Headaches and Deadlines

Some point every summer, I regret pitching article ideas to Llewellyn. My kids are home being a distraction and as hurricane season hits, my head aches almost non-stop. I live in Ohio, so you can hopefully appreciate that last bit. How a tropical storm forming off the coast can affect my own sinus system here in Ohio is something I'll never understand. I'm too busy being out of it with the pain. You would think writing would be impossible. I spend chunks of the day as my deadlines approach thinking the same thing. And then, miraculously, I manage to get them finished. I have one remaining article to proof and it's over for the year.


As for my kids being home, well, they've actually been pretty good about letting me work this year. Probably my biggest distraction is feeling guilty over not spending much time with them during the day. But the truth there is that they really just want me to let them go off and play their games, or swim in the pool, or watch tv. Sometimes, my youngest, Monkey Girl, who's 8, is bored and wants me to play a game with her or to go sit and watch her in the pool. Unfortunately, that's usually when I'm in the middle of something, but we manage to work it out. Most of the quilt is all in my head. Wonder how many of us suffer from that - imagined guilt?


And as for the writing? I honestly enjoy it or I wouldn't still be doing it. There's a challenge in finding something new to write about each year. Something that no one else has done lately, or even done at all. And it's a fun challenge to put my unique voice on an often short article, to make it mine. So I guess I'll keep writing for them as long as they let me.

Well

Hello and welcome to my little blog, Post Number 1. I've been itching for awhile to perhaps actually start one of these. Ya know, being a writer, I should have some writing out there, like a blog. Of course, now that I've got one, I can't remember anything interesting that I wanted to write about. Aren't first posts a bitch?

Stick around, please, as I figure out how the blog thing works. Second posts, and especially third posts, are usually much more interesting. All of the introductive things are out of the way and we can get down to the fun.