A Plan Forms

It’s time to get serious. I have been writing on and off quite a bit. I have four or five novels in the works, none of which I’m working on nearly enough and none of which are anywhere close to finished, but they’re all good in their own right and I have goals. I want to be a novelist. I want to write for a living. It’s important to me to get there.

And I’m fat again. It’s mostly not my fault. The weight I gained over the past few years was a direct result of my birth control, but now that I’ve had that removed, I need to take control and lose it. I started out well with that yesterday. I planned a full day of healthy eating and I walked and jogged more than four miles after work. Then I went to a friend’s house and ate this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this morning, I nearly got sick in the shower (if you’ve ever experienced morning sickness, it felt like that) and then a pair of pants that fit me fine last year wouldn’t even come close to buttoning. Yeah. That happened.

But no worries because even before the truffle/cheesecake incident, during my workout, I had formed a plan in my mind. I am going to remedy all my woes.

First, I will go to the gym three times a week to lift weights. On the days I go to the gym, I will do some sort of cardio exercise to round out a full hour and on the days I don’t go, I will do a full hour of cardio. I will also do at least thirty minutes of yoga every day. I will write for a minimum of one hour per day and I will read a book each week. I mean, I started the book review blog before my surgery and I feel like I wrote two great reviews and was on a roll and then … I stopped. And that isn’t OK with me. I have big plans for that blog. It has a theme and a purpose and it’s pretty. It’s time to get serious.

 

 

 

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The List of 7

Author Mark Frost

 

I’ve been trying to think of how to go about writing this post. I discovered this book many years ago and read it several times, then put it down for a few years and picked it up again last month.  

The List of 7 is a fictional account of how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle met the man about whom he based the Sherlock Holmes stories. According to the short biography of Doyle in the front of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I, Doyle based Holmes on a professor he had in college. But author Mark Frost tells us a different story in The List of 7.  

Late in his life, Doyle began speaking of his belief in spiritualism — the idea that the spirit lives on after it leaves the body. 7 focuses heavily on this aspect of Doyle’s beliefs.  

The book begins with young Dr. Doyle receiving an urgent request to attend a séance one evening in order to ascertain whether the medium is the real thing. What he doesn’t know is that the invite is in response to a book he wrote and shopped to publishers. The book was a work of fiction, but touched on a subject close to home for a group of seven people with very bad intentions: bringing “the devil” (or “the dweller on the threshold”) across the spiritual divide and into an earthly body.  

A man named Jack Sparks rescues Doyle that night and the two embark on an adventure to both elude the Seven and also to stop them from achieving their objective.  

The writing is amazing. Unfortunately, The List of 7 was not a runaway hit and is out of print, along with its sequel, The 6 Messiahs. Frost was co-creator of the infamous Twin Peaks series. For good measure, Frost throws in an appearance by Bram Stoker as a member of an acting troupe, which was a really neat reference.  

Reichenbach Falls, Switzerland

 

The entire novel is a supernatural mystery, Sherlock Holmes style. I loved it the last time I read it as much as the first. In contrast to the Sherlock Holmes movie in theaters now, which I reviewed yesterday, it’s refreshing. It’s a shame no filmmaker picked up 7 instead.  

I won’t tell you the twist at the end. I happen to love spoilers myself, but many others don’t. I will give you all a hint, though: The novel ends with Doyle and his family visiting  Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland in 1889, where they meet a very “special” baby.

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It’s Official: I Suck

The old me who will soon be the new me

It’s November 30. With this post, I have completed NaBloPoMo. The irony is, I wasn’t participating. I didn’t even know about it until I think last week when I saw it mentioned on a couple blogs I came across. I didn’t set out this month to post every day, but I did.

I did not, however, complete any of the goals I’ve actually set for myself through the course of the past year. In a month, it will be New Year’s Eve and time to set some resolutions for 2010. Not that I ever set resolutions, but I think this might be my year.

A list of my failures:

• Read a minimum of one book per week.
• Write a minimum of one hour per day.
• Cut WAY back on television (I have cut back a little, but I still fall back on it when I’m tired or bored or lazy).
• Diversify what I cook and eat, and cook something new every week.
• Stay off the computer 90 percent of the time while I’m home.
• Pay off my debt (or at least pay it down).
• Lose the rest of the weight and finally hit goal (I gained back 10 pounds instead).
• Exercise a minimum of one hour per day average, no matter what.
• Win NaNoWriMo (I have fewer than 10,000 words as of November 24).

Yep. I suck. And I wish I could say I really, really tried any one of those things, but honestly, I didn’t. They were always in the back of my mind, but I managed to justify not doing each and every one of them one way or another. This has to stop. I need to stop fearing failure. I need to stop making excuses. I need to just do it (see last Thursday’s post).

I’m not waiting until January 1, 2010. I’m starting now. Today. This is the end or procrastinating and dreaming but never doing. I’m committed and that’s that.

Luckily, there is some good news in all of this: I seem to have moved past my writing block. I have learned to just write. To stop listening to that voice in the back of my head telling me it isn’t good enough. To stop rewriting and just push through. I can revise. I can get feedback. I can do this. It may take longer than 30 days, but it will take less than a year. I vow this to myself. I need it. I am suffocating in my life and getting published, or the prospect of getting published, will give me hope. And if I’m lucky, freedom.

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