The Back-from-Vacation Slam

I don't need to explain it to you, right? Most of you have taken a week-long vacation (mine was in Williamsburg last week, so I had a good excuse for the blog silence—for once :) ) and come back to have all of the tension you've relaxed away hit you harder than ever. If you're lucky, it's only ten-fold. If not, it's a hundred.

I've been cranked up to a thousand.

The good news: I finished line edits on Under the Moon and sent those to my editor, and submitted a requested manuscript elsewhere. I have a cover for Behind the Scenes, and should soon get the final JPGs so I can post it.

The challenge: Juggling writing one manuscript and revising another with working extra hours and keeping up with client work. While handling soccer practices, the start of school in a week, and half a dozen appointments for the kids and myself. Head down, keep going until everything is done, on time. Ready set go.

But you're not here to listen to me whine about good things! Deadlines and client work and extra hours are good things! They sure beat rejections and unemployment, for pete's sake.

Unfortunately, deadlines and extra hours leave me precious little to talk about here. *thinks*

Okay, some of the usual fallbacks:

We saw Captain America on vacation. I was so happy the timing worked out so I didn't have to go to the Glee movie with the kids. I like Glee, but I don't need Gleemersion. The kids liked it more than they expected.

I loved Captain America. Well, I found the overly skinny CGI distracting. Ditto with the overly buff CGI. Once they padded Chris up instead of sticking his head on another body, it all worked a lot better. But other than that, I liked the story a lot, and loved Howard Stark and the Red Skull. The ending wasn't what you'd expect or even want if the movie were stand alone, but knowing it's all setup for The Avengers made it okay.

And hey, if you haven't seen it yet, stay after the credits. We were the only ones in the theater who did. I was all, "seriously?" They were obviously not even semi-dedicated fans. All these movies have a quick scene at the end. Maybe they didn't like those. Maybe they thought finding Thor's hammer at the end of Iron Man 2 was lame, or that Loki being alive at the end of Thor wasn't worth the wait. But this one was so worth it. They had a trailer for The Avengers, and OhMyGod, I don't know if I can actually handle watching that. All those superheroes in one room? Tony Stark and Thor and Captain America? *shiver*

Many of my summer shows are done already. I miss Auggie. Like, a lot. But I'm loving Haven, even though, really, all of my enjoyment is wrapped up in the anticipation of something happening between Nathan and Audrey. I just want to see that look on his face when she touches him. And she's so oblivious! It's not just that, of course, the mystery is intriguing, and the Troubles they come up with are clever. This show will hold me into the fall. Especially since I won't have any time for TV!

I can't say I'm liking Torchwood as much as I have in the past. There's way too little emphasis on Torchwood itself, and too much on the horrors of no one dying. I'm two episodes behind, so I don't know if that changes. I hope so. That's a lot of money for a show we don't like.

So that's pretty much all I've got! What about you? Comments on these things, or other entertainment that's been filling your summer? How was your vacation?

In Over My Head

Yesterday was a pretty productive day, culminating in a meeting to revise and finalize the Policy and Procedure manual for my local writer's group, something that's been in the works since 2003.

Unfortunately, none of my productivity was the stuff on my list. And the same thing happened today! I spent hours darting (figuratively) here and there, getting ready for The Month of the Hero. And I'm still doing it! I stopped writing this post to go set up that page at my website, then created a few more bit.ly links, then posted on Twitter, then took a deep breath and came back here.

I still have to set up my posts for the week and schedule them to go. They're written, but need some additions and tweaking. I also have mail to prep to send, some revisions on three chapters to enter and print so I can mail them tomorrow, a contract to finish reading so I can mail that tomorrow, too, a checkbook to update, an insurance policy to review and file, and the aforementioned P&P manual to proof, since our overachieving committee chair already made the 26 pages of changes we discussed over 3 hours last night. OY!

I have a synopsis to finish by the end of the week, some phone calls to make, and my annual mammogram tomorrow. Oh, and the Carina marketing plan to complete for my March 28th release!

I'm a little worried about my ability to get that all done. I mean, it's already 5:22 p.m.!

What's your go-to defense for drowning in "must get done NOW"s?

Grumpy. And Stressed.

We won't talk about the grumpy. Suffice to say week 2 of the NFL was not as fun as week 1.

So let's talk about the stress. I can't stop thinking about my week:

Best Laid Plans

In my day-to-day schedule, it's far more likely that my well-planned day will fall apart by 9:00 a.m. than not. But usually it's little things, I get derailed by circumstance or my own reshifting priorities, or work coming in from clients, etc.

