The glamorous life of a stay-at-home-writer

Sit down to write. Get a few sentences on the screen.

“MAMA! MAMAMAMAMAMAMA! COME HERE QUICK!” Run to other room/upstairs/outside in a panic. “Look, Mama! I can blow bubbles through the (holes in the grating on the patio) table!”

Breathe deeply and hope heart rate returns to normal. Remind kids to not call for me unless it’s important. Go sit down again.

Try to remember where I was going with that. Write another sentence.

“MAMA, PEANUT FELL DOWN!”

Find child who sat down a little too hard and is not even crying. Resist urge to scold older child. Go back to computer.

Completely forget what I was trying to say. Erase sentence fragment. Frown at the screen. Wonder if I’ve showered today already, and if I can manage a fourth cup of coffee without taking an antacid. Plunk down a few forced, disjointed sentences.

Eye the child wandering muddily inside. Have the conversation whereby I deny her candy for the sixth time that day. Offer healthy snack. Optional tantrum. Banish children from kitchen.

Make coffee and pray to the gastrointestinal gods for mercy and harmony. Remember where I was going earlier while coffee is brewing, and hover over computer to type out as much as I can remember before coffee is finished. Happily pour boiling water into drip cone, go to fridge and realize there is only that almond/coconut milk blend, which is weak as a creamer and tends to separate on contact with hot, acidic liquids into a slurry of weird curdles. Pour it in anyway and eye my mug, which resembles a heavily-polluted snow globe. Coffee suddenly does not taste that great.

Hear sobbing from outside, hurry out there to find Peanut banging on the door with dirt smudged all over her cheek and Podling nonchalantly gliding up and down the driveway on the scooter. Decipher 3-year-old sobs to discover that she wants her heavy, metal tricycle carried down the treacherously narrow porch steps to the driveway. Oblige, sighing. Realize I’m not wearing shoes when my sock feet hit the wet dirt at the bottom of the steps. Sigh.

Go back inside and sit down, realize coffee is across the room, get coffee, sit back down. Wake computer back up. Look at screen.

Receive lap full of awkward, sausage-shaped cat who badly needs her claws trimmed. Manage to not scream. Dislodge cat. Finish the sentence and write two more. Pat self on the back. Write three more. It’s almost looking like a paragraph. Skim paragraph, realize I shifted tenses twice between beginning and end. Swear quietly, but not quietly enough.

Podling asks what a bitch is. Resist urge to point to self and snap at him. Deny his request to go see a friend who is not yet home from school. Argue about what time his friend gets home from school, then argue about what time it actually is. Refuse to entertain the possibility that his friend did not, in fact, go to school today. Refute “evidence” that friend’s family car sitting in the driveway means his friend is actually at home. Confiscate shovelful of mud from Peanut walking through the living room. Order both of them out of the house again.

Sit down. Pick up coffee. Breathe.

Children bang on the door and cry with hunger, despite the sandwiches, brownies, fizzy water, and apple slices they ate less than an hour ago. Offer more apples and more peanut butter. Refuse to substitute candy hearts for apples and chocolate frosting for the peanut butter, because I am a mean. Refuse to let them eat green bananas, because I am not falling for that again. Order them into the backyard, with their bubbles, sidewalk chalk, bouncy balls, spades, wheeled toys, and plenty of dirt and rocks. Consider locking the doors.

Sit down. Realize it’s been two hours since I started trying to write. Look at calendar. Rub face and try to concentrate. Write at least two sentences.

Break up a fight over whose turn it is on the pink tricycle.

Make a peanut butter sandwich, sans frosting or candy hearts. Watch it turn stale as two noses turn up in its direction.

Eat the sandwich myself.

Take an antacid.

Refuse to take children to park. Offer to get out crayons and markers. Spend the next fifteen minutes opening markers for the Peanut and trying to find lost caps.

Check Tumblr, Facebook, and Plurk. Check them again. Feel faintly queasy from too much coffee and not enough water. Wonder if maybe I can get some writing time in when partner is home to run interference. Consider flopping onto the couch with British mysteries and sock knitting.

Partner texts to let me know he’ll be late, and not to hold up dinner for him. Try not to cry. Cry a lot. Have another brownie and go back to the computer.

(How long did it take to write this? Let’s just say…I started writing it yesterday.)

 

75 in ’13: Tipping the Velvet

Butts.

 

For the fifty-eighth book in the challenge, I read Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters.

