All's Well That Ends Well/Time to Say Goodbye

by Giselle Renarde

There's a radio program I've been listening to for the past ten years. It's on from 10pm until midnight. The host has the perfect voice for that time of night. She shares the perfect anecdotes for that drowsily contemplative space of hours. Better still, she plays the perfect music.  Over the years she's introduced me to music from Bjork, Tanya Tagaq, Owen Pallett, Anohni, and so many other artists whose talent I've grown to crave and adore.

Over the past month or so, there's one particular song that kept making its way onto the playlist. I noticed it sticking in my head. I heard myself singing it around the house, and I didn't mind because I liked it so much.  The song is by Blood and Glass, and it's called Punk Shadows. The first lines in this song are exactly what you see as the title of this post:

All's Well That Ends Well

Time to Say Goodbye

Two weeks ago I was at the cottage ("the cottage" = someone else's cottage), staying in a room without a radio. For me, for someone who would chose music over food, being without a radio at night is like... I don't even know what. Tragic.

The owners of this cottage are family friends, and these people are very choosy about who they invite. My mother had warned me not to use "too much internet" but there was one night when I couldn't help myself. I knew I had to tune in to my radio show. An imperative. Something was telling me I couldn't miss it.

I listened online, time-shifted, because it was already past midnight.

That night, the host announced she would be leaving the show. The show would be leaving the show. The radio program I'd been listening to for the past ten years would be no more.

How do I describe how I felt, hearing this news? Gutted. Yes, gutted. There's no other word for it. I found this out two weeks ago and I'm still in mourning.

I don't begrudge the host her choice. I'm not mad at her for leaving. It's not personal in that sense. I just feel a deep, deep sense of loss in knowing this show will be coming to an end.

Maybe part of the reason the news hit me so hard is this:

At the beginning of my relationship with my girlfriend, we chatted for hours every night via instant messenger. We still do, but nine years ago I didn't have a wireless modem. Every night, I chatted with her on the Mac in my bedroom with my radio right behind me. This radio show I'm telling you about--it was the soundtrack of those early chats. I associate the show with my relationship. The idea of the show ending automatically triggered panic: is it foreshadowing things to come? When I left for the cottage, Sweet and I weren't on the best of terms. Time apart helped a lot, but when I heard the news of my show ending, I didn't feel that I was on the firmest footing with my girlfriend.

The other thought that popped into my head was this:

I need to tell my readers I'm not going anywhere.

Loss is a part of life, sure, but like Cameron said the other day--I'm not catching a fad wave with my writing career. Some of you have known me a good long time. I've been doing this job for more than a decade. I plan to continue. Forever. Or at least until I die. You can count on me. There's not much in life you can count on, but stick by me. I have been there. I will be there.

The only real commitment I've ever made in my life is to my readers. I don't know if that's sad and pathetic, or if it just goes to show how highly I value the people who read my books. I treasure this writing career. When I think about dying, I don't wonder who will take care of my cats (that's a no-brainer: my brother will do it), I think, "Who will take care of my work?"

There's nothing I can do to prevent the inevitable end of my favourite radio program. That's going to happen whether I like it or not. But hopefully this post will set a few minds at ease. As Cameron mentioned, lots of authors bolt when the coffers are running on empty. I'm not one of those.

My coffers have always have been empty. I'm still here.

If you'd like to commune with me through music, I created a playlist to accompany my novel In Shadow. I hope you'll give it a listen. A lot of these songs came to my attention through the radio show whose praises I've been singing in this post.

Monogamy Blues

By Lisabet Sarai

We both know what’s going to happen. It’s understood, the inevitable consequence of the delicious tension crackling between us. Desire hangs around us like a perfumed fog. Reveling in the knowledge that you want me, I broadcast back the silent message that I feel the same.

Perhaps we kiss. I melt into your body, drunk on cheerful lust and the sense of rightness. We fit—but of course we do, this sort of natural magnetism doesn’t lie, but points us in the direction of blissful satisfaction. We’re not in any hurry. Languid yet buzzing with need, we explore one another.

Sometimes you’re a stranger. Sometimes you’re someone from my waking life, a startling revelation from my unconscious. Either way, I cherish these dreams for the sweet arousal they kindle, the traces of secret excitement that remain after the lascivious details have faded.

These nighttime visions always end the same way, though. Before we consummate our mutual desire, I remember. I’m married. I can’t go through with this, much as I want to. It would cause too much hurt to the man I love. This precious attraction is difficult to relinquish, but I have a responsibility to remain faithful.

