Diligence is the mother of good luck. (Benjamin Franklin)

Another quote I like, I can’t remember who said it, is that the muse cannot resist the working writer. You sit in front of the screen, or chew the end of a pencil, long enough and something has to come. Some days it just comes harder than others.

I love quotes, obviously, or I wouldn’t use them so liberally. I envy those who can spout them off like I can eat fun-size Snickers bars. We went to see Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, and Richard Ford speak on Thursday night out at MSU. Great, great time. It’s impossible to capture what those three authors do on stage together. So much experience, so much talent, and all so very literary. It’s a great gift to have such a passion and talent for crafting words. It’s comforting to think that, while I hardly aspire to be of that caliber, I am doing all the semi-right things for where I want to go with my life. One of the men said he writes because that was the only thing he was ever any good at. There are days I feel the same, since splitting open square bales or stacking them in the barn, or calving cows are hardly viable professions any more.

For those of you wondering, stacking hay is what Dad and I did this morning. 316 bales, give or take one or two. And splitting open wet bales was what we did on the 4th.

I’ve got a pile of 16 books beside my bed right now, all begging to be read, all research for Taylor and upcoming books. An odd mixture of animal behavior, shamanism, werewolves, and unicorns. All right, the unicorn book isn’t for Taylor. It’s for a short story I’ve been working on. I developed the idea years ago and only recently returned to it, knocking it down from high aspirations of becoming a novel to a novella at the most, a short story at best. I have a lot of those. There just isn’t enough there for the story to make it as a novel. But it makes a kick-ass short story. And I get a break from Taylor’s world and get to play around in one I’ve lived in, on and off, for the past twelve years. Okay, I’m into that writer’s ramble now. Better wrap this up.

No one is happy all his life long. (Euripides) or Aren't those ancient greeks depressing?

Five pages today, yey! I even got a really nice scene with Tay and her dad. Nerdy, excited girl that I am, I just had to share. This part of the book has gone so bad (over and over again) that getting anywhere makes me happier than getting the damn book done. (Well, maybe not that happy…)

Dad’s home today so we worked on the barn door some today, the one that got blown off in the storm last month. Dad repaired the door and got it off the ground. We got it leaning against the barn and jacked up on blocks, but getting the brackets together so the door can hang and slide has proven a (pardon me here) dirty rotten cock sucking mother fucker of a job. Yes, that bad. Hey, Dad was the one in the bucket of the tractor cussing it while I jacked. He’s got a right to say that with his fingers pinched between the barn door and the barn. (Taking bets on which one of the three gives first… Joke.)

So since I got my five pages with Taylor, I’m moving on to other projects. The practice screenplay, the short stories, the query letter for the book, and lots and lots of research. That never ends. And I keep needing little details for this last part of the book, by far the most metaphysical and the place I’m weakest in. I never realized how all this shit went together, but by god I’m learning now. See what five years of college gets you? An expensive lesson on how to look shit up.

Macabre and pensive? Who, me?

A good, productive day, but kind of a frustrating evening. Let’s just say neither my dad nor I excel at relationships of the romantic nature with the opposite sex. I’d really like to step in and fix everything for him but whaddya do with a schizo bitch? Go horseback riding. (I wish.)

Finally worked through my issues with then ending for Taylor, going backwards. Dude, and one of the reasons I chose to be a writer is because it’s so easy. Just like farming. (Anyone hear the tongue in cheek yet?)

I worked in my garden tonight and got two gallon size bags of lettuce and spinach. I thinned the carrots and stopped the summer squash from a hostile takeover. The peas smell really good and are blooming like crazy in all this humidity. The potatoes are slowing down on top. It seemed like for a week or so the greens grew by feet over night. I think they’re making baby potatoes. (Shh! Newlyweds!) Yeah, I need to get out more.

Gram and I ate dinner together tonight. Between the two of us, my youth and vigor and her age and wisdom, we could solve all the world’s problems. She’s cute. She called and wanted to make supper. But I went to work in the garden and brought in all the stuff for salad and seasoned her pasta sauce, cooked the pasta, burned the bread, put a salad together and she still made supper. Well, she did put the sauce together… Group effort, let’s just call it a group effort. Good food, good conversation. It’s one of the big regrets of my life that I didn’t stay and have more nights like that with my grandpa before he passed. It’s nights like this I miss him. And it’s not that often that I admit it. Well, I’m having a beer for you Grampa, wherever you are.

Ummm....

Holiday weekend and shit got away from me. Mostly, I stayed at home and grilled out with Dad and Bruce and wrote a lot. Started work on a screenplay (yeah, I know, everybody and their dog has one, it’s writing practice, okay?) and sketched out some short stories. I finished The Nick Adams Stories and Alice in Wonderland and started Gulliver’s Travels, among other assorted books for research on shamanism, magic, the astral world and all that. I figure if I don’t kill people I ought to at least have a decent magic system and my mythology facts oughta be right.

