Snow, Glorious Snow....

Well, as predicted, today was slighly off-kilter because of the snow. The snow definitely came down. I'm not sure how much we've had but it hasn't stopped snowing since about 8 a.m. I'd say there were at least 5 inches out there, possibly more.

We did not get to leave the office early. Nor did most of us get to work from home. I could spend time complaining about my boss who is rather spineless and refuses to make a decision in our company president's absence even though he is the vice-president but I've had a lovely evening and I refuse to be bitter. Bitterness is catching; I've realized this and I don't want to be infectious so I'm trying to nip it in the bud right now. Work is what it is, this is my mantra. I cannot change it. I know that I'd much rather be the Assistant Cheese Shop Manager at Jungle Jim's but I have a feeling that either my salary request was too high or I lack the experience with cheese that I need. It's also hard to sound sincere when talking about cheese, particularly with a British accent. Somehow, it always sounds sarcastic, even though I don't mean to sound sarcastic. In case you were wondering, my favourite cheese is probably either a really, really sharp white cheddar or a piece of Quemby Hall Stilton. I also like stinky cheeses and soft cheeses. There really isn't a cheese I don't like. Except maybe head cheese which actually isn't a cheese but, rather, pieces of meat from the head of a pig or calf and stuffed with vinegars, salt and seasonings. Apparently this is also called brawn. Ironically, when I was a child in England and we'd go get meat from the deli counter, I'd see brawn and think it was brains. It was jellylike and pink. Now I know it actually is brains, in a way, it makes much more sense. But it's still not cheese, even if it's called head cheese. Apparently, it can also be made of intestines. Just so you know.

I apologize profusely to my sister for the above paragraph. She has recently turned full vegetarian and prefers not to know rather unsavory meaty things such as the definition of head cheese. But for the record, she was the one who asked about cheese made from intestines. So, for future reference...if you don't want to know, you probably shouldn't ask Captain Monkeypants. I do like to research.

So, I digressed....Where was I...oh, yes, Work is Work. That's pretty much all I plan on saying about my job at the moment. That's really all I have to say about my job for the day. At least I didn't wear a horrible gold shiny shirt again. I don't know what I was thinking there.

All in all though, despite the tedium of the day, the evening has been good. I can't say why, exactly; it's just been...good. I had to shovel when I got home from work. My driveway was invisible under the layer of snow. I have to confess, as odd as it sounds, I rather like shoveling the snow. It allows me to go out and let the snowflakes swirl around me. When you shovel, it's not cold because you're moving all the time. It's good, physical labour and it lets me spend time with snow which, if you do any search on my blog topics, you'll know snow is one of my favourite things on earth. People have told me the novelty of shovelling will wear off. I'm not so sure. Unlike lawnmowing which I didn't like from day one, shovelling is therapeutic and somewhat...mediatative. That sounds odd but it's true.

When I had shovelled and salted, I came in and rewarded myself with a mug of William's Sonoma Peppermint Hot Chocolate which is one of the truly great treats of winter. Then I made gumbo which turned out rather tasty if I do say so myself. I spent the rest of the evening working on my synopsis, my query letter and editing the first few chapters of my novel, The Reluctant Demon, for submission. Unlike last night, everything went well tonight. I managed to submit to five agents who seem to be a good target for my manuscript. Having been through this process several times, I'm not going to expect a miracle but if I can just get one to be intrigued enough to want to read more, that's something. If not...well...I'll keep trying. It feels good to be trying again.

All in all, it's been a nice, relaxing, lovely evening. As strange as it sounds, I think the snow outside has relaxed me somehow. It's made me feel calm and happy. I know it's an inconvenience to drive in but there's something about a coat of heavy snow on the ground to even out the world around us just a little. Everything is hidden, everything looks the same. It's beautiful and mystifying.

You can tell I'm happy because I'm waxing poetic about snow...again. I wondered if it'd wear off from last year but, apparently, it hasn't. I'm glad about that. I know for most people, it's a pain, it's cold, it's inconvenient but, to me...it feels right. Somehow the thing that made the day seem off-kilter has righted me after all. I'm back on balance. Hopefully tomorrow will follow suit.

Happy Friday...and have a good and safe weekend.

Off-Kilter Days...

There are just some days where, no matter how much you force them, things just don't happen the way you plan them. Something feels off-kilter, not quite right and even though you try to continue, it just doesn't go quite right.

At the moment, I'm trying to send out a query letter to agents. I sat down to do this a while ago. I have a good query letter, I just wanted to find some agents to whom I could send it. It seemed like a great idea in theory. In practice, it turned out that perhaps tonight was not the right night for it.

It started with my computer. I have a Dell Mini and a desktop. As much as I love my Dell Mini, it seriously lacks memory and I'm currently limited as to what I can do with it. I really need to get a new memory chip for it but at the moment, there are bills to pay. My desktop is a nice machine. I've had it for a while. The trouble is that it's running really slowly. There are some days when I open up some windows and the whole thing just freezes and churns for about five minutes while it unfreezes itself.

