The fireflies froze in their lazy circles.  It seemed they waited for an answer, too.  My mouth dried up, probably because it had been hanging open in surprise for the past several minutes.   

I blinked.  Once.  It was promising, that flutter of movement.  It was reassuring to discover I hadn’t died of shock, after all.

“Claire?”  Liam asked.  Everything about Liam screamed his confusion:  The hesitation in his voice, the way his eyebrows pulled together over his dark eyes, the way he drew his hand away from my chin and tucked it in the pocket of his dress pants.  “Say something.  Please?”

He was looking for words, noises to come out of my mouth--my still-hanging-open mouth--that would amount to something.  That was asking a lot from me, a girl who always said the very worst thing at entirely the wrong time.  Besides, my brain swirled with all kinds of thoughts, none of them an answer.  I shut my mouth and swallowed, then turned back to look over the gently rolling surface of the pond.  

Liam waited for my response, but I remained silent, unless you counted my deafening thoughts.  I felt sure that anyone in a five-mile radius could hear them loud and clear.  If he heard anything, he didn’t let on.  

“Edwin’s lawyers requested that I come back and help wrap up things with the sale of the stable.”

I dropped my gaze to where my freshly-manicured fingers rested on the smooth wood railing of the gazebo.  “I don’t know what to say, here,”  I croaked, finally.

A puff of air escaped his lips as he ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair.  “It’s okay.  Forget I asked,” he sighed, turning away.  As usual, my reaction wasn’t what he hoped for.  You’d think he’d be used to that by now.  I related so much better to my horses than people, even the man I loved.

Yes, I loved him.  That much I knew for sure--but marriage?  Marriage.  Like forever, forever.  I’d just graduated from high school a few months ago. There was a lot of forever left ahead of me.  Still, he’d just spent the day pampering me with a trip to the spa, the beautiful dress I now wore, and dinner at the most amazing spot in town.  He deserved something more.  Maybe he deserved somebody more.  

Nothing I've written is remotely near being ready to publish.  There are sentences to weed and phrases to prune.  Characters to cultivate or burn away, the choice is up to me.  Plots need water or redirection like vines on a trellis.  In other words, a ton of gardening.

Have I mentioned I'm not particularly great at keeping green things green?  Gardening is a bad metaphor.

This week I gave myself the option of writing or not writing, editing or not editing.  Laying in bed catching up on bad t.v. and afternoon naps instead of deadlines and writer's block.  Staying up late watching Conan because I can or going to bed obscenely early because there's no word count left.  My break should be refreshing.  My synapses should be snoozing so they can return ready to fire more quickly and easily.  But no....  That's not what's happening.

Instead, my stomach is churning with each day that passes in which no forward progress has been made on my dream.  I don't like being in limbo.  I don't want to rush this thing, but I hate being suspended in this void.

I'm reading to distract myself, to refuel my creativity and see how others more successful than myself spin a tale.  Apparently it's not working, because instead of losing myself in these books, I push my way through each one.  My brain is persistant, nudging me every few pages.  "Pssst!  Hey!  If she can do this, so can you!"

My husband is not helping.  "Finish that book yet?"  Every. Single. Time. He. Walks. In. The. Door.  I love him, I do.  But sometimes, I loathe him.

Mommy Dearest isn't helping, either.  When I described to her why I was overwhelmed about editing my first book (a.k.a. "The Book Written Entirely In Passive Voice"), she shocked me by telling me I was probably over-analyzing my book.  A few minor changes,she said, and I would think it's ready to go!  She's my mama.  It's written into her job description to believe I can do no wrong--except for that typo on page 35 and the other one on page 110--but it's still strange to have her on more of an accelerated timeframe than myself.  I probably owe her money.

It's all about patience.  When God handed out patience, I think I was in the back of the line, and by the time I reached the front, there were only crumbs left in the bag.  "Here."  I imagine God said as he dropped the specks of patience in my palm.  "Good luck with that.  And, remember, 'thou shalt not kill'."  Then He walked away bent over in hysterical laughter.  To make it even more hilarious, He pumped my veins full of the blood of Irish, Scottish, and German ancestors.  Well-played, God.  Welllllll-played.

On top of it all, the crazy (and not-so-crazy) thought occurred to me to write the third installment first just to see if I could and the stars aligned.  And by "stars aligned", I mean "does any of this make a lick of sense?"  If I chose to write more now, I would need to find another place to live because I am pretty sure that would be the end of my marriage, right there.  My husband's already convinced these books will never see the light of day past my computer screen and I'm just pretending to write. 

