The power of a positive attitude

The day started off with She Who Cannot Stop Taking and all the problems she had with her job. It would be pretty easy to blame a non-productive day on her, but I wasn't taking the bait.

This lasted for about two hours, and damnit, I understand. I've held a job since I was thirteen. (1973 for those keeping score.) Sometimes the job is a pain in the butt.

I wanted to go through the the multitude of emails, and honestly, I shut her down to a degree and did it anyway. My wife always sleeps late on Saturday's, and this is my prime writing time. I was a little upset, but kept my mouth shut about it.

While she jabbered on about life in general, I decided to print out my critiques. Only one of three worked, and I had to ask the other two to send a different format. They were happy to do this, but I could have ended my day right there and blamed all my problems on circumstance. This is where the positive attitude kicked in. The guys provided an alternate format, and I printed all of them out. I even managed to finish one of them. We meet Tuesday, so I need to make these a priority.

I have a lot of things on my list, and knew some of them could get done anyway. I've worked myself into a catch 22 on The Yak Guy project. This is my novel, and I'm so used to this kind of problem that it's old hat. I want Yak Guy to face a larger problem. I want him to have limited resources when he does. Then I want him to achieve a goal he doesn't even know he has. The problem comes from needing the goal to happen before he achieves it. I'm probably not explaining it well, but it happens in every novel length project. I'll think about it and come up with something. I always do. The basic thought for this post is that it isn't time to be working on the novel. Some serious thought is required here. Getting it wrong now will cause problems four chapters down the line.

This is the beauty of having other projects on the side. My short fiction is a godsend this way.

I wound up getting some new Lisa Burton art in the morning email today. (Surprise! Two weeks before I expected it.) This has to do with my next crazy promotional adventure. I'm not ready to announce it today, but it required me to set some things in motion. This involved sending out a pile of emails. By creating a form, I easily achieved this goal. I'm really excited about this project, and several more of you might be hearing from me in the next few days.

My wife took my daughter to town this afternoon. I knew better than to tear into my novel, but I have a short story that I've been working on for weeks. This came in a more manageable portion, so I opened the file and went to work. I finished the rough draft of the short story. It came in at about 3200 words. I'm relatively happy with it, and would like to include it in a future Experimental Notebook.

After I finished this draft, I edited one of the guest posts I'd been working on, and made it into something more palatable. I even wrote a different one from scratch. These are about The Playground, which I'll be publishing soon. At some point, I'll need to have some guest posts ready for the street team, and need to keep working on them. Still, some progress is better than no progress.

When my wife returned she announced that it was time for date night. We went to the Yardhouse for dinner and beer. I had one of my favorite beers, Anderson Valley Wild turkey Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout. It's a mouthful, but it's absolutely wonderful. I switched to Belgians after that one, and had a sour, and a Belgian Quad. Quad means four times the alcohol. If this post winds up intelligible, blame it on the Belgians. The people, their beer, the whole country actually.

For supper, I had a crab and lobster omelette. It was wonderful too. My wife ordered a turkey pot pie. Check out this picture. It had to be about 16 inches wide, and was more suitable for her and about four friends. She was embarrassed when they delivered it, and that brought me great joy. I snapped a picture to commemorate the event.

Yes, she texts at the table

She did her best, but some of it came home. It's open season for someone tonight, and our son might get it. If he doesn't, a part of it is destined for the old pitbull tomorrow morning.

All in all, a positive attitude prevailed. I got my next crazy project launched, I finished a short story that I've been struggling with, and I knocked out a portion of my critique chores. I even managed some progress on Playground promo material. There's always more to do, but I'm pretty excited about the way things turned out. We even managed a wonderful date night.