Somedays, I can just walk away and let it sort itself out. Other days, I really need to use the computer and I get very frustrated. Simply opening a Microsoft Word document causes my computer to panic and I have to wait until it's ready to show it to me. Tonight, it did that during every stage of my attempt to get my query letter out. Then, it turns out that though it used to be that agents only wanted a query letter, they now want at least a synopsis and usually the first three to five chapters. This is all well and good but it takes a lot of time. Also, I haven't got a synopsis for my novel yet. I just have to write one. So I thought, "hey, I'll do that!". No such luck. My computer froze again. Then when it let me type, it was lagging so badly that I had typed a sentence and had to wait for a while before the sentence appeared.

So, I thought I'd edit my first three chapters and get them ready to send out. Same thing. It took a while to open the file.

I think the only way to deal with it is not to deal with it tonight. I had a goal to get ten letters out tonight but, alas, I think I'm going to have to be patient and make sure I get everything right. If I do it in a hurry, I'll end up screwing something up. I just have this sense of incompletion because I had mentally told myself I'd get it done tonight.

This week has felt a little off-kilter in general. I don't know if it's because it's the first week after the holidays but things just seem a little off. It's all silly little stuff. For example, yesterday, I thought I'd dress nice again so I pulled out this gold blouse that I've had for a while. I had a matching hairband so I thought I'd match the two to look coordinated. Then, when I got to work, I realized that instead of looking sophisticated and smart, I looked like a giant, shiny gold blob. My blouse was not flattering in the light of the bathroom mirror and my hairband did not match as well as I thought. Sometimes all it takes is a bad wardrobe day to make you feel off-kilter. For me, that was yesterday.

Today, things were thrown off-kilter by an impromptu staff meeting. Every time we get an invitation on our calendar to an impromptu meeting, my heart races a little. I consider it Post-Traumatic-Impromptu Meeting disorder. My entire first six months at our company were filled with impromptu meetings where we found out that our being sold was not going well and, most likely, we'd all be unemployed. As I've said many times, fortunately things worked out. Yet, the impromptu meetings always left us frustrated, stressed, angry and worried. Even though things are better now, the old fear comes back when we're told we have to be at a staff meeting.

Today's, fortunately, was not too serious. Well, it probably was to people who, uh, care a bit more than me. It was a meeting to discuss the financial state of our company. Basically, long story short, we need to make a lot of money. That was pretty much the entire summation of the hour and a half that the meeting took. There were a lot of numbers in there, spreadsheets on the overhead projector, that sort of thing. I sort of listened but I'm not really a numbers type of girl. I tried to listen but there was a period in the meeting where I realized I had completely zoned out for a full five minutes. I'm not talking daydreaming type of zoning where you can still hear the drone of our president's voice. No, I'm talking about that scary 'not-in-that-room' anymore type of zoning that almost felt as if I'd been asleep. I know I wasn't asleep because I spent the time writing a query letter in my head and figuring out how to go about finding agents who might be interested in my novel. It was quite a productive five minutes. Just not so much in terms of the actually meeting. By the end, we were all told at the end that we need to work hard and we're all responsible for the company's success.

I think I'm helping the company in my own way. After all, as one of the lowest paid employees, I'm not taking a huge chunk of the budget, so that's a good thing. Also, I didn't cost them a new computer so another bonus point to me! Also, now that I'm not allowed to do anything but work, I no longer waste frivoulous time enjoying my job by having a quick surf on the Web every now and again. I think I'm actually doing my part to help the company.

All sarcasm aside, it was a bit of a weird meeting. Tomorrow is going to be, likely, another weird day. We did get an updated Bad Weather Policy from our HR manager. Basically, it boils down to the fact that we can only work from home if we're physically unable to make it to work or there is a level 3 snow emergency. We have to ask our supervisor first though. Since my supervisor told me two days ago that he didn't like his employees working from home, I know we can only ask sparingly. Of course, it didn't stop my boss from leaving early and working from home tonight though. I suppose that's why he's the boss.

Nevertheless, tomorrow should be interesting. It's supposed to start snowing after we get to work. I'm not that worried anymore. If that's the case, if it gets bad enough that people are leaving, I can monitor the conditions and see if I should leave or not. I do feel sorry for the commuters though- if driving is going to be as horrendous as the weather forecast states, I would NOT want to drive home on roads like that. Hopefully, they can get a break and do what's safest for them.

I suppose the week began on an off-kilter note with the Awkward Bagel meeting. Then the next day was the Giant Gold Blob of a Monkeypants. Today was Impromptu Money Meeting and tomorrow is going to be Big Snowstorm Day. I'm not sure what Friday will hold but given the way the week's going, I'm sure there will be something.

