Frozen Here in Bookland

Oh my gosh, am I sick of this book. I am so sick of spending every day hiding from it, procrastinating working on it, finding a zillion things to do instead of it, and then, at like midnight, wandering in here and then still figuring out something else to do.

There are so many problems. I'm sitting here changing names but the more I change the names the more I worry that I'm turning it into a work of fiction. I worry about the names I'm using - which is true to the person, true to the time period. I have my Jewish book of baby names open to the Bubbe and Zayde names for the people of my mother's generation and the aging baby boomer section for people who were kids when I was. Then there's the Dictionary of Jewish Names from which I'm getting surnames. What a nightmarish hassle. And I can't just use the search option to find and replace the names when I am changing them because my computer is like a comedian: if I'm replacing the name Gale it will also replace the word "regale" and then I'll have a big problem. So what do I have to do after I'm done with this name stuff? Another read through!

Then I started looking up the PDF conversion process again tonight and can't remember how and so I went on the Amazon discussion boards and it's like, guess what Linda? You're never going to be able to figure this out! Really I just need to choose one of the midline pricey options they offer and let someone do it for me. I have to accept my stupidness. I'll end up with pages half printed and a book numbered from the highest number to the lowest, from beginning to end backwards!

So I'm frozen here in book land. I can't blog (this one's a diary, right? Right?) I can't write for salon right now. I can barely write an email. I'm keeping up with Poetica. I'm managing to cruise Facebook at all hours of the day and night and, I have to say, my desk and workspace area looks wonderful since I procrastinated writing all day today and reorganized it!

Onto tomorrow. A committment then: I will finish these name changes. Monday read through the entirety. Tuesday reset the margins and chapter spacing and write the back of book blurb. I will not think of anything but the task before me.

March is for Marching Orders

Thank goodness I wrote that To Do list on here since I didn't do it and totally forgot what the items were. Instead I guest blogged for a friend and got a bunch of new readers (on my other, more public, blog), had an excerpt from my (unpublished) book appear on another friend's website who is a New York writer with impressive freelance writing credentials, and I did withdraw my gaming piece from the Jewish news. Or let's put it this way: I wrote to the editor who's my contact person and, as usual, she didn't write back to me. So I'll just go with that and consider it withdrawn.

Then, like an idiot, I started a new, completely anonymous blog for my twelve-step eating program because I really want to do my writing online. And I mean anonymous, folks. Anonymous email address, pseudonym for a name. So, obviously, I can't link to it here. I'm just glad that I'm finally going to have a place where I can write about the amazing things that I hear in the meeting rooms and obey the traditions of the program which tell me I should remain anonymous at the level of press, radio, film and other media. Great news - a writer who can't be known for her writing. That's progress for sure.

So, to do list for March:
1) submit kids and gaming to parents or parenting or, at the very least, to RAK.
2) More Magazine: submit the 50-yr-old inhabited marriage (at the intersection of V and P)
3) Lilith Church and Jews
4) Per Betsy Lerner blog challenge, get that stupid manuscript edited by April 1st. Use notecards then reshuffle. If it requires a rewrite just do it.
5) Write three sample columns for Literary Mama to pitch column to them.

Do you set more goals than you can reasonably achieve in the hopes that you'll achieve some if not all?