H is for...

There are good habits and there are bad habits.  Currently, I am trying to incorporate a few good habits into my life so that I will be happier and healthier as I sprint towards the finish line.  One of these habits is running.  Let me backtrack here for a second.  I used to be a smoker and I'm talking a heavy, two pack a day chain smoker.  On a good day, I had the lung capacity of a hamster.  But, I was able to kick that cigarette addiction a few years back  with the assistance of nicotine lozenges.  I started out with Commit, but found that I liked the Wal Mart generic variety because they were cheaper and tasted more like candy.  And guess what?  I am now thoroughly addicted to the lozenges.  Like a nincompoop, I disregarded the right way to quit.  Ya know, like in three months with a gradual decrease in the nicotine consumed.  

Every day, I pop those tasty little lozenges like they were Altoids.  I drink with them.  I sleep with them.  I eat one right after eating.  In other words, they have become another nasty, expensive habit that I need to break.  Like today.  

Yes, you heard me right. Today I am cutting them out cold turkey like I should have done with the cancer sticks two years ago.  Goodbye weekly $30 box of nicotine and Hello, .99 bag of Atomic Fireballs!

Let's see if I have any teeth left by next week.  So, back to running.  I decided to run a 5k a few months back so I did the Couch to 5K app on my phone.  At first it was really tough, but after I hit some magic moment on that treadmill, I began to love it.  Each day I walked out of the gym floating on air.  Endorphins rock!  And accomplishing a goal rocks too.  My 5k is June 1.  We'll see if I can actually run outside with wind blowing and Texas heat and humidity assaulting my senses.

So, the other habit I'm trying to incorporate into my life is writing on a daily basis.  I'm one of those writers who sits down when the mood strikes and lately, well, the mood hasn't been striking.  And I've got to finish this book so that the editor that I'm paying actually has a story to rip apart.  It's got to have a beginning, a middle and an end.  And it's got to make sense.  And she needs it April 20th.  Yes, I have 290 pages.  Yes, it's book length, but does it flow?  Is there a narrative arc?  Will people care?  I have no idea.  I'm so lost and so so distracted.

Which brings me to the A to Z blog challenge.  I thought very deeply today about throwing in the towel and giving up. Heck, nobody would really notice.  But then, I thought, wait a second, this is daily writing.  And it is a good habit.  But then I thought, well it's not really fair to the people who visit my blog and I don't respond and visit their blog because I get distracted and stop writing on the project that is closest to my heart.  So, this is what I decided on.  I will post every day.  If you post a comment, you're a saint.  You are getting some seriously good Kharma by doing so.  Your reward will be delayed, however.  I will visit your blog and sing your praises on April 21.  In fact, the last week of April will be a marathon of blog hopping.  

I know it's unconventional.  I know it's sort of lame.  But, what can I say?  Sometimes we have to put ourselves first.

I wish you all great success.  If you want to hear me bitch and complain till April 20, stop on in.  The door is always open.

H is for...

Psyche!  This post is totally not about the Hunger Games, even though the book (and yes even the movie) is all about DEATH.  Instead, I'm going to try my darndest to kind of incorporate the Hunger Games into a long drawn out metaphor about what it's like to be a writer.  

If you're a writer, you're used to sitting alone at your computer sharpening the weapons in your writer's toolbox.  Sometimes, you think you're getting pretty good at this writing thing.  At least that's what your Mom tells you, but she doesn't count. You're hungry to see if  your skills are really that stellar, so you venture out into the world to shoot a squirrel.  

Squirrel?

Wait a second.  I take that back. You don't kill a squirrel because that would be senseless and cruel, unless you plan on eating it and I don't know, squirrel meat just sounds kind of yucky.  Instead, you take your coffee stained, wrinkled pages to your trusty writer's group or you send your manuscript to a trusted friend to see what they think about your supposedly mad writing skills.

There is a long pause.  Sometimes it starts out with a vague "that was interesting" comment and then you hear the dreaded words that no writer ever wants to hear, "Primrose Everdeen!"  I mean, "BUT."  And there's always a but.  Why?  Because writing is subjective.  Some people think the Twilight books are the cat's pajamas and I think they're...well, um, uniquely different, but that's another story.

Okay, so let's say there's is a reaping and you volunteer your story because your younger sister's story is kind of weak. And you meet Lenny Kravitz, I mean this cool person that you really like and she gives you a writer's hat and convinces you that you're going to nail this one and be victorious in this game.  So you submit.

After hitting send, you run off into the forest to get as far away from the other writers as you can and you wait.  And wait.  And wait some more.  And just when you're about to give up, a balloon drops from the sky and says, "Congratulations.  We have whittled down all the entries to the top forty and yours is one of them.  We'll let you know soon. Thanks for your patience."

So for the first time in a long time you've got hope and hope is good. But then you realize you're going to have to kill Peeta to be the victor in this game of publication.  And who wants to kill Peeta?  

I certainly don't want to kill Peeta.  

But it's all for naught because you get rejected from this book, so you contemplate eating some poison berries for like a second and then you realize you don't have to do anything that rash because you and Peeta can both win.

So what's the moral of this story?  There are several. You can't win if you don't play the game.  Don't kill the people who help you along the way.  In fact, prop them up and support them in any way you can. And whatever you do, don't give up.  This writing game is a bitch, but lucky for us, there can be more than one victor.  Even luckier, it's not televised.