Patti O'Shea's Blog

I’m reading a great book right now! It’s called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. This book is for anyone who wants to pursue something be it writing, painting, working out or whatever, and has found excuses to delay doing anything. It really resonated strongly for me and I can’t find enough good things to say about it.

Mr. Pressfield talks about Resistance being the root cause of why we procrastinate or sabotage ourselves to keep from pursuing our life’s work, our need to create, our self-betterment. I’m only on page 33, but I want to send this book to about half a dozen people and say “READ THIS!”

This is probably the worst review you’ll ever see for a book and I probably should wait until I finish it because I’m only in the section which is defining what Resistance is and how it manifests itself. Ways to combat it are coming later, but I’m honestly hugely excited about this work and I want to tell everyone about it now!

The book is broken up into really small sections so you can read it a little at a time, which is what I’ve been doing–a minute here, a minute there. What I’ve read so far as hit me as Truth and I’ve found myself nodding my head in agreement as I read. I’ve also laughed out loud, not just because the author was trying to be funny (although he has been in places), but because some of this is either stuff I’ve done myself or stuff I’ve seen other people do.

If you know anyone who’s expressed an interest in starting something that calls to them and you see them make a gazillion excuses to avoid doing it, tell them about this book. I’m not getting any money or other consideration for blogging about this book–I’m just so freaking excited about it that I can’t not talk about it. It’s probably the best book for creativity and writing that I’ve ever read (and I’m only 33 pages into it!).

I’ll probably mention it again, so beware.

I’m having a lazy morning so far. I slept way late and can’t seem to find any desire to move. I’ll have to soon, though, because it’s already noon and I’m starting to feel like a slug. I got my edits for In the Midnight Hour yesterday so I’ll be doing that for the next little while. I need to rework two scenes in this book (I talked to my editor about it), so I do have a little writing to do, but mostly it will be left-brained stuff which is good for the end of the day.

Okay, I’m home from work. The commute in this morning wasn’t too bad, actually. I left the house about 15 minutes early and I punched in about 10 minutes early so it only took 5 minutes longer. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate snow?

So a week or two ago, there was a discussion on one of the published authors loops that I’m on and it was depressing as all get out. The gist of it was that an author will fade into obscurity if she only has one book a year released. Herein lies the title of this post. While I work a full time job, I can’t write much faster than I currently am (I already have no life and little sleep) and that amounts to one book a year or so. As long as I only release one book a year, I can’t earn enough money to support myself. However, until I can support myself writing, I can’t afford to quit the EDJ. The EDJ pays the bills and it has health insurance. Catch-22.

If I were married to a man who earned enough to cover the necessities (like mortgages and internet bills) and who had health insurance, it would all be simple. Unfortunately, I support myself.

Maybe if I wrote shorter books (I always turn in stories that are 60-100 pages over what I’m required by contract) I could squeeze more in, but then I’d feel like I wasn’t giving my stories enough room to unfold, that the characters wouldn’t have enough time to change and grow. And honestly, I have little control over the length. When I wrote Power of Two, I had a 4 month deadline and three plots I was weaving together through that story. I sweated and sweated making that deadline, so when I had a 4.5 month deadline for Through a Crimson Veil, I realized I couldn’t manage a complicated plot that would go 460 pages like TPOT did. My “simple” story came in at 463 manuscript pages–exactly as long as TPOT to the page.

I’m mostly over the depression now. I’ve accepted I can’t write 8 books a year like one of the authors on the loop or even three or four like so many of the others. Not while I work full time, at least. I just keep reminding myself of Jenny Crusie’s RWR article where she talks about how writers are rats swimming for an island. I’m still treading water.

I have to post really fast this morning because we had snow and rain yesterday. It was mostly sloppy going home Thursday, although there were some slippery spots, but now it’s had time to freeze overnight and the drive in should be ever so much fun. I hope those people who wanted a white Christmas are happy now since I’ve already had one awful commute and it looks like I’m going to have two more–it’s supposed to snow and rain again today. Gah! To think positively, at least it wasn’t as bad as Colorado.

Both Amazon and BN.com show Shards of Crimson in and shipping in 2-3 days. This is not only two weeks early (as usual), but during the holiday rush where people don’t have time to think about books. I also have nightmares of trucks loaded with copies of the anthology trapped in Colorado and the whole west coast not getting the book in. Yes, writers are neurotic and we have active imaginations.

And I have to go now because I need to leave the house way early. Grumble.

Yesterday was our holiday party day at work, which basically means potluck lunch for our floor. This year a lot of people participated which made it better than in years past when hardly anyone took part. Of course, we didn’t come close to touching the amount of food that fifth floor brought in last week, but then I think they have much larger numbers taking part than we do. Oh, well. It’s a nice break from the ordinary.

