Yes, I do. And normally I would be happy to read nearly any pop science book, or issue of Nature or Science or...you get the picture. But now I'm trying really, really hard to get through this book on electricity in the human body (Spark of Life, by Frances Ashcroft; I think it's a Sept title?) and I'm just...bogging...down. Love the discussion about Volta and Galvani, Ben Franklin, and was all geared up for some Mike Faraday post-Enlightment coolness...when we started on ion channels and nerve cells and my brain just unaccountably...went...to...sleep.

I say, "What is this, Brain? What's with all the drooling drowsiness?" Brain snorts and jerks up and yawns very wide and scratches itself...and says, "There aren't any characters here." And Brain is right. It's suddenly all abstract-y chemistry/biochemistry and we don't have any people in the picture who are Doing said chemistry.

So--even my science needs to tell me a story. That's what Brain wants. But Brain's going to have to suck it up and get on the trolley now and read it anyway.

That is all.

Blocking everything out on paper the night before does help, somewhat. Now I have to get more realistic about figuring out how long a job should take, and how to keep myself from getting distracted away from the schedule after I've done it for a few hours.

I have 1) managed to get some exercise in (yoga, 1st thing after everyone else is out of the house) 2) get the first couple of things on the list done pretty consistently. Then things sort of fall apart, especially come Wednesday or so. Later in the week, inertia builds up and drags my brain away (and I admit, the gray matter is not exactly kicking and screaming about it).

So. Yes, there is some progress. I am also heartened by the fact that a certain start-up venue for which I'd done some reviews has suddenly made it much easier for me to say "No, not until you pay something reasonable", all without me lifting a finger. That feels nice too, even if it's a passive aggressive response. Fewer reviews are a good thing right now. My brain can feel that.

I keep telling myself we are economically stable at the moment. We are starting to replace some of the savings we burned through during spouse's last lay-off. It is to hope that things will continue on this way. Because it's much easier for me to think about writing fiction when I am not constantly fretting about finding immediate work to pay bills.

Now back to checking the schedule.

Excelsior!

Have I mentioned my schedule?
Ah, I thought so. But this is the newest incarnation: a stern 1/2 hr by 1/2 hr list of hope and desperation. I fit things into it based on optimal work speed: best guess, if I've just finished a book in the last 24 hrs, I can bang out a review in 1/2 hr. I built in tea breaks. Lunch. (I need to build in exercise time, too.)

The plan is: make a rigid-looking schedule and try as hard as possible to stick to it. If something overflows its slot, then something else gets pushed off, and so be it.

I made this morning a bit easy--mostly housekeeping (cleaning house and study, laundry, trimming old files, etc) and pushed all the writing into the afternoon, which may not have been the best way to do it. BUT--I have the most energy in the mornings, and there were many, many housekeeping chores that had been put off for far too long. So, some of those are now out of the way and no longer preying on me. Maybe one morning a week should be set aside for these onerous tasks? I'll make a note of it.

At least this is true: taking on the issue of scheduling has forced me to "take control" and "take direct responsibility" and all those buzz-wordy things so at least I -feel- as if I'm accomplishing things (even if I don't get everything done, I get more than one thing done, and that is good) and so I feel more positive about it all as a whole. This, too, is good. It is progress. Now if I can stop fretting about money issues, think of all the extra brain I'll have back again for writing!

Excelsior!

I have far too many book reviews due tomorrow (yes, well, I have worked out a schedule, which requires that I actually finish reading them tonight, in order to write about them tomorrow) and I see now that there is apparently snow headed this way. Oh joys. None of the local weather stations appears to have any idea if we'll actually get it, but if we do, it looks as if we might look for 6-16 inches. Fun times. I knew there was a reason I hadn't washed all the winter coats and shoved them into the upstairs closet yet.

This getting-out-of-the-NYJoB-book-review-business is taking longer than I'd wanted. I promised some more for this month, then one in early May, and it's sayonara. I have lots of clips beyond genre and heavy science now. On to bigger and better. Does ANYONE pay for reviews anymore?

Actually, I have a list of people to query and pitch things at. Several are $1/word markets, or at least they were last year. Let's hope they haven't downgraded like so many other places have done.

And once again I have built a new schedule with dreams of actually sticking to it. Once more into the breach, and all that.