Today started with this to-do list:

1. Download writing assignment from client and write it, send back to client via e-mail.

2. Download proofing job from client, proof, send back to client via e-mail.

3. Download other proofing job from client, proof, send back to client via e-mail.

4. Draft Supernatural Sisters blog post I forgot to do last night.

5. Draft list of questions for June class speakers and e-mail.

6. Do laundry.

7. Clean house, mostly vacuuming and mopping.

See a pattern there? I bet some of you might guess what happened as I launched into these tasks.

The power went out, accompanied by a giant boom from a block or two away.

It stayed out.

The "convenience" of paperless billing reverses at moments like this, because I have nothing with the electric company's number on it. Though I confess I did put the battery in my laptop, reboot it, and try to go online to get the number before going DUH, my router runs on electricity.

I found a number (it was the Choice line, about changing electric generators, though) and went outside with my cell phone to see if I could back-door in to PPL's main switchboard, but no luck. While I was out two other neighbors came out to see if my power was out, too. One guy said he'd called and reported it, and the automated recording told him it would be back up in 3 hours.

Cr**.

I almost seized the moment and spent the time reading. Because none of those things on my to-do list could be done, or not done the way I wanted to do them, without electricity. But my client work really needed to be done, so I hauled myself to B&N and their free WiFi.

An hour later, my husband called me. He'd tried the house first and the answering machine came on, sans recording, which meant the power was already back. Cr** again. I checked the outage report and sure enough, it said our account had no outage. So I guess I should have stayed home anyway.

So five of the items on the to-do list are done, but I still have two big ones, Number One will be home in half an hour, and I won't have time to get to the book again before we go to the Main Event, an intro to middle school that lasts for two and a half hours.

Check back tomorrow for the next installment of Natalie's Excuse Week! *sigh*

Wrapping Up 2008

I have no posts in 2008 labeled "Goals."

None.

Of course, according to my final post about 2007, I didn't set goals. I made plans.

Let's see how I did:

Exercise

I did very well through May, when I got swamped with work. From May through August I occasionally missed my goal of 2.5 hours per week, and then I was totally inconsistent, with some weeks in the fall good, some bad, and then nothing at all in the entire fall.

Compared to previous year: 126 days of exercise compared to 301 in 2007. Ick.

Goal for 2009

I dunno. I started again this week, went to the club yesterday and today. I'm just going to try to go every day, except when I can't.

Weight

No change. Nothing different in my plans for 2009, either.

Entertainment

I read 95 full books, a falloff from last year's actual 107. I also started but didn't finish 40, and tracked 7 additional novellas.

I saw 22 movies in the theater, 8 fewer than last year, but 35 on DVD, up from 17 in 2007. Plus two on TiVo, two on TV, and two on DVD that I didn't finish.

I won't go into the TV I watched live or TiVo'd, I do that during the year. I also watched the following on DVD:

All the Buffy seasons
All the Angel seasons
Prison Break season 3
Entourage
Roswell season 1

Goal for 2009

I always strive to read 100 books, but I think I'll keep better track this year so I can push myself if possible and make the goal. I don't expect as many movies in 2009, probably about the same amount of TV. Once I finish Roswell, I might give Bones a try.

Work!

Okay, this is the biggie. Here's what I accomplished:

Overall writing

Fiction: 184,486 words (includes totally new text and added words during revisions)
Nonfiction: 57,855

That's a total of 242,341 written words in 2008. That's more than 60k less than 2007!

Goal for 2009

Whatever I manage to do, based on my circumstances.

Project breakdown

Fiction:
Submitted 8 projects
Sold 2 novellas
Wrote three novellas
Revised three+ novels

Compared to plan: Did two of the revisions I planned, started both of the sequels plus another book, though not the one I intended to.

A reminder of my plan for 2009:

1. Revise Under the Moon until it's ready for submission
2. Process critiques for Hummingbird and prep for agent review
3. Revise Fight or Flight again, if Agent Awesome so decrees
4. Do first round of revisions for More Than You Know and submit to critique partners
5. Finish Zoe WIP

What else did I do, that caused me to write so much less in 2008? Well, let me tell you:

Nonfiction:

1 20-page report
58 articles
74 biographies (short ones, not book-length!)
21 autoresponders, 4 ads, and a few miscellaneous things

Editing/Proofreading:

Approximately 3,579 pages, some being full editing in hard copy transferred to computer documents, some being small projects that I typed a list of corrections for.