Okay, Waters did her research here, and it shows. Not that I’m any expert on gay or lesbian experiences in the late Victorian era, much less the current time, but there are so many offhand references to basic pieces of life during that time period, that someone composed a set of footnotes to help explain the significance of everyday things. Or even what that everyday thing was, like common songs, foods, products, locations, celebrities, and jokes. It was absolutely immersive, to the extent that this felt at times more like an autobiography than a novel. That also made reading it very difficult, imagining a real person going through what Nan does in this book. The confusion, the bouts of self-loathing, the anger, the betrayals all feel very real and personal. The people in the book, primarily women, are flawed and rounded and real.

You should read it. She has others. I’m going to read them, too. I gave this a 4 out of 5 stars.

75 in ’13: Swordspoint

 

He is too fabulous for you, sweetheart.

For the fifty-seventh book in the challenge, I read Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner, the first in her World of Riverside series.

This was a different writing style than the last several books I’d read, and it took a while for me to change my mindset to actually accept it without working too hard. It’s more descriptive and makes you pay attention, and the characters remain more of a mystery to the reader, even the narrators. Once I stopped treating it like a fluff piece I barely had to remain awake in order to understand and took it more seriously, I really got into the story and let the prose just wash over me and do its thing. It’s rather like The Tower at Stony Wood in that way.

You get no hint that there’s a gay relationship in it, or that it’s anything weird, or that the other characters think it’s particularly unusual for any reason other than the social status or personalities of the characters in the relationship. What is the swordsman doing with this crabby scholar? Why is he putting up with the way he treats him? Of course, in that area of town, being too curious about anybody’s business can get you in a lot more trouble than you want to deal with, and there is a whole lot of looking the other way and worrying about your own survival instead. That feels perfectly reasonable and real in that situation. In the upper-class world, it’s completely different. Everyone has plenty of time to dig into others’ dirt and spread it around and destroy people for funsies, and the moral and religious implications of every action can be discussed and scrutinized and abstracted into anything one wants. It’s just as ruthless, but differently so.

I’m definitely reading another of Kushner’s books. I gave this one 5 out of 5 stars.

75 in ’13: Heir Untamed

The Abs Of The King.

For the fifty-sixth book in the challenge, I read Heir Untamed by Danielle Bourdon, and wished I hadn’t. This is the first book in her Latvala Royals series.

I only finished it because I wanted to see if I was right about the dude, and I was. Stilted narrative flow, several words used incorrectly (“conscious” instead of “conscience,” for example), some homophone mix-ups, and other issues that could have been easily resolved with a good copy editor. Quick read, though I kept finding myself stopping at errors to have a grumble.

I gave this book 1 out of 5 stars.

75 in ’13: Anne of Avonlea

Gotta love that FLDS hairdo.

 

For the fifty-fifth book in the challenge, I read Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery, the second book in the Anne of Green Gables series. Anne is sixteen and growing up. She goes to teaching college and gets a job back at home, and though her free spirit and tendency to get into scrapes is somewhat dampened by experience and the weight of everyone else’s opinions, it isn’t gone in the least.

Again with the nostalgia for me. Only now I can see some other things going on that I didn’t notice before, and does anyone else think it’s weird to have a job teaching other kids when you’re not even eighteen? That seems like a lot to me.

I gave the book 4 out of 5 stars.

75 in ’13: Anne of Green Gables

How could you ever be mad at that face?

 

For the fifty-fourth book in the challenge, I read Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, the first in the Anne of Green Gables series.

You guys, I read this whole series so many times growing up that I can’t even begin to describe these books with any sort of objectivity. I was so upset that I wasn’t as creative as Anne Shirley, and that my hair was only the tiniest, slightest bit reddish (my mother is red-headed, and all of her sisters, and her mother, and her mother’s siblings, etc.), and why didn’t I get into any scrapes or adventures? It wasn’t at all fair, I would think to myself, until I got thoroughly embarrassed by something so easily preventable that Anne did, and squirmed and wallowed and skipped through the worst of the humiliation parts (which is rather a lot of the books). These books colored my childhood.

If you’ve never read it, the first book starts out with an older couple, a brother and sister with no living relatives, deciding to get an orphan boy to help them out with their farm. It’s hard work, and they are not getting any younger (especially Matthew), and one of a friend’s friends got one from an orphanage and was quite happy with their decision, and the opportunity presented itself for a boy to be fetched along as well.

