Last week, before all my creative energy got slurped into the book editing project, I polished up a few blog entries and turned them into essays on my website. I also finished a piece of flash fiction and I’ve posted that as well. If you want, you can go read them: http://sandra.tayler.com/
Me doing the editing and layout for the Schlock book changes things. My summer is suddenly not so empty. I expect that the work will come in clumps. I’ll work like crazy for a few days, then I’ll have to wait while Howard and the layout guy do their bits. But I have to plan ahead for the days where I work like crazy. I think I’m going to have Taylercorp buy some frozen meals that I can use on the days when I’m exhausted by book work and can’t find the energy to make dinner. The thing is that this book work is not going to go away for quite awhile. As soon as the layout is done for this one I’ll be starting layout for the next one and ramping up to do shipping. Then shipping time is always crazy. Oh and at some point the kids will be starting school and I will not give up writing entirely.
I’ve got to pace myself. I can not always work as hard as I did the past two days. I need to allot each of my important things spaces in my day. It is probably time to dust off my planner that has been languishing since school got out. I need a place to collect all of the tasks and make sure everything gets done.
Weirdly, being busy exhilarates me. After a long stretch of it, I long for empty days, but I’ve just finished a 7 week stretch of empty days. I’m ready to have stuff to do.
Did another 4 hours of work on the Schlock book.
Did 4 hours of accounting (Quarterly reports eat time the way wood chippers eat branches. I’ve still got more to do.)
In the spaces (ha!) I took care of children.
Tired now.
Seven hours of work on the Schlock book today. I was so focused that I did not notice the time pass. I did pause to order pizza for the kids. Tayler Corp will pay for that expense because I was doing a business critical task across dinner time. But I finished making notes to hand to the layout guy. Hopefully this will let us set pagination in stone and we can start filling up the white spaces.
Tomorrow I need to go through the book again and copy edit. I also need to go through and make notes about things that I think Howard should have to comment upon.
I don’t know how quickly our layout guy will be able to implement my notes. Hopefully he’ll have some time before he gets completely busy with Comic Con stuff.
Right now I’m all worn out. I could just got to sleep. Instead I need to put 3 of my kids and 2 of my brother’s kids to bed. Did I mention that I started my day by driving 90 minutes, trading Kiki for two nephews, and driving back? This explains the state of my kitchen and my house. It is not fair that I can work so hard, get so much done, and still feel discouraged at the end of the day. Hopefully a night’s rest will solve the discouragement and tomorrow I’ll have cycles to tame the chaos a little.
When we released The Blackness Between in November of last year, our stated plan was to get the next book out by June of this year. It didn’t happen. The next book is twice as big as the previous books and it is full of old artwork that Howard hates to look at. This book project has lurked like a vulture. It just sits and waits blackly. Where ever you go you’re always peripherally aware that the thing is there. Waiting. Then when you do really look at it, the first thought is always “That thing is huge!” The size of the project has been paralyzing for Howard. That’s why we missed the June release date. Now we’re aiming for October. But this time it is a little different. I’m going to take care of the vulture.
Last week Howard asked me to pull out the files of his old artwork so we could see what to put in the empty spaces between strips. Yesterday I dug it out and sorted through it. I loved looking at all the old artwork. Yes it is artistically awful, but it brought back so many happy memories that I loved it all. I kept looking at things and thinking “Oh this HAS to go in.” I took the pile and the excitement to Howard and he hated it all. If he had his way none of that stuff would ever make it into the book. Instead he’d draw all-new marginalia. But there is a lot of space to fill and the thought of drawing so many new pictures depressed him. He asked me to put the file aside so that he could work on the buffer.
I thought this over for a day or so. I realized that I love the idea of this project. I love the chance to organize the strips and put in the margin art. Then all I have to do is ask Howard to write a few notes. I don’t even care if the notes say “I hate this art, but Sandra made me put it in because she thinks you’ll want to see it.” So I have wrested the layout project from Howard’s unresisting hands. I’m so glad that I’ll get to influence what goes in. Like the picture of Schlock which Howard didn’t like, so he gave Schlock a talk bubble saying “I look awful. Keep trying toon boy.” Or the very first character sketches of Schlock, Tagon, Kevyn, and Brad.