So, yeah.  There's a lot of pressure.  From books that aren't but very well could be my own...  From my well-meaning (but adolescent) husband...  From my usually well-planned but impetuous mother.  But mostly, and most deeply, from my own self. 

I'm not letting anyone talk me into putting anything out there before it's really and truly time, but I sure hope this feeling of suffocation decides to leave me soon.

Tonight I did it.  I finally completed--in 2-1/2 months--what I was hoping would only take me one.  But who's counting, anyway?

Book 2 Draft 1 is complete at 50,004 words.  It is not perfect, but I never expected it would be.  Show me someone who writes the perfect first draft, and I'll point out that it probably took them 20 years to do it. 

There is a lot of smoothing to be done, details to be added, and probably I will end up with a completely different story when I eventually go through and do a second draft of the thing.....  Kind of like when I did a second draft of my FIRST book.  But right now I feel better about this one.  I think that's just denial.  Time and space will reveal how horrible it actually is.  For the moment, I am proud. 

Thank you to the hundreds of people who endured my word count posts on Facebook.  I know it is one of the many reasons you hide me in your newsfeed, and I love you still.  Don't expect me to like the accomplishments you are proud of, but we're still okay.  Haha.  But, seriously, thank you for your encouragement--especially those who have no idea what I'm talking about most of the time.  Yes, I realize that's most of you.

(Is it weird that I still get surprised when people say, "You're writing a book?"  I've kept it this big secret and all.... ;-)  )

And even though I'm not 100% he deserves it, I'd like to say thank you to my amazing husband.  He's my biggest fan, always, and yet he gives me so much grief about my starting on a second book when I haven't published the first.  There's a method to my madness this time, dude.  Take a chill pill.  Just for your impatience, maybe I'll start writing installment three.

The flu has made me testy, my bad.

Tomorrow--today, officially--I will rest and do whatever it is when I'm not worried about self-imposed deadlines.  It likely involves mountains of laundry and even bigger mountains of pet fur lurking in every corner of the house.  Exotic, I know.

Unless I decide to do something really crazy like enter this contest, in which case I would have to forego said piles of things and figure out stuff I've never done before (pitch and picking an excerpt).

Tonight, I sleep.

Hours ago I watched a baby slide into this bright world to the shelter of loving arms.  A family's joy and wonder was renewed with the cry of life.  For me, it was an evening of learning more about new friends, laughing together until baby was near and undeniable.  Walking from the hospital with a grin--a nice reminder of how rewarding and powerful it can be as a birth worker.

At the same time, I know my days as a doula are numbered....  Or, at least, my days as a semi-busy doula are.  The on-call lifestyle is difficult on families, bodies, and just about everything else.  This week it is more apparent to me after a night spent away from home and the subsequent day lounging around the house required to recharge my energy.   

I admitted it on the phone to one of my sisters this morning.  My sister, in all seriousness, replied, "You need to write." 

Where has she been hiding for the past year-and-a-half?  Or, maybe, where have I been hiding for the past year-and-a-half?

In her defense, she does not waste much time on the Internet, so she has missed my million-and-one Facebook statuses/blog posts about my books.  I'm sure she believed she was shedding light on something I'd been passing over all this time.  At the very least, it made me laugh to myself several times throughout my morning. 

Really?  You think I should write?  Eureka!

Make-up writing was my only weekend plan (besides make-up sleeping), but a simple text message looks like it may throw a wrench in those plans.  Books never text with emergencies, and books can be written accompanied by a nice meal....  But books, as wonderful as they are, don't hug you at the end of the day with appreciation for the minuscule role you play in their life.

They keep talking about how lonely it is, the life of a writer.  Authors are driven to drink every day, taunted by their own words and the overwhelming quiet of it all.  We're changing that, they say.  Now you can connect with other writers who are on the verge of crazy, too!, they say.  See Twitter, Facebook, Skype, meet-up groups, a million blogs from Joe Schmoes just like you--you get the idea.  There's no reason to slog through this alone when you can share the [sometimes] torturous process with others.  And when the madness strikes all of you, well, at least you're not drinking alone.

