Tagged Truth Tuesday

Rosalind Adam tagged me with seven questions, and since it was Truth Tuesday, I figured it could be a Tagged Truth Tuesday. Time constraints demand economy, right? Thank you, Rosalind, for the tag!

Are you hot?
Yes, definitely hot. I'm one hot momma.(Kidding, kidding.)

Upload a picture or wall paper you are using at the moment. 

This is the dashingly handsome sidekick's fault. I don't know why he chose this as our wallpaper, but it's a nerdy picture of our family from Easter. Whenever I look at it, I laugh, which is probably the reason he chose it. We had a hard time corralling the children to all look at the camera at the same time. I guess they are all *looking* in this one. Sort of.

When was the last time you ate chicken meat?
Two nights ago. I made fettuccine alfredo. There was chicken in the sauce.

Songs you listened to recently?
We listened to music in the van coming back from Boise. The last CD was a Beach Boy's Collection (my nine-year-old's request - she is a Beach Boy's fanatic). Before that we listened to Great Big Sea which is a Newfoundland folk group. The DHS and I picked that one.

What were you thinking as you were doing this?
What was I thinking as I was listening to the music? Well, I was mostly wishing my daughters would stop fighting in the back seat. It was a long drive.


Do you have nicknames?
Not really. I had some in high school, like Amer and A-moo (the latter because I had an affinity for cows -- don't ask me why). Now people call me Amy or, more commonly, Amy Lynn (because my sister-in-law's name is also Amy Sonnichsen, so we have to find a way to differentiate between the two of us).

Tag eight blogger friends.
Oh, it's hard to choose just eight! I love you all so much.

1) Kristin Creative
2) Krista V. over at Mother. Write. (Repeat.)
3) Faith Elizabeth Hough
4) Myrna Foster, a.k.a. Night Writer
5) Kelly Bryson at Book Readress
6) Catherine at The Writing Room
7) Vijaya at Reading, Writing, Ruminating
And last, but not least...
8) Kim at Asiaramblin

You're it, ladies! Have fun playing!

A Very Boring Post

Have you seen my pile of laundry?

No, you say? Because you're sitting in front of the computer screen and my pile of laundry is in my basement?

Well, that just shows how much you know! Go to your window, or better yet, step outside. If you are east of me, look west. If you are south of me, look north. If you are west of me, look east. I doubt too many of you are north of me, but you know where to look if you are.

Did you look? Did you see it? That laundry pile on the horizon? It's visible from the moon, so I know you can see it.

This is the kind of laundry pile you get when:
1) you are gone for five days with five children.
2) one of your kids wet the bed before you left on your trip.
3) two kids wet the bed when you got back from your trip.
4) your swimsuits didn't dry before you left the hotel.
5) your two-year-old decides it's time to be potty-trained, but doesn't have a clue about getting to the toilet in time to pee.

For those of you who are wondering:

Yes, I survived our trip to Boise.

Yes, "survived" is the best word to use.

Yes, I was crazy to go. Absolutely crazy.

Will I go next year? Probably.

I'm leaving on another trip on Thursday and this one is BIGGER and LONGER. This one is to Hong Kong. I'm going with my almost-ten-year-old daughter and my littlest, five-month-old daughter. The other three children are staying home with my dashingly handsome sidekick who is especially dashing because he's now on summer vacation.

So, if I seem to disappear for awhile it's because I'm doing laundry-- trying to make a dent in it so I have something clean to wear on the airplane. I know my mom will take care of us when we get there, but I don't want to leave the DHS with this mountain of dirty clothes. That would not be nice of me.

Hong Kong is technologically advanced, so I will be online while I'm there. But I'll be playing a lot, so ... you know how that goes.

Okay, enough procrastinating. Back to laundry now.

What's on your horizon?

Am I Insane?

The dashingly handsome sidekick (DHS) is going to football camp in Boise, ID, and since I'm madly in love, I'm following him ... and dragging our five kids along with me.

I have this habit of going with my DHS on trips whenever I can. If I'm allowed to go and we can afford for me to go, I go. And the kids come too, of course.

When we lived in China, I got sort of a reputation for following my husband on insane trips. The one I took every year was to a seaside town called Qingdao. At our school in China there was no American football team, so the DHS coached basketball. The big basketball tournament between our network of schools was in Qingdao, so we'd take an overnight train there and back, and I'd always go with babies in tow.

I won't mention how difficult this trip was-- traveling all night there and back with a host of high school and middle school students, with a night in between at a Qingdao hotel. I won't mention the time my son fell out of second-story train bunk bed on his head, or the mad rush to get off the train at our destination because we only had two minutes to get EVERYONE off the train, including all our baggage and fifty-plus sleepy students (not to mention my slumbering infants).

