How Did Your NaN - Oh! Look! Something Shiny!

As you can tell by the title, I feel a bit distracted lately. By everything. When did America become such a over-stimulated, multi-tasking, short attention spanned place to live?  Not that I blame America. The blame is all on me. I can barely focus on anything these days long enough to finish it.  As a result, my Christmas decorations are only a third up, my gym hasn't seen me in three weeks, my newest novel is hanging out waiting for me to get back to it... along with the other two novels I started this year and then stopped.

Jessica Faust over at BookEnds had a great post today about the writing process... about all the different ways authors attack writing and the self-doubt we seem to fall into every time. And then Mark Terry commented about the Eureka moment he gets to in writing... that moment in which the story gets a little tough to write and suddenly you have this really great idea for another book, which he mentions that Erica Orloff calls her Bright Shiny Moment. as in, this plot is getting a little hard to figure out - hey! look! another bright shiny idea!

I shamefully admit this is where I am. I have three novels started... all exceptional ideas in theory. And another popped into my head yesterday, complete with title, rough outline and characters, and suddenly I was like HOLD ON! I can't keep up!! And it reminded me of all the people who have said to me, since finding out I am being published, Oh! I have some great ideas for books! To which I want to say, Yeah, me too.

The ideas aren't the hard thing. The hard thing is writing them down, each and every word, start to finish. All stinking 90,000 words of them. Because really, sometimes only the first 10,000 are the fun and easy part. And then it all starts to look like crap, and I wonder why in the world anyone would want to read them, and I imagine all the awful reviews they would get on amazon and blogs (How in the world did this piece of garbage get published when I know so many people who write better that can't even find an agent??).

And now, even worse, I have a puppy in the house that, if you don't watch him every single second something might get chewed or peed on - or toppled, like the Christmas tree which I swear is cowering in the corner shaking at the double threat of being mistaken for an inside toilet and being wrestled to the ground by tiny teeth.

And Christmas cards... don't even get me started on this one. I bought the cards. Do I get partial credit for that?

And shopping - I'm doing good that we haven't run out of puppy food or milk at this point. Please don't tell me how many days I have left to figure out what to buy for people for Christmas.

Yesterday there were four loads of laundry cleaned and waiting to be folded. Have you folded clothes with a puppy around? Every article of clothing becomes an opportunity for tug of war.

I haven't even filled in our activities on the calendar this month because it is just too overwhelming. If I close my eyes, will it all just magically happen?

So my latest WIP is waiting... sitting patiently (unlike the puppy). And I'm just trying to figure out how to fit in a shower...

does walking the dog in the rain count?

(and when I started this post, I meant to ask: How did your NaNo writing go? Did you finish? Did you survive? Did you push through even when it felt like crap? And are you so proud of yourself for doing it - even if you didn't grab the final prize?)