Ignore me, I’m just rambling…

My husband has the most annoying habit. He whistles. His favorites are: Joy to The World, Happy Birthday, La Cucaracha, and the theme song from Jurassic Park. If he’s trying to be extra irritating, he will imitate a siren.

I love my husband. He’s smart and handsome with a smile so big, it creases the skin around his lovely brown eyes. But the whistling. The sound of it makes my fillings vibrate to the point of exploding from my molars, exposing raw nerves that are then rubbed with aluminum foil and then packed with gobs of dry cotton. This is what whistling feels like inside my body. Apparently, I have “sensory issues”.

I love this time we are living in because everything gets a label. Things that used to just make me quirky are now conditions. It is true that noise makes me feel a little crazy and I hate the feel of wool and I’m really sensitive to smell (my husband thinks I may have been a bloodhound in another life). I also really hate olives and if one so much as grazed my pizza, I will know because I will taste it’s vile trail. But does all that deserve a label? Apparently it does.

When I was a kid, I spent many nights on the floor by the toilet. I would be sweating and whimpering, certain that vomiting was inevitable. But I never vomited. “She has a sensitive stomach,” they said. Nope. Anxiety attack. And there’s a pill for that and most people I know take it.

Mental health is no longer split personalities and hobos that hear voices. Mental health is everything and everyone talks about it all the damn time, which is wonderful. Really, I mean it.

I suppose there’s a little sarcasm there.

Does it ever seem like we have all become afraid of each other? Like we are so worried that one sideways glance or wrong word will fling someone into a mental health crisis? Like we are all made of china, precariously balancing on a narrow sliver of sanity.

Maybe we’re afraid of ourselves. Afraid to feel.

They tell us not to feel stress or sadness. Only surround yourself with happy and calm people. Make sure you are grateful and fulfilled every second of every day. (To me, this conjures images of cult members in togas with blank stares and frozen grins).

I want to feel.

I actually enjoy wallowing in a little self pity now and again. I am amused by people who see the world through a dark lens but can spin it into dark humor. I like to bitch about the weather so that I can really appreciate a beautiful summer day and I love the feeling of slipping into my bed after a really long, stressful, shitty-ass day.

I’m a feel-er. I live in my head and I analyze everything. When you notice everything, you feel everything and inevitably, most things will irritate you.

I know it’s weird that whistling bothers me. I recognize that Costco makes me want to crawl out of my skin. I accept the fact that nausea usually equals anxiety and I am fully aware of my vomiting phobia. It’s okay that I hate the feel of the cotton balls in pill bottles and make my husband pull them out.

I know who I am. I know how I feel. I don’t need a label and I’m not going to break to if you don’t get me.

I like quiet. People exhaust me. I think all refrigerated leftovers smell like farts.

Tell me I have sensory issues. Tell me I’m strange. Or, just call me quirky.

Is post-vacation depression a thing? If it’s not, it should be.

PVD is often associated with spoiled people. It is thought to be a first-world problem and doesn’t affect those that are #grateful. PVD can be debilitating as those afflicted are unable to concentrate on mundane household tasks, feel the need to eat out for every meal and have a cocktail with lunch. PVD makes it difficult to get up before 9am and in rare cases, causes individuals to yell at the sky for not being brighter, bluer, and/or warmer. If you think you have PVD, call anyone who hasn’t been able to travel because of illness or inflation. Maybe then, you too can feel #grateful to have had the experience.

I love the sun and the beach and the smell of sunscreen and the taste of fresh fish. It fuels my soul. I do not love crowds, club music, or men in banana hammocks but I can overlook these things for a week in southeast Florida. We didn’t have a day when the weather wasn’t perfect. Do Floridians ever get sick of warm breezes and sunlight? When anyone asked where we were from, they would shudder with the thought. When we told them it was still snowing in April, they practically passed out, praying to Jesus on their way down.

However, spring is starting to take shape here. I saw a few daffodils poking their heads from the earth. The robins have returned and are in a constant frenzy and most of the ice chunks in the lake have returned to their liquid form. Now, a wintry mix is predicted for Easter Sunday but let’s just pretend that’s someone’s idea of a really bad joke.

You know you’re old when……..you constantly talk about the weather.

Let’s talk about my book progress.

I have had days where 1500 words felt easy and I’ve had days where I couldn’t bear to open the document. I had one day where I composed my very first sex scene. Afterward, I felt embarrassed and almost ashamed. It was like I had done something wrong by creating imaginary characters doing imaginary things to each other. But then I reread it a couple days later and oh la la. I’ve never in my life considered being a romance author but that little scene was actually pretty fun to write and read. I hope no one I know thinks I’m a perv. That is, if my book is ever completed and published and if anyone actually buys it.

I really can’t complain too much about writing. It’s been hard to concentrate due to my PVD but I’m still managing to get some words out. Twitter on the other hand has been a total buzz kill. I’m not someone who loves social media. I’m actually super private but I started an account so that I could connect with writers and I’ve learned some very important acronyms like WIP and MC. I’ve learned about querying and partial and full requests as well as beta readers and mood boards. All super great things but I only have about 100 followers and this blog only averages one view a day. Better than zero but I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. One person can tweet, “do you like green beans?” and get 387 comments while I tweet my lastest blog post and ask an actual question about the writing process and get 1 comment and 2 likes. What’s the trick? And don’t say sultry selfies with the phone angled toward my cleavage because I’ve seen way too much of that and prefer to stick with the profile pic of my dead cat.

I am working on a book. A novel? Maybe. Anyway, I went on a streak where the words were just pouring out of my fingers and onto the screen and it was pretty good. But then I hit a roadblock. After nearly 12,000 words, I realized nothing had happened. (I wish you could hear my voice and see my flared nostrils as I say, nothing had happened).

Now, I have read books where it takes a while for things to get going but my plot felt too undecided. I thought that if I just let myself go without a plan, that real magic would happen. I thought I might open up some secret corridor in my brain where my imagination would lead me to thrilling places with shiny twists and turns. I could almost see myself floating above the story ideas that swirled like meandering streams and jutted up into the sky like mountains. I may have even saw myself holding on to a balloon but with just one hand. Or, maybe I was just remembering a Lucky Charms commercial. Either way, I needed to stop and regroup. And have some cereal.

The first thing I did was dig into my character descriptions. I needed to create these people from scratch so that I could really see them when I was writing. I’m still working on details like mannerisms and body type and tone of voice but they are coming to life and beginning to grow into people that I genuinely care about.

When I was outlining one character, I started to include her backstory and found myself crying as I was typing it. This may be partly due to PMS or I’m just really talented. (Ah, that’s sarcasm in case you didn’t know). The point is that I connected to her and I feel her and I think that’s a real turning point in my writing.

Next, I started an outline. I have four lines typed and now I’m stumped. Getting up for a piece of cheese and a handful of tortilla chips did nothing to aid in my stumpy-ness. Folding laundry just made me sad because I hate chores.

I really think I’m on to something but some days I feel like I’m trapped in a tiny box and whichever way I turn, I bump into a wall. And it hurts and it makes me swear.

So, what’s an aspiring author to do?

Google “What authors have said about their first book”.

Scrolling, scrolling.

I landed on “How to write your debut novel, according to Penguin authors”

Here, I found some great advice…..

“Time applied equals work completed. So much of writing is actually just being in despair about writing, not actually writing. Just write your crap and accept it!”

Frances Cha, author of If I Had Your Face

Thank you Frances Cha. This is just what I needed.

I’m going to go write my crap.

Talk soon!