The thrill dissipates. Reality bites, even if I’m still asleep. My dream reshapes itself. Sometimes I cry, or you do. Most of the time, the chimera of our perfect fucking simply vanishes, replaced by new images and emotions.

I’ve never told my husband about these dreams. What’s the point? In real life, I’m almost never tempted by anyone else—especially not now, post sixty years old. My wild times are behind me. My commitment is crystal clear.

I don’t regret anything. Still, those dreams evoke a bittersweet longing, a nostalgia for the woman I used to be.

I don’t think I’m fundamentally monogamous. I am perfectly capable of loving—in the erotic sense—multiple people concurrently. In fact when I met my husband more than three decades ago, I tried to get rid of him because I already had three serious lovers, and felt my life was sufficiently complicated without adding another, long distance relationship to the mix.

He was stubborn, and charming, however, not to mention a really good fit for me along almost every dimension. I didn’t really even choose him, not explicitly. It was just obvious that we should build a life together.

He’d had lots of lovers, too, before we met. Our marriage contract specifically states that we are both free have other sexual partners as long as we are honest with one another, and continue to give our relationship top priority. That was the principle. We never really put that clause into practice, not as individuals, though we explored swinging and polyamory together. As far as I know, since we married, neither of us has had sex without the other one being present.

It wouldn’t bother me if he had a girlfriend, I don’t think. However, the older we’ve become, the more I’ve understood that he’s a lot higher on the monogamy scale than I am. If I were to take another lover (which sounds ludicrous to me now—just goes to show how much I’ve changed), I’d wound him deeply. I don’t believe that the abstract notion of fidelity means much to him, but he’s lonely when I am not around. Plus I suspect that he’d worry about losing me to someone younger (since he’s a decade older than I am).

In my dreams, though, I’m still the lusty, experimental, open woman I was in my mid-twenties. And sometimes I wish that my sense of commitment wouldn’t intrude on my fantasies so reliably.

The only place I allow myself to be unfaithful is in my stories. There, anything goes.

Learning to Say No

By Lisabet Sarai



I hate pressure, absolutely hate it. When I have a deadline looming and my writing isn't going smoothly, you'd be well-advised to go somewhere else. I moan, I cry, I literally tear at my hair. (Fortunately I have a lot of hair.) My head aches. My back hurts. Even the cats know enough to hide under the sofa.

Yet when I started thinking about this post I came to a startling realization. The pressure doesn't really come from outside. Although I expend a huge amount of energy trying to keep my life organized in order to avoid crises and crunches, in fact I create the pressure.

I used to make myself sick when I was a schoolchild, worrying about my grades. An A- just wasn't good enough. If I didn't get an A, I'd be a total mess, most likely in tears, much to the disgust of my classmates. Now, this didn't come from my parents. Certainly, they emphasized the importance education (which was hardly necessary, since I loved the life of the mind from my earliest days). However, they never pushed me to be the absolute best in the class, nor punished me on the rare occasions that I fell short of my extreme targets. No, that need to excel came from somewhere inside of me.

Writing is like that for me, too. I'm the one who establishes the goals. Nobody forces me to write. I willingly commit to deadlines. No one is going to kick down my door and rough me up if I don't follow through.

The notion of not meeting a deadline, though, is practically unbearable. If I've made a commitment, then I'm going to fulfill it, come hell or high water, the Rapture or the tornado of the century. When I suspect that might not possible, I fall apart.

The presence of deadlines, the accumulation of tasks on my to-do list, and the inevitable unforeseen obstacles - these aren't the source of the problem. No, it's my reaction. I panic. I hyperventilate. I lose exactly the concentration that I need in order to make progress.

So really, what I need to do is manage my reactions. Not easy, but clearly possible. Meditation, exercise, enough sleep, these are all strategies that can help. Mostly I need to get my priorities straight. Yes, my deadline is important, but not as important as my relationship with my husband or my own inner peace.

I understood something else, however, as I continued to consider my post. Sometimes the external aspects of a crunch are also my fault, because I'm so bad at saying no.

I'm the perennial volunteer. When my publisher sends out a note saying that they're in critical need of a story or two for an anthology, I'm ready to pony up and commit to supplying one. When I'm contacted by a fellow author, asking if I'll help judge a writing contest, how can I refuse? Peer reviews needed? Lisabet can oblige. Crit for a colleague? Of course - after all, I've received so much help from others' crits, it's only fair to pay it forward. Take charge of editing a series of books? Gee, I'm so flattered - I'd love to.