Except, when Matthew arrives at the train station, there isn’t a boy sitting there waiting, there’s a girl. He is very, very shy, especially around women and girls, and there isn’t anyone else there to complain to, and she can’t go back right then, and she can’t stay the night in the station, so he takes her home. On the ride to Green Gables, their farm, she completely charms him with her fanciful imagination and near-constant stream of chatter. Marilla has no such compunctions about talking in front of anyone, and fully intends to send her back as soon as she can be sent; but that will be several days, at least. In the meantime, they get to know her a bit better and start to wonder if maybe, just maybe, they shouldn’t send her back.

It’s cute, and Anne is ridiculous, a handful, and a good soul, and she gets herself into so much trouble (in such a straight-laced, rules-bound, judgmental society) with her free-spirited ways, but she accepts her flaws (they are so hard on her, for reals you guys) with good grace…most of the time.

I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars. I TRIED not to let nostalgia color my rating. Tried.

75 in ’13: Kilmeny of the Orchard

She don’t talk, but that’s a bonus, amirite? HAW HAW HAW!

For the fifty-third book in the challenge, I read Kilmeny of the Orchard, by Lucy Maud Montgomery. In it, a young man comes back from teacher’s college to fill in teaching at a school for a buddy of his and catches sight of a beautiful girl playing the violin in a ruined orchard. He quickly becomes obsessed and falls in “love” with her, delighted by her innocence and “natural warmth,” and intrigued by her mutism and the rumors surrounding her and her family in the town. So that’s not creepy at all. Pretty much everyone is against the two getting together, and a lot of that disapproval is because her mother was a horrible creature for a woman, being all confident and stubborn and knowing what she wanted and then refusing to settle for what everyone else thought was good for her, so obviously all that hateful, selfish, mannish behavior had to be punished by God. Clearly that’s the reason Kilmeny won’t speak, and that’s why she went crazy. Obvs. So gross. Run, handsome teacher dude.

I loved this book when I read it in high school, but it’s a bit harder to swallow this time around. It was something about everyone being worried whether or not she was “the right sort of woman” for their precious buddy, and it all being okay once they realized she was pretty. Because that’s really all that matters when it comes to wifely virtue. Rubbed me the wrong way. It’s a pretty story, though, if you can ignore the rampant sexism and ugly relationship tropes.

I gave it a 3 out of 5 stars, because it IS a pretty story.

75 in ’13: The Story Girl

Many suspense. Such mystery. Wow.

For the fifty-second book in the series, I read The Story Girl by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Sweet, nostalgic, old-fashioned and just this side of purple. Not much in the way of an over-arching plot, simply the events (or imagined events) over the summer on a quiet farm in Prince Edward Island. Two brothers go to stay with their extended family, various aunts, uncles, and cousins. In addition to the cousins their age is a particularly imaginative, dramatic neighbor girl with a knack for breathing life into the myriad stories she loves to tell.

This started off quite a LMM kick for me. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars.

75 in ’13: The Stepsister Scheme

Note the power stance.

For the fifty-first book in the challenge, I read The Stepsister Scheme, by Jim Hines.

It’s a different take on the old fairytale of Cinderella, with references to Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and several others. The story begins after Cinderella’s/Danielle and her prince have returned home after their honeymoon. The prince goes missing, and she is attacked by magic wielded by her jealous stepsister. Danielle is recruited by the prince’s mother to find him with the help of two other kickass ladies who have done this sort of thing before.

It’s a fun idea, and the world-building is interesting, but I think Hines’ style doesn’t jive with me. Half of the story I wanted to read was there, but the other half was in my head and didn’t quite mix with what was on the page. I would have done the dialogue differently, the descriptions…the overall style would have been different. So I didn’t enjoy it as much as it deserved, probably. I still gave it a higher rating, because it isn’t a bad book, just not the one I wanted to read at the time. I haven’t read any of Hines’ other books, but I know people who have, and that just seems to be his storytelling groove.

I gave the book 4 out of 5 stars.

75 in ’13: The Dogs of Riga

I think I need a Xanax.

 

For the fiftieth book in the challenge, I read The Dogs of Riga, by Henning Mankell (translated by Laurie Thompson), the second book in the Kurt Wallander series.

This time, our sensitive and seriously flawed homicide detective is dealing with a puzzle. Two bodies wash up in a rubber raft on the Swedish shore, shot execution-style and wearing very fancy suits. Clearly related to organized crime, these murders take a turn toward Latvia and a city where the only thing you can trust is that you can’t trust anyone, especially the police. But who cares if a couple of criminals are bumped off by other criminals? Wallander does.

I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars.