that's a fine looking high horse

Vacation has abruptly come to an end, which I'm suddenly quite sad about. Today felt like a last breath before chaos strikes - I'm anticipating the next couple of weeks at work will be mostly ridic, given that it's the start of a new quarter and new year, and I also want to start writing Rafe and Octavia's story. But today was v. quiet. Perhaps too quiet - and I can blame that on the wine I had last night, which did no favors for my head this morning.

But I eventually rallied and met up with Claudia so that we could renew our love affair with Hong Kong Flower Lounge. Neither of us eat gluten anymore, but we took our chances with the rice noodle dishes (a far cry from the feasts of our youth, but better than nothing). It was lovely to catch up after the holidays, and the dim sum remains as good as always. I got home around 2:30, stared at my room in a stupor, and eventually finished unpacking and took care of a lot of laundry. Yes, I'm fascinating.

I stopped even that tentative attempt at progress to call my parents; we had nothing new to share since I just left home two days ago, but Sundays require calls regardless. Then I messed around a bit more before escaping the apartment and going to my favorite greek place for supper; if I hadn't left, I would have been tempted to take a nap, which would have wrecked me for tonight. So I ate some chicken and wrote in my journal while chatting up the bartender, and it was all a perfectly peaceful end to a quiet weekend.

But now, in anticipation for tomorrow, I'm going to read a bit and go to sleep early - wish me luck that the next quarter at work is better than the previous one. Goodnight!

keep the faith

My horoscope for today pretty much sums it up: "Your key planet Mercury is up against a formidable adversary today as it squares powerful Pluto. You may have shared an idea or started a project in the past few days, yet now you might feel as if your task is more challenging than you thought. Nevertheless, you feel unstoppable and aren't in the mood to negotiate. But your uncharacteristic aggression can create more problems than you realize. Take several deep breaths and think your next steps through before you swing into action."

As I've hinted already, I'm entering a workaholic mode and am already feeling like the wine bus on Saturday is going to be one glorious last hurrah before I barricade myself for the next few months/years. The last bit of disappointment over not selling my second book is slowly leaching out of my system; similar to the first book, the initial months were the hardest (full of despair and bleak thoughts and wanting to pull the covers over my head), then I went through a period of depressed resignation (not helped in this instance by my ulcer friend), and now I'm in the fired-up 'let's try this again' mood in which I want to write something amazing and take over the world. I can't help but think of Chumbawamba in this instance, although I wish that I hadn't. Granted, there are still a few editors who still have it, but neither my agent nor I feel particularly optimistic about our prospects. Amusingly enough, Jenn had just gotten a rejection before I talked to her this morning; this rejection even praised my "assured and lyrical voice" and my "feisty heroine", but said that my writing reminds her too much of another author they're already publishing. Grr.

So, the end. Or rather, the beginning. Jenn and I had an excellent conversation, and while I'm still mulling over the exact path I want to take and the insane amount of work required to traverse it, I think both my heart and my gut are aligned on the path I need to take. All of my myriad talents make me a great test candidate for self-publishing at this stage of the industry -- I have the writing talent (award-winning stories that get rejected by editors because they don't have space on their lists, not because they hate my guts), I have the tech skills, and I have the marketing and business knowledge to take a stab at it without being completely clueless. It's just taken several months to get over the dream of a glorious three-book deal (which Jenn thought would happen; she was as surprised as I was that we didn't sell) and align myself to a new, different, riskier dream.

And that was the agent chat. We discussed more of the business and logistics end and I have some decisions to make about how I work with her and what I do first, but the main thing is that I'm moving forward on *something*. And I can't express how good that feels after several months of traveling about like I hadn't a care in the world, giving myself an ulcer over my disappointment, and letting my self-doubt consume me. So if I do go all crazy workaholic on you in the next few months, give me awhile before you stage an intervention; I need some work time for awhile to get my dreams back on track.