This happens in other areas of my life, too. A few weeks ago, an academic colleague mentioned passing that it would be great if I could give a guest lecture to her class on a subject where I have special expertise. Before I knew it, I'd agreed to creating a brand new two hour presentation, which ended up taking two days to prepare - two days that I might have devoted to my work in progress, if I'd thought for a moment and declined.

I've wondered whether my urge to say yes has anything to do with my submissive tendencies. Or maybe I just want people to like me. Actually, to be honest, I think that pride is a factor - you know, the kind that goeth before a fall? I know that I'm competent in a variety of areas and also that I'm the sort who gets things done. When someone identifies a need, I figure that I can do at least as good a job satisfying that need as most people. Perhaps at some level I'm even trying to show off.

I've got to watch myself, though. Pressure just isn't healthy, for me or for my writing career. The quality of my writing is far higher when I can approach it in a spirit of play, rather than as a task that has to be completed.

So I've got to practice saying no, even when I'm dying to say yes. Perhaps some role playing as a Domme might help. You want me to do what to you? Dream on, slave!

On the other hand, I know that would be terribly difficult for me. I've written dominant characters, but they're usually far more indulgent toward their subs than they probably should be. Face to face with a submissive who's eager to offer you his or her whole self - how could you refuse?

Commitment To Making It As An Author...

Commitment to making it as an author (when you have a fulltime day job) - AKA – Sleep is for the meek

By Claire Thompson


Ok, so it’s Thursday, and Devon asked me to please have this to her as early in the week as possible. Like all rocky roads, mine is no exception, paved as it is with good intentions! But good intentions don’t write books or sell them either. Good intentions don’t get things done.

So, I have a bunch of kids at home (the number is always rotating, I can hardly keep track, they are all over sixteen, none of them fully independent, all of them money-sucking slobs), a disabled spouse who doesn’t work, two shedding dogs, a cat and one bathroom. I work a fulltime job for a school district, and then there’s my real career – writing!

Oh, oh, oh, I am a lucky girl because I love to write. I don’t just enjoy it or do it well (though I hope I do!), I freaking love it. No. Love isn’t a strong enough word. I eat, breathe, sleep, dream and wake it. I couldn’t not do it. Writing is what I do, a part of who I am, a very key, core part. I couldn’t imagine life without my laptop, my dirty mind and my stories.

I follow a lot of chat groups and blogs where folks are lamenting the fact they have no time to write, or they have been polishing up that one manuscript for the last five years and know that soon, soon, they are going to work up the courage to submit it. You know what I say to this?

Just do it.

Gosh, that sounds easy, but I have always maintained, and still believe, once you make a decision, the rest is just details. And once you decide, damn it, I am going to be a writer—a published writer!—that is the key. The rest is details. Admittedly there are lots of details.

The main number one thing, up and above any kind of blogging, advertising, chatting, posting, dreaming, is to write. Every day that you can, every spare minute that you have, sit your ass down and get those fingers flying. Buy a digital Dictaphone so you can tell yourself your ideas while driving or in the cereal aisle at the supermarket. Skip those stupid TV shows and all the time-wasting crap you do after work (Dishes? Laundry? Making dinner? Delegate, baby!). If you’re too tired after work to write, get up early (I aim for 4:30) and write then, when you are fresh and the world is still.

Yes the marketing is important, but not nearly as important as you might think. The real key is getting with a publisher who has a good distribution network, and getting your name out there by getting your books out there! The old adage – “write your story and the market will find you” IS true, at least to a point. If you have a good, compelling story to share, and it’s distributed where folks who want that kind of story are hanging out, it will sell!

Yes, it’s good to blog and chat and post and all that stuff, but only to a point. If that’s what you’re spending your time doing, instead of writing, you are missing the boat! Do that stuff after the book comes out, and even then, limit it.

What about advertising on review sites, stuff like that? I have personally found that advertising does not make much difference. I have tracked a book before and after an ad went up, for example, and noticed no difference in sales. Good reviews do cause a small increase in sales for a while, though I haven’t noticed that bad reviews negatively impact sales (not that I ever get them, ha, well, hardly ever! Groan).

The main thing is that you have a good book to sell, and a place to sell it. Sounds simple and guess what, it is! With ebooks and the Internet, the world has been split wide open and made hugely accessible. There is still lots of room for a good writer to break in, and pretty easily.

