One of THOSE Days

Elaine Cunningham once wrote, "If you wake up and want to write, you are a writer. Don't let anyone say otherwise."

Today I woke up with a fabulous new idea burning in my head. The tone was fantastic, the characters sympathetic and quirky. The world is unique. And all I wanted to do was rush into my computer room and start writing down the outline and fleshing out the characters. The first chapter was ready to fly off my fingertips onto the screen.

Really, it was love at first thought.

But, about thirty seconds after waking up, real life came crashing in.

My MIL is here and she wanted to have lunch with DH. But I need to get my car registered first. So I was supposed to be rushing off to do that first thing in the AM, then take her shopping for souveniers for everyone back home, and then take her to lunch. Right.....

The DMV has a website- with the wrong number listed in all places

The DMV (when you get there) only has 5 requirements- one being that both owners of the car be present and another being that all military personnel have a signed form stating that they are indeed military (because the pretty government issue ID's aren't valid)

The DMV is on the far side of every county I am near

Needless to say, I spent my morning dealing with the DMV - and my car still isn't registered in this state.

Then we had to do shopping and lunch. Which stretched into the most tedious and unhealthy 3 hours of my recent life. I hate shopping with a soul-searing passion. Especially when I haven't balanced my checkbook in several days, someone else is picking out what I'm buying, and I don't get to even look for myself. We came home with two fussy children, a worn out MIL, and a stack of bills.

I wrangled everyone down for naps, everyone out of bed for dinner, got everyone dressed, and dragged them off for DH's company "family dinner". Picture three and a half hour sof mandatory fun in a very crowded and greasy resteraunt with two small children and a MIL who doesn't like talking to strangers.

After that it was rushing everyone to bed and then I got to face the stack of bills.

Six identical enevlopes arrived from one company today. Two identical bills over a month late that are just now catching up with us. Two identical letters stating our bill is overdue. And two identical larger bills with a note that the change in address may disrupt the mailing of bills please see their website.

head -> wall

So, now it's 10:30 and I'm exhausted. I have to be up early. And I have done NO WRITING!!!!

On the days I struggle through line edits and revisions it seems I have hours to stare at the computer looking blank faced and stupid. But on the days I wake up ready to write for hours with ideas frothing out my ears Real Life gets in the way again. It's Murphy's Law of Writing. Whenever you have a wonderful idea something will step in to prevent you from getting it down on paper.

I did cheat though. I have notes for revisions scribbled on the back of driving directions and I wrote the basic outline for my new idea on some scrap paper while I pulled on jeans this morning. If I didn't have pens and paper littered around the house I'd probably go insane.

(sigh)

Now that I have my rant out of the way and my brain cleared again I'm off to write a transition scene for DOJ. Edit another chapter to feed to my beta-readers over at CC, and then (if I still have energy) I'm going to write that outline.

*Side Note* I'm seeing wonderful progress with the revised and edited chapters. We're down to nit-crits rather than demands for massive overhauls. Some of the transition scenes that are brandnew still need tweaking but I'm making so much more progress now. There is hope for a polished manuscript before November and NaNoWriMo