Not a Reading Update...

seriously.

This Writing-a-Book stuff is time consuming!

I've barely read (and my barely reading is like, 1 book every 8 days. LOL)

and I've been staying up way too late for way too many nights (five of the last 7 nights has been past midnight...)


I wish I could take a day off from work once a week just to write.  (I used to want to take a day off to catch up on cleaning house... now we have "Mags" coming for three hours every Monday - she puts away our clean laundry, picks up the kitchen (empties dishwasher, reloads, cleans counters) and puts the kids' toys away!  Every three weeks or so, she'll vacuum, change sheets, and clean bathrooms! I'm going to ask her to be my sister-wife next week...)


Instead of taking off work, I steal 30 minutes'time when I get home with the kids - after taking dogs out and feeding them, I set the kids up in the playroom and sit next door in the office and write. Button and Mack play together (or more like just in the same room) so quietly, it's AWESOME.
(I also steal time while at work.... ssssh!! I figure, as long as I'm still getting all my work done, why not??)



So, I'm still here!  At the beginning of chapter fifteen, just under 15K words... according to a word tracker I'm using (I plugged in a goal of 50K words - no clue if the book will be less, or if that many words just gets me close to the last chapter!) at my current average daily rate, I'll be done (with 50K words) by June 25th.

Only to start back at the beginning to deepen some sections, fluff others...



WHEW.

randoms

Yesterday, I almost got caught in a cell phone trap while on the road... apparently an "undercover" guy - not even in a car!! - "caught me with a phone in hand."
Dude - I only ever look at my phone while stopped at red lights... I didn't say that to the cops when they directed me into a parking lot down the road (the first cop radioed to these guys...)
I just said, "oh gosh - seriously, I'm usually very good at not being on it - he must have seen me just moving it from my lap to the cup holder..."
and they noted I had no points on my license (no violations - speeding tickets, moving violations, etc) and let me off with "just a warning..."




I continued on to my dentist appointment (a filling cracked two weeks ago)
the good news?  the tooth had no decay past what was already drilled out, it just needs a crown (and not a root canal as I feared...)
the bad news? I was being fitted with that mouth guard thing filled with goop to make molds for making the crown...
and when the dentist pulled the mold off, it pulled off my front crown (one that Ms. Mack had knocked off a few months back - with my cell phone -_-)

the really bad news? the dentist then dropped the crown on the floor...

(it was cleansed thoroughly and re-installed... ugh)





I crushed it at CarKaraoke this morning - HIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME!




Before crooning in the car, I ducked into Walgreens (once again, in the craziness of setting up the housekeeper (day #2! so excited!) and getting kids dressed & shoe'd this morning, I dashed out of the house without brushing my teeth, so I decided to buy brush and paste for work...)

At the checkout, I put my micro-chipped Amex into the card reader, and then cashier (cute guy) goes, "You can take it out now..."

And in my head I thought, THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!!!





I've got 9 chapters completed of TinCan... about 40 chapter-book-style pages.
I write about a page at a time - and "working on TinCan" also involves researching.  A LOT... thesaurus, dictionary, medical pages, etc. So I spend about an hour or so, and have only actually written 6-7 paragraphs...
This stuff is tedious!

But I do a bit each day, and cannot WAIT until it's finished... SO FREAKING EXCITED!

Challenge check-In

We left off with being in the middle of reading book number 17 this year...

Here's the new tally as of today! (not counting A Mother's Reckoning as read yet - got a few pages left, lol)

#17. The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer         Cat: 36/40: book by someone you admire           fin. Mar. 23rd
So - especially now that I am writing my own book, as a full-time working mom, I can totally respect the work that goes into it and can't believe how Ms. Twilight got out that whole series... AND THEN SOME! (of course - I don't think she worked - but just as hard to be a SAHM writing!!)
So - The Chemist was, I feel, totally different than her past more YA-ish works (Twilight, The Host) and it was pretty good! about a woman who worked for the government - basically as someone who assisted in "interrogations" with her chemical concoctions... and she's on the run. liked this book a lot!

#18. Sia by Josh Grayson           Cat: N/A               fin. Mar. 25th
It happened - I read a book (some books, by now) that just do NOT fit into any category...
And I think this will happen a lot this year - as I download more and more free books based on BookBub deals. (but not all of them good - I started one, and thought - bleh - stopped reading it and archived it...)
anyways - this was a nice fluff read about a girl who had lost her memory, found herself homeless - but then a week later was "discovered" by a classmate volunteering at a soup kitchen - she was in fact the daughter of a very wealthy couple in Beverly Hills (or something like that)
was good for light reading

#19. Revelation by Carter Wilson          Cat: N/A         fin. Mar. 26th
another free read recommended by bookbub...
This was actually a pretty cool book... here's the synopsis from GoodReads:

When Harden Campbell wakes cold and beaten in a dirt-floor cell, he finds only three other things in the room with him: the mutilated body of his good friend, an ancient typewriter, and a stack of blank paper, the top sheet of which has a single, typed sentence.