So, all you aspiring authors, stop reading this blog right now and go write! (and don’t worry, I wrote this during my day job, so I’m not taking time from my writing! (and don’t tell!))

Respectfully submitted,

Claire Thompson

*****
 
Claire is a multi-pubbed erotica and erotic romance author with over 50 titles in ebook and print. She recently went "indie" with her imprint, Romance Unbound.

You can connect with Claire at:

Website www.clairethompson.net
Romance Unbound
Yahoo Chat Group
Claire's Blog
Twitter CThompsonAuthor
Facebook

Knowing when to walk away

Does anyone here remember the motivational posters that were so popular back in the late 1990s? Maybe they're still popular. Maybe they were popular even before then. I don't know. I just recall that in the late 1990s, when I was hip-deep in my first and only corporate job, the office I worked in was wall-papered with the damn things. All those posters with images of stunningly beautiful nature scenes and the pithy saying underneath, meant to inspire us drones to give our all to the gods of the J-O-B. I hated the damn things. I already gave my all for the J-O-B, and because of it I spent far more time locked away in a tiny cubicle lit by nauseating florescent lights than I did in the great outdoors pictured in those posters.

Not long after the motivational posters came out, some comedic genius came up with the "de-motivational" posters. Now these were funny, painfully so in most cases, because they held far more truth than the originals they were making fun of. The one that still sticks with me showed some poor schmuck on his knees at a running track, his face a cataclysm of agony and frustration. Beneath the picture it said, "Winners never quit and quitters never win. But if you never quit and you never win, you're an idiot."

I think that was about that time I started seriously re-considering my corporate career.

I've walked away from a lot of things in my life time. When I was eight, my mother signed me up for dance lessons. I started with ballet, and by the time I was 13, I was taking gymnastics, jazz, and point too. Point was excruciating. I couldn't bare to slip my feet into those hard-toed shoes and try to balance on tip-toe. After a year of struggling with bleeding toes and ingrown nails and infections, I told my mom I was done, more than done, with dance and I never took another class again. Considering at the time I was taking four classes a week, and that most of my social life came from the dance studio, that was a hell of a thing to walk away from. I don't recall ever looking back though, and my feet were grateful for it.

From dance I went to band. My favorite cousin played the French horn in her school band, and I just had to play too. I had a good ear for music, so I signed up for my school's marching band and spent the next few years struggling to play as well as everyone else. You see, I had the ear for music, but not the mouth. French horn demands a hell of a lot on the muscles of the lips and face. Some days, an hour of class would leave me with a throbbing mouth and cracked lips. Not a pleasant way to go through the rest of the school day. Plus I always got so damned nervous during auditions and exams that I bombed every single time. I was the worst French horn player in the school, and I knew it. By the end of my junior year, I figured I'd suffered enough, so I didn't bother to sign up for marching band the next year. When my instructor found out, he laid into me like nobody's business. "You're a quitter!" he screamed at me. "A lousy quitter who can't commit and can't finish what she started! And you'll never amount to anything, ever!" You better believe I never looked back when I walked away from that conversation.

It was another 12 years before I was ready to quit something else. That was the corporate job I hated so much. Sure, the money was good; I got lots of raises and bonuses and nearly doubled my salary during the four years I worked there. But while I was getting well paid for 40 hours a week, I was actually working 80 hours a week. And I hated the job. I was good at it, but it was boring, sterile, and at times very degrading. The Hubster understood, fortunately, and we eventually made arrangements that allowed me to quit that particular millstone and once again walk away.

Looking at all this, it might seem like I've made a habit of quitting. But I also have a habit of committing. I completed both my bachelors and my masters degrees, which was no small task. I completed four years of Army ROTC and got my commission in the Reserves, in spite of the fact that I hated ROTC and definitely did not want to join the military. Of course my ROTC scholarship came with an 8-year commitment to the Reserves, which I also completed and then went beyond by a few years.

I have committed to this and committed to that. I have started some things and walked away from them, and started other things and crossed the finish line even if it meant I had to limp several miles to get there. Why finish some things and not others? Pain has a lot to do with it. I have a limit for how much I'm willing to suffer for a cause. Dance, band, and the J-O-B had become intolerable in my eyes, thus they went. ROTC and the Reserves were pretty intolerable too, but in those cases, I had no choice but to finish what I started. My dad refused to help pay for college unless I joined ROTC and went into the military after school.

