Autumn has always carried with it much more of a “New Year” feel to me than the calendar date.  Dating back to schoolwork and the refreshing cool air blowing in with shorter days and a break from the heat, fall has always signaled the start of new beginnings for me.  My religious tradition happens to feel the same way–first week of August is our New Year, and is a time for new beginnings, expunging the old, and approaching the new with fresh eyes and fresh enthusiasm.

It’s now taken on something of a bittersweet turn.  Next week, Firstborn starts his preschool five days a week.  For some reason, the two- and three- day a week sessions didn’t really count in my mind.  But now, he’ll have school every day of the week, and it won’t stop until he’s graduated.  Most of me can’t wait–he’s a bright kid and really loves his school and misses his friends.  I don’t have the energy to occupy him, and don’t want him growing up a vidiot sacked out in front of the TV.  He’s more than ready for school to start.

But that small part of me is aching unexpectedly, and it didn’t start until today (honestly, you’d think I’d be less late and more willing to take advantage of our time together).  But it just occurred to me that there’ll be no more “free day” weekdays, no more lunches with Daddy (unless they’re really early, or on one of those “no school” days).  No more “hey let’s hit the Children’s Museum today” days.  And suddenly, I’m not quite so eager to send him off.  So what if he’s bored out of his skull and climbing the walls.  At least then we could theoretically just jump in the dragon wagon and go somewhere fun.

This is the same small part that feels guilty the rare times when I have to get a babysitter for a doctor’s appointment, or is secretly glad when they’re both upstairs playing quietly (but not so silent that I start to get suspicious) and giving me a few minutes to steal away to read email or write out a few sentences.  Now it’s saying I should have been full-time engaged, playing with them constantly, the big playmate instead of the mom.  Those stupid refrigerator magnets with Erma Bombeck-isms saying you should play more and clean less and all that yadda are haunting me now (even though I’ve got the whole “clean less” part down pretty good already).

I know in theory I’ll get over this, and if I don’t, too bad, because time and tide wait for no one, but still…it’s a bittersweet kinda thing.  Heavens help me next year, when actual kindergarten starts and I have to watch him ride away on a bus.  Gotta stop now, before I get too emo and have to call the waahmbulance.

But I’m having a hell of a time with this latest WIP. I seem to be obsessed with writing the boring parts, and as Elmore Leonard says, don’t write the boring parts. I feel as if my entire writing life consists of the boring parts right now.

Figuring out where a story is going wrong is one of the hardest parts of a writer’s life. You’re too close to the story to really have a good idea where it’s going pear-shaped, but you’re also the one who knows it best, and oftentimes the only one who knows how far to back out of it and which new direction to push.

I think it comes back to my beginnings. I have to have a good beginning, or if not a completely good beginning, a decent starting point. If I don’t have that, I’m just farting around with characters. Right now, that’s exactly what I’m doing.  My heroine hasn’t yet found a point where she’s willing to give the hero a chance (or consider him to be more than something to be scraped off the bottom of a shoe), and my hero hasn’t yet given me the real reason he isn’t trying to get as far away from her as possible, as fast as possible.  I know it will come, somehow.  The Girls In The Basement will send up the material I need to figure it out.  It’s just a question of when and in what form it will be.

So here’s to hoping that this blog post will be the expunging of a particularly full-bodied whine and its associated cheese, thus clearing the way for some quality writing time in the near future.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I return from a vacation, I need another damn vacation to recover from the first one! Maybe it’s because, being an active person who’s married to another active person and who bore two active sprouts who don’t know the meaning of “downtime,” we don’t seem to be able to understand the concept of a truly relaxing vacation. Case in point, this year and every year, when most sane individuals would be taking a relaxing holiday on some beach somewhere, or maybe a hot-tub equipped cabin, a cruise ship, or a luxury hotel, we go to War.

No, not real war. I’m more than aware that Real War is No Fun, and my heart goes out to all those who are separated from their loved ones due to armed conflict. The war we attend is a medieval recreation event known as the Pennsic War. This year was Pennsic XXXV. That’s right. Somebody has been doing this shindig for thirty-five years.

Now, any summer event with that many Roman Numerals after it ain’t no little get-together. We traveled to Western Pennsylvania with not one, not two, but twelve thousand like-minded individuals, set up camp (some of us in medieval period tents and pavilions that could pass for circus tents), put on steel armor and many-layered (read hot) period garb in the middle of August, and beat the living shit out of each other with rattan weapons in melee combat.

And we call it fun.

Hell, who wouldn’t? Pretending to be a medieval lord or lady, swanking around in long skirts (or short kilts if you’re a gent), strapping on a belt with a knife and not having anyone think twice about it, and (theoretically) adhering to the tenets of chivalry (although when that gorgeous metallic-gold trim goes on sale, all bets are off) is a manner of Playing Pretend that takes us all back to dress-up and age six. And having your SO tuck a strip of something you made into his belt and promise to fight for your honor, whether it’s a cross-stitch doodad or a piece of your hair band, and whether or not he actually defeats his opponent–there’s something just that shivery about it, even if it is pretend and you’ve been together for years already.

This year, we added to the fun by taking a short vacation from the Middle Ages to attend GenCon, which is the biggest gaming convention (I am that kind of n3rd, and damn proud of it. I play Dungeons and Dragons, and all your g33ky brothers’ friends only wish they could meet a chick like me) .

Now, I met Mr. Xandra through RPG gaming, so it always holds fond memories for me. All-night dice marathons fueled by Doritos and Cokes, Mighty Moose pizza (the only place that would deliver after three AM), and the zombified shuffle through the next day’s classes with a mind still in Superhero mode (or Elementalist Mage mode, or Cyberpunk Hacker mode) wondering what next week’s adventures would bring and if we could outsmart the GM’s evil plots to kill us off with NPCs. GenCon is where you can, if you schedule it right, just bury yourself in a four-day orgy of gaming until you’re hoarse and the corners of your dice have all worn down so far they might as well be marbles. But more than that, the energy from GenCon comes from what gaming is at its heart. It’s storytelling.

Not only storytelling, but collaborative, cooperative storytelling. A group of people, each working for a common goal of a really ripping tale of adventure, action, excitement, even tragedy. Fantastic worlds populated by characters who really are Just That Good.

So a vacation playing pretend and telling stories.  Maybe it isn’t relaxing, or isn’t exotic, or isn’t at all stress-free, but perhaps it’s the perfect vacation for a writer who loves to tell stories.