Are You There Lovelies? It's Me. Rae.

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

-Phillip Roth

It's been a while, hasn't it?

Yeah, I know. There really is no excuse.

I've been told: When in doubt, just write. Even if you have no idea what the hell you're doing or saying, just get it out. You can always edit later. 

Ahhh editing. How I hate you.

But what if there's nothing there? Nothing to write? Nothing to say? What if you sit there in front of a notepad with pen or at the laptop, hands hovering over the keys... and there's nothing? 

And what's worse? What if you have no desire to write... at all?

I think I've mentioned this before, but since my car accident back in February, my passion for writing left my body, heart and soul. Usually I'd be exhausted and though my mind would be racing with ideas, my body and frontal lobe were in agreement that it didn't have enough energy or consciousness to life that pen or to type out whatever it was that my children were telling me at the back of my mind. That always killed me, but I'd eventually get something out. But after the accident, after the adrenaline died down and the pain faded, I would just look at my notebooks or computers and think... meh. 

Around this time, I barely even wanted to read. I just wanted to do anything but what I loved to do. Most of my time was spent going to the chiropractor, talking to lawyers, filling out paperwork, taking meds, icing and elevating my leg, public transporting myself to work which meant going to bed early and getting home late, shopping for a car (and finally getting a car)... and let's not forget work itself. Ugh. 

I had writing spurts here and there. I'd update one of my story blogs here and there and try to stay current (which is always the goal), but I swear to gawd it was like pulling teeth.

And then I decided to do something stupid: NaNoWriMo.

So the last time I did NaNoWriMo was back in 2010. Back then I had a beginning, a middle, and an end. I even developed an outline of sorts, made character notes. I was all over that shit like white on rice.

This year? Yeah, wasn't as "prepared" as I was before. November is already an off month for me due to Thanksgiving and my birthday, but last month was just full of fail. I knew I should have just skipped it, saved it up for next year. I had maybe three or four ideas that were still in the blurb phase - just an idea that would be the equivalent of the small blurb on the back of the book telling you what it was about only not so developed or detailed. But something in me wouldn't let go. I just HAD to do NaNoWriMo. 

So... I did. 

Midnight of the first day... BOOM! I wrote... something. Not to sound like a defeatist, but I knew right away I wasn't going to make my goal. 2010 I was very close to the end goal. This year? Oh HELL NO! I won't further embarrass myself with telling you my goal. I really should have just let it go. Or hell, picked a month that has nothing going on for me in it so I can devote all my time to writing. February is good. All that has in it is Valentine's Day, and I'm single for frak sakes. In any case, last month NaNoWriMo was a bad idea for me.

So now I'm back here... trying to keep up with this blog as well as my other writing projects. Before my sad hiatus from the blog world, I did manage some little story blog updates. And they are as follows (in no particular order).

• Kai is at part twenty-four
• Kearie is at part twenty-three with No Good At Being Patient
• Sanya is at part twenty-four with Gates & Tunnels
• Della is at part seventeen
• Arwyn is at part twenty

Yeah. Those were back in October, but they still count. (I'm trying to turn a positive spin on everything.) And even though I didn't make the NaNoWriMo goal, I still wrote some. Toward the end, there were some moments where I had a groove going, and I think what I wrote was pretty good. So yeah... that's something.

Last month while I was trying to work on NaNoWriMo, an idea has popped into my head that just wouldn't be ignored. Currently writing the crap out of that until it behaves and then I can go back to finishing one of my novels.

I feel like I've fallen off track this past year. Could have started with the car accident, but I'm much more organized than I have been these days. My room goes through cycles of improving to holy crap. My energy levels have been utter crap lately. That is in part of the sleep I get.

My insomnia is irritating as hell, but it's usually manageable. Lately I've been getting less and less quality sleep. The older gentleman that lives in the house I'm renting a room from is a bit on the loud side.

He stomps around like an elephant wearing cement loafers. When he talks, he has volume control issues. When he's home, he sits on a chair next to his bed, door open, watching TV. (If you haven't guessed, his room is right next to mine.) In any case, he'll hear something interesting on the news and then have to go tell my landlady about it like a kid saying "Hey Mom! Guess what happened at school today?" But he calls out to her from his door as he's walking to find her. Usually when I'm home, I'm in my room cleaning or reading or writing or watching something on the laptop, but knowing what hours I keep, she's under the impression if I'm home, I'm sleeping, so I constantly hear her telling him to be quiet. He remembers for a second but then goes back to being loud. 

When he's asleep with the door closed, I can still hear him snoring though the sound is muffled. This week he's been having health issues (leg pains from what my landlady has told me). So he's been sleeping with his door open these few days. And the hall light has been on. Now I've already established that the dude is a snore machine (what I call "chainsaw symphony"), and since the house has wood floors, sound carries. So imagine me in bed, door closed, lights out... with his door open SNORING AWAY! My landlady's room is on the other side of me. She keep her door closed, too, but she's got the master bedroom so her bathroom is the first space past the door and then her room. Meanwhile, I share a wall with Captain Snore Pants, and MY GAWD!!! He also talks in his sleep, and the bed he has now is very springy and squeaky. 

Now the dude is lovely. He's sweet and caring, and I'm not usually home for very long. I work in the middle of the day, and then I try to run my errands as much as I can after work. Sometimes I have time to be social, so I'm not there all the time, but when a girl is trying to sleep, she can't do that when she's being serenaded by someone nose and throat.

The other night I thought I could use the timer on my Songza app and let it play me out to sleep, but it's late, and I can't have the volume up else it wake people (or my landlady's dogs) up. Plus, I use my phone as an alarm, too, so I need to keep the volume up for that to wake me up in the morning. So right now, I'm just making due, but I fear one of these days, I'm going to snap at him since I'm not a pleasant creature when I first wake up in the morning, and he likes to say hello and try to chat with you even if you're walking away. Since he's been keeping me up the past couple nights, I'm afraid if this keeps up, I'm going to tell him to frak off or something, and I don't want to do that. I'm a good Jedi, dammit. No Sith allowed.

Okay, I've babbled on long enough. I think I need to post this and be done with it.

Just wanted to update everyone that I'm still here, and I'm EPIC FAIL when it comes to writing these days. But hopefully next week (or should I really start next month?) will be better?

Later my lovelies.

Have Goodness! 

Rae