Critiquing:

40 pages for LM
55 pages for M2
184 pages for M3
402 pages for TM
491 pages for JW
506 pages for VB
783 pages for VS
1,011 pages for M1

for a grand total of 3,472 manuscript pages! That amounts to roughly 868,000 words, though it's probably more than that because some people don't use standard format.

I think I only sent one full book out for critique in 2008. I'll make up for it this year!

Judging:

I judged 9 stories with just a scoresheet, and 279 pages that required comments as well as the scoresheets.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay, I'm tired just adding that all up! I will no longer feel like a slacker! Such occasions are surely few and far between, with that kind of tally, wouldn't you say?

So that's all. Goodbye 2008 (a few days late) and hello 2009! May it be better than productive for all of us!

Coming Out of the Dark

I am a technology junkie, curbed only by budget and something my mother instilled in me that always makes me think, "yeah, you want it, but do you NEED it?" Once I give in and get stuff like satellite TV and DVR, FiOS Internet, an iPod, or a GPS navigation system, I never want to go back. I can't live without Internet access or e-mail for more than a day. I was excited to hook up my new DVD player/recorder to the new flat-panel TV on Mother's Day, even though I'm not supposed to have to do any chores on that day.

Add to that my degree in environmental studies, and it may surprise you that it's only been a week since I adopted online bill pay.

It's true. I have a great fear of digital loss. Paper can be lost, of course. Thrown away, ruined with water, eaten by the cat (my dog doesn't have any interest in paper, but Frisbee loves shredding anything we leave lying around). But it's harder. Digital stuff can go "poof!" with little provocation and not brought back.

So, like, a decade ago, when my bank started holding on to canceled checks, I opted out of that and required them to send them to me. Never mind that in the 16 years I've had an account there, I maybe needed a canceled check one time. Maybe. About six months ago, I finally went paperless with my monthly statements, with all the bank accounts. It felt safe. After all, the bank had to be keeping accessible records, so that even if we had, say, an electromagnetic storm (see my story, The TreeKeeper, they'd have my statement when I needed it.

Banks have offered online bill pay for years. And it's not like I've had any fear of making payments on the Internet. I do it all the time, when payday falls too close to the due date of the bill. But I have other fears:

• Fear that the bank will fail to make a payment, I won't have proof, and I'll be labeled delinquent

• Fear that I'll overlook a bill

• Fear of a system failure, desktop crash, or complete loss of Internet

Last week, guilt overcame fear. I am tired of wasting paper--wasting even more of it when I pay a bill online at the payee's site--and even more, wasting time. It can take a few hours to enter the payments in Quicken and the checkbook (Quicken makes things easy, the checkbook is insurance against the aforementioned crash possibility and is easier to access to check something), write the bills, label and post the envelopes, etc. Not to mention, that horrible licky adhesive is probably giving me cancer of the tongue.

So I made the switch. And no gradual toe/ankle/knee-in-the-water progression for me. I set up a full bill pay account and entered all the bills, AND signed up for paperless billing wherever I could. And, of course, I love it. It's so much faster and easier and less wasteful, on both ends. It makes balancing the checkbook easier, because things clear faster. And it will save money, since I won't be spending it on postage or gas to go to the post office.

I'm still a little nervous. My routine is disrupted. The other day, I got a notice of a bill. Mid pay cycle. Printing the reminder notice would defeat the purpose, but I hate having stuff sitting in my inbox. Stuff in my inbox screams "handle me!" But if I took it out of the inbox, I might overlook it on payday, even though the reminder would be listed at my account site.

So I paid the bill.

Which means things are going to be totally messed up come payday. I mean, I'll pay the e-bills that come in, and that will leave maybe two bills on payday, and I'll feel like I'm missing stuff, and I'll panic, and I'll spend twice as much time researching what I'm missing as I would have spent under the old system in the first place!

Welcome to the 21st century, Ms. Damschroder. *eyeroll*

Thursday Thirteen #18

Thirteen Random Things From This Week

1. There's been a lot of talk (articles, blog posts, e-mail group discussions) about feeling envy/jealousy for authors who are finding success when we aren't. Everyone is saying envy is okay, that's just wishing you also had that sale or good news or whatever, in addition to being happy for that person. Jealousy is bad, because that's not wanting them to have the good thing they just got.

My question is, if envy is okay and jealousy is not, why is envy one of the seven deadly sins?

2. The gag reel on the Supernatural Season Two DVD is quite possibly the best one I've ever seen. Usually gag reels are people messing up lines or being unable to stop laughing. But this nine-minute-plus video has true gags and some highly entertaining exchanges. Plus boytouching.

