Spring Cleaning, Med Sheets, and Other Trivial Pursuits of My Writing Life

I cleaned the meds off my kitchen counter today. Returned the Children's Motrin and Tylenol to the bins in the cabinet. Put away the digital thermometer. Culled old med sheets. Inventoried the dosing spoons and syringes.

Packing away the meds must seem like such a trivial pursuit. Not in our house. Not over the last month or so anyway.

For an average kid a cold can last a week or seven days, whichever comes first. For E, a cold equals two weeks of sick time or more. That's why we've been out of commission for so long. Thanks to a cold that started mid February and morphed from one illness to another, I've been unable to clean the meds off the counter. A week or so ago, just about the time E started showing signs she'd finally beaten her bugs into submission (and I dared believe that maybe we were finally finished with the month from hell), P and I got the chest-cold-cough thing everyone else and his/her uncle seems to have had lately.

The bad news is I'm still so tired I could take a nap at the key board if I let myself do so. The good news is E's at school, I'm finally on the mend, and today, in addition to cleaning off the counter, I made progress working through the piles on my desk.

Two realizations came to mind while doing so:

1. My confidence level was high enough that when the phone rang I didn't expect the caller to be the teacher informing me that I should come get E because she couldn't make it through the day.

2. The number of meds on the counter (and the length of time they've been there) is a direct correlation to the quantity and quality of pages I'll be able to write during any given day.

3. Today, I'm in a much better position to commune with my characters, and leave the computer satisfied they were being honest with me.

4. Tomorrow will be a successful writing day.

Current read: Eoin Colfers's Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony.

Yoga Writing

The longer I practice my art, the more I'm convinced that the difference between those who succeed at finding an audience for their art and those who don't is the ability to maintain focus when life conspires.

Every new project has what I call a honeymoon phase. During this phase I'm so eager to get to work that I rush the girls to school, grab a quick breakfast, put up the tea kettle, and spend hours at my computer. More often than not my muse is so jazzed at this point that I'm unable to keep up as she introduces characters, places and world events, and offers me insights into the story.

Exciting and energizing, each day is a new discovery. Unfortunately, this inspirational phase doesn't last. After awhile the newness of the project wears off, and the breathless time spent typing my first draft turns into months--and in some cases years--of re-visioning.

Here's where the persistence, patience, and, more importantly, the ability to focus comes into play. During the re-visioning phase, life can and does conspire. Jobs come and go. Children enter our lives or set out on their own. Significant others come. Or go. Illness strikes. Our priorities shift. Our to-do lists grow.

Good or bad, happy or sad, our lives both inform our work and distract us from it. The challenge during times like these is keeping our work a priority, enough so that we're able to maintain the momentum created when our muse first whispered in our ear.

As the mother of three girls, one with significant special needs, keeping my focus as I re-vision my current work-in-progress, KM, has been one of the biggest challenges of my writing life. This isn't a complaint. It's a statement of fact. Realizing that my girls inform my writing in addition to challenging it was the key to making my process work for me rather than against me.

For the record I'd be lying if I said that tossing aside KM rather than finishing it hasn't crossed my mind. The difference here is that I refuse to let the fantasy go any further.

I am and always will be a writer. Which means that honing my ability to reclaim my center whenever life conspires is an essential skill.

Striving to write two pages a day is one way I keep focused. I have one of my VC advisors, Jane Resh Thomas, to thank for this practice, and the benefits it reaps.

Jane's mantras are simple:

1. Do your work.
2. Write two pages a day.

My two pages are rarely great. And I freely admit that lately I haven't come close to attaining such a simple goal. Yet, pledging to make it so means that more often than not I'm writing something each day, and when I finally sitt butt in chair to work on KM I'm able to enter the flow of my story much easier than if I'd waited until it was "convenient" to do so.

Another way I maintain my focus: yoga. Last night's class was a prime example of why I must continue my practice, especially in the face of E's illnesses.

Each pose, each asana does more than improve flexibility and core strength. Each posture becomes a moving meditation, one that requires such intense concentration that my worries slip away. The present is all that matters during that hour.

Each stretch and breath is in the here and now. And inevitably, by the end of the hour, something amazing happens.

My characters step forward. Sometimes as a group. Sometimes individually. They don't always have much to say, but it's enough to know they're there, waiting.

Remembering last night's class recalls the sense of peace and clarity I found there. And remembering that clarity reminds me my characters haven't deserted me no matter how much I fear that they have done so in the face of life's challenges.

Yoga is a gift. It brings me closer to my writing, reminding me that when I'm ready to work, my characters will be ready, too.

All I need to do is find my center--the place of clarity I've discovered through my yoga practice--and call.

Breathing Treatments, Allergies, and the Reluctant Muse

E's coughing again, and her nose seems to fill up as soon as she's done blowing it. Here's my theory why:

The forsythia's are blooming. The grass is greening up. The Weather Channel is warning of higher-than-usual pollen. Seasonal allergies could very well be to blame for this most recent setback.

Poor kid. She's off for spring break this week, which means we should be relaxing, chilling, doing all the things we'd hoped to do: a trip to see Bridge to Terabithea, a visit to Bath and Body Works to use old gift cards, planning and planting of flower and vegetable seeds for this year's garden, a walk to the library for a long overdue visit, a sleepover with friends. Unfortunately, at the rate the week's shaping up, we may very well spend the rest of it hunkering down and doing doctor visits. I'll be curious what we learn because E's already a walking cornucopia of allergy type meds.