I'll just have to remember not to wear that shirt again.

Happy Thursday!

Grocery Stores, Queries and Bad Days at Work

How come weekdays seem to drag on forever and weekends fly by?

That's my question that I'm putting to the masses today. Last week seemed like the longest week ever at work. It may have been because we're all a little stressed in our office due to the inevitable buyout of our company. We think we should have jobs but no one knows for sure. Combine that with a temporary order that everyone has to dress in business casual for two weeks...and you get a pretty stressed out office.

Not that it's really such a hardship to dress in business casual. I used to have to do it every day. It's amazing how spoiled you get though when you find out you can wear a sweatshirt and jeans to work. Suddenly, it seems like a right, not a privilege. Normally, I enjoy dressing up a little but the minute someone says I have to, I no longer want to. I like being contrary sometimes.

Yet after such a long week, the weekend flew by in a blur. I had dinner with a friend on Friday, dinner with another friend on Saturday and a trip to one of my favourite grocery stores EVER in between. The store is Jungle Jim's International Market and is huge with a fantastic supply of wine, a bakery, the best produce section...ever and, best of all, areas dedicated to groceries from around the world. They have a great British section. It's so wonderful to see the jars of marmite, tins of Heinz beans, cans of Bisto gravy granules just sitting there like it's nothing special. Those things are a staple of any British ex-pat and you wouldn't believe how much you miss them when you can't find them. There are some things that just make life better because they're comforting and most of these things I can find at Jungle Jim's.

The only problem with Jungle Jim's is that I spend too much. I blame the produce section. I tend to get a little batty when surrounded by fresh produce; suddenly everything looks wonderful and I must have it. I tried to restrain myself on Saturday but still came home with a cartful of produce.

Yet it's not also the produce section; it's the bakery and the British section. Going to the grocery store on any given day is fun for me so Jungle Jim's is like going to Disneyland. Needless to say I spent three hours there.

The rest of my weekend was nice. I sent out more queries yesterday. I used the pitch from my Amazon.com entry. It's a good pitch but trying to find an agent even with a good pitch is like trying to catch a bird with a handful of breadcrumbs and a lasso of string: In theory, it's should work but, in reality, it's never as easy to lasso a bird with a piece of string.

Yet I live in hope. If not, I'll do what I normally do: Pound my head against a wall, have a day or two of self-pity in which my friends and mother, wonderful people that they are, tell me that it'll happen one day and not to give up. Then I start again. It's a vicious cycle but a necessary one.

So today begins a new week, hopefully a less stressful one. The snow has melted, the temperature is supposed to be near sixty degrees and it's supposed to be calmer in our office. I'll allow the warmer temperatures for a while but I hope for one more bout of snow before Spring truly arrives.

In the meantime, rejections or not, I'm determined to make this week better just by trying to enjoy life instead of trying to hide from the stress that surrounds me. I have tricks for doing this. I've discovered that the "Bale Out" remix of Christian Bale's on-set rant makes me giggle uncontrollably. Christian Bale is proof that we all have bad days at work, no matter what our job. I feel bad for him that his bad day was recorded. When my day is bad, all I can do is call my poor mother and vent to her. She's a great listener and usually, a good vent session is all I need to make going into the office bearable the next day.

Yet since it's a Monday and I'm trying to be positive, I'm hoping that there are no bad days this week. I'll keep you posted on that.

Happy Monday.

Shadows of Doubt

I never have a clue what I'm going to blog about until I sit down. I often have a completely different idea in my head and then, when I start writing, something else comes out instead. It's an interesting process. Then again, that's usually what happens when I sit down to write a novel; I start with a basic idea and then it goes in a whole other direction. I wrote a novel called Skater Boy. It was supposed to be a chick-lit romance with comedic tones. It turned into a dark little novel complete with child abuse, rape and the coming of age. I tried to make it light and fun but apparently that didn't work out so well.

I like just writing to see what comes though at times, it's frustrating. There are times when I just don't know what to write and nothing's coming and the flow just isn't there. I don't consider this writer's block at all- just a case of Writer Needs to Do Something Else Right Now. Often that involves watching TV, reading a book or even, when I'm really frustrated, playing on my Playstation 2. I've found that I can't force the writing; if I do, I always end up scrapping it and starting again. It feels forced to me when I read it and I hate that.

