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Ride the internet waves.

Today, I’m guest posting at Lisa Rivero’s blog, Writing Life.

Lisa and I live within easy driving distance of each other, but it was the ever-expansive internet that brought us together. I won’t bore you with details on when and where we connected, or how long we “chatted” before we finally met in person (writers’ forums and social networking sounds a lot like online dating, don’t you think? Only we exchange website domains instead of phone numbers).

How Lisa and I met isn’t half as important as why I value her as a writing friend: her blog continues to inspire me, and she’s a constant bouy of support. So, jump on the broadband and slide on over to Lisa’s blog, where I write about how one genre of writing informs another:

On Stanley Kunitz, Memoir, and Fiction.

If you’re like me, you’re always in search of the perfect How-To book when it comes to the craft of writing, but sometimes the lessons are found in other books. You just have to pay attention.

Browse around Lisa’s blog, too, while you’re there. She publishes some great posts on writing and some amazing flash narratives.

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Just make the pancakes.

The other night, I decided to make breakfast for dinner. There’s a thrill in deviating from the norm, isn’t there? But, the real reason I opted for flapjacks was that they’re easy.

I had a list of writing projects on my mind. I worked on a few pieces during the afternoon and then found myself short on time for dinner. Keep the meal simple, I thought, easy and stress-free. But, even as I whipped together the batter without cracking open a book (we have breakfast for dinner often), I still created my own little chaos.

I studied the clock and wondered how long it might take to get things cooking along. I calculated the amount of edits I might get done during my late night writing time. I felt the pressure of self-inflicted deadlines.

Maybe, I figured, I could edit a few sentences here and there, in between batter drips and flips.

Pretty soon, I was praying for an extra set of arms, burning myself on bacon grease, and reading the same sentence over and over. My stomach grumbled, not from hunger but from anxiety, and my head began to swell with whispers from my internal critic.

Watch out that you don’t burn dinner.
Do you even know what your kids are doing right now?
There’s no way you’ll ever finish that story on time.
By the way, that batter’s too thick.

What happened to that quick and easy, stress-free dinner?

Then, I heard that still, small voice that can break through my insanity like the sun, when it cuts through a cloudy day, and I heard a simple solution:

Sometimes, you just make the pancakes.

You put the writing aside.

You let go of the fear of unfinished projects.

Just for now.
Make the dinner.
Listen to some music.
Relax.

Amanda Hoving talks about a similar moment in her post on unruly To-Do lists. She dared to put her list aside; she embraced the day and found respite. She says, “The point is, it will all eventually get done.” She’s right.

Because, do you know what happened? I flipped one pancake at a time, cooked up some mean bacon, and set a lovely table for breakfast…well, dinner. Then, I smothered my inner critic in syrupy goodness, so that she stayed quiet the rest of the night.

And that writing? Little by little, those stories are coming together. I even sent out one submission before the deadline.

It’s Sunday.
A perfect day to bask in the steam from that cup of coffee.
To mix up some bread dough and knead, knead, knead.
Go ahead.
Make pancakes for dinner.

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The Two O’Clock Shadow

Something strange happens every day around two o’clock in the afternoon. An unseen hand brushes over my eyelids, and they grow heavy. The space around me settles into quiet, muffled sounds. My breathing runs shallow. I hear a whisper, “Ten minutes. All you need is ten,” and, boom, I’m out.

The Napping Monster strikes again.

Like the silly old grandma in Audrey Wood’s classic children’s book, I’m so exhausted that I could be buried under heavy objects and still be completely unaware.

Surely I am not alone. Writers fall into two camps, the early bird or the late night owl. And, no matter in which camp you rest, the same question applies: how much sleep (or how little) are you really getting?

At The National Sleep Foundation website, there’s an article that talks about how much sleep we need. It mentions basal sleep and sleep debt and some crazy thing called circadian dips (aka. naptime). There are consequences for too little sleep and fallout after too much sleep, and all I can think of is Goldie Locks and her determined search for all things “just right.”

And, while I don’t spend too much time on the numbers and science of it all, I know that when I settle myself into bed at a reasonable hour and get a full eight hours of sleep, I wake up late the next morning, ragged and hung over.

Let me stay up until the late hours, though, and don’t bug me during those wee ten minutes, and I’m good to go.

What about you? Are you an early bird? A late-night owl? A napper under wraps? What’s your ideal sleep?

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