After lunch, at 1:07 while I was fighting to keep my eyes open, Loud Vendor Guy wheeled his laptop in. Sigh. Between the sound of the rolling laptop case and the loud way he walks, I can hear him as soon as he turns into the main hallway. Turns out, though, that I got an early Christmas present–LVG has a new job! In Raleigh-Durham! That should be far enough away that I don’t have to listen to him. One loud, obnoxious man down, one loud obnoxious man to go.

That big huge storm in the middle of the country is supposed to ruin my weather today. I went to bed early last night so I could get up early today and give myself extra driving time. This really is irritating. Can’t I ever have one Christmas without expletive deleted snow on the ground? I tell you, white Christmas is highly overrated. Oh, sure, if it snowed like today and was gone by January 2nd and never snowed again, I’d probably agree with the people saying snow for Xmas, but this is Minnesota. Any snow we get now will likely still be on the ground in March! Nope, I’m dreaming of a brown Christmas and wishing really, really hard that the horrible storm stay south of me.

Today, though, is solstice. I love solstice! It means the days will start getting longer again. Oh, sure, it’ll take months before it starts getting dark so early, but man, it’s a huge relief to hit this day. I have a friend who lives in Anchorage who totally understands how I feel about this day. I think the two of us are the most excited out of our group, but hey, we both live north.

My parents went shopping yesterday and came home with two oddly shaped massage things–one for my mom and one for me. They’re supposed to be really good at relieving headaches, but the thing looks like some kind of spaceship for inch-tall Martians. I did give it a try yesterday and darn, it did feel good. The only thing is the way it vibrates makes me hand feel all tingly and weird.

The second thing occurred to me a couple of hours after I used it. These things were loose and had a sticker on them saying “Try Me.” What if someone with lice or scalp lesions or something else gross used it first and then I rolled that thing all over my head? Ewwww! I wonder if Lysol wipes will take care of icky germs on the plastic feet?

I just saw that commercial for you’re the TV boss where the woman tells the mafia guys (The Sopranos?) that she’s blocking them because she doesn’t want her kids exposed to the violence. Um, where’d she get that skirt? I know, I shouldn’t be focused on that, but it’s horrible, stripes in a V-pattern. Where’d they find this thing? A 1970s retro clothing store? You know, it’s not like I care about fashion, but hideous is hideous and even I can pick that out. Some things, like avocado green stoves and V-pattern striped skirts should never be resurrected. It’s bad enough they existed once.

Yesterday, I sent an email to one of my writing buddies. In it, I was talking about the heroine from the WIP and she pointed out how many times I used the heroine’s sister’s name (Ryne was my previous heroine). She’s right, I used it a gazillion times in our note and I define Maia in contrast to Ryne all the time in my head and when I’m emailing about her. I wonder if that’s part of the reason why I’m fighting with this book so much–I’m more interested in my other characters still? My friend challenged me to write this next chapter without using Ryne’s name and she’s right, Maia should be the star of her own story. I’m just not quite sure how to divorce myself from Ryne. It’s not like I can tell her and Deke to go away because I need them around until I do edits and galleys. I did decide to finish Maia’s character sketch. I started one for her after I did Creed’s, but I never filled out much. Maybe this will help yank my head out of the previous story.

I received my Golden Heart judging packet yesterday. Five entries to read and I have until March 1st, I believe. That’s the only thing I really looked at was when I needed to be finished. I’ll examine everything more closely when I get ready to start reading. I’ve got my fingers crossed that I don’t have a bunch of time travels. I can judge them fairly, but they’re my least favorite part of the paranormal category.

I’ve been wondering why when years ago, I used to read every single one that came out and I decided that was part of the problem–I read too many and some of them weren’t good. And two, time travel is hard to write. A lot of times, it just feels clumsy to read and it’s the same general stuff all the time. Hero or heroine (usually heroine) put on a magical (cursed) dress (or something else if it’s the hero) and gets sent back in time. Of course, the character never ever believes they’ve time traveled and they accuse everyone of being part of an elaborate hoax complete with actors, costumes and sets. (Yeah, my friends always spend thousands of dollars to pull off a joke.) The character who’s traveled in time then proceeds to fall in love with their look-alike relative’s spouse who hates the person they replaced because she’s a horrible bitch and the heroine (or sometimes hero) decides to stay in the past without running water, electricity, computers, hair dryers, hot running water, etc, all in the name of true love.

After reading the paragraph I just wrote, maybe it’s the predictability that I have trouble with. I’d be more interested in a time travel where the h/h traveled to our future. Now that would be different. Hard to pull off, of course, and it would take a lot of world building, but I’d find that a lot more fun to read than another historical disguised as a paranormal. (Yeah, I know, but I don’t read historicals.)

