Diana Rowland — Writing, Life, and the Stuff in between

August has pretty much flown right by. Sheesh! I guess there’s an upside to being insanely busy—the hottest part of the year goes by with barely a notice.

So here’s what my average weekday has looked like for most of this month.
Wake up 4:45 am. Either go for a run or do 40 minutes on the stationary bike. (I’ve been trying to run MWF, and do the bike T, TH.)

Get home/finish, do breakfast, shower, get dressed, clean the kitchen (I am SO sick of having a house on the market), then get the kid up at 6:15-6:30. Sit and cuddle with her in the recliner while she drinks her milk and watches “Little Einsteins.”

7 am or so, do last minute sweep/clean of house, make sure the kid goes potty (in the potty!), get her dressed, teeth and hair brushed, and then kick husband and kid out the door by 7:30.

Go to work. Try and write on my lunch hour.

Get off work 4:30ish, and either head to gym or coffeehouse to write more. (I go to a coffeehouse to write after work because if I went home it would waste over half an hour for me. Instead I go to a place near the day care, and then can usually get another hour of writing in before I have to pick her up.) If I go to the gym (which I really try to do at least 3 times a week) I squeeze out a quicky 20 minute weight workout, then force myself to do 40 minutes on the elliptical trainer.

Pick up the kid, head home. Do something that resembles dinner that doesn’t involve messing the kitchen up too much. Spend a couple of hours doing something vaguely resembling Family Quality Time (which usually involves all of us being in the same room while we do our own thing.) Give the kid a bath around 8ish. Give kid to husband to put to bed.

Try and write some more. Go to bed 10ish.

On the weekends we sleep as late as possible. I also rarely do any working out on the weekends. And at some point during the weekend the husband almost always takes the kid off for several hours to give me alone/writing time.

The funny thing is that I’ve really never been an organized person. But I think there comes a moment when a person realizes that if they want to do all the things that they want to do, then they either need to give some of the crap up, or they need to schedule the ever living crap out of their life. Thank god for weekends!

***

My agent warned me that August was an insanely slow month in the publishing world, so between that knowledge and being busy as all crap, I’ve actually managed to not stress too much about the submission status of my novel. Give me another couple of months—then I’ll probably start freaking out! But I’m trying to be good; I’m working hard on the next book. I’ve finished the [incredibly rough and shoddy] first draft, and am now going through and putting in and taking out all sorts of stuff that will basically render the final product completely unrecognizable from the rough outline that I started with. (Yes, right now I’m the stage of novel-writing where I’m utterly convinced that this thing is horrible and will never ever be right. Thankfully, I know through reading other author blogs that I am not the only person who goes through this and that this feeling will—hopefully—pass.)

And, speaking of blogs, I’ve come to something of a decision about this one. I’m keeping it—mostly. I’ve received a wide swath of advice ranging from “don’t change a thing” to “no blog no how no way Real Writers don’t blog.” I can see why the “don’t change a thing” part could be risky for a writer, and I also disagree with the “no blog” view, especially since there are SCADS of very successful writers who blog, and blog about far more than just their writing. I got to thinking about how I find new books and what I do when I find an author I like, and one of the first things I do is I look for their website, and when I find their website the first thing I do is look and see if they have a blog. Then I see if they link to any other authors, and will often look harder at those names when I go to the bookstore.

So I’m basically going to strip out most of the super-personal stuff (after backing the whole thing up first, of course!) and then maintain a professional, but still fairly personal and personable site—hopefully maintaining a happy medium. I don’t get a zillion daily hits at this point, but I’m fairly sure that the hits I do get are from people who want to read about me and my life and my writing, and I don’t want to lose any of them.

***

In other news, we did get an offer on our house, the caveat being that it’s a predicated offer, i.e. it only goes through if they sell their house. And it’s an open predication, so if we get a better offer, or even one that we prefer over this one (i.e. ready to buy right now), we can take it—hence the reason our house is still on the market.

Yes, we now have a silly little chain of predications. We have a predicated offer on the house we want to buy as well, so as long as the people we’re hoping to buy the house from don’t make a predicated offer on the house of the people trying to buy our house—resulting in an eternal loop of predications—we might maybe someday get through all of this and actually get into a new house. Sheesh!

I’m steadily working on making this website more professional and attractive and accessible and all of that. It’s still nowhere near where I want it to eventually be, but I think I’m getting closer. I’m not a web designer by any stretch, so I’m relying on the talents of others to pull me through.