3. I'm irritated with the people who mentioned the Jared barefoot kickboxing on the DVD (yes, Gail, I'm looking at you!), because I can't find it. I have some interactive map things to look at still, and didn't finish the webisodes, but if anyone can point me to the barefoot kickboxing, I'll be grateful.

4. I love soccer, but I've been spoiled. The problems we've encountered this season have left me with constant nausea and a strong desire for the season to be over. I hate that!

5. Can the Patriots go 16-0?

6. I listened to last week's Pottercast, and they discussed Dumbledore's plan and how he was a jerk, and how he should have just told Harry that the sword of Gryffindor would destroy the horcruxes. I shouted at my iPod a lot. Dumbledore was dying, yes, but he thought he had a year to live. He didn't expect to be killed on that tower. We could presume that as soon as he and Harry got back to his office with the locket, he would have showed him how to use the sword and explained why it would work. He just never had the chance. He never wrote it down because it was of paramount importance that Voldemort not know they were aware of/were after the horcruxes. Anyone else knowing about it, or documents lying around that mentioned it, could lead to someone telling him, either out of loyalty or fear.

7. Supernatural starts in...*checks ticker*...seven days!

8. I decided to do NaNoWriMo again this year. I hope to finish Hummingbird by October 6 and have the rest of October to revise it, with a final polish in December or January or even after that, as I have other projects that can come first. In the meantime, I've been percolating More Than You Know, about a married couple who has to learn to live together for the first time. I have enough to pound that out in November, I think, the way I did Under the Moon last year.

9. I've had several friends in various levels of stress and/or crisis lately, and I think for that reason I've been nursing anxiety off and on all week. It's not my own anxiety, though it is probably exacerbated by fatigue.

10. I can't complain about being tired as it's all my own fault. I've had a lot of work, which I've been focusing on at night as well as during the day, but I haven't given up my vegging time, nor have I taught myself to watch only two episodes of a TV show on DVD (still Gilmore Girls), even if watching four meant going to bed at 2:00 a.m. when the alarm goes off at 6:11 a.m.

11. Fall TV Premiere Week is filling up my TiVo. I have Prison Break, Eureka, Heroes, Reaper, Private Practice, Bionic Woman, and four hours of Dancing with the Stars. Tonight Smallville and Ugly Betty will join them. And I am not eager to watch anything!

12. Waiting does not ever get any easier in the publishing industry. In fact, as hope increases, for whatever reason, waiting gets much, much harder. That's a no-brainer, I know, but it seems like the waits should be shorter (and may be) but it doesn't matter, because it's still torture every minute that the wait is occurring.

13. Captain Black's Grog-Flavored Pirate Mints are not as gross as they sound.

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Extremes of Service

I got a new computer recently, as you may know. I was dumb and paid for an IEEE somethingsomethingsomethingsomething that has something to do with digital transfer or something about which I'm clueless. But what I really needed was an IEEE somethingelsesomethingelsesomethingelsesomethingelse, aka a parallel port. I contacted Dell via their live chat, the guy offered a solution that doesn't work for my printer, and proceeded to immediately find me four options at third-party retailers. The entire thing took maybe ten minutes, tops. I love well-trained, helpful people who know how to do their jobs.

In contrast, I recently tried to add a bank account to my PayPal account. There are four fields on the screen: bank name, routing number, account number, and repeat account number. I got an error message that said the First Name had to be letters, numbers, spaces, or hyphens only. I e-mailed PayPal customer service. They sent back a cheerful response telling me how to add a bank account to my account. I said no, they DIDN'T solve my problem, they just repeated their own FAQ files, and I still got the error message. Today I got a message from a new "person" who said "in looking at your account history I see your problem is solved. Have a nice day!"

Dumbasses.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
StressStressStressStressStress

I have spent the last two days running nonstop. Cleaning, shopping, cooking (okay, doing the Wendy's drive-thru), preparing for dress rehearsal, recording dress rehearsal (badly), more cleaning, laundry, running the kids all over town. My dad and stepmother will be here in one to two hours, I have soccer camp for Number Two tonight, tomorrow is the dance show, for which I am a backstage Mom (*screaming stress*). And there's a soccer game on Sunday.

I love my family and enjoy spending time with them, which I haven't done in a year. The backstage stuff is never as bad as I anticipate it being, and everything goes smoothly even if we're rushing nonstop. The cleaning is done, and I may have some time to read at camp tonight.

So why won't my nerve endings stop vibrating?

All in all, I'd much rather be here.