Another Week Looms

OK, here it is. Another Sunday night. Ask Mark: this is usually the point where I go a little whacko thinking about how far away the next weekend is. Tears, anger, frustration, resigned silence, you name it. Nothing good. I was going to say that I started that before things got crazy at work, but that's a lie. Things have been crazy at work since mid-November when I found out that one of the temps was quitting because of my counterpart. And then people started getting fired and quitting. And then rumors sprang up like wildfire and no one's even trying to put them out. And then management got really fucking good at double-speak and chasing their tails. Yeah, downhill for a while. Here's hoping my resume is being considered at the places I've sent it.

But I didn't start this post in order to bitch about the Dreaded Day Job. I started this to talk about my great weekend. Yesterday, Mark and I had barely pulled ourselves out of bed when someone from my crit group called and asked me to go with her and another of our critters to a writing workshop down in a southern Denver suburb. All that was required of me was to help said person set up coffee and cookies. I said sure. We got there and set up in no time, only to have not even a dozen people show up for the RMFW business meeting scheduled for just before the workshop. Somehow I ended up being impromptu secretary for RMFW's shortest meeting ever. (The minutes are about three lines long.) And then we all went to lunch and chatted. The best part of that conversation was when someone said to me, "You're published, right?" Glad to know I look the part or present the impression of being published. Then we had the actual workshop given by Sharon Mignerey, all about how to deal with this crazy job description we writers have. At one point I asked a question (basically revealing again in front of fellow writers my personal psychotic perfectionist tendencies - more on this later), and got a free signed book out of it. Always nice.

And today I read that book for a bit, just relaxing and pretending that the Dreaded Day Job was just a demented figment of my imagination. Later I sat down with some brainstorming software and mapped out the status of my writing. It wasn't quite as cathartic as I had hoped, but it did help to get it all out of my head and visualize it. Then I mapped out all of my ideas for "Princess Incubus". Everything from the original inspiration to the research to the plot outline. All on one brainstorm map. It's a very busy map, but I like it. Again, nice to have it all in front of me, with clear deliniations of relationships and ideas.

Tomorrow night I hope to do some brainstorming for The Masque, or actually write some of "Princess Incubus". It'll depend on what, if anything, the day takes out of me. Still, I'm pleased with the weekend. It was a nice assertion that the Dreaded Day Job (aw, hell - I'm just gonna start calling it the DDJ from now on; the world never has enough acronyms) isn't who I am, it's just what I have to do at the moment.