Impatience

Lately, I have felt...impatient.

I have multiple books coming out (something years ago I wouldn't have dreamed of.) Even one year ago, my confidence level wasn't to a point that I would have believed that I could be not only a multi-published author but a multi-published author in more than one house.

Yeah, I've done that. I should be super duper proud of me.

Instead, lately I have been impatient. I haven't gotten things done as fast as I want them done. Yes, as an author I comprehend publishing schedules...that isn't it. (Although having five contracts signed and under my belt before March is over...feels pretty darn good.) I want more.

So before 9am this morning, I buzzed off another query on one of the stories still floating uncontracted in my harddrive. Yes, there are a few. There are a few more WIPs.

I set an unrealistic goal this year for myself, or so it seemed when I set it. I wanted to contract a book a month for 2012.

I know that a writer has no control over publishers. Even if you write the best book ever written, there is no guarantee that someone is going to shoot you a contract on it.

But I wanted to see if I COULD push myself outside my box and force myself not just to write but to send out what I wrote without painfully gnashing my teeth for months over it.

Write it...two crit partners...edit it...out the door.

For a control freak, that was like saying, "Just dive out of the plane without the parachute. No big deal."

That it has worked so far is leaving me...

Restless. If I can do that, it seems like I should be doing more.

I'm not sure exactly what MORE I want.

I have a long list of goals I wrote myself for 2012. You see, this is the year I turn 35. After two strokes, I realized awhile ago, I might not have forever to do the things I want to do. 35 was a magical number in my head. I was supposed to have a bunch done by 35 since it meant I was officially closer to 40 than 20. (I know, my idea of math skills is sort of wonky. But you can't pretend to be close to 20something when you are closer to 40...so...)

The list was something like this:

1. A contract a month for each month of 2012
So far so good...I have a small buffer, even. My impatience has me firing off queries still. Hence my 9am query letter.

2. Become okay with my body
This one was weird. I wouldn't mind losing weight. Even if I don't lose weight, I comprehend that I am not Igor and that there are those who find what I got hot. But so long as I was getting in my own way, so long as I wasn't okay with what I saw in the mirror, it is a weakness. I have been working on believing that I am beautiful, sexy, desirable. And...uh...it is a process. I have gotten to the point that I don't make faces at myself in the mirror anymore or look at my ass and gag. Not bad progress for almost April but I was hoping it was more of an overnight thing.

3. Sustain my ability to stay home with the kids.
I managed to make it home with them for the first time in their lives. Now...to stay here.

4. Travel.
I have had two really lame goals for most of my life. I have said, since I was a freakin teenager, I want to see the ocean and desert before I die. I have traveled from San Antonio to Toronto, from Colorado (and stood on the Rockies and looked out at the world) to the hills of West Virginia and yet...

Still no oceans or deserts. It is like Fate is up there grinning at me..."You can get close but not quite there...not yet."

5. Be willing to fall in love.
Not fall in love...I wasn't putting a goal on love. Love comes when it wants to. I just wanted to get into a place where the idea wasn't terrifying. Right now, I'm still not there. Love means giving up control (something I suck at.) Love means being willing to trust that person with your heart and know they will probably break it. Love means throwing that parachute into the wind and instead taking their hand...

I suck at that.

A friend of mine told me yesterday that it isn't my job to make a man impassioned when I mentioned that I wasn't the kind of girl that inspires those kind of feelings in a man. I kind of want to be that girl...shh...don't tell her. And if it isn't my job, I would still like to meet one...one that just finds who and what I am irresistible. I figure probably part of the problem is that willingness I mentioned. If I am not willing to leap off the cliff with him...why would he be willing to risk everything and shove me into a wall, risking rejection and whatnot, just for a moment in my arms?

Oh, and I am a bit of a bitch. But that isn't on this years list to fix.

So it is almost April. Almost the halfway point of the year. Deadlines loom and my list lingers in the back of my head with little to nothing checked off.

Maybe I am impatient with myself for setting goals like this. Maybe the universe for making it so hard to just DO them.

But regardless of the why, I sit here today and am restless.

Patience is a virtue

Patience is a virtue...

One I do not possess.

I admit, I used to sing the song from Willy Wonka all the time as a kid... "I want the world. I want the whole world. I want to lock it all up in my pocket, it's my bar of chocolate, give it to me no-o-ow!"

(Okay. I still do. Your point?)

I hate to wait. I don't like lines and I loathe and detest waiting rooms. I like to do things in waiting rooms so that I feel like the time is 'productive' like read books that I have due for review or that I want to 'preread' to see if they are acceptable for the kids.

I am pretty sure NO ONE likes lines or waiting rooms but they make me literally twitchy.

For college, my best friend has been trying to help me schedule and she wanted to give me gaps between classes so I had time to work on homework at school but one semester of this was enough for me to figure out that this meant, on times when I had my work done, that I was WAITING. Which I don't do well. And it wasn't like I could sit and write a book or do my other work on campus for a half an hour or an hour... So I was left twitching and waiting with things like, what, Farmville to fill the time...

Drove me NUTS.

So I eliminated the gaps.

The point of this rant? Submissions are hell for me. I am sure I am not the only person out there that goes wonky waiting. And since there is sometimes a THREE month wait... This is something I had to get big girl panties about and buck up and get past. Does it still suck... Yes.

Do you sit around in that waiting room and wait to see what they say?

Oh, no you don't.

While that book is out on submission, you can be writing another short. Or a full length. Do something else productive. If you spend the months or weeks or whatever inbetween while you are waiting just sitting there, chewing your nails...

You will have no nails, you will have pulled out all your hair and if they buy that book and ask you the million dollar question (Do you have any other work?) your answer will be... Ummmm...

But if you keep in mind that you want the whole world, in your pocket and you want it NOW you can be doing something rather than waiting.

(See? My impatience serves a purpose, doesn't it?)

Anyway, bet that song is playing in your head now. How does it feel to be my puppet? Muah ha ha ha....

Happy Writing!

Kindle the fire...

So I am impatiently awaiting the shipment of my Kindle...

By impatient I mean to say I am dancing eagerly by the door like a puppy who has been left alone all day and thinks it has been a lifetime since it has seen another living being.

I have been impulsively ordering books for the thing. I mean, I know. I can read them on here. But I don't have the time.

Yeah. No.

I have been working overtime at work and with book stuff I have been busy. Not to mention, you know, the whole three kids who have issues thing.

Um. Time consuming.

And I have to sleep sometimes.

But the Kindle will read to me. While I drive. All the books I do not have time to read because I am working. Or driving. Or writing.

I wonder if I can write and read at the same time?

Probably not but it would be super cool if I could.

Probably that would take too many brain functions. Probably bad since I still haven't mastered the walk/chew bubblegum thing.

But I can drive and eat and give fantastic commentary. My steering wheel is fascinated.

Have a readerific day.