However, I’m experiencing a bit of a dilemma. My eventual goal is for this domain to be my “Author Website.” (That’s pretty much always been my goal, but until recently the “Author” part has been a lot more distant.) I think I have some good ideas for dynamic content that will attract people to the site and have them returning as well, but the one thing I am very undecided about is this journal/blog. I’ve maintained an online journal for over ten years. I chose long ago to allow the world glimpses into my personal life, and at times I have put very personal stuff on here. However, there’s still quite a bit that y’all don’t see. I try to never air any dirty laundry about my relationships with any members of my family. I very seldom say anything detailed about dayjob work; I do my best to keep anything like that very generalized, and (hopefully) nothing that could ever come back to haunt me. I also worked in computer crimes long enough to have some common sense about security. (99% of the people who read this journal do not know my daughter’s real name, and the other 1% know it because they know me/her in real life. I also know that if anyone is really determined and has the right resources, they’ll be able to find out far more about me than I could ever hope to reveal on this site.)

So, the dilemma is this: If I’m fortunate enough to sell my books and this website indeed becomes an “Author’s Website”, should I remove the journal or should I allow readers and potential readers of my books continued easy access to this insight of Diana Rowland the writer/mom/cop/IT professional/person? I’ve seen quite a bit of advice on how to set up a “professional” website, and there are usually words of warning about maintaining blogs that deal with anything beyond the business of writing. But that just seems so… boring. [shrug]

I figure I have two choices: I can move this personal journal to a different domain, one that is not so obviously “Diana Rowland the Author”, and then simply maintain a writing-related blog on this domain. Or, I can keep doing what I’ve been doing–sharing the ME with the world, and include people who have read or are going to read my books and hopefully not turn anyone off by showing so much of ME.

This may take some pondering.

I called my sister late this morning to see what she was doing today. “I’m curled up in my chair and I’m on page 520,” she replied. I asked her if my 15-year-old niece was going to her dance class today. “Are you kidding?” was the gist of the reply. Apparently every teenager has turned off their cell phone!!

Now I have confession to make. I have Harry Potter #7 at home, sitting on my dining room table and I have yet to start reading it. In fact, I’m reluctant to start reading it right now, because I know that there’s absolutely no way that I’m going to have several uninterrupted hours for reading it, and I don’t want to have to put it down and pick it up several times during the reading. I’ve come to accept, in a fatalistic way, that I’m going to hear or read spoilers before I manage to make it to the end of the book. But I think I’d rather have the knowledge of how it turns out somewhat “spoiled” than have the reading enjoyment of it spoiled.

Because I am desperately looking forward to that blissful future when I can go through my day without the theme song from Dora/Wiggles/Little Einsteins/Blues Clues running through my head. All. Day. Long.

DoraDoraDora the exploreeeeer…!

Gah!!

I’ve been in Arizona all week long, where the temps are obscenely high and the humidity is achingly low. However, it’s been a balmy 72 degrees for me all week simply because I’ve stayed put in the hotel.

Okay, so I might have ventured out once or twice. It really is stinkin’ hot and dry. However, there are bunny rabbits all over the place!

Anyway, I’ve been in Arizona to learn more about a big horking piece of software that our lab is about to purchase, and I’m flying back tonight to return to a much more normal climate: 95 degrees, 95% humidity. Ah, bliss!

In other news, I have some really cool exciting news that has had me jumping up and down, buuuuuuuut you’re going to have to wait until Monday to find out details. (No, it’s not about the house.)

Anna was trying to pet the cat, Emma, just now, at a moment when Emma didn’t care to be petted. Emma is amazingly tolerant of the attentions of a three-year-old, but when she tires of it she will administer a token nip or very light tap with her claws which usually gets the message across (and has so far failed to draw any blood.) Emma batted at Anna’s hand, and so I tried to explain to Anna that you can’t make cats do anything, and that if they don’t want to be petted it was best to leave them alone.

Anna considered this information very seriously, then looked at me and said, “Then we should get a DOG.”

I love the 5th of July because it means the %$!@ firecrackers will stop.

I have come to utterly despise firecrackers. Not fireworks. I love watching professional fireworks displays. But firecrackers are legal in these parts, which means that on New Years Eve and 4th of July (and usually the week leading up to each as well) are chock filled with far too many people setting the damn things off. I know that lots of people love them, but I think most people are in utter denial about how dangerous they are. Not only are they dangerous to living bodyparts, but they’re also quite dangerous to stuff that burns, e.g. collected leaves on roofs of houses. It rained most of the day yesterday, which delighted me since it pretty much killed the risk of fires.

But I admit it’s not just the danger that makes me hate them so. Call me a curmudgeon, but I can’t stand the noise (it scares Anna to death) and I especially can’t stand all of the trash that ends up all over the street and in our yard. And I guess it’s that last part that annoys me so much about firecrackers. The people who spend all of this money on firecrackers (at least the ones in our subdivision) and spend half the night setting them off, seem to be in blissful denial that all of this crap that they shoot up into the air has to come down somewhere. Today Jack and I pulled close to 20 spent firecrackers out of our yard (I’m talking about the big ones with the 2-foot wooden rod attached to them–like giant bottle rockets). Grrr.