Post agent chat, I had to urgently deal with the last details of our trip to Napa on Saturday. That left me precious little time to eat lunch, so I grabbed a protein box from Starbucks (that sounds more ominous than it is -- I don't think it's human, but it does have an egg, some cheese, peanut butter, apples, grapes, and some sort of biscuity thing) on my way to my hair appointment with Susie. I went shorter than I have in ages; while it's still long enough to cover my collarbones, it's no longer long enough to cover my breasts, and I kept being surprised when I was playing with it tonight and my hand ran out of hair several inches sooner than it usually does. It looks great, though, and I'm excited to have cut my hair-drying time by at least a third. Post-Susie, I came home, did some more winery stuff, grabbed a v. late lunch/early dinner at Roam (burgers, yum), then came home and took a nap. It was absurdly hot in the city today, so hot that it was still 77 degrees when Terry and I went out later in the evening, which is almost unheard of.

Terry's footsteps coming up the stairs awoke me from my nap, and I sprang up all eager for our planned wine bar excursion, but she had been rearended on the freeway on the way home and was understandably shaken by that. Her car wasn't badly damaged, but she was feeling a bit of whiplash (my non-medical diagnosis; WebMD would probably tell her it was spinal cancer), so we hung out at home for awhile while she dealt with the insurance company. We still went out, though, and had a glass of wine at Ottimista Enoteca, conveniently (or dangerously) located two blocks from our house. The place was lovely, even if I did horrify the host by asking for ice; I wanted it for my water, but he clearly thought I was going to dump it in my lovely glass of montepulciano. Terry and I caught up over our wine (and I stopped at a glass even though I wanted a second -- there will be time enough for multiple glasses of wine, and that time is Saturday), then came home and watched last week's "Project Runway". She went to bed, I continued rereading the book I finished two years ago, and eventually decided I should go to bed rather than reading when I was no longer awake enough to think.

And so, goodnight -- tomorrow looks different than I had hoped it would six months ago, but I'm excited anyway. I should also take a brief moment to give a shout-out to my sister, whose birthday was today - yay! For the rest of you, you also get a yay, but without the exclamation point. Goodnight!

eye of the tiger

Waking up to the perpetual silence of my phone is rough, but waking up to two rejection emails is worse.

And that pretty much sums up my day. I'm going to try to avoid chronicling the pain here, not because I'm worried about boring you (if you're still here after seven years, you've tacitly accepted my idiosyncrasies), but because it's generally not a good idea to blog publicly about such things. And, I'm not sure that blogging about it would be particularly helpful anyway. So, I'll try to stop complaining about the phone not ringing, and may not share future rejections until we have a definitive answer on whether we've sold or come to the end of the road. Sorry, kids.

After getting the emails from my agent (including her attempt to cheer me up with continued optimism for our prospects), I promptly told Alyssa that I wasn't coming in to the gym, pulled the covers over my head, and went back to bed. It was the only thing I could think to do, but I eventually rallied, got up, and made myself some breakfast. Eating bacon certainly improved my mood, if only briefly, and so I took care of some stuff that I needed to get done. Sometime around two p.m., I ventured into downtown Palo Alto and had a late lunch, then took Alyssa's advice and hiked the Dish. Being outside certainly helped to clear my head a little bit, as did the nap that I took when I got back to my house. Then I showered, made a peanut butter sandwich for dinner, and read half of a book on my kindle. And now, I need to go to bed -- I'm training with Alyssa tomorrow, and I don't intend to skip this one.

The last thing I will say, though, is that the only positive outcome that I felt in the minutes after those rejections was the clarity that I'm willing to sacrifice anything to be a writer. Maybe that's not a positive; some of my lunch friends yesterday already said that the movie "Black Swan" reminded them of me (I haven't seen it, but I'm assuming that's not a compliment). But my first instinct wasn't to stop writing -- it was to identify what I have to change/allow/give up in order to make this dream happen. It's still too early and I'm still too raw to think in terms of battle plans, but that day will come. And that kernel of clarity will have to be the basis of all the tough decisions I have to make down the road.