Got to ride horses on Sunday with Dad. One of our bonding things and it really makes the world make sense again.

I’ve been staring at the blank screen and reading a book on werewolves for the past fifteen minutes, listening to Alison Krauss. I really oughta just post this and get on with life.

"I'm happy for the failures that you're having right now, because it's these failures that will keep you strong forever."(Pardis Sabeti's inspiration)

My first blog from Gram’s kitchen table. We’ll how working from down here a few afternoons per week goes. Keep Gram company, make some meals, sell some fiction and poetry, what could be better? And in September I can calve my cows from here. Might as well move my desk and bed too huh? lol

I finished The Nick Adams Stories this morning. Really good book. Of course, it’s set in Michigan, what’s not to love?

I’m listening to the rock group Thousand Days right now. Their lead singer is a geneticist at Harvard! I saw her profile last night on PBS’s Nova Science Now and thought “what a role model for young women today?” Pardis Sabeti graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Medical School too, something only three other women had done. Check her out here and here.

Not much else to report. I better get back to work. We’re marketing the book today and I’m nearing the finish line on final edits for it. Happy thoughts, just think happy thoughts.

Be happy. It's one way of being wise. (Colette)

Slow going today. Gram had a doctor’s appointment this morning and I took her to that, so I didn’t make it to my desk (or rather my bed) until nearly 2 p.m. We worked on magazine submissions today and my head is splitting. Still haven’t made pages. Will probably work on that after supper.

The countdown has begun for calving season. Last year (2007) we calved in January and, of course, several cows dropped during a cold snap where it got down to single digits and stayed there for a week. It got up to twenty degrees and we had our coats off, almost sweating in the heat wave. (I am seriously not kidding about that one either.) We lost a set of twin bull calves, one single, and a heifer died from a weird clostridia thing. So no, spring calving was not for us. We didn’t like the cold Jan-Apr, or the mud Apr-May, or the summer May-August, so we went for fall, Sept-Nov 15 (due to deer season opening). The calves should have some grow on them before snow that way. We’ll see how this thing goes.

Haven’t done a book update lately. I’m reading about seven at last count, for pleasure, research, and some devotion to a classical education. So none of them are finishing that fast. Alice in Wonderland is actually quite good. The Disney version freaked me out as a kid (I’ve never been very brave) so I was a little apprehensive about it. But the book is fun, right along the lines of Peter Pan and Winnie the Pooh (always a classic; love Eeyore and Piglet). It’s a nice relief from Nick Adams, Strange Candy, and Astral Projection for Beginners. (Yeah, Taylor didn’t know she’d need that when we started out either.) So lots a new age and shamanic research for some of my characters and poems to try and inspire me to actually write some. Maybe one of these days I’ll get to read a novel again. (Can anyone say the queen of wishful thinking?)

Never argue with your characters; they know themselves better than you do. (Laurell K. Hamilton)

I just spent some time working out on the porch. The yard reeks of dog shit right now, since our eighteen year old lab/rott can’t make it far from the house to crap. I’m not ranting, I just wish the old man could take it elsewhere. But, contrary to the people who keep hassling us to put him down, Max isn’t ready to go yet. He’s still happy, if somewhat arthritic, and not in pain. He’s just happy to live minute to minute and in hope of pizza.

I’m procrastinating on the book today. We made great progress yesterday, until we got to a certain point and said “wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute! This ain’t workin’.” So I’m doing yet another rewrite (third ending so far) for the climax. The second showdown, let alone the first, just didn’t work for the characters, the plot, the pacing, or anything. I still want a big showdown, and so does Taylor, but we’re changing it (again). Besides, Bryen really got tired of being the bad guy. I’m trying so hard to plot and choreograph this escape/fight scene that I think I’m blocking myself. I keep moving around the house, my room/office, the porch, the kitchen right now, even the local bookstore for awhile today. How sad is that? I don’t usually write action, like who hit who and now who’s bleeding kind of action. So it’s a delicate thing for me to imagine and get right. So far part of the scene’s working. I keep pecking at it, then going on to something else. Not a very effective method. Maybe I need to get angry. It’s easier to beat the shit outa bad guys in paper when I’m pissed off. Should have done that last week when I had stupid boys to contend with. :-)

In the time in took me to put this post together, I finally got my four pages!!!! :-) It took me ALL DAY but I got them and this ending works SO much better! Oh this is such a relief. I better leave off here before I start gushing too much. But goddamn this makes me happy.