Then there's the other extreme: Too many ideas. This does happen. And you'd think it'd be easy to write some of them down and just pick one. This does work. Sometimes. But the worst is when you pick an idea but can't get started so you pick another one. Then you go back to the first idea because the other one isn't working. Sometimes this can happen with as many as three or four ideas. It ends up feeling like a disorganized mess and the only way to get through it is to stick with one of the ideas and push through until it feels natural. That's happening to me at the moment. I haven't written fiction in a while. Moving cross country tends to interrupt your life for a while; there's the packing, the organizing, the cleaning, cramming in as much time with friends as humanly possible and then the actual moving. After the physical move happens comes the unpacking, the myriad of Walmart trips because you realize you gave a lot of really useful stuff to Salvation Army because you just couldn't be bothered to pack any more boxes. This continues for a long time. For example, when you spill wine on your carpet and you no longer have any carpet cleaning supplies. Then you have to make a frantic dash to Kroger to grab some before the carpet is forever ruined.

So, now, finally, it's time for me to start writing. The thing is, lately, it's hard because there's a lot of self-doubt getting in the way of the flow. I mentioned I was sending out query letters to agents. I sent out 15 of them. I've already had 7 rejections. None of them have read my novels, they're rejecting my letter. I suppose that's not quite so personal but it still is extremely frustrating. I've sent out batches of queries for three wildly different novels. I know my letters are well written, they summarize the plot well, follow all the guidelines but they still get rejected. I only send them to agents who represent the type of novel I've written but I inevitably get variations on the one line rejection email "Not for me, I'm afraid."

I don't know anyone in publishing. This is a huge problem. Many of the success stories these days are from writers who either did a writing program and networked that way or they had a friend who had been published and they introduced them. I've thought about writing programs but I'm a new-ish writer. I only figured out I wanted to write professionally after I had been out of college for a couple of years. For a while, I thought I wanted to go to law school. So I worked as a legal secretary. That is an excellent way to realize that being a lawyer is not like you see on TV. Being a lawyer is very boring. Being a legal secretary is also very boring. I decided not to do that. After a lot of jobs, I finally wrote a screenplay and decided I loved it. Then, as I think I've mentioned, I couldn't come up with an ending for one of my scripts so I wrote a novel and that was my Epiphany moment, the moment where I realized that I had to keep writing because it fit.

The problem with MFA writing programs is that they need a lot of stuff. They need letters of recommendation from professionals in the field. I don't know any of those. They also want you to take the GRE which is the graduate version of the SATs. This means I'd have to relearn all of that horrible maths stuff I didn't like in high school. The logical question becomes: WHY do I need to prove I can do math to be a writer? I applied to one writing program and, naturally, got rejected. It took months to round everything up. My letters of recommendation weren't terribly good though I tried hard to find appropriate people to write them. And the truth is, I don't really want to enter a writing program, anyway. I like writing on my own; I hate workshopping my stuff because it makes me think too hard. My 'process' is to just write the novel and then figure out what does or doesn't work. Workshopping means taking scenes out of context, of letting others critique them. How can they critique something that isn't finished yet? It's like trying to judge a painting when it's just a pencil sketch. I know it works for some people but not for me. I need to be left alone with my work, to see where it goes. I never feel like I'm writing a novel, honestly- I'm just 'finding' it and writing it down. It's happened eight times now so I'm pretty sure that method works for me.

Writing workshops also help with writer's block. For me, the only thing that works for writer's blog is to sit down with a character. It sounds nutty but I've gone so far as to 'have lunch' with them, talking to them in my mind, writing down a backstory or anecdotes that don't have anything to do with the novel but tells me who they are. I've done that countless times and it has never failed me.

So, I don't think I really would enjoy a writing program other than the fact I would get to focus on my writing full-time. I just want the contacts I might make from them. I also can't afford it. The same goes for writing conferences or writers retreats; I don't really like the idea of them anyway. I was naive enough when I started to think that my writing was good enough, that I had enough ideas and talent that I'd be ok on my own.

But now I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall. I've entered contests, I've written short stories, I've queried publishers and agents....nothing. And so I am filled with doubt. What if I can't write? What if I secretly suck and people are too nice to tell me?

And no matter how much I love writing, how much passion I have when I do so, the doubt creeps in. It taints my ability to get lost in a story, to hear a characters voice because I wonder if I'm doing the right thing. There's this voice in my head constantly saying "what's the point?" The point is that I love doing it and so being successful shouldn't matter but it does. Now that I've written eight novels, it does matter, no matter how much I love it. Each new idea is tinted with that shadow of doubt, the idea that I should concentrate on what I've already written rather than hiding in another work.

I invited agents to look at my blog in my last query letter. That's probably a faux pas but, frankly, I don't really care. I've followed the rules and that got me nowhere. So, I tried something new. Seven down, eight more to go. If only one of them would ask to see part of my novel, that would be something.

In the meantime, I'm making myself write again. It may end up sucking canal water but I'm pushing on and last night, I felt the doubt disappear for a while when I let my character in; I let him tell me what to type instead of forcing it and it felt right. In the end, it's just a question of persevering, of dreaming, of hoping that someone will, in the immortal words of Abba, "Take a Chance on Me."

And, if not, I can always blog some more about snow.

Happy Thursday.