Chuck Wendig on writing a novel

Can't explain how much it helped me to read this today. My first go-round, it feels like rolling a turd uphill. This morning I almost threw my idea out the window--it's been a year, and by god the first draft sucks--but I guess this is about having guts and balls.

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2011/06/20/25-things-you-should-know-about-writing-a-novel/

(Oh yeah, I'm writing a novel. It's been about a year. Shows how long...)

It's like hot potato with garbage

...is the game me and my wife play regarding who will empty the kitchen garbage can.

Untitled and unstructured like nature itself

Do any other children of the '70s remember sprawling days and nights of unstructured summer? It made the months seem endless as if school didn't exist. It was boring sometimes, but being bored really often meant sitting inside in the cool shade watching Goonies and RoboCop, the kind of boredom which is actually a sign of luxury.

I do want a little more structure for my kids---they don't live in the same kind of suburbs I did, with several surrounding quiet, low-traffic streets full of kids my age and a beach near by, and I don't want them on their iWare* every day; plus I can't quite trust my 14-year-old baby like I used to---but just a little more structure. Unfortunately my ex doesn't agree, and like it or not (I don't) I have to agree to a few more camps or days of camp than I would like for them.

They will have the rest of their lives to have places to be.

*My ex is also the one who bought them the iPhone/iPad, against my wishes. Sorry but I have to be a dick like that.

At Ezra's 8th-grade graduation they honored a teacher retiring after 33 years. He was a bit surprised and didn't have any remarks prepared for the graduates, so he said he'd just share something a friend of his told her daughter when they were visiting a new city on vacation" "Put down your cell phone, and look at everything."

tap tap tap.

What happens when
You confine yourself
To writing a poem
With only one finger.

Without mettle...

Sometimes I hear a song, and it makes me want to make music so badly that it hurts

Music I must make because I am the next undiscovered thing who never will be

And if only I’d known it sooner in life,

Because now I have children:

If only my parents had loved me more I would be famous.

I start to scheme. Who do I know? Should I take piano lessons? I could sing karaoke in a restaurant and be discovered at 40…

Then I remember, oh yes, it’s just that I drank too much coffee.

  ...

Trees

This morning,

dropping the boys off,

I saw little Christmas trees in the garbage.

These trees have been in their rooms each year since the littlest was a baby.

It's a tradition I learned from my mom. Maybe she learned it from hers?

All of us were alarmed, the truck would come soon, we had to get them out of the garbage and into the car. One of the stars was missing, where was it?

Ezra looked inside, I looked in the garbage. We couldn't find it, but at least some of it was saved.

After that, driving to work, I thought about memory. It's not myth. You do feel it in the heart, hard to breathe, like a shock of cold air. My littlest boy, already 9, was in the back seat. At what age does memory get tied up with sadness, the way it is for adults? I thought about this and I remembered how confusing it was as a child, seeing adults cry when they claimed to be happy.

Passing parked cars. A man stepped out with an artificial leg. I thought, memory is like a phantom limb.