I have to admit, my days in ROTC and the Reserves did not kill me, but my memories of those times do put me in mind of yet another de-motivational poster. "That which does not kill you can really fuck you up." I keep that in mind any time I confront a situation where staying means more pain than it's worth. I do not hesitate to look at a situation and ask, "Is this really what I want to be doing right now? Is this really worth the agony and frustration?" When the answers to these questions are 'no,' I know it's time to walk.

I can tolerate a great deal of pain and suffering. Hell, I have a husband and kids and I've decided to make a career of writing. You know I can handle pain. But only for the right reasons. Sure, winners never quit and quitters never win, but sometimes we all get into games that just aren't worth the effort to finish. When that happens, it's time to smarten up and just walk away.

*****

I'll be at Marscon in Williamsburg, Virginia, all this weekend, presenting discussion panels on science fiction erotica, so I won't be able to respond to comments until after I get back. I hope everybody has a great weekend!

They're coming to take me away ... ha ha!

When I first read this topic, I didn’t know what approach I wanted to take with it. (Still don’t have it all worked out). So I am doing a thought exercise where I just write what comes to me. (You might not notice any difference between this and my normal posts). Also, keep in mind classes just started back up for me, so my mind has taken a sabbatical for a while. *smiles*

I’ve come to the conclusion that we (writers) have to be out of our ever-loving minds. Not that we mind, but there it is.

“They're coming to take me away Ha ha … To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time.”

Looking at Devon’s list, which overwhelms me just looking at it, and knowing some of the authors that I do, we are all nuts to do this to ourselves. So many writers I know are not lucky enough to have it be their full-time job, so they are working, caring for their families/pets/friends, doing who knows what else, and in what little free time they have, they write.

I am the same way, although I don’t go to the level that some I know do, giving up sleep to stay up and write. Not because I don’t want to, but because I simply can’t – I turn into a completely different person without enough sleep, someone that no one wants to meet in a well lit room, let alone a dark alley. Simply put, I turn into a b*tch. Hello evil twin! So my family has that line that we just don’t cross.

My own insanity lies with the fact that in addition to family and all my other commitments, I am in college. Being a non-traditional student sucks. Trying to be a non-traditional student and write as well? Doesn’t always work out so well. School drains the creativity out of me, except the night before a big exam. Then I am creative as all get out, just brimming with ideas and needing to write.

How does this relate to the topic, you might be wondering at this point? Well … being a writer takes commitment. All too often in interviews we are asked the same questions over, and over, and over, and over (see my drift), and over again (I LOVE the interviews that are different!) and one of the main questions asked – “what advise can you offer to aspiring writers?”

Stick with it …

Don’t give up your dream …

Try, and try, and try again ….

What it all boils down to is commitment. If you want to be a writer, and have at least a modicum of success, you have to understand and be willing to make the commitment.

I truly think outside of marriage, and having children, being a writer is one of the biggest commitments a person could make. And unlike the others, you are making a commitment to more than just one or a few people – you are making it to dozens, potentially hundreds; your editors, readers, cover artists, readers, publisher staff, readers, publicity staff, and hopefully even more readers. All of them are expecting you to be more than a one hit wonder.

It completely boggles the mind just how many people you are saying to “Hey, I’m doing this and I am going to stick with it. You give me a chance and I won’t let you down.”

Yep, we all must be nuts. Especially when you look at characters who “talk to us”, aka we hear voices, and we get lost in our own worlds, or we hallucinate. *smiles* But, the company is good, and really, we get to share the worlds in our minds with anyone who cares to journey to them. Sometimes we even get paid for it!

So the commitment is worth the insanity, which could potentially lead to another form of commitment. *smiles*

Stylish!

And on that note, I leave you with more Dr. Demento:
“They're coming to take me away Hoho hehe haha!
To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time,
and I'll be happy to see those nice young men
in their clean white coats
and they're coming to take me away haha!!”

Overcommitted and out of time

For me, commitment is the flip side of the coin of guilt.

I am impossible to live with in my own head when I falter on something I have assured myself or someone else I will do. Drive myself crazy with guilt.  Therefore I am one of those perpetually early, hard-working, if-I-say-it-it's-as-good-as-done folks.


Since this is my topic, you should know that I'd had a very lengthy and in-depth treatise on commitment planned for you. Instead, what you will get is my analysis of what happened to my commitments when a nightmare of epic proportions (in my life) bloomed last Wednesday:

My daughter got sick.

