What is the worst thing that happened to you today?

What is the best thing that happened to you today?

What did you daydream about?

How did you spend your free time? On your phone? On facebook? Or in your head, with your characters?

What are you scared of?

What are you excited for?

Do you end your sentences with prepositions?

List five things that have happened to you that you think have never happened to anyone else.

List five horrible things that have never happened to you but you’re scared will.

List five wonderful things that have never happened to you but you hope will–even in your wildest dreams.

Write down five character names you will use someday.

Write down three things you know your WIP needs.

Write down what your first kiss was like.

Write down what your last kiss was like.

Write down what you want to wear at your funeral after you’ve died and you’re watching from the back of the chapel.

Eat food.

Now write down five new ideas for novels.

 

Today I’m 

a. not going to get mad because it’s supposed to get cold again.

b. going to work on my book that I have a full draft of but feel like it’s not good enough so I’m tempted to trash it even though first drafts are never good enough. This book keeps whispering to me “keep me. keep going. keep trying.” One of the hardest parts of writing is when you can feel the potential of something but you don’t feel the confidence that you can make it what it can be. I know that if something HUGE can be done, this book could become something. I mostly just want people to tell me what to do. I want people to fix everything for me. I don’t want to do the work on my own because my brain is tired.

c. going to try to do laundry. 

d. going to read through an old manuscript that I worked on for two years. I have several drafts with several points of view and several plots and several characters all revolving around the same idea. I want so badly for this book to work but it never has. How do you know when to give up completely? 

e. going to hang upside down from the jungle gym in my yard. 

What are you going to do today? 

A few things:

1. I love WIFYR. And my advice is to get your book as ready as possibly can before that conference. Revise it. Have others read it. Revise it again. And again. And again. Make every second of that week count. 
2. Two of my baby boys had birthdays last week. My youngest turned one. My next youngest turned three. Ack! They’re growing up! 
3. My anniversary is on Wednesday. TEN YEARS! Is that a lot? Probably most of you have been married thirty and think who cares. I care. I think it’s crazy and exciting. We might eat Indian food because that’s what we did on our first date which was a total disaster but the food was good. 
4. And my book’s birthday is THURSDAY! THE END OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT comes out this week! Yay! 
5. I’m doing a signing thing at the King’s English in SLC on May 15th at 7:00 if any of you would like to come.
6. I’m also doing a signing in Las Vegas on Friday night if any of you would like to come! Road trip! 

I think that’s all. xoxoxoxox

 

A dental rant

Here is a thing I want to talk about: The day I went to the dentist WHICH I HATE AND HATE AND HATE.

I think I’ve spoken of this before. I hate going to the dentist.

Anyway, it couldn’t be avoided so I went. First thing they asked me was what show I was wanted to watch. Last time I picked some sitcom and then there were extended sexual jokes ringing throughout the office as I sat there with peoples’ hands in my mouth and I wanted to say, Turn it off. This is uncomfortable. But I couldn’t because their hands were in mouth.

So this time I picked a cooking show–the barefoot contessa to be exact. I have never watched this show but I have her cookbooks and I didn’t think it could get racy unless she cooked naked which I have heard is a thing, btw. So they put on the show. I was incredibly tense because that’s how I am at the dentist so I was watching the show as hard as I could so I wouldn’t be distracted by the hygienist yelling out numbers about my gums.

Here’s the thing about that show: Ina Garten kept saying that her friends were stuck in traffic coming in from the city and they were supposed to be hosting a dinner party so she agreed to cook for them because she owes them. Then they cut to her friends on the freeway saying, “We are so so late. This traffic is awful. We are so glad Ina said she’d cook something. It will be awesome. I cant’ believe we are stuck in traffic.”

Here’s my thing. Why is this the premise of the show? We know they’re all lying. How did they get the camera crews at her house and in her friends’ car so they could say how late they are? Why doesn’t she just do a cooking show? It felt very very fake and contrived and almost got me mad enough to forget the horrible stuff in my mouth that I was trying not to swallow and then I wondered can you die from not swallowing? Maybe. But back to the show, it was horrible story-telling. Really horrible.

I’ve read this in books. When the heart of the book is buried under silly things. Maybe the author is trying to be clever. Or maybe they are trying to teach us a lesson about friendship. Or maybe they think it’s boring if they don’t put in a bunch of extras.

Here’s what I want to see: The cooking. The meat of the story. I want that to be the focus. I want everything else, all the scenes and dialogue and descriptions that have NOTHING TO DO WITH braised beef or whatever she was making (there was a plum crumble that looked fantastic) to go away. It’s distracting and makes me lose focus. I could hardly concentrate and therefore I will never go back and finish the episode.

Also I had no cavities this time.

The end.