Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Heat!!!


I really hate the heat and boy is it back, with a vengeance. Guess what? While I was in Colorado, we had a cool front. It actually started before I left and lasted until now. So 106 before I left for Cooler temps, and now we're back to triple digits in Oklahoma. Joy of joys.


Mind you, I don't like to be cold, but I can put on more clothes. You can only take off so much in the heat before you are arrested for indecent exposure, or at least for looking to bad to be on the streets. So much depends on what you get used to and age hasn't helped. When I was a teen, I would lay out in the July-in-Texas heat, slather myself with baby oil and iodine (no, I actually haven't had skin cancer-yet.) I had a wonderful tan. When my kids were little we'd spend weekends at the lake, in a camper, lay out in the heat and all that good stuff.


Something happened about menopause time and the headache and nausea that accompanied the heat made tanning much less fun. So now I stay cool. A lot of things change with age, not just tolerance for heat, but tolerance of other things. I'm less tolerant of adults who act like children or who fail to control their own children. I'm less tolerant of politicians who can't keep it zipped, either their mouth or their pants. I'm less tolerant of writers who just don't have time to write or they are "blocked."


If you are a writer, you make time to write, even if it is at 5am before you go to work or at 10:30 pm after the news. I've written in ER waiting rooms, at my son's karate class, in a clogging studio. Put the butt in a chair and write, you don't wait for inspiration or just the right quiet place, if your life is like mine, there is no such thing, especially if you have a family and work full time. Am I the perfect, self-disciplined writer? No, just ask my friends. I whine and complain just like everyone else. At the same time, in the past couple or three years I've finished two books and two novellas, not as much as some, more than a lot. As they say, whoever they are-JUST DO IT.


What do you do when you need to motivate yourself to get the writing done?

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