Okay, rant over. You won’t have to read my bitching about firecrackers again until the end of December.

Another person came to see the house today. Woo! I was looking at other real estate listed in the area, and we’re definitely the most reasonably-priced house in this subdivision. And the house was actually spotless today, too!

One of the biggest aggravations about having a house for sale is that it has to be in Pristine condition every single solitary time you leave the house. Which means that mornings that are already stretched thin and hectic become even more so when you have to factor in time for making sure all dishes are out of the sink and all laundry is out of sight and all floors are clean and all surfaces are wiped down and all toilets are flushed (yeesh) and all lights are on and all blinds are open and all beds are made… GAH!

This is in addition to making sure that kid is dressed and kid has pottied and kid drank all her milk and kid’s teeth are brushed and kid’s hair is brushed and kid’s bag is packed with the correct gear needed for that day at school (Dance day? Swim day?)

This morning I did my usual run-around-the-house making sure all was neat and tidy and pristine, and on my way out I noted that there was some grass that had been tracked into the kitchen. I scowled at the grass, and thought about the fact that the frickin’ broom was upstairs (I swear I will NEVER buy a 2-story house again if I can at all help it,) and then I scowled at the Sign-In sheet that realtors are supposed to use when the house is shown–the Sign-In sheet that has no frickin’ names on it at all so far, and I decided: Screw it. It’s not like anyone is beating our door down to see the place, and besides if I don’t sweep it, that will guarantee that someone will come to look at it today.

I just got a call from my realtor asking if it was all right if someone went to look at the house today.

HA!!

I called my husband and said, “Hey! My evil plan worked!”

His reply: “Which one?”

Of course now I’m sitting here obsessing as to whether I did make sure all the toilets were flushed (Hey, I have a 3-year old!)

Yeesh.

No more hot ice picks through the face. I took the first two pills of my z-pack last night, slept 9 hours, and woke up this morning with the definite sensation that I was actually Getting Better.

In house news, all of the paperwork has been signed, the check has been handed over, and the inspections have been scheduled.

Now we just need to sell this house. [whimper] It’s spotless. Totally frickin’ spotless. And not a single frickin’ person has come to look at it yet. [sob!] Though I am maintaining my sanity (ha!) in the knowledge that 5 flyers have been taken from the tube doohickey out front. (Yes, I’ve been counting them every day.)

[sniffle] I actually thought I was almost over this darn cold. My worst day (or so I thought) was Monday, when I Just Couldn’t Breathe no matter what combination of drugs I took. But then it gradually started getting better, though the sniffling remained.

However, I was wakened at about 1:30 am this morning with the sensation that someone was attempting to drive a red-hot ice pick through my left cheekbone. As soon as I determined that there was not, in fact, anyone attempting to do such, I dragged my weary body out of bed and shambled downstairs to find drugs. I took some decongestanty stuff, and an aleve, and tried to go back to sleep.

Half an hour later the ice pick was still pounding through my face, so I got up again, and went in search of stronger drugs. I finally resorted to a stash of leftover painkillers (leftover from my C-section, which tells you just how often I resort to this level of assistance.) However, I’ve seen SO many ODs, and I’m such a weenie, that I broke the damn pill into quarters (after first checking to make sure it was not the kind of pill that you are absolutely NOT supposed to break or crush) and only took one quarter. Fortunately, that 1/4 pain pill was enough to at least let me get back to sleep. But between the level of pain, the low-grade fever, and the lovely color of my snot, I was fairly positive that I’d progressed to a sinus infection. Bah.

So first thing on the agenda this morning after getting to work was to go up front and beg for a scrip for antibiotics (and longtime readers of this blog will know just how rare it is for me to want to take antibiotics, since I’m allergic to darn near every frickin’ one of them.) That’s one of those times when it’s nice to work for a doctor.

Now that Book One is steadily making the rounds of the agent world, I’ve been pounding pretty steadily at Book 2. Actually Book 2 was originally going to be Book 3, but the more I got into it the more I realized that Book 3 would work much better as Book 2, with just a few tweaks. So, the work I did on the original Book 2 has been set aside, and Book 3 which is now Book 2 is well underway.

OKay, I just confused myself with all of that. Anyway. I’m writing the next book. I decided to use the same process that I used for Book 1 (which was never Book 2 OR Book 3), which was basically to just writewritewrite and not worry about how crappy it was. I only put descriptions in if I really know them right then, I insert a lot of tags, like [fix the stuff with the bodies] and [something with action goes here], and mostly just write until I get to the end. Then I tear it all apart and work on it, but at least then I have the story in place.

I actually have a pretty solid outline for the next two books, which is making it easier as well.

Now if I could just breathe. Ugh.