Breathing deeply. Reminding myself that weeks like this one (when finding the uninterrupted time to write is damn near impossible, and writing anything meaningful if I do manage to find the time is even more unlikely) are a natural part of my process.

My yoga teacher J would probably have something reassuring to say about this place in which I find myself. Her advice would be wise, knowing, non-judgemental, just what I needed to hear.

"Don't worry about where you are or aren't," she's been known to say as we move from one pose to another. "Where you are is right for you. Honor where you are."

I want to believe this, need to believe this. Most days I do.

Today? Well, let's just say that after nearly a month of shepherding E from one illness to another with less than a week inbetween each bout, attending tonight's yoga class is crucial on so many different levels. For me. For my girls. For P.

And for my reluctant muse.

One Writer's Rationalization: Why Being Sick For a Week is Good Thing

E missed the entire week of school last week.

An entire week.

Normally, I'm able to write through E's illnesses. Not this time. The round-the-clock nursing required to keep E comfortable sapped me so completely that the need to sleep when E did trumped any hope of working on KM. I lived with this--accepted it as an inevitable part of my process--until Thursday or so when a mutated form of E's bug infected P and I.

Then I got mad--or would have--if I hadn't felt so crappy.

So, instead of spending the weekend catching up on writing and promised SCBWI-Illinois work, I hacked and coughed and tagged-teamed with P for the right to crawl under the covers, all the while attempting not to reinfect E.

One saving grace: E continued to get better despite our rotating sick ward.

Another saving grace: Friday's teen writer's group was a hoot, and the library asked us to extend our run indefinitely. Woohoo! A paying gig. How cool is that?

And yet another: This most recent illness of E's was her first sick week for the school year, making a comparison to last school year statistically remarkable. By this time last year, E had missed multiple weeks, enough that by the end of the school year illness had kept her away 25 percent of the time.

Hear that KM characters? In a weird warped way, the fact that last week was the first E missed this school year is encouraging news. Good news. Fighting news.

And now that we're all in a fighting mood, there's the matter of the sub for next week's crit group. Before we can finish it up I need to face my inner critic. It escaped its cage last week, and is more than a bit feisty about being returned to it.

So, I need a favor of sorts. Shouldn't take long, and might even be therapeutic. Take up a sword (there are plenty of them laying about the stage of the story) and help me subdue this foul beasty.

E Report, Coming Up Out of the Trenches, and Good News for the Muse

E's finally on the mend. She's not yet back at school, but we're giving certain meds less often, and I can actually envision sitting down with KM today instead of crawling under the covers when E takes her nap.

By the way, we ended up starting steroids over the weekend. As much as I hesitated doing so, it was the right decision. Within 12 hours we noticed a difference. E was still coughing, but the cough had changed, sounding less labored, more productive.

E still has a ways to go before she can return to school, but we're headed in the right direction, thank God.

Current read: Back to The Higher Power of Lucky after being seduced away by Cynthia Leitich Smith's Tantalize and Sharon Creech's Pleasing the Ghost.

Werewolves, Vampires, Coughing Fits, and Other Seductions of the Night

Another rough night, filled with coughing fits and too little sleep. Trying to keep ahead of the meds. Doing so seems to give E the best chance at grabbing a moment of uninterrupted sleep. One thing that seems to be helping: P and I have resorted to logging each med after we give it, and setting alarms so we don't sleep through the next one.

As for today, the jury's still out on whether or not we'll need to add steroids into mix. I think E's fits are less frequent and intense, but then again my assessment might be the result of wishful thinking.

On an up note, I finished Tantalize last night, curled up on the sofa and read about Quincie and Kieran rather than sleeping like I should have when P was on duty with E.

Wow-za. This book has it all: werevolves, vampires, seduction, murder, intrigue, red herrings, plot twists, and an irresistable (or should I say tantalizing?) page-turning pace.

Few books weave this kind of spell over me. Usually, the need to sleep trumps everything.

Doctor's Visit Cliff Notes (Or Why--in a Wacked Out Way--My Muse Might Just Find This Situation Inspiring)

Here's a Cliff Notes version of what the pediatrician had to say after listening to the list of E's symptoms (coughing, sore throat, nasal congestion, coughing, coughing, coughing) and checking her out:

1. After struggling for so long to bounce back from her cold/ear infection/cough, E's suffering from reactive airways, which in layman's terms means she's experiencing asthma-like symptoms and attacks.

2. Our last-ditch effort at 4 am to give E a nebulizer treatment for her hack-up-a lung coughing attack was the right course of action.

3. Round-the-clock nebulizer treatments should help reduce the swelling in her airways, which in turn should reduce the frequency and intensity of the attacks.

4. If treatments don't help after 24-48 hours, we bring in the big guns: a course of steroids.

5. In the meantime the usual: keep hydrated, keep up the heavy-duty cough medicine (the kind the pharmacist keeps under lock and key). And prepare for a few more nights of little or no sleep until the treatments have time to work. Or not.

Swell.

Even if I convince my muse to sit down with me at my computer (assuming I find the uninterrupted time to do so) I doubt that anything she says will make sense in the morning.

Then again, my muse has been known to work under intense and surprising conditions. Perhaps sleep deprivation and a quarantine at our house will work in my favor...