This book when it is finished, will always make Howard want to apologize for the art. What he can’t see is how much people love getting a glimpse into the origins of things. People WANT to see the bad art. They want to see the awful prototype for the F’Sherl Ganni which never saw the light of day. They want to know the story of why Sentient Elephants wear earrings and body paint. If you’re a Schlock fan, please comment and back me up on this. I think I’m in for some arguments about what gets to stay in the book.
Mostly though, I’m just excited to have a fun project that allows me to directly contribute to the Schlockiverse.
In this area wasps are something of a plague. Every year we have to eliminate multiple nests from our deck railing and even more from our wooden fences. We put out traps and catch them by the dozens, but this has no visible dent on the population as a whole. For some reason the wasps particularly like our red maple tree. In July and August you can watch as dozens of them hover around the tree.
This year there are no wasps. I have not seen a single nest on our property and I’ve only seen two flying around that I can recall. This is such a drastic change from the norm that I have spent some time wondering about it. I’d heard that there was a horrible bee virus sweeping across the country. The virus apparently kills whole hives. I wonder if this same virus kills off the wasps too.
The wasps were a nuisance to me. I didn’t like them. But the abrupt disappearance of all of them is a disruption in the local ecology and I wonder what the further repercussions will be.
When you decide to become a parent there are some things that you expect. You expect to have to deal with diapers and potty training and tantrums and piano lessons and carpooling and a million other things. The reality is always somewhat different from the expectation, but at least you expected it. But there are other things. Things which never occurred to you prior to actually arriving in the middle of them. Things like explaining to your disbelieving daughter that she will indeed have to deal with this unpleasant feminine cycle every single month. Things like being 8 months pregnant and chasing your naked giggling toddler down the street. Things like having a child deliberately poop on the floor on purpose to make you mad. But, of all the things I didn’t know I signed up for when I had a baby, the one that haunts me most often is nail clipping.
In the hospital you look at the tiny fingers and toes and you marvel at them. Little do you know that you will soon be forced to take blades to those cute little nails and trim them off. If you do not, those cute little nails will be sharp little claws that will rake you bloody. Babies of course object to nail trimming, so they don’t hold still. More than once I’ve accidentally drawn blood while trimming the nail from a small digit. Then the child becomes mobile and can run away when the nail clippers come out. At various points I have cajoled, bribed, pleaded, and physically restrained various children to get their nails clipped. Link objected to nail clipping so strenuously that I would sneak in and clip them while he slept.
At 12, Kiki is finally in charge of her own nails, but this is a fairly recent development. For awhile I was in charge of 20 little digits for each of my kids. If I added in my own nails, that comes to an even 100 little nails for me to trim. Each and every one of those nails had to be trimmed at least once per month. That’s a lot of nail clipping. It is particularly annoying when Link would turn nail clipping into a 40 minute emotional ordeal. He has thankfully gotten over his terror of nail clippers. Also he has figured out that if he tears the nails off, I don’t have to clip them so often. I think Gleek is nearing the end of needing me to clip her nails for her. She loves nail polish and is trying to keep her nails nice so that they look pretty. This works for awhile, but then inevitably she plays in the sandbox or climbs a tree and makes them all ragged. Then we trim them off and start over again. Patches is fairly content to let me cut his nails as long as I only clip through 90% of the nail. He likes to pull them the rest of the way off by himself. He makes a little game out of it. I’m not sure what the game is, but it involves explosions and the nails going “Aaaaaah!” as they fall from his fingers.
So let this be a warning to all potential parents out there. The diapers are done within 3 years or so, but the nail trimming lasts much longer than that.
Every day is full of events. Most of the events are very small. This past week was full of large events. Large events always fill my brain full of things to talk about. But now my brain seems to have emptied out. I’m back to the trickle of ideas prompted by small events. This is not bad, really. I was so busy last week that the only writing I got done was blogging about events. Now I’m back to having space to contemplate less hurried writing. This would be happy except that I seem to be currently in a mood where nothing I write seems to be worth much. The mood will pass. I know it will, but it doesn’t make me motivated to write things today.
My mother offered my kids $5 for each one-page story they wrote for her this summer. The kids took full advantage of this generosity while she was here. Gleek wrote two storys. Patches wrote a story. Link wrote three stories. Grandma duly paid them. Then they had money burning a hole in their pockets. Today I took them to a store to spend it. Gleek acquired her very first potholder loom. Patches bought a magnetix toy. Link got a coveted set of pokemon cards. Then we fled the blistering heat to our air conditioned house to enjoy the loot.