In and of itself, it was "only" a stomach virus. You know, one of those gut wrenching, purging, awful nights where one should just camp out in the bathroom since you're in there every 20 minutes anyway. Where the thirst tempts you into sips you know will just come right back up. Where the end of the contents of your system is NOT the end of the extreme effort your body is making to expel...nothing.

Now put that all on a 6 year old.

Bless her, she's finally old enough to not cry about it, and made some effort to contain the mess once she was aware of it. Telling her she shouldn't be drinking anything? Didn't penetrate.

Did I mention her 3 year old sister sleeps in the same room?

Talk about a nightmare for that one. Every half hour, all night, the sounds awoke her into fits of crying and providing a running preschooler commentary on her sick sis:

"Ewww!  Yucky!  Sissy yucky.  Mama make it stop! No!"

Older sis, between vomiting: "It's okay, budda-boo. Sissy be okay."

I was up until it ran its course around 6am, then grabbed a couple hours sleep, hoping against hope it was an isolated thing.

Home from school. she slept most of the day. I did LOTS of laundry and kept the little one from jumping on her. 

****

Okay, a side note on commitment. Of course, when you take on any life change, you commit yourself in myriad ways and in all levels of importance. Becoming a parent, and moreover becoming a "good" one, is kind of the coup de grace of commitment. You've basically agreed to put this new little person first and provide for them in an unimaginable number of things.

Uber-commitment. And it can wreck havoc with other commitments in your life. Kind of trumps most anything else. Case in point:

****

One night behind on my "other" job.  Okay, I'll still be able to manage. My "writing" to-be-completed-by-Monday list, which on Wednesday afternoon (pre-puking), consisted of:

1. 10K to finish a short story an editor had made a request for just after the new year.
2. Final run through edits on GA Hauser's 177 page February release.
3. Put together a series blurb, four full synopses, and choose titles for a series of four stories I pitched early last week to one of my pub houses.
4. Proof two manuscripts (not mine, other authors for editors) on very tight schedules, sooner the better.
5. Write my OGG blog post on commitment. 
6. Was expecting another proof from Claire Thompson for her imminent next release.
7. Was also expecting first edits from my editor on my own February release.
8. If I had time, write out and submit a 2-10K short story for an anthology.

Normally, I have a fairly easy time separating my "family" time from my "work" time, the dividing point is by the clock: when everyone goes to bed, everyone else including the eight indivduals and groups above, finally get their claims to my time. So from 9pm to 2am most nights, with a few additional hours snipped from weekend downtime, handling a list like this in five nights would be a piece of cake.

Wednesday night I lost to sick daughter patrol.

Thursday night, I got sick myself.  Same drill (I'll spare you the details).  Then the little one began about an hour after me, husband about an hour after her. So all Thursday night, the only one sleeping in our house was the recovering 6 yr old.

She got up for school on Friday. I didn't have the heart to say no (she was already all dressed for the 'pajama party' her class had earned), but did make her eat breakfast before I gave a firm okay. Making any kind of food at this point should have earned me brownie points for life. And I still hadn't been to sleep. Watched her get on the bus and crawled to bed. Got up once around 11 and sucked it up for a trip to the store for a caffeine fix (last thing I needed was a withdrawal headache on top of everything else, wish they had a patch), saltines, soup, gatorade, ginger ale, and whatever else I could remember Mom having around. Knew no one else would do it. Sapped the life outta me.

Got home and found husband still asleep and little one lifting the lid of the toilet upstairs, dazed. Not to go potty or throw up, but looking for water...like a dog. Gave her a bit of ginger ale. She threw it up. Put her in my bed and went back to sleep.

Woke up again. Dark. Quiet. Dark?? Oh shit, Sarah! I'm officially the world's worst mom. She's sitting in the living room playing solitaire. Proudly tells me that after she got home and "everyone was SLEEPing, *humph*!" she fed herself a pb&j, watched Lord Of The Rings, read three books, and got double Yahtzee twice. Pat her on the head, sit upright for a couple hours and put everyone back to bed.

Mommy guilt is currently in overdrive, needless to say, between the toilet incident and the leave-the-door-unlocked method of welcoming Sarah home from school.

Saturday...everyone is listless. I'm lucid enough to start worrying about my work commitments and do some mental prioritizing. Nobody's eating, and the kids have Dad to play with them, so I start laundry and then hop on the computer to try to assuage the guilt starting to gnaw on my insides. 

