–W. Somerset Maugham

I’m obsessed with it.

I had been plugging away at what I thought would be my second book, but every time I sat down to work on it, I got bored. It was a perfectly good story–a great idea, I think, actually–but I dunno…it just wasn’t working. The timing was off. A certain spark was lacking. “It’s not you, it’s me.”

I’d also written this other scene that I couldn’t get out of my head. It was just three pages, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Two weeks ago, I finally went ahead and submitted. I set the WIP aside and started working on this one. It’s exactly what I was looking for.

I’ve heard a bazillion writers talk about how you need to be madly in love with a story to make it work. It’s obvious, of course, that if you’re bored while you’re writing, it certainly doesn’t bode well for your readers. I just think that giving up is easier said than done. Every story has it’s moments–there are many, many times you’ll want to give up on a MS and have to push through. Some of my best writing moments happen that way. And, let’s face it, this isn’t supposed to be easy. It wouldn’t be worth doing if it wasn’t a challenge, as far as I’m concerned. The key is discerning when something’s worth sticking it out for, and when it’s time to move on.

So I’ve moved on. It feels really, really good.

And because this new story is constantly on my mind, I’ve started collecting images related to it while I poke around on Pinterest. Here are a few:

Images courtesy of: TripAdvisor, VillainouslyVintage.wordpress.com, thisnext.com, consideryourselfathome.blog, flickriver.com

“It’s hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.” –Dolly Parton

I just found out that Dolly turned 66 last week! Check out this great photo essay of her style evolution on the Huffington Post.

a couple of years ago, I interviewed harvey karp, the author of those wildly popular “happiest baby/toddler on the block” books, for a story I wrote for a parenting magazine. one of the greatest tips that he gave me, which I’ve never forgotten but have only actually acted upon once or twice, is to remember to record my kids’ voices while they’re little. photos and videos are essential, obviously, but their voices…when they lose that squeaky, chirpy sound, it will be a very sad day.

and then there’s the way in which they say things. my big girl says “wit” instead of “with” (as in, “will you color wit me?”). like her mother, she really likes to “lax,” as in, “mommy, i’m going to sit on the couch and lax with my books.” the other night, as I was headed out the door for margaritas with a couple of girlfriends, she hugged me goodnight and told me that she “loved me really much.” and then there’s “last year yesterday,” which is what she says when referring to anything in the past: “remember last year yesterday, when we went to see my cousins at the beach?”

last week, we were chatting during bedtime, and I tried to explain the concept of telling each other the best and worst parts of our day–the “rose” and the “thorn.” The next day in the car, she asked me and my husband to tell her our “roses and horns.” I haven’t corrected her yet.

I hope you have a fantastic weekend–high on the roses, low on the horns.

In essence, he’s saying don’t get hung up on the little details. Ignore the “nose-blowings of everyday circumstances.” Keep it moving. Focus on the big stuff.

It’s good advice. I think.

The problem for me is that I adore writing about the little details. While I obviously don’t want to painstakingly enumerate every single thing that a character does all day—the boring commute to work, the deciding what to eat for lunch—I do think that it’s the aggregate of all of those things that help me understand my characters. Whether my character listens to NPR or Metallica during her commute matters to me. What she cooks, how she talks (or doesn’t) to the person ringing up her grocery order, what’s in the bag she carries—maybe I don’t want to pore through these things with such detail that a story becomes a chronological journal of everything the characters do all day, but still…the little stuff matters. A lot, I think.

But the question I keep asking myself is whether the little details that I so love writing about are essential to my writing process, and solely that, or whether they’re just as essential for the reader, too? In other words, when I’m dreaming this stuff up and having fun writing about all the extraneous stuff in a character’s life, is it primarily a first draft thing? Is it part of chipping away and figuring out what the essentials are? And if that’s the case, what’s extraneous, really? Is that the toughest part of the job?

Maybe it’s partly that I think of myself as a writer who’s primarily interested in ordinary people and ordinary lives and the way that we handle what looks like the mundane sort of day-in-and-day-out that makes up a life. The mundane is sort of essential, no?

But then I read, “Notice how much you customarily skip as you read.” This makes me wanna barf, because I know how much I skip as I read, and I also know that, in contrast, I am a world-class tinkerer when I write, fretting over every last word choice and getting lost in descriptions that…what? Maybe don’t matter so much?

I’m (quite obviously) working this out in my head as I type. The bottom line is that I think it’s interesting and worthwhile, as a writer, to think about how you write versus how you read and what the differences are between the two. This seems obvious, but I’m discovering that it’s something I haven’t examined too closely.

So here’s a lazy, fill-in-the-blanks post for a lazy, low-effort afternoon. I stole this directly from Lindsey, who, by the way, sells lots of great handcrafted items that I’ve had the pleasure of buying.

right now, i am…

watching:  the rain fall outside my kitchen window.

eating:  for lunch, i had the pioneer woman’s chicken spaghetti, which is delicious and, even better, I didn’t cook. my great pal and neighbor made too much and brought me her leftovers.

drinking:  bean traders coffee (when am I not?) and my ever-present camelbak bottle of water.

wearing: my husband’s sweater, black leggings, and the slippers that I got for Christmas (quick! somebody call clinton kelly!). oh! and white shoulders perfume–a classic and my new fave.

avoiding:  the laundry, the inbox, the tumbleweeds of dog hair rolling across the kitchen floor.

feeling:  excited about the progress I made this morning on my next book, and about the fact that I’m having dinner tonight with my best friend.

thankful:  for a husband who sent me to the mountains last weekend with a bunch of girlfriends, and for the girlfriends themselves. i’m so lucky to live in a place where I have such an incredible network of women going through the same stage of life.

weather:  rainy and cold, which is exactly what I’m in the mood for, though I’d love some snow.

needing:  to go for a good, long run after my comfort food lunch. a nap would also work.

thinking: about the fact that the main character in my next book is still named “X” because I can’t commit to anything. and about how increasingly anxious i’m going to get over the next several months as the launch of the first one approaches.

loving:  emails from my very oldest friend, a stack of new recipes to try this weekend, the way that my 17-month-old mimics me by patting my back when I hug her, the way that my big girl sings “the bare necessities” by saying “the bear mah-sesames,” the possibility of a cape cod vacation this summer, making new writer friends over the past couple of days, the golden retriever snoring next to me.

So that’s my 17-month-old in the cast she got right before Christmas when she fell off of her sister’s bed and fractured her wrist. The cast, mercifully, came off a week ago. Not that she hardly noticed, aside from discovering that she could make really cool noises by banging her cast against the wall.

She didn’t seem to be in any pain when the accident happened–in fact, she got up and walked into the playroom just like nothing had happened–and my husband and I spent several minutes deciding whether to even take her to the doctor.

The “should we see a doc?” question can be so hard with kids, particularly with wee ones who can’t verbalize their symptoms. For advice on what to do when your little one is sick, check out “12 Symptoms You Should Never Ignore,” my article in this month’s Parents magazine.