Gather up your New Year’s Writing Goals for next Monday. We’re posting here to keep track.
Hope everyone’s yesterday was fun.
Mine was.
Got Grinch footed-jammies.
When I was on my LDS mission, a friend used to sing to me, “You’re a mean one, Sister Lynch.”
I loved it.
And I love my jammies.
Plus also, I got Modern Family, Seasons One and Two.
AND I met Kyra’s hot Indian boyfriend’s Mom and Dad.
That was an amazing part of the day.
Why? I had this sort of spiritual experience (I think one might say spiritual–kind of left me frightened and breathless) (I won’t be talking about that, though) and I came to the realization that I can speak to a thousand people, sing in front of a crowd, dance around on a stage, come up with cheesy, semi-dirty writing jokes on the spot, complain endlessly about what I’m working on–but ask me to talk to normal people around a Christmas dinner table and I don’t know what to say.
I sat there, the house filled with babies and parents and even someone who loved The Chosen One (that wasn’t my own family!) and I couldn’t come up with one topic–and this would make Chris happy–so was SILENT.
“How’s the novel going?”
“Got any hopes for the Newbery?”
“Did you do NaNo?”
That’s what I wanted to say.
Three times, people told me about family problems and I couldn’t say anything back.
All I could think was, “Oh, that’s awful. Can I put that in a book?”
At one point I made a pretty funny joke about someone I’d never met before who sat across the table from me (thank GOODNESS she made a grammar mistake I could play off) and everyone burst out laughing. One second later I got the long, slow press of Kyra’s knee into mine that meant Mom, are you kidding me? Shut up!
It’s a terrible thing to realize you’re flawed.
All in all, yesterday was a darned good day.
This morning as I lay in bed thinking about this post, I remembered back to my Santa experience from so many years ago.
Oh, how I love Santa. I love that wishful feeling, that waiting feeling, that hopeful, good, let-it-be-true feeling.
That’s when I realized something else.
All those feelings are exactly why I write.
I like believing.
Throwing Up Words 