Edited to add: I do think I can judge any TT I have fairly–I focus on the writing–it’s just not my favorite sub-genre, that’s all.

I have to run. It’s after 5am and we all know what that means–time to get ready for the EDJ.

I finished Christmas cards last night. Hurrah! I’ll get them out in the mail today and be finished with it. Now let’s hope that no one unexpected sends me a card because I have none left. I might be able to scrounge up a card left over from previous years except that I have no clue which box they might be in.

I did get one card yesterday from someone I didn’t expect to send me one. Fortunately, I hadn’t finished cards yet, so I was able to send one in return, but boy, her card held bad news. Her husband, also a friend of mine, was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Reading that was like taking a kick in the chest. He’s been tested regularly, so they caught it early, but it’s an aggressive strain.

Still haven’t bought any Christmas presents. Gah! It’s gift certificates for everyone, I guess. Again. And I still need to send out e-cards, but I haven’t even had time to get over to the website and take a look. This time of the year is way too stressful and hectic.

I ordered a book that’s out of print and has been out of print for years. It’s called Screwballs by Jay Cronely and it’s a book I’ve loved ever since I checked it out of the library years ago. It was out of print then too, but I found a copy very reasonably priced and it arrived yesterday. It’s fiction. The story’s about a baseball team full of high-priced free agents who get a new manager, a man who believes in the old school of baseball. It’s a hilarious read. One of the descriptions I’ve remembered for years was when the manager talks about his rookie pitcher who has “all the control of a blind man throwing feathers in a hurricane.” I don’t know if you need to be a baseball fan to read and appreciate this story, but if you are, it’s LOL funny.

Saturday, I made great progress on the WIP. Then, as has been the way with this book, I cut half of it on Sunday and rewrote. If I thought I did a lot of cutting and rewriting on Crimson Veil, this book is proving me wrong. Now I know what a lot means. :-/

After my brain shut down around 7:30, I went shopping online. Not for Christmas presents, which is probably what I should have been shopping for, but for other stuff. I kept waiting for some charity to send me those free address labels–after all, I have a huge collection with my old address–but I still haven’t gotten any and I’m tried of writing it out by hand. I know, lazy, but it seems like such a waste of time. I happened to have a free shipping coupon code that expired at the end of the month so I decided it was a good opportunity to use it. After all, it was still early and I could finish picking up a few things and go to bed early. Yeah, right.

Next, I went to check out the online vitamin store. I’m running low on the B Complex (for energy, which I totally need since I never get enough sleep) and I wanted some Flaxseed oil in pill form. I tell you, there’s way too much to choose from and I don’t know what version is best. It’s overwhelming.

I still had an coupon for $10 off at an office supply store and a coupon for $15 off my next shoe order and a coupon for free shipping from an online store that sells house stuff, but it was after 10pm by then. What happened to my early night? Sigh. So I’m really tired this morning and now I’m getting spam in foreign languages. I can’t even understand the alphabet, so I’m betting it’s Cyrillic (spelling?) or Slavic or whoever uses those different shaped letters.

I just realized how stupid and boring this post is. I was going to delete it, but it’s 5am and I have to logoff and get ready for the day job, which means this stays. Sorry.

Yep, it’s movie review day. Well, kind of. Do You Believe In Miracles is an hour long documentary on the 1980 Olympic hockey team. I was so captured by the movie Miracle, that I wanted to see more about that team.

This documentary aired on HBO in 2001 and includes interviews with Herb Brooks who coached the team, Craig Patrick who was another coach, about half a dozen US team members, a couple of soviet team members and sports reporters from both the US and USSR. Not only did this hour-long show cover the hockey team, but they also spent a great deal of time putting the gold medal into societal and historical perspective. This included interviews from Walter Mondale, who was vice president when these Olympics occurred, some regular news reporters and one of the former Iranian hostages.

I enjoyed the documentary a lot, particularly how they put it in context because that really was critical in explaining how huge this miracle was to the United States. It was also completely fabulous that they put the Soviet players’ perspective into the show as well. That added a lot and it was the first time I’d seen anything about that at all.

What I thought needed improvement: they didn’t display the names of the people interviewed often enough. I frequently couldn’t remember which player was speaking and I just gave up after a while. The only one I recognized every time he appeared on screen was Jack O’Callahan. I also wish the documentary had been a little longer and showed more hockey. My other disappointment was at the end. They had graphics telling what the players/coaches interviewed were doing now, but only those interviewed. I would have liked to have seen what the entire US team was up to now like they did at the end of the movie I watched a couple of weeks ago.

Overall, it was an interesting documentary that enhanced Miracle. I wish I’d seen it before I watched the movie.

My rating: 4 stars