Writing

These pictures have absolutely NOTHING to do with this post.  I would just like to record that Halloween did indeed happen here.  Plus blog posts are always nicer when they have pictures to accompany them, true?

*Major shout out to my super fabulous SIL April who invented the "Drill Your Pumpkin To Death To Make It The Coolest Pumpkin On The Block" method.  Thanks for letting me steal your idea.  I wasn't kidding last year when I said I'd actually do it.  Also mad props to Ben for carving the witch with clouds behind her with nothing but his imagination to guide him.  He has quite the set of skills, too.

Lily was a princess.  Skyler was Buzz Lightyear.  For a pic of him scroll a few blog posts down.


I always knew I was weird in college when I would secretly clap my hands when my teacher would assign us a paper that we needed to write.  All the other students would groan and I would put on my own fake disappointed face and then I'd dash home, clear off my desk, and start typing.  It was actually fun for me, even if I was researching all the grim details of how bad diet soda and artificial sweeteners are for the human body.

I shouldn't have majored in Elementary Education, but I definitely don't regret doing it.  I think that that choice has been ridiculously helpful to me in the motherhood department.  But if I could go back in time Napoleon Dynamite style ("You forgot the crystals") I would have majored in English.  Because of, you know, my book.  But sometimes God intervenes and early on in my college career I got married and then became pregnant which made me opt to take all 5 billion of my English credits (resting on a couch with a big novel sounded like better pregnancy work than running a couple of miles out in the snow for a gym class while toting an eight pound beach ball in front).  I'm not so sure that the only reason why I was pregnant at that time was to pop out my adorable daughter.  I think that my classes at the time helped me get to the point that I'm at now in my writing, though I still have a long way to go before I would consider myself to be anywhere near the "publishable" level I hope to be at someday. 

One of the questions I get all the time is, "Why do you update your blog so much?"  I know that for a lot of people it's boring or just one of those things that they'll do later or they're just so dang busy that blogging is sporadic.  Not for me.  I blog when I'm avoiding my book because I'm stuck in a rut but I need to satisfy my writing itch.  So if I post 5 times in a week that means I'm having a bad book week but if I post once a week I'm lost in a future world with people I've created who are trying to fight through the life I've given them. 

I never would have guessed how time consuming this whole "hobby" has become.  I listen to writing podcasts when I fold clothes.  I scheme twists in the plot when I shower.  I try to give my characters voice when I have insomnia.  I write while Ben fixes up his motorcycle and I write while the kiddos sleep.  I write when I eat lunch and I write when the kids are watching a movie.  Is it sad that I find more excitement from writing 1500 words than watching an action packed movie?

One day I hope I'll have enough courage to share my writing with someone.  For now, only Ben knows little bits and pieces of what's happening in my own little fictional world but someday, SOMEDAY, I hope that you, too, will read it.  Because I'm pretty sure this is something that no one will expect from me, I don't think people usually look at me and say, "Oh that girl totally looks like she could write Sci-Fi."  I feel like a Barbie invading G.I. Joe territory. 

So from the bottom of my heart, thank you blog readers who faithfully come back to read my ramblings and actually comment.  As conceited as it sounds, the comments really do boost me up and make me think that maybe someone else gets what I'm trying to express.  In my dreams, I hope to be an official author, but the odds of that are smaller than small.  BUT, if it does happen, you will all be my first readers.  And for that, I can't thank you enough.