Spring Break Easter Jinx

Well, I definitely jinxed myself with the last post about writer's block. I haven't written a thing since that post. But to be fair, it wasn't because I couldn't think of something to write -- it was because I forgot that Spring Break and Easter were upon us.

With my children off from school last week, and my husband taking the week off work for a "stay-cation" -- I didn't really find myself with any free time that I could dedicate to writing. It was an exhausting week, complete with trips to museums, Broadway shows, playgrounds, Chuck-E-Cheese, karate belt testing, tee-ball games, my daughter's birthday, Easter, etc etc. I spent most of this week so far catching up on everything that didn't get done because of all our Spring Break fun.  Truth is, I'm still tired. Sigh. Yep, I'm getting old.

I have always thought that Halloween was my least favorite holiday. Even as a kid, I never really enjoyed it (yes, I like candy, but I'm just not one for dressing up in costumes and knocking on the doors of strangers). I think I stopped trick-or-treating when I was 9.  Anyway, this past weekend has me reconsidering whether Easter is not, in fact, my least favorite holiday.

My kids are still fairly young (5 and 4), so the tradition of the Easter bunny, egg hunt and coloring of eggs is alive and well in our house.  Every year we manage to make the same mistake when it comes to coloring eggs. We (1) start the process way too late (as in 10 minutes before bed time); (2) forget how to hard-boil an egg (so they end up cracked); and (3) waste time trying various techniques to cool the eggs quickly.  Our kids inevitably drop most of the eggs anyway...and the whole thing seems pointless.

Nearly three decades have passed since I was a child celebrating Easter, and it seems to me that much has changed in that time (or perhaps my family just celebrated it differently).  Back when I was little, we colored eggs the night before, woke up to an Easter basket filled with chocolate, and went on an egg hunt. [Side note: my father LOVED to hide eggs in the most unusual places. I think I found an egg in a filled mayonnaise jar once.]  These days, I've noticed it has become a gift-giving holiday.  

"What did you get for Easter, Timmy?" 

"A new bike!"

"Cool! I got a new PlayStation!"

Um, I must have missed the memo that made Easter a "Christmas Junior" holiday.  As it turns out, my son does need a new bike, and it would have been very easy to have given him one for Easter, but I didn't want to set a new precedent of expecting gifts on that day.  The feast of chocolate is enough of a gift.

Speaking of chocolate, that seems to be another thing that has changed since I was a kid. I noticed a few of my FB friends noting (proudly) that their kids' baskets were filled with DVDs, games, other small toys and healthy snacks...not a chocolate egg to be found.  I know that we get hit over the head every day about how Americans in general are overweight and that our children are overweight too -- so I definitely understand the desire to curb the unhealthiness of the holiday -- but I still subscribe to the "everything in moderation" theory. 

My kids get chocolate/candy 3 times a year: Halloween, Christmas, and Easter.  I make sure it doesn't get eaten all at once by dolling it out slowly in the weeks following the holiday.  Hopefully, by doing this, my kids are learning that candy/chocolate is something to be enjoyed a little at a time, and that it is not some forbidden fruit to be coveted and gorged upon when they are old enough to make choices on their own.  Alas, if they have a sweet tooth like their mommy...this lesson may be lost on them.  I can only hope that if they inherited my sweet tooth, they also inherited my willingness to be active and exercise.

Anyway, now that I have found the time to update my blog, I no longer have any excuse not to start working on my other creative projects.  I will get started right after I pick up my son from school, and take my daughter to dance class, and fix dinner, etc etc :)

Writer's Block

So, apparently there is some debate as to whether "writer's block" is a real thing or not. There are some who insist it is just an excuse for lazy writers. Those individuals argue that you should be able to write every day, even if it is just a sentence.

I would argue, however, that even if I did write a sentence each day, it is still possible to suffer from writer's block. 

Having spent the better part of my (paying) career learning to write to a deadline, I discovered that the best way for me to meet a deadline was to just start writing, even if I wasn't sure what I wanted to write yet. There were times I had to scrap much of what I wrote, but most of the time I was able to salvage a good bit of it. HOWEVER, I was writing marketing materials and technical reports...things that did not have a plot. Trying to write a novel is a completely different beast.

I sailed through writing my first novel (The Rise of Fallon). I woke up one day with an idea and just ran with it. But it wasn't as though I had the entire concept plotted out in my head ... the novel soon took on a life of its own, relegating me to the role of a puppet scribe. I had no idea when I began that Gentry would turn into a major character. I had no idea that Lady Dinah would go on a quest in search of her mother's journals. But that was the story that wanted to be written, and so it was.

I had assumed I would sail through writing my second novel (The Dungeons of Cetahl) as well.  I sat down at my computer, expecting my fingers to begin typing at the command of the same unseen forces that dictated my first novel.  Much to my frustration, my fingers remained still more often than not. The words would not come. I tried to force myself to write, giving myself a goal of writing a scene a day, but it was a waste of time. Those forced scenes were not where the story wanted to go -- they were dead ends -- and they always ended up in the digital trash bin.

It took some time to admit it to myself, but I had writer's block.  The creative juices weren't flowing, and there was nothing I could do to force the situation. I could only wait, and hope, that the story would finally come. It finally did -- in fits and bursts with long periods of silence in between. I must confess, it was a painful story to write.

It is the fear that my third novel (The Order of the Ancients) will be just as painful to write that has kept me from working on it in earnest. I am reluctant to go down that road again, so soon, with the wounds of the second novel so fresh. I have sketched out a few scenes, but I haven't really tried to sit down and write the story.

Instead, I have started working on a collection of poems and short stories -- some of which were written long ago, some of which were ideas that I never fully fleshed out. But this is not necessarily meant to be a distraction. It is my hope that the act of creative writing will be the inspiration/motivation I need to get over my fear and finally begin working on The Order of the Ancients.  And it WILL get written.  I am one of those unfortunate souls who feels compelled to finish what she starts...