"Tell me a story."

He is locked away by a "friend" named Coyote, who created a "religion" as an experiment. Pretty cool psychological story...


#20. Beyond Grace's Rainbow by Carmel Harrington          Cat: by an author from a country you've never visited            fin. Mar. 29th
(The author was born in Wexford, Ireland and the story is set there - which is fun to read after becoming a little familiar with it from reading Outlander)
This book.
Not written phenomenally, but a good story - a single mother (she estranged her baby daddy because he was an alcoholic) is diagnosed with cancer; she goes through treatment while also trying to track down her biological mother (she was adopted at birth) so she can possibly pursue finding a bone-marrow match. (slight Spoiler Alert) at one point in the book toward the end, there was a bit of a twist that as I read it, I thought - WELL FUCK YOU BOOK! for doing that, and then literally set my nook down on the counter, and walked away saying out loud, "I NEED A MINUTE before we can continue..." (LOL good thing E isn't home when I do this... he'd call the white coats!)
So, and then the "epilogue" ended and I was still like, DAFUQ.
so did I like it? hate it?
I feel like if it was written more eloquently, I would have hated to love it, due to the ending, but - it was moderately good writing so - meh...


#21. Waiting for You by Catherine Miller        Cat: N/A                 fin. Apr. 1st
a lighter read (not that the TOPIC was light - a woman who is facing secondary infertility, and whose husband seems to have checked out - spending more and more time in his office/apartment in London where he spends the work week, who is also hiding SOMETHING HUGE) but it was a quick read with language and writing easy to pick back up after reading in spurts at bedtime and during lunchtime at work.



Currently Reading :
finishing up A Mother's Reckoning

and reading Ssh! by Stacey Nash (a free bookbub read... I am starting to feel the need, after The Chemist, and Outlander and the heavy Sue Klebold book, to get back into something deep - Jodi Picoult may be up next - but at the same time, am trying to keep focus on "TinCan" so we'll see...)

NOVEL NEWS UPDATE!

(speaking of news.. The President that no one expected to win executed the first military action of his campaign last night.  My assistant this morning asked me what I thought of it.

It took me about 2 full minutes to gather my thoughts before I spoke. 

I never really get into politics here, and only in the last very few years have I educated myself and read articles and news stories, and while I want to bury my head in the sand of my bubble/snowdome of first world problems (the coffee in the break room isn't hot enough for me in the morning, because the carafe was filled at 8am and by 9am it's still warm, but not as warm as I like and I can't microwave it in my mug because there's metal elements. total #FWP) I also feel the need be aware of what's going on in the world, as scary as it may be to consider what the future may hold for my children.

((I'll be honest - a small part of the reason I started following things more closely was to theoretically be able to get a head start on getting the hell out of dodge when the hypothetical shit may or may not hit the fan, whatever that hypothetical shit may be... I had a dream the other night that we WATCHED as a weird plane went down over the horizon - crashed in a sense, and warheads started launching from where it had crashed. Dream-Me was already mentally grabbing as many bottles of water, cans of soup, and precious mementos as possible - cramming in any bag at arm's reach - as we flung the kids into car seats and peeled out, heading west.))

ANYWAYS - no, the news I refer to in the title is an update on The Next Great American Novel that I started writing while sitting in Starbucks on Tuesday... 

 

The number of pages and chapters written so far (17 chapter-book pages, an intro and five chapters) doesn't very accurately represent the hours of work put in so far which include researching medical jargon, university settings/academia, and creating characters - from their date of birth to their favorite food to their inner weaknesses and strengths.

I have the entire plot laid out (partially in print, partially in my head) and each time I "read" through what the finished product will be in my head, I get giddy and dance around and then stay up way too late (i.e. past MIDNIGHT) writing/researching/typing & deleting and typing some more.

YOU GUYS - I am so f*cking excited about this.

(Especially excited that this may make me the next Stephenie Meyer and then I can quit my day job shortly after publication because MGM/Searchlight/21stCenturyFox will want to purchase the rights and I will get to help audition actors/actresses and hand-pick the faces that get to bring my people to life.)

((I might be getting ahead of myself...))

(((I'm especially proud that I actually did work today while on the clock, the first deviation all day being the writing of this blog post...)))

I'm also looking forward to a glass of Clos du Bois chardonnay, my favorite white wine... 47 more minutes til the whistle blows!

Happy Friday!!!