Happy New Year -- and more Woe Is Me Juggling and Complaining

Years ago, in a very fem-friendly high school English class, I read (and then re-read on my own about a zillion times) Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper." From what I remember -- and I remember it pretty clearly, I think -- it's a story about a woman who has been sent to bed for your garden variety turn of the century (1892) female hysteria. She sits up in her room, completely divorced from the goings on of her own life, denied all entertainment / distraction, including even a pen and paper, and becomes obsessed with the patterns she sees in the yellow wallpaper on her walls, because what else is there? Eventually she sees people in the patterns, and as she grows quietly more and more and more insane, she believes she is one of them and climbs on in.

That story is the scariest story I have ever read -- and in context, I probably read this around the same time as Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," and I still vote "The Yellow Wallpaper" a million times scarier -- basically because I relate to it so strongly. I mean, she wasn't even allowed a pen and paper ... I, too, would go incredibly and irredeemably nuts.

Here's how I know:

I take one week off writing-writing -- the real writing, the work -- and I become a total bitch. Even if it was my choice to stop writing -- even if I decided to pack, or clean, or be Volunteer of the Year at my kids' school.

I take two weeks off writing-writing -- and I descend into a self-worth-questioning morass of chocolate-consuming, late-night weepies.

I take three weeks off ... the shit hits the fan. That's basically where I am now. Consider this:

6 weeks ago I finished the first draft of the screenplay for / with Mr. Lovely and Hilarious. I also started packing up the house for our move into the Dream House.

A week later, I started the second draft. And I ramped up the packing. Mr. Lovely and Hilarious and I started sending pages back and forth, which was a pretty decent system, until The Move began to consume me ... at which point my writing slowed, his sped up, and he decided he might as well write Draft 2 "on his lonely," as we say around here.

That sounded good at the time. I had to pack. I had to move. I had to incubate twin boys and care for toddler girls and hold it together somehow. And I had a lot of apartmenttherapy.com to catch up on.

But here's the rub:

We moved into the Dream House three weeks ago -- and I promptly went on bedrest. It's hard to really complain about bedrest when you have a nanny and husband who works at home and can basically sit on your ass and make them do all the diaper changing and grocery shopping and errand running and meal providing while you, well, sit on your ass.

HOWEVER -- sitting on your ass in the middle of your household is no way to get any writing-writing done, especially when your actual active PROJECT is being done by Mr. Lovely and Hilarious and you're just waiting around on it (not that I could concentrate on it if the situation were reversed, I mean, I'm sitting here in the middle of my loud friggin' household where there is no way I could get anything done ... especially as I stew over the fact that no one is doing anything the way I would do it myself if I weren't on fucking bedrest, but that's a subject for another day). Regardless ... I am not writing-writing. And I am going a little insane.

I was doing okay, really I was, until my husband walked in last night and said he'd finished unpacking his office. That was sort of the last straw. See, the whole point of the Dream House, for me, was a pantry, a laundry room, a guest room, and my own "DO NOT DISTURB" office space. I have spent the last six years thinking about that office space. I have designed every spare inch of my smaller-than-9x9 refuge -- I have done drawing after drawing of the furniture plans, I have gone over and over the cabinetry, I have surfed the internet for file cabinets for hours at a time, I have sat on dozens of sofas smaller than 51 inches long. But my office remains a mess of boxes because I am on fucking bedrest. My files are not in those file cabinets, because I have to depend on the kindness and priorities of other people to take my file cabinets to the body shop to be painted before I can file my papers. I still don't have a desk. I still don't have the couch. I still don't have my fucking OFFICE.

This is a dumb thing to complain about, it really is. I mean, even if I had my office, I couldn't hang out in it, I'm on bedrest, cooking the twins, and that is literally the most important thing I need to be doing right now. But the problem with bedrest is that I am never alone. It doesn't matter if the door is closed, people are in and out all day. My kids are the loudest tiny people on earth, apparently, and my husband likes to sing to himself. All. Day. Long. And make calls on speaker. Which apparently he believes doesn't work unless you are SHOUTING into the phone. And I am stuck here, in the middle of it, with nowhere to be alone.

Which is not, it turns out, really just a "Yellow Wallpaper" problem. I mean, I have TV, I have internet, I have the Huffington Post and the pre-eclampsia boards, where I am killing ridiculous amounts of time. And I have the constant, whether-I-want-it-or-not, human-interaction.

And THAT'S the problem -- I'm really climbing the walls because I have a "Room of One's Own" problem. I am never alone. Pre-Dream House, I had no private space either, but I could escape a few hours a day and go write in a coffee shop. And that was fine. But that's all gone now, and I am losing it.