i cry tear drops over the massive attack

I don't quite know what to say about today, so perhaps I shall keep this brief. I woke up stressing about the book, agonizing over the silence of my phone, and so didn't get anything done until around lunchtime (when all I had to eat were scrambled eggs; I need to go grocery shopping). But, I finally dragged myself to the gym and purged my thoughts on the elliptical. Then, I met with a trainer who is not Alyssa -- Alyssa recommended that I do this test that facilitates and meet with him to discuss the right nutritional approach for my body. It was all quite interesting; according to the test (which was a v. comprehensive quiz I took online last week), my metabolic makeup means that I should be eating a lot of protein, more fat, and less carbs. Of that protein, it should be mostly red meat. All of this is exactly the opposite of what I've been eating (or trying to eat, when I'm following Alyssa's instructions and not eating whatever I want, like I did tonight), since I've been living off of chicken breast and cheerios.

I'm going to give it a try for the next month, although the idea of getting up and eating meat for breakfast doesn't sound all that appealing right now. But I do notice that I tend to get hungry faster if I've eaten mostly carbs during the previous meal, and carbs are certainly my downfall when I go out. And if I'm allowed to eat all the liver I want, I'm pretty much guaranteed to lose weight, since I don't want to let any liver cross my lips. So, we shall see; if nothing else, you can look forward to being amused at my attempts to figure out where to get elk and wild game if I get sick of eating steak.

After the gym, I went to Starbucks and spent an hour writing a guest blog post for the romance blog that I'm part of. Then, I met up with Jenni for dinner at Bodeguita del Medio. It was the first time I'd seen her since I went over to her parents' house when I heard that her fiance died last month, and it was really good to see her. We ended up lingering for two and a half hours, discussing life and catching up on everything that's happened since the last time I saw her. I won't dwell on that here, but I was happy to see that she seems to be holding up about as well as anyone in her position could be expected to.

Since we shared appetizer plates and dessert (empanadas, shrimp/corn fritters, cheese cubes, and then some awesome caramelized bananas with ice cream), and since I had two drinks, it's little wonder that I came home with no desire to do any more work. I made sure that the post I wrote went live appropriately, and then I spent the rest of the evening reading one of my favorite books (SUNSHINE by Robin McKinley). I practically know some scenes by heart, but sometimes I want the comfort of reading something I know rather than learning something new. And now, I should really go to sleep so that I can get up and eat something appropriately protein-y before training with Alyssa. Goodnight!

once i set the mood right imma make it sound like

Words cannot quite express how sore I am today; I was right that Alyssa was trying to kill me yesterday, and I have to get up and let her try again tomorrow. I suppose it's all worth it, but when my legs nearly gave out from under me every time I tried to climb any step/slight incline or sit down/stand up, it was hard to remember the long-term goal in the face of the short-term incapacitation.

However, other than that, today was mostly lovely. I didn't go to the gym this morning, but I did mess around on the internet and take care of some stuff while lazing about in bed. Then, I dolled myself up and went to my old place of employment, where I had lunch with Meital. She's Alan's admin, and while she started being his admin after I stopped reporting to him directly, I still got to know her quite well. It was wonderful to catch up; Alan's out of town this week, as is the big boss, and so she had time to linger over lunch and coffee while we discussed all sorts of topics related to work and life. Finally, I escaped, stopped at Starbucks for some tea, came home, took care of a couple more online errands, and called my parents to replace the call that they missed out on while I was driving back from Vegas on Sunday.

After I got off the phone with my parents, I procrastinated for a little bit, then decided I had to stop. I'm in a complete tailspin from the stress over whether my book will sell or not, which is a) not good for my attempts to eat healthy, since I gave in to my pasta craving tonight, and b) more importantly, is blocking progress on my next book. So rather than taking tonight off as I said I would, I went to Stanford, sat in one of my favorite study rooms (the Bender Room, on the top floor of the Bing Wing, which was filled with evening light and not filled with very many people), and tried a meditation exercise before writing. And, much to my surprise, it worked. It came from a guest post that I facilitated last week on the group romance blog I'm part of, and at the time I'd dismissed it as kind of silly. But, after fifteen or twenty minutes of sitting in silence and envisioning walking down a series of steps to my ideal writing place, my mind had stopped frantically obsessing over my sales potential, and I was able to write 5+ pages of character development stuff related to my hero's childhood and personality.