Email the first ed to say it doesn't look like I'll get the story done on her timetable, explain and apologize. Crap. Debate trying to bang it out anyway. It's only Saturday night, right?

Make sure the next load has the favorite pillows and stuffed animals in it.

Muscle my way as thoroughly as possible through two proofs and GA's edits, and get those emailed back. Whew. Okay. Those obligations met.

Try to get everyone to eat some soup. Nobody's eating. Mom in me is fretting, writer is glad I don't have to take time to do dishes.

Try to do some brainstorming on my series. Urgency is tied to the fact that the first story needs to come out in April to make it work. Email that publisher to say I'll have all the synopses in no later than mid-week.

Put everyone back to bed. Now I can get some work done. Yawn. I mean, goodnight.

Oh shit. Sunday already?  Feels like it was just Wednesday. Claire's proof has come, and short and "tight" as it is, I whip through it and send it back her way. Very proud of myself.

Fix waffles by request. Two out of four eat. Continue laundry.

Sit down and make the decision to try to finish the story. Send the kids on a low-key outing with Dad, and write for three hours. All I get done is a piddling 2K, and am currently mired in a POV switch that's not working. Okay. That story is NOT going to get done by Monday. Leave it!

Dad has picked up burgers and fries. Three out of four eat (little one is getting littler by the day). No dishes again, maybe I can work on my synopses.

Family movie night, I've seen it twice, so try to brainstorm my series. Get drawn into the movie by kids instead. Still have to work on the OGG post. I'll do that as soon as they're in bed.

As soon as they're in bed, husband snags the computer. Shit. Can't say anything...after all, while I was sick, he took care of the little one while he was hurling too, plus took the kids out for the afternoon. Try not to stew about wasted time, and instead clean up the kitchen. Put shoes away (sigh). Sort the mail.

Oh right, Sunday. Sign off on daughter's homework. Find backpack. Pack lunch. Sneak up and make sure her alarm is set.

Get idea for the short story, which was dead last with the addendum "time permitting" on my list, due date is the next day, not even started. Finally get my hands on the computer and give birth to a 3K scene, synopsize it, format, and submit by 3am.

Guilt kicks in when I realize I must go to bed and still haven't written my OGG post: the only thing I haven't addressed on my list, and one of the few things graven in stone timewise.

Today "normalcy" reigns, albeit in a house that needs cleaning. Which I have put off so I could take care of my commitment to you, dear readers.

And now??  Time to plan my daughter's birthday. 

For two days from now.

Talk about a commitment graven in stone. Guilty Mom to the rescuuuuue...

One Day at a Time

By Lisabet Sarai

He's a chic lit cliché: the guy who can't commit. He loves the heroine, truly he does, and they're clearly compatible, in bed and out, but somehow he can't quite take that step. He can't make himself pop the question and join his life with hers happily ever after, 'til death do us part.

Actually, it's not a literary myth. My sister's husband was like that. It took five years, two breakups and some therapy before they finally tied the knot. I'm not ridiculing him. It was a painful and difficult process for him to get to that point. Commitment often is.

However, if you don't commit, you go through life skimming the surface, flitting from one person or activity to another, never experiencing the depth and beauty that's available. Commitment brings emotional and spiritual rewards that are well worth the pain.

The general understanding is that “commitment” is a kind of transition, a phase change, a final stepping over some line. Before you make a commitment, you're in one place. After the act, you are someplace else altogether. You commit and then you breathe a sigh of relief. That's over.

That's not the way it works, in my experience.

As I've shared before on this blog, I was anorexic in my late teens. After the acute phase was over and I returned to college, I still had anything but a normal relationship with food. I still weighed myself daily. I binged on calorie-free items like cantaloupe, cabbage and popcorn (without butter). I felt guilty whenever I ate a real meal.

To try and cope with these behaviors and feelings, I joined Overeaters Anonymous. OA is a twelve step program modeled on AA for people who have food-related disorders or addictions. I already knew something about how AA worked, as my mom was a recovered alcoholic. The first of the twelve steps, revised for the OA context, reads: “We admitted that we were powerless over food, that our lives had become unmanageable.” That was me. I wasn't overweight, but food was using up way too much of my mental and emotional energy.

In AA, you make a commitment to stay sober, to abstain from drinking alcohol. No one forces you to do this, by the way. You can come to AA forever and keep drinking; the heart of the program is that you, personally, must decide to become sober. Of course one can't abstain from food. The OA equivalent of sobriety, called “abstinence” is to eat three healthy meals a day with nothing in-between.