New toys make for a quiet afternoon. By tomorrow they’ll be bored with the new stuff and I’ll have to find them something else to do.
I’m having a “My writing stinks” kind of a day. Every project I currently have in the works looks lame. My completed projects still look alright, so it isn’t as bad as it could be. I guess I just look at the unfinished work and don’t know how to fix it. Not only am I unsure how to fix it, but I can’t find any enthusiasm for doing so. And yet in this same time frame I’ve written three times as many blog entries as I usually do. Some of them felt pretty good too. Of course even the ones that seemed good garnered little response. So perhaps they weren’t as good as I though they were. Perhaps they just mean something to me and I need to be content with that.
I’m starting to doubt that I can pull off my intended middle-grade novel. I’m confident that I can push it through to completion, but I just don’t know that it will be worth reading when I am done. Supposedly the book is just to help Link deal with issues, but that focus seems scattered. I don’t know how to put the necessary threads where they need to be. I don’t know if it will mean anything to him. I want it to mean something to him, but I don’t know that it will. I’ve got two chapters done. I was supposed to finish Chapter 3 this week, but I haven’t even started it. This week was really busy, which is a good excuse, but it doesn’t change the fact that every time I open the file I have no clue what to write next. Writer’s block. urgh. I guess it is more accurate to say that while I know what comes next, I can’t make myself care. And if I don’t care, that comes through in the writing.
I should probably read the first two chapters to Link to see if he cares. If he doesn’t, then I should probably pack it away for awhile and let it go.
The Provo Freedom Festival is a big conglomeration of events. It includes contests and beauty pageants and fireworks and parades and an art’s festival. This last, the art’s festival, includes closing several downtown streets and letting vendors set up booths to sell their wares. I love the idea of an arts festival in open air, but I’ve never gone because that kind of setting is a nightmare for keeping track of small children. It is also guaranteed to make every child in range come down with a bad case of the screaming gimmies, causing them to demand every treat in sight.
This year I finally got to go because my parents volunteered to watch kids while I wandered off for awhile. I picked a time in late afternoon when the sun was not so scorching hot. It was very pleasant to wander through the booths just looking at things without feeling compelled to buy anything. I even stopped to chat with a man who was selling the books he had written.
There is something about the air at a festival like that. Everyone was there to enjoy themselves. For a moment I just stopped and felt the wind as it brushed past me. I looked around at the variety of people who passed by me. There were people dressed to the nines with coifed hair and perfect makeup. There were people with shaggy hair and raggedy clothing. There were people with black hair, piercings, and eyeliner. There were bikers and beauty queens, and stay at home moms, and business men, and families, well dressed kids, and ragamuffin kids, people with different skins and cultural dress. All of those different people gathered together for the purpose of enjoying the day. Naturally, not everyone was happy. Some kids were screaming, some couples were fighting, some people looked hot and miserable, but all of those things just added to the flavor of the event. There is an energy about a gathering of people who are intent on enjoyement.
I loved my own lack of agenda. I had no where in particular to be. I wasn’t seeking anything in particular. I was just there to observe and participate. As I walked I heard Debra Fotheringham performing in a pavillion. I stopped to listen for awhile, delighted to find a familiar face in the crowd. The familiar music was a joy as well. I wished that I could have stayed to talk to her after she was done singing, but Howard joined me and we needed to go and eat. I learned later that she spotted us in the crowd. If I’d known that, I definitely would have stayed to talk for awhile. Ah well. I’m sure I’ll bump into her again since we have lots of mutual acquiantances now.
After dinner Howard and I left the festival behind and went back to Dragon’s Keep. The Keep was hosting an all night game fest for whoever wanted to stop in and play. This was because it is right on the parade route for the Grand Parade. All up and down the street people were camping out to save places for the parade. Hundreds of people were wandering around chatting and just enjoying the pleasant nigh air. Again there was festival in the air. I did not spend all night at the keep. I only stayed until 12:30 because I needed to be home to get the kids up for the parade. But part of me wishes that I could have stayed. It was such a happy place to be. There were so many good friends to talk to. It was like being in college again when I did not have children to be responsible for.
I drove home down the parade route, past crowds of people all wandering about and partaking of the festival air. I wished I could stay. That freedom from responsibility is an experience to be relished. Freedom Festival indeed.