And my new bookcases are up. Which means now some of that scheduled time is alloted to getting things out of boxes from the move last Sept (and the move 3.5 yrs before that move) and back on to shelves. There is going to be a neighborhood-wide yard sale on May 5th, so I'm planning to sit in my driveway with a few hundred or so books and see if I can sell them to other bibliophiles (hopefully not just making room for more). I will also bake up a couple batches of choc chip and oatmeal/raisin cookies and sell baggies of cookies, 4/$1, because why not? I mean, as long as I'm sitting there anyway.

Thanks to the unexpected arrival of a HomeDecorators.com catalog in the mail yesterday, I realized the company not only #1) still existed and #2) still sold those wonderful folding hardwood bookshelves, but also #3) they happened to be having a sale which included said shelves in all the unloved colors. So what if they will not match the lovely reddish "mahogany" finish shelves we got umpteen years ago? Urchin will not care, and mine will be at my back and thus unseen most of the time.

We will be receiving one yellow set (two stackers with a mantel top), and one in purple. I suppose I will give urchin 1st picks.

The next set will have to be in a more traditional (ie: not on sale) finish, since they'll be downstairs and so should make an effort to blend in, but they can go on the household expenses, not mine. After taxes are paid.

So yes, we can finally unpack the books that have been languishing in boxes since we moved! And replace the two sets of wobbly bolted-together pine shelves that have no sides and are impossible to happily keep books upon.

I like chaos as much as anyone, but only when I'm in control of it!

Okay, so lunch, eaten around 1:30pm, was a wee tad late. This is not child abuse, mostly because the urchin (home for spring break this week) is nearly 11 and bloody well able to make his own sandwich. Instead he waited, and I drug out the sandwich fixins (Ham, of course, which needed to be whacked off the bone, and some deli turkey and cheese and lettuce) and we et a bit late.

So what do writers do when they aren't writing?

Well....
Lunch was late because (after I slammed out a review) I started trying to clear up a mess: one of the places for whom I review had apparently started giving my OLD address to those sending review copies. I don't know how many books have failed to reach me because of this, or even why it happened, since I appear to have gotten everything I was supposed to receive up until this month. Maybe they accidentally lost a back-up and loaded an old (pre Sept 2011!!!!) reviewer database? In any case, I've collected a list of the books I'm supposed to be receiving for the next 6 months or so, and the PR contact info, so I can email the publishers myself and set this straight. Meanwhile the pitches go out for some better paying work. Tearsheets? Boy, have I got tearsheets. Well-paying markets? Um, not so much.

Yipes, I have been lazy and distracted and telling myself to get organized without actually committing to the process of doing so--and also, not posting anything here. BUT...I have actually kept to my schedule today so far, and now it is time to take a walk in the 37 deg F sunny day I can see outside my window. Maybe even take said walk up by the canal (a 15 min drive--so silly, to drive to walk, but I don't enjoy walking in the development anywhere near as much).

Happy bright spring!

From one of my favorite rabble-rousers, John Salzi's blog:

Here's a doctor's perspective on forcing women to undergo unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds.

Nice to hear a medical professional speaking out on the Rick-Perry-and-other-idiots' idea that women don't deserve the right to be responsible for their own health choices. I wish the doctor had signed his or her name. But still, it's a voice that should be heard.

You have to wonder why it's possible for any man to get Viagra and similar drugs for erectile dysfunction (or, frequently, just because they want the pills) without justifying themselves to everyone up the medical food chain. I'm still waiting for the doctor or pharmacist or insurance company or employer underwriting an employee's insurance who will stand up and say, "Sorry, but if you can't maintain an erection to your satisfaction, it's clearly your deity's will and we can't defy that." Because, hey--fair is fair.

Going back to my cave now....

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First, the fun stuff: Here is the cave I went into for a cache yesterday morning:



The entrance is about 3' high and 2' wide; inside, the ceiling gets a bit higher in spots, but the walls narrow down. The cache container was tucked up in a crevice about 8-10' inside. The stone is at the northern side of a limestone outcrop, not far from a big quarry.

In other news:
I spend a lot of time complaining about writing book reviews. I've been thinking about why I write them, and have come up with two answers:

1) I'm good at them. I'm good at analyzing what makes a story or book work, and what makes it not work. I know exactly how to do them, and I can dive in and do the work without fear, frankly, of being challenged by it.

2) They're one steady, if not very well-paying, paycheck right now, and over the last decade or so, I have programmed myself to seek out those dependable paying writing gigs, simply because I have so few of them.

