Yes it’s been a few days! I went to Bent Con last weekend, and I had a lovely time. It’s taken me a couple days to decompress after that, a couple trips to the car dealership with hubby’s car and an afternoon spent with my youngest son at the allergist. Just because it’s NaNoWriMo, doesn’t mean the world gets put on hold. One has to work around the world, every day of the year.

And so we’ve reached the stage of NaNoWriMo I think of as…THE BARGAINING STAGE.

Please, oh, please let me finish this and I’ll never drink or party or entertain strange manuscripts again. Please…just this once, let the day go by without a call from the nurse at school, or that friend who is never in town. Please let my inbox be silent. Please keep my dog from throwing up on the carpet, just for today…Please…

But NO. There’s always something. Always. And today MY something is 1. The way-late edits on a novel that will be published like… in two weeks, and 2. A reprint I need to totally rewrite because OHMYGOD it was crap, how did I NOT know how crappy that was when it was published the first time and how am I going to fix this goddamn train wreck so that my new editor won’t think it’s crap now? and… 3. My NaNoWriMo novel. Which I am in love with.

See that? That’s how it’s supposed to be. My NaNoWriMo novel is my new boyfriend, and he’s so fucking cute. He stands on the periphery of my day, grinning, giving me come-hither eyes. He’s singing me cowboy love songs. He smirks at me, He fucking smirks and I want to be with him so badly, but I also I have all this other stuff I have to do. And it’s important. It’s critical. It’s fundamental for me to keep my commitments and take care of my family and clean up dog puke.

(Actually, that’s not true, everyone around here knows: If whatever effluvia we’re dealing with comes out of a human, I’ve got it, if it comes from a dog? That’s not my department.)

But wait. When I was in college, I DID it, didn’t I? I got fairly decent grades. I prioritized my time. I’m the mother four kids. I have TWINS, I think I can prioritize my time…

Can’t I?

YES. I can. I do. Every day. So lets see how.

NOBODY can pay attention to two things at once. IT isn’t possible. So whether it’s laundry or or edits or driving kids to the doctor, you have to focus on that, and put the other aside. Thank heavens, my jobs today all require that I sit behind a desk. So I’m kicking it old school.

I can work on edits for about an hour before I need to stand up and walk around, crack open a Starbucks Double Shot, and do something else. So I’m setting a timer for 1 hour. That’s it. When it rings, I’m done, whether I’m finished or not. I’m going to eat lunch with a friend–something healthy and nourishing–and I’m going to set another 1 hour timer and spend time with my cowboys. Then I’m going to get up, hydrate, walk around and set another 1 hour timer, and do the other edits and I’m going to continue that until I’m done. Or I need to leave the house. Or sleep.

And I’m going to do that until December.

Maybe I’ll get to 50K on my cowboys and maybe not. But it’s for damn sure I’ll get farther than if I spend one more minute panicking, bargaining, or begging God to zap my doorbell, my phone and my inbox. In the end, it will all get done in time. Or it won’t. But it can’t get done if I don’t do it. Nothing will get done if I give up. So… If I don’t shoot myself in the foot and get to the acceptance stage long before the game is over we’re still golden.

In that way, I guess NaNoWriMo is kind of like everything else, like school, like our day jobs, like life. The only way to lose is to quit.

Timers at the ready?
Who’s with me?