Kali McCray

Sick and Sulking…

I should have known.  Getting up so early and running around so much over the past two weeks…I should have known I would get sick.  Ugh!  Adding insult to injury, I was so ill I had to go to the doctor on my daughters birthday.  She didn’t complain a bit, but I am doing enough complaining for the two of us and using it as an excuse to continue birthday celebrations into next weekend.

Four prescriptions and two over the counter medications later and the doctor assures me I will feel better in about a week if I do absolutely nothing but rest and sleep…yeah, right.  Never the less, I am taking the advice to heart and sitting on my bum.  I don’t even feel like writing or knitting for goodness sakes!

Oh!  And the nastiest bit of all, they gave me sticky yellow ear drops with the consistency of thick syrup.  It doesn’t sound pleasant and sure doesn’t feel pleasant as the goo slides down and into the ear.  I shudder to think of my next dose.  

Okay.  I am done complaining…for now.  Too bad they didn’t give me a prescription for an attitude adjustment, I really need it this week.

Sleep. Not So Over-rated

For the second weekend in a row I had to be up at 4am to get ready for my daughter’s dance competition.  Do you think I could sleep?  Nope, not a single wink.  I watched each hour roll by on the clock and grew more and more anxious with each passing moment.  It’s now 4:16am.  I gave up on sleep about 45 minutes ago when I realized I couldn’t even enjoy a full REM cycle even IF sleep decided to grace me with it’s presence…which it didn’t.  

So here I sit.  Fizzy Cherry Coke Zero in one hand, a bad attitude on the other, and a 14+ hour day at a loud competition ahead of me.  Yesterday I wanted to pitch a hissy, a tantrum, and have a “moment”…today seems to be starting of as simply an extension of the same.

I know myself.  In the recesses of my mind I am trying to convince myself that sleep is over-rated.  We will all sleep enough when we are dead.  But it’s a lie.  It’s a big, fat, huge lie I am telling myself to trick my sleep deprived brain into believing I can be a functioning and pleasant person without sleep.  *sigh*  I feel bad for anyone who has to be around me today.  

It all comes down to one fact.  Sleep.  It’s not so over-rated after all.  

Tantrum…

Do you ever have one of those days when you want to throw a good old tantrum?  You know, the one that would make all two year olds jealous to their toes?  Yeah…that is me today.  If I could get away with throwing myself on the floor and wailing about…I would.

My ears hurt…my throat hurts…I have a migraine…we have out of town guests and looming on the horizon for tomorrow is a 14 hour dance competition…UGH!

Momentary Scribbles…

Why is it when I desperately want to write, I don’t have but a mere moment to scribble something down?  The momentary scribble whets my appetite but fails miserably to quench my thirst.  

I need to learn how to journal better.  I feel insufficient when I scribble upon the pages of my Moleskine.

Pen, the writer’s brush,

Paper, the writer’s canvas,

Ink, the writer’s blood.

Neglectful, Awful, and Blocked…

So what happens when a writer gets writers block?  I would hope they try to work through it, find inspiration and persevere.  What did I do?  I forced myself, at pen point, to finish my novel and ended up resenting it.  Was it my writing decent?  Maybe.  Was it a good story? I hope so.  The fact is I resented it.  I had high hopes for my story, a part of me still does.  Perhaps in the future, maybe even in November, I will revisit the story…but, maybe I won’t.

Without a conscious decision to do so, I stepped away from all things “writerly” for the past 5 months.  Surprisingly, for the first time in my life, it felt damn good not to write.  A huge weight, one that I had put upon my own shoulders, was lifted. 

However, as in most things, I am slowly finding myself drawn to put pen to paper again.  Ideas I struggled and fought against 5 months ago are finally starting to resolve themselves and characters are once again starting to visit me in my dreams.  This makes the writer in me happy.  This time around I endeavor to enjoy each moment of writing…as little or as much as I like.  

NaNoWriMo Word Count Day Two: 2,592

No, this isn’t the word count I was striving for, but it’s something.  Life has yet to bend to my will and allow me uninterrupted writing time.  Life didn’t get the memo apparently.  Go figure.  

I have set aside some writing time tomorrow morning and hope by the end of the weekend to have my numbers above where they need to be.  I would like to write more than needed each day so if there is a day or two I can’t write, especially around Thanksgiving, I don’t need to freak out.  I did this last year and ended with over 71k and within a week of the NaNo finish had the first draft of my novel finished with just under 92k.  It’s amazing how the ending of a novel seems to almost write itself.  I sincerely hope this is always the case.

Happy Writing!

And So It Begins…NaNoWriMo 2011

Really what more can I say about today?  NaNoWriMo begins again and the insane reality of writing a novel in 30 days along with it.  With each scribble across the page and tap of fingers across the keyboard we inch closer to the seemingly impossible feat which at this moment lays before us…a finished manuscript…a novel.

I wish luck to anyone attempting this amazing literary feat and hope we all have stocks of coffee, ink, paper and power cords aplenty to see us through the coming month.

Good luck WriMos!!!

#AmWriting #NaNoWriMo #NaNo2011

This is one of the things the kids and I did today during #homeschool. It was an experiment/craft about melting points.