Yet #2 is a lie--If I stop putting so much time into reviews, I would have more time to write fiction, which I have No Way of knowing whether or not it will sell, and thus pay my bills. I could also write other non-fic, articles, maybe even some kids science books. Yet I fear not being about to pay the bills. I fear my spouse getting laid off (again) or getting sick in various awful ways, or the house developing another Thing Which Must Be Repaired--and us not having the money to pay for it.

When spouse is out of work, so far we've had my earnings and our savings to pay for things as long as we cut back on things (so much so that I really don't get anything out of those "how to save lots of money" articles that women's mags and newspaper lifestyle sections are so fond of printing--I've already been doing all those things, many of them since I was a child), we've been okay. Our son has no Big wants--I suspect because we've never demonstrated giving in to big wants of our own. (Ex: like I never asked my parents for a stereo when I was growing up, because I knew we couldn't afford it)

Every once in a while, maybe once a year, if a friend goes on a vacation to DisneyWorld, I hear him say, "I wish we could go there." But it just hasn't possible for most of his childhood. So our satisfiable wants involve things like getting take-out once/wk--maybe 2x, if we're really dead tired, overworked and burnt out and want some pizza instead of scrounging through the fridge. Hell, I still feel guilty for owning a Kindle, and that's something I needed for work and still doesn't get used for entertainment. Because I am writing it off as a business expense and I fear getting audited and having the IRS ask me why something that's not a review copy is on it.

Sometimes spouse comes up with ideas that make me see our income as a mysterious sine wave with a far greater amplitude than I normally think about. Like the idea that we might actually "go someplace" during the urchin's upcoming spring break, just after Easter. Yes, spouse may have enough--right now--to pay for this. But still there's the paranoid part of me that is scared to spend the money, Just In Case. (and quite frankly, we no longer have anything approaching the name of "college fund", after the last layoff)

So. I'm trying to balance this fear of future expenses with the need, very real, to live something more than a small life. Generally when we plan to do something, it's my brain and enthusiasm that provides the ideas and impetus. Spouse suggests going someplace, which means someplace in another state, kind of, but he's not sure where. I counter with ideas like--go back to MA, see friends, go whale watching (which we never managed to do while we were there) and visit museums, go back to the coast to see the ocean; or take urchin to Niagara Falls, because still, he's never seen it. These are not big enough for spouse, who still has no idea where else he'd like to go, only that our suggestion somehow isn't "big enough".

Anyhoo--what this really comes back to is the need to make the writing I do more satisfying--which, shamefully, includes a requirement that it make me feel a bit more monetarily secure. I need better paying markets, and more interesting work. Lots of places want reviews, and the kids magazines I've been writing for really like my work--but neither pays beans, frankly. I need to navigate my way to some better-paying gigs. Which means biting the bullet, scaling back on the number of reviews I'm churning out for minimal pay, and sitting around very nervously while I start sending off pitch and pitch again. At this point I have plenty of science clips for kids magazines. Somehow those need to scale me up to better work.

I just need the guts to do it. --after I satisfy the current next two months of review obligations. So I shall be steeling myself. And looking for cool cache spots, especially if they involve caves.

Excelsior!

This is sort of a two-part "in passing" post, because I got to do TWO fun things yesterday:

1) morning geocaching, with temps reaching 50 deg F (though it was windy-cold) at the eastern end of Oneida Lake, let me tell you! I love this lake. I don't know why--maybe because it's still very much like the Finger Lakes were when I was a kid, before all the land was glommed up for cottages and "vacation properties". Oneida is the "thumb" of the 11 Finger Lakes, and there really isn't much there, population-wise. In my travels along about 1/3 of its coast, I haven't seen any libraries or grocery stores, so that's a negative. And these days I'm sure everyone who owns a snowmobile (they drive them on the lake in winter, you see) also owns one of those stinky, noisy Jetskis. But right now, with the ice buckling along the shore and the center open water, it's quite nice and quiet up there.

2) Afternoon talk of gaming, and a round of Settlers of Catan -- we have met some fellow gamers and they seem nice and sane and creative and clever and enthusiastic, so we are undertaking some RPG activity (hence the d20 pic). Next week, we put together Call of Cthulhu characters and Chris will run; then I will run. Then we'll start up an "Adventure" campaign (pulp adventure in the Roaring Twenties) with rotating GMs. Fun times!!

Then we'll see. Nice to meet some folks who are also burned out with the Tolkeinesque elfy-welfy epic fantasy thing and want to try something new. This will be fun!!