This morning I am feeling the isolation.  I'm also confused because I don't know whether I should feel sad or if it is acceptable.  To me, writing is exciting but also weighty.  It's the warmth of sun on my face as well as the dark outline of a thunderhead off in the distance.  This is what I want to do...  But I feel the pressure of it, the frustration from wasted moments while pursuing other things. Or, on the other hand, there is the sadness from looking family in the face and saying, "It's been a long time.  What have you been up to?"  Then there's the agonizing decision of spending an extra hour or two to write in the evening or turning in early because I know I will end up at a birth sooner or later.  Even taking the time to post on this blog seems foolish, a wasting of words, when I should be concentrating on my other works in progress.  What's the payoff to hiding myself away in order to THINK, or sitting alone in a cafe with earbuds and a keyboard (besides the obvious--people-watching and caffeine!).

Balance.  Reality.  What to do, what to do.

I read somewhere that writers shouldn't write in order to be read, to which I agree to a point.  But, really, I can't figure out why someone would spend hour upon hour building a story unless they planned to share it, at some point.  All of this has to be worth it--has to reconnect you to the world in some fashion, or the world slips from your grasp.

It feels egotistical to say, but I need a writing village.  Who's in?

... or I'd like to think it is.

I hit 40k words just a little bit ago.  Finally.  I almost went to bed early because I've been dragging all day.  Instead, something told me that it would be a perfect night to check out the Write Or Die desktop program I bought before Christmas.

The premise of Write Or Die is that you can set goals--crazy or easy, or somewhere in between--for your writing, and if you don't hit those goals, then you are punished.  The punishments range anywhere from violins screeching in the background to words deleting themselves from the screen.  If you are idle for too long the screen fades from pink to red, which I found to be really annoying. So tonight, I managed to write about 1084 words in an hour, which is  some sort of record for me.  I'm excited about this new gadget to hopefully motivate me to get to the finish line.  I'm only 10k off now!  Yay!

And now I am falling asleep at the keyboard.  That's the price you pay for an hour of super-speed.

Dance-Off! 

Okay, not really.  It just sounded exciting.  I'm still in my pajamas weighing the pros and cons of doing anything else besides nursing my current mug o' joe.  So far, nothing has been so important that I've moved.

The ringing in of 2013 was anti-climactic.  Some tummy issue sidelined me from my family's annual karaoke/card game party, so I curled up in bed with my laptop, a tall glass of water (I'm a lush), and a couple of Twilight movies I haven't seen in ages but try to avoid watching when my husband is around.  My husband is my biggest fan and would sit through a Twilight marathon if I begged him to--and secretly, he would like it just a little bit.  That's the kind of thing he holds over my head, though.  Eventually I pay a price for such injustices to his manhood.

But, getting back to New Year's Eve...  The house was mine.  Empty.  Friends, I have never lived alone.  Never.  Maybe someday my own voice will echo back to me and I will miss the sheer chaos.  For now, the solitude is as close as I will come to straight-up magic.  My family's party could have gone for a week solid, and it would have been the next best thing to laying on a beach somewhere with a fruity drink in my hand.  Sadly, the boys returned at about 11:30p.m., and we flipped on the t.v. ten minutes before midnight only to see Carson Daly and his female co-host holding a conversation they wouldn't shut up about until 10 seconds before midnight.  Horrible--I want Dick Clark back. 

Anyway...

Uninterrupted, I managed to plunk out a little over 1900 words, reaching my re-re-revised goal of 38k by the end of 2012.  Shortly after the ball dropped, bringing in 2012, I was snuggled up with my laptop.  A year later, I am in the same place, same characters, different story.  My eyes opened this morning, and my first thoughts were, "Now what happens with my characters?"

Well, no.  My first thoughts were, "Coffee.  Where's my coffee?"  But, the two kind of go hand-in-hand, so it's almost the same thing.  The point is, clearly I am where I am supposed to be.

The end of the world didn't happen, not yet, unless we're already smack dab in the middle of the zombie apocalypse and we just haven't noticed.  So what are you going to do to bring yourself to the place you want to be?  I'm not talking resolutions, because there is something about a resolution that screams "You know I'm too hard.  Quit already."  It has to be something else--something you go for with fire, because failing isn't an option if you ever want things to change for the better.       

Maybe you're stuck on a big picture, when focusing on a single baby step is enough to begin.  Every journey starts with a single footstep... or keystroke... or glass of water.  Take that single footstep every day and by this time next year, you're at least 365 paces closer.  But I bet you're closer than that because momentum in one area of our lives tends to push us to take a step or two (maybe more!) along the way. 

So tell me what your journey is, and one baby step you'd like to take to get there.  Can I help you, even if it's just cheering from the sidelines as you baby-step your way through a year?