Those were the days, I tell you. I was young and brave and incredibly fit. I had to be, hauling children and bags off a train at four in the morning. (Good grief! What was a thinking?) 

Now that we're back in the comfortable United States, I'm keeping up the tradition by following the DHS to Boise State University football camp. In America we do things the easy way, though. No overnight trains, just a packed up mini-van. My mother- and father-in-law are also going, as is my sister-in-law and her brood, and a close family friend and her daughter. We're all staying together in a hotel. A hotel with an indoor swimming pool that's walking distance from the Bronco stadium.

Should be a blast!

Apparently there's a WiFi at the hotel, so I shouldn't be out of touch ... but just in case, see you Sunday!

And just out of curiosity, do you think I'm crazy?

Can Success Come Too Quickly?

"The worst thing that can happen to a man is that he succeed too quickly."

~Author Unknown

What do you think of this quote? True, false? 

We are studying the life of Joseph in church and this quote came up in the sermon yesterday. But it can apply to the writing life, too.

• We all know getting published often takes years (and years and years and years).
• What if someone had published your first book? You know, that piece of crap you have hidden under your bed, the one you take out occasionally to giggle at. Are you ever glad that first book wasn't published? 
• And if it had been published, would your second book have been equally crappy because you didn't have to try very hard with the first one? 
• What would your sales have looked like with the first book? Would those sales kill you mid-career? Would your projects be immediately dismissed because you don't have the advantage of being a debut novelist with no track record? Instead, you're a published author with a poor track record. 

Maybe I'm being harsh, but the point is, there's a time for everything. Even a time for being published. There are worse things than a rejection from an agent. Premature success could be one of them.

My goal is to put out something great and lasting, not simply to publish a book. For me, yes, success could come too quickly. Call it lack of confidence (which it may be), but I don't consider myself a good judge of when I'm ready. I'm just trying my best and taking what comes.

Thoughts?

WiP Wednesday: Top Speed Organic

I'm up to 40,000 words on my work-in-progress (WiP).

I generally shoot for at least 50,000 words on a first draft. Usually they're a bit over that word-count by the time I type THE END. Then the rewrites seem to make them even longer. My word counts usually hover around 70,000 by the time I start querying.

It's funny how you start to notice these patterns when you've written several books.

If I keep up the pace at which I've been writing the last two days, I could be done with this first draft by next week.

I took a little writing break because I didn't know how the story would end (and I was distracted with querying). But now I know my direction so I'm plowing forward at top speed.

Can you tell I'm an organic writer? I had the premise in place, but I didn't know how my characters would respond to certain situations until I started writing about them.

There's no point being slow with first drafts, in my humble opinion. It's a vomit fest and I'll probably rewrite 99% of my words by the time I'm done. No point holding back and attempting perfection.

Writers: how does what I'm describing compare with your writing process? (I'm probably driving all you plotters out there crazy, aren't I? *grin*) Non-writers: considering your personality, what kind of writer would you be if you were a writer-- an intricate plotter or an organic go-with-the-flow?

Truth Tuesday: I Drank Bugs

I'm always parched with thirst in the morning when I wake up.

So I've gotten in the habit of leaving a glass of water by my bed.

This morning I woke up and glugged my water. I was about half-way through my glass when I looked down....

And saw about six gnats floating in it.

I don't know how many bugs I drank.

Extra protein? Any other positive ways to spin this? Leave them in the comments.

And have a fantastic day!

Summer's Coming!

Summer is creeping up on us. Here's how I can tell:

1. We put the kids to bed WAY after their bedtime, but it's still bright outside. 

2. Flowers like this are blooming in our yard:

YAY poppies!

How gorgeous can you get?

3. The Dashingly Handsome Sidekick has started coaching football again (which means hello single motherhood!). 
4. The kids' activities are slowing down. We're done with gymnastics and piano, but not ballet.
5. My preschooler has graduated.
6. Everyone is tired.
7. I'm getting lots of paper notices from my kids' schools reminding me about field trips and pajama days and end-of-year parties, etc.
8. The DHS is staying up until the wee hours of the morning grading papers.
9. The calendar says it's flippin' JUNE already.
10. I'm not getting any writing done whatsoever thanks to reasons 1, 3, 4, 5 & 6.  (Hopefully I can figure out a summer schedule soon that includes a big afternoon or evening chunk of writing time.)

How are you coping with imminent summer? Excited, scared, indifferent?