Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Penelope

I know, I haven't posted in a while, but I have a good excuse. I'm 7 weeks pregnant and my new hobby is vomiting. I have to say that I'm not sure if the pregnancy is good for my writing or not. Upon first glance, it's horrible for my writing. I'm tired and nauseous all the time. Staring at a computer screen is painful. (Smells, sights, sound, touch makes me nauseated. Heck, it's like having a permanent migraine for 12 weeks.) Being creative, witty, and charming is the last thing on my agenda, and well, if I could write, what would I write about?.... nope... nothing comes to mind, except when I met someone yesterday and they lost all their baby weight in 4 months by diet and exercise. I would much rather they lie to me and say, "Oh, I breastfed it off" or "The weight just fell off me while I was chasing my toddler around." With the mention of diet and exercise, I feel guilty that yeah... I could do the diet and exercise, but I'd rather sit on the couch and have my toddler fetch her mama a Twinkie. 

But I digress. 

So, there are so many reasons why this pregnancy is bad for my writing, but here's how it benefits me. If you couldn't tell before, I was a little neurotic about the query letters, edits, word counts, ect. Every rejected query letter seemed very personal and I started to doubt myself as a person. Something had to give. It was as if with each rejected query letter, a bit of my soul was torn away. 

But now, I have something else to concentrate on. Writing's nice, but it's not my priority now. My family is. Now, I have a finite amount of awake and active time. I could spend it querying new agents or working on another edit, but to tell you the truth, I would rather do tickle wars with my little girl of cuddle with my husband on the couch. 

I've been thinking a lot. I still don't know how I'm doing writing wise. I don't know if I'm creative, talented enough, or hungry enough to get published, and before, I felt like I had to immediately know the answer. But now, with this pregnancy, it released me from the mental strife.... and sent me into a gastrointestinal one.