ve forgotten to blog!

So I did go see Star Trek a couple of weeks ago, and it was very good! Yes, in case you’re wondering, I still think Star Trek is hot. Maybe even hotter now with Spock being all young and virile and not minding ladies with cocoa skin (so maybe there’s a chance for me yet!). Heck even Kirk was doing it for me in this movie!

Star Trek was so good in fact, that I was motivated to put the story I’d been writing (in slow motion, it seems) aside and started working on this space opera that started developing in my head several months ago. So for the past near two weeks, I’ve been busy creating the details of the world; its history, its current technology, galaxies, the planets and their inhabitants. I’ve even been geeking-out researching stuff like Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, hypothesized solutions to his gravitational field equation, and electron particle propulsion so that I could decide exactly how I was going to have my characters travelling around the universe.

Now that’s what I call fun stuff! Oh don’t worry – it’ll be sexy too, of course.

I have outlined a series of several novels and novellas all set in this same fictional universe and have a great start on one of the novellas. This story is practically bursting out of my head, so I have to get it all down before my fingers will let me even THINK about going back to the other stories I’ve started.

*sighs* So much to write, so little time to write it all!

In the meantime, I’ll try my best not to neglect the blog too much … if I can stop daydreaming about sexy aliens and spaceships long enough.