Girl Detective

and I lived deliberately for less than 48 hours. And used an outhouse. And made good progress in editing novel #1. And nearly finished reading Emma. And walked in the woods. But did not test the ice. And did physical therapy exercises for my problem wrist, back and hip.

I stayed at a retreat recommended by a friend, in a single cabin that had heat and electricity but no running water. I picked up meals at the lodge. The cook told me what was in the basket each time. My first meal, lunch yesterday, was a veggie curry over brown rice, a salad with hard-boiled eggs and cheddar cheese with a honey mustard dressing, and sugared almond slivers. I took it back to the cabin, and burt into tears, overwhelmed by the peace and quiet, with a nice meal given to me that I could enjoy at my leisure.

And I did. Throughout the time I was there, I only did one thing at a time. What a luxury that was. When I ate, I ate. When I walked, I walked. When I read, I read.

Unfortunately, my high hopes of two nights of blissful, uninterrupted sleep did not materialize. Both nights I was anxious about being alone in a cabin in the woods. The first night I had the cabin too hot, and the second night I undercompensated and had it too cold. Also, I fear that I may have lost the ability to sleep deep, uninterrupted sleep, even if I didn’t have to contend with lurid imaginations of killers with hooks for hands, and widely variant room temperatures.

At the end of my time, I felt rather like I’d visited a MASH unit for my internal self. They patched me up, treated me nice, and sent me back to the front.

Me? I’m a winner at Nanowrimo. I wrote a novel. Or, more accurately, over fifty thousand words of raw material for a novel.

I do have one concern. My novel didn’t end. I passed 50K, but I still am not sure where the novel was going. Without my artificial, arbitrary deadline, I’m not sure I’ll ever find out. Because writing 50K in a month is not a healthy way to live.

Here’s how I did it. I woke up at 6 a.m., my husband made me coffee and I did small writing things, like journalling and catching up on the past year of thank you notes for baby gifts, until the baby woke around 7:30 a.m. I made sure to eat lunch while the baby did, so that when he went to sleep for his nap, around noon, I could sit down as soon as possible at the laptop and work on the Nanowrimo novel. Sometimes I checked email, or blogged, to my detriment. The baby’s nap is usually an hour fifteen, so anything other than power novelling meant that very little novelling got done. Occasionally, on very wonderful days, I would finish my goal of 1700 words per day during his nap. Usually, I did not, so after he went to sleep at night, around 7:30 p.m., I would sit down and write till I hit the goal. The later I novelled, the harder it was. The worst days were the ones in which I had to start after he went to bed for the night.

But I did it. And now I’m glad that it’s over. I’m going to go do laundry. Or bathe. Or read my book. Or watch TV. Or a movie. Or any other of the zillion things I put off last month, saying, “I’ll get to it in December. Right now, I gotta novel.”

One of my many pet peeves is people who ask stupid questions at author readings. I feel so bad for authors when they are asked “Where do you get your ideas?” I like Jennifer Weiner’s response, “Target.”

While all authors I have ever seen have graciously answered this question, I’m not sure that I would be able to be so polite. So when I have my “when I get my book published and am doing readings and someone actually comes to them” fantasy rolling in my head, I think it would be a good thing if questions were submitted in advance, so I could weed out the “Where do you get your idea?”s and all the questions that aren’t really questions but just a way for the inquirer to sound erudite in front of a crowd. In real life, though, I haven’t even put together a good submission package for my book, so I think I can say with certainty that any author readings on my part are a long way off.

Censoring comments, though, is happening right here, right now, because as soon as we put this site up, my comments feature got spammed with poker solicitations. So I have to approve comments before they get posted. This actually is far more like abashed agony then my authorial fantasy. I don’t get tons of comments, and I’m thrilled by each one, since they affirm that people are actually reading this. So believe you me, readers, I don’t want to make commenting harder. But I did want to let you know why there is a delay in seeing your comment posted.

Blame the poker spammers. I didn’t want it to come to this.

Welcome to the new address of Girl Detective. Two and a half years ago, I started writing as Girl Detective at Blogger. A few months after that I got pregnant, and started another weblog, Mama Duck, to write about things specific to pregnancy, and eventually parenthood.

Over time, the silliness of having two weblogs became apparent. I thought I needed two forums to keep the topics separate. What I learned is that the lines are very blurry, even when I’m not deprived of sleep. The pop culture of Girl Detective seeped over into the motherhood of Mama Duck, and vice versa.

Additionally, I wanted to do more with the sites, but was limited at Blogger. What they have is fabulous, and even more fabulous for being free, but I needed a form that was more flexible. And thus the need for the new digs.

Thanks for visiting, and I hope I’ll give you reason to come back again. The site will be under construction for a while, so pardon the appearance while we work out some bugs in the system.