I am fairly certain that the number one reason I am a writer is that I am, by temperament, someone who craves being alone. I don't get lonely when I spend a few hours writing-writing -- I get jazzed. I get re-charged. I don't feel cut off from other people, I feel more connected to them, when I spend a few hours alone. I like to eat alone. I love to go to movies alone. I just like to be alone.

And I am getting desperate. I literally broke down CRYING when my husband walked in here a minute ago to ask me what I want for lunch. I almost killed the nanny for coming in to get the laundry this morning. If I don't get some space soon, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

Which is fucking hilarious, considering as of a few weeks from now I am going to have FOUR KIDS. FOUR KIDS. Which makes it incredibly unlikely I will ever be alone again.

Not until they're all in school, at least -- which, and yes, I've done the math, is the fall of 2013.

Here's hoping I get my office unpacked before then.

At Least If I Were On A Treadmill I'd Be Burning Calories

I have written 600 words reworking yesterday's lost pages, which I think were probably better, but who the hell knows. I can't say I feel much like going further forward, considering the trauma. Will read pages of a friend's mss and see how I feel after that.

At least I'm sort of caught up, though the sense of running in place is nauseating in the extreme.

FUCK FUCK FUCK

Dammit. Just as I was saying to Writer Friend that I thought I might be getting somewhere:

This morning I opened up the story I'm working onto discover NONE OF THE WORK I DID YESTERDAY was saved. Now, I know for a fact I saved it three times at the end of the day yesterday. AARGH. But stupid 'puter has seen fit to spirit it all away. I was finally feeling like I was getting somewhere with this story and BOOM! Gone. Lots of good good stuff that I worry I can not duplicate and which has me wanting desperately to throw in the fucking towel today. But I know I have to write my 500 words if my story and/or career and/or sense-of-self are ever going to get anywhere, so I'm stuck here attempting to pick up where this fucking Dell dinosaur has decided I should. DAMN IT. I was looking forward to actually MOVING FORWARD today and now I have to spend precious time back-tracking.

Fittingly, this story is titled "Endurance," and writing it has been an excruciating act of same.

New end-of-day rules for now on:
--Print new work
--upload to webmail folder
--save to hard drive
--Fridays: save to USB

AARGH AARGH AARGH AARGH.

Okay, enough screaming. Time to get back to work.

I'm Baaaaack ...

Two months later. Married (woohoo), honeymooned (woohoohoo), and finally home. Spent a week playing housewife, unpacking boxes, but now I am back at the office and definitely getting back to speed. Wrote 713 words on ITS CLINGING HABIT today, in what is ostensibly to be Chapter 4. Also read throught pre-wedding work on RENOVATIONS, and there is definitely something there, so I have ping-ponging projects to keep me busy. (Of course, this requires buying more bulletin boards).

Have also joined a SECOND writer's group, so that should keep me focused focused focused.

Ah, the perils of being a woman writer: Today I received an email from a Columbia MFA friend of mine, congratulating me on getting my thank-you notes out within 6 weeks of said wedding, and with photos in them, no less. He, on the other hand, has been spending the 6 months since HIS nuptials writing and completing the mss of his second novel. Which is great, he's a fabulous writer. But why isn't he slowed and pulled from his writer-time by thoughts of renovating, cleaning, decluttering, in his free time?

Because he's a HE, that's why.

One more hour in the office. Gonna push farther now, see how far I can really really go.

Open letter to whomever turned me on to THE KNOT ...

THIRTY-NINE DAYS TO GO.

I am beginning this blog b/c I have recently discovered blogworld and find I like it a lot better than THE KNOT. I hate the THE KNOT. I have killed 10+ months on THE KNOT. I have learned nothing there except where to buy 432 votive candles dirt cheapt. With the time I have spent on THE KNOT, I might instead have been surfing the fun wide world of lit blogs, and learning a thing or two.

Or I could have been writing my book.

I have been writing my book for 6+ years. I began working with the central plot lines in college, carried it into two MFA programs and out again ... Then, just as I really started tooting along -- finally finished a honest-to-god start-to-finish draft, got the silly piece of paper to hang on my wall, found an agent ... I fell in love.

And now I have THIRTY-NINE DAYS TO GO.

So here's the experiment: Can you write a book, yet be young-ish and in love/battling your way through the first year of marriage? Can you write a book, even when aforementionied husband-to-be is trying to convince you to write screenplays with him? Can you write a book and still do laundry, dishes, and keep your cactus garden growing?
I ask all these things because a few months ago, a writer friend of mine sent me a story in what I think was the International Herald Tribune essentially accusing all writers at being SHITS at family life. And I thought, reading it, "Jesus Christ, that's me."