Through that exercise, I discovered that my ideal writing place has a minibar, but I won't dwell too much on the implications of that; if it makes you feel better, a fancy tea machine and an abundance of Diet Coke and ice featured more prominently than top-shelf liquor. But, I'm glad I was able to write, if only for a little while. I came home, still quite peaceful, to make sure that the post I'm facilitating for tomorrow's romance group blog went live at the right time, and then did some desultory answering of email.

And now, I'm going to go to bed, and when I wake up tomorrow morning and start obsessing over whether my phone will ring, I will hopefully hit myself in the head and try to go to my quiet place. Goodnight!

it is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing

I sincerely hope that I don't go crazy waiting for an answer on whether my book is going to sell or not. Oddly, I feel both more and less confident than I did last time -- more because I genuinely feel that this book is leagues better than my last one, which was not a shabby book, and less because I know how hard it is to sell and lost a bit of my faith over the course of my first book. So needless to say, I'm a bit of a basketcase right now, and will likely remain a bit of a basketcase for as long as it takes to resolve this. It was too early to expect any news today, and yet I still slept poorly and spent the morning lazing about in bed hoping that the phone would ring. If nothing else, I can't sleep poorly all the time, and I know I'll settle into some uneasy equilibrium while I wait. And, the good news is that by about three p.m. every day I know that business has shut down on the east coast, so I can at least spend my evenings not waiting for a call that may not come.

So, I laid around in bed until almost noon, finally pulled myself out of it, ate some cheerios, showered, etc., and decided that I should get out of my house. I had a late lunch at Sprout Cafe, which I had turned my nose up to when Tammy's boyfriend suggested it for dinner a couple of months ago -- but for lunch, it was a v. welcome change from the salads that I get at the gym. The salad was absolutely huge, and the ingredients were way better than any other salad place I've been; if parking in that particular stretch of University weren't such a bitch, I would go there more often. I stared at zee romance novel for awhile, came home, made some tea, and took myself over to Stanford library, where I spent a couple of hours and managed to write approximately six pages. Yay -- and yet it's a bit concerning that before I've even gotten into the story, just thinking of Nick and Ellie brings tears to my eyes. Between the stress of the submission process and the deep well of emotion I feel for these characters, I may go completely insane within the month. Lovely, right?

After I got home, I decided to give my emotions a break. I engaged in a bit of schadenfreude and watched the "60 Minutes" episode that I taped last night about the writer of "Three Cups of Tea" who has been exposed (by Jon Krakauer, of all people) for faking key episodes in his memoirs and (worse) potentially misusing funds given to his charity that were supposed to go to building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I just checked some stuff online about it, and one of the excuses that Mortenson floated about why he didn't speak to Steve Kroft when Kroft ambushed him at a booksigning was that he mistook Steve Kroft for a suicide bomber. Ha! Granted, Kroft was wearing a trenchcoat and looking like he wanted to dress up as an investigatory journalist, but how many suicide bombers show up, introduce themselves as Steve Kroft, and bring cameramen and microphone carriers and all sorts of other people with them? Wouldn't it just be easier to show up alone and hit the detonator without pretending to be Steve Kroft?

While watching tv, I painted my nails, and since I wanted to continue watching television rather than messing them up by typing, I watched the second half of "Fellowship of the Ring". Yes, I am a dork. I know I'm a dork because I still get a visceral, breath-stealing reaction to key scenes, like the Bridge of Khazad-Dum sequence or Boromir's death. Sigh. I wanted to put in "The Two Towers" and keep going, but I think I shall go to bed instead. Maybe I'll watch it in the morning while waiting for the phone to ring -- although at least tomorrow I need to go to the gym and see Alyssa, so I'll get a bit of the break from the tyranny of waiting. Goodnight!