Sunday, November 07, 2010

Daylight savings time, writer's doldrums

The time switch certainly did not work to my advantage this weekend. Jacob fell asleep on his own bed at nine (old time), so I struggled him out of his shoes, jeans and underwear and was about to put on a diaper when he fell out of bed, which woke him thoroughly. He declared he was not asleep: "My eyes were open!" Not. So I got him settled in bed, watching Star Wars. I thought I'd let him stay up a bit so he didn't wake me at six; besides, he'd fall asleep again, but no, he'd just taken the edge off. He promised me however when that DVD was over, he'd go "Night, night." Wrong! When it was over and I turned of the TV, he had a meltdown, wanted Mommy, etc. We called her, he calmed down a bit, and settled in bed, I thought. Pretty soon he came into the office announcing he wanted to sit on my lap. When I finally asked if he wanted to sleep in his bed or mine (dumb, dumb question), he said mine. We settled down, except I had to get up to get Froggie and Puppy and then again to turn off the kitchen light. He fell asleep quite quickly, but then he was all arms and legs and elbows and knees, and he slept crosswise on the bed. When I tried to move him, it was like moving a boulder--dead weight. I remembered the time when I was about his age and my grandmother came to visit--she slept in my bed with me. The next morning, she, a very neurotic woman, complained that I kicked her in the belly and made her ill. It's a tiny bit of guilt that stayed with me for years until I realized it was her problem, not mine.
This morning, I was sleepy, but Jacob woke at 8:30 (9:30 the old time, thank you) bright and happy, and we had a delightful morning. We did discuss last night's meltdown and decided to revert to our old rule: the TV goes off at 9:00--he calls it nine-oh-oh.
I've still got the rejection blues, pondering what to do with my mystery--self-pubish, go the small press route? I know that I rushed into a contract with an agent, so delighted to have someone interested in my work that I didn't ask the right questions or enough of them. This time I want to be deliberate and have a plan. I won't do another agent search--the manuscript has been shopped to all the obvious publishers, so what agent would take it on? But I'm convinced that Skeleton in a Dead Space has as much merit as many of the mysteries I read. And once again I'm distracted from the work-in-progress, which now has a title: Deadly Greens, A Blue Plate Cafe Mystery. I'm reading a book right now about establishing your social network platform--maybe I'll be inspired. The coming week is busy enough too that maybe I'll snap out of my doldrums. It's not like me to linger in them.

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