I made a commitment to abstinence. I tried to stop my bizarre food behaviors. I tried to release the fear of getting fat. It wasn't as easy as it might sound.

One motto of the twelve step approach is “One day at a time”. The idea is that if you tried to commit to never drinking again, ever, that would seem totally impossible. You would sabotage yourself before you even began. So, wisely, the twelve step approach advises that you simply commit to being sober (or abstinent) today. Today is all you have anyway. You could be dead tomorrow. So don't worry about what you're going to do in the future, or how you're going to survive. Focus on where you are. Focus on now. Make a commitment for today and let tomorrow take care of itself.

Simplistic as it sounds, this approach seems to work.

I've come to believe that this is the essence of all commitment. When I first thought about Devon's topic, I figured I would write about marriage. I've been married more than 27 years now—even though I never expected that I'd marry at all. It's true that my marriage is a bit atypical: we have no children, we are professional colleagues as well as mates, in our younger days we were not sexually exclusive. I suspect my marriage is easier than those of many of my readers. Still, there are times when I get fed up with my DH and really want to walk out, slamming the door behind me. (I'm sure he feels the same about me every now and again.) Or I worry about the future, as we are both getting older (and he is eleven years older than I). How will I manage if I have to be his caretaker instead of his companion and co-conspirator (as we promised in our wedding vows)?

Then I stop myself. I remember that I've made a commitment to love him, share my life with him, take responsibility for him, as he does for me. But I don't need to think about forever. I only need to reassert my commitment now, today.

This is the way that all good marriages are built, in my opinion. One day at a time. Commitment is not a single act, but a process to be repeated each day. That makes it easier—and in truth, making a commitment today is all we can really ever do.

In Sickness And In Hell

"Do you, Helen E. H. Madden, take this series to be your lawfully long term project, to have and to hold, to write and to edit, in sickness and in health, through edits and rewrites, for publication and promotion, until death do you part?"

"Uh... what was the question again?"

Anyone who's ever written a novel will tell you that a story that long takes a lot of commitment to finish. Anyone who's ever written a series of novels will probably tell you that you should be committed, as in locked away in a padded room with a custom fit straight-jacket and those funny little pills that make you feel oh-so-happy all day long.

Personally, I have not written a series of novels... yet. I have two published books to my name, one of which is a collection of short stories and the other of which was meant to be the first book in a trilogy of dark fantasy erotica novels. I loved that novel. In fact, I used to eat, sleep and breathe that novel. I loved the exotic settings and the twisty turny plot. I loved the way the characters would wake me up in the middle of the night, feeding me pages of dialog and steamy sex scenes. I loved, loved, loved it!

And yet I have never returned to write that second book.

There are a dozen reasons why, including the fact that I was asked to write something else first. I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have cheated on my first love by going on to work on this second novel. I have yet to finish the second novel at all (though I've got about 30,000 words of it written, so I guess I should finish it some time). But I strayed, and two years after diving into that initial relationship with Demon By Day, I sit here wondering if and when I can revive that long lost love.

Will the half-demon Orziel still talk to me if I dare to conjure him up? Or will he flip me the bird and say, "Sorry sucker, but I know who you've been screwing around with." I'm almost afraid to try. But there's something inside me that makes me think that flame is still alive, and I think that if I try, I could lure my characters back and worm my way into their good graces once more.

But not right now. I've got a list of projects as long as my arm, including a podcast that requires I write, record and produce a new short story every week. I had initially considering writing and producing an ongoing story for the podcast, taking a longer story and breaking it down into weekly installments, like a TV series only in audio format. But I worried about the commitment that would require. What if I didn't like the story? What if I wrote myself into a corner and couldn't figure out how to get out? What if I ran out of steam before I reached the end of a lengthy plot?

What if, what if, what if. As much as those words frequently inspire stories, they can also kill potential projects. With so many what-ifs looming over my head, I opted not to do a podcast serial and went for the individual stories instead. I figured this way I could get away with just doing five episodes and then if I didn't like the project or I couldn't handle the workload, I could quit without leaving anyone hanging. After all, how long could this podcast thing last? Three months? Six?

Or maybe a year and a half and still counting?

"Do you, Helen E. H. Madden, take the Heat Flash erotica podcast to be your lawfully wedded long term project, to have and to hold, to write and edit and produce, recording in sickness and in health, through technical difficulties and computer crashes, until death do you part?"

"Uh..."

Honestly, at this point I guess it's too late to say no.