Curse You, Red Baron!

Snoopy on top of his doghouse shaking his fist is an appropriate image.  I like to imagine there is something out there I could put an end to.  He/She/It is busy these days trying to thwart every writer-ly turn I take.

WARNING!  A rant follows.  But if I don’t get this off my chest where I can laugh about it, my family will suffer.

This weekend I participated in Writer’s Weekly Winter 24-Hour Short Story Contest.  It rained on Saturday, so I stayed inside and enjoyed listening to a steady patter I hadn’t heard since Halloween.  I found plenty to do, waiting for noon and the prompt to arrive in my box.  I was feeling so laid back about this (weirdly enough), I didn’t log on and open the e-mail till close to 12:30.  

I always tell myself this is a 23-hour contest, just so I have that last hour to simply mail the stupid thing in.  I should listen to myself better.

This one did not come together as easily as some of the others.  But the word count was higher than any others I’d done and I liked the idea of the wiggle room.  I am finally learning that when I panic, ideas are flung to the far reaches of the galaxy.  So I sat quietly and lured them in with a mind map or two and some brainstorming.  Nothing was jumping out at me for a story line, so I decided to do other things like laundry, mopping, dishes.  When I began to get a little more concerned about the lack of direction, I went and took a shower and voila! I had an idea.  

The idea was okay.  Not brilliant, not something that grabbed me by the throat, but it was okay, and I was beginning to feel the need to get to work on something.  I decided this one would work.  

Well, it just so happened that my kids decided to go off to friends’ houses for the night.  Wahoo!!!  

I should have found a friend for dh. (

We so seldom have the house to ourselves.  He got a batch of chicken wings and we watched back-to-back episodes of Lost that we’d recorded.  Before I knew it, it was after midnight.  I decided to catch a few winks and let the ideas percolate.  I usually wake up around 2 in the morning and thought I’d go ahead and get up then and write in the dark and quiet.  I actually woke up around 1:00 AM, which was all the better.

Things folded together pretty well.  By 4 am I had a story that needed to be cut by about a thousand words.  I always over-write.  I pushed myself for another hour to revise.  Then it was a fight between whether to prop my eyes open and finish, or get some more sleep and put some distance between me and the story at the same time.  I decided on the sleep.

I slept till 8:00 AM.  Four hours to work with.  Or three, actually.  I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast. I just know my dh fixed it and I enjoyed it with some coffee.  There was just nothing I could do but slowly come to.  I’m not good on mornings when I’ve had plenty of sleep.  So the morning was a bit of a blur.  I do remember getting ready to get back to work just as my dh asked if I could voice the ASL video for him.  

Our lesson every Sunday is in ASL—totally.  No interpreting, no voicing, all ASL.  My dh, who was sweetheart enough to get involved so that I could continue to serve in the Deaf community is trying to learn a new language with limited time to put into the learning process.  So when he asks for my help, my rule is that I put aside what I’m doing to help him.  He put aside his preferences so that we could be in a Sign Language congregation.  Turn about is fair play.  

So I told him what I was doing with the short story thing.  I had it pared down pretty well, so all I really had to do was a read-through for typos and then send it in.  I told him if I could stop by 11:30 (there goes my 23-hour rule!) I’d be fine.  

We took a break from the ASL at 11:30.  I ran a word count on the story, and found it was over by about 100 words.  I didn’t remember that.  I honestly thought it was ready to go.  So I immediately went in to editor mode and started hacking. (  At 11:45 I was 6 words under 1,100.  

Egads!  I hadn’t even dialed in.  No problem.  I had 15 minutes.  

“Signing in (attempt 2)”

“Signing in (attempt 3)”

“You are now connected.”  

FINALLY!  Now to open the mail page.  

I am seriously panicking by this time.  My hard drive is whirling like a dervish.  NOTHING is opening up.  I’m trying to copy from MS word onto a text page to make sure nothing gets lost in translation when I copy it to the e-mail to send.  (No attachments allowed.)  Then I remember I’m supposed to put something specific in the Subject line of the e-mail.  I think I know what it is, but I’m not positive.  So I try to open up the e-mail with the prompt in it.

NOTHING with my e-mail is working.

Till 12:02.  

I was so freakin’ mad.  I seldom come unglued, but put me on no sleep and an overdose of adrenalin, and it’s all I can do not to toss my laptop through the window.  All that work and all that skipped sleep for NOTHING.  Lordy.

I don’t know how long it took me to convince myself that I learned one more time from the process.  I didn’t have nothing—I have a good start to work with later.  Maybe.  I wasn’t really happy with it.  Not like I was with the others that got honorable mentions.  I probably saved myself some embarrassment not turning it in, right?  Nope.  Anyway, it wasn’t time or $5 wasted.  It was an education, an exercise, blah, blah, blah.  It was my own fault—next time have a draft e-mail all set to go with the header typed in and ready to go, and have it up on the screen, log in at 11:00 AM and REMEMBER THE 23-HOUR RULE!!!  

My son thinks it is a sign that we should give up dial-up.  He thinks I’m cheap.  I am.  When he’s ready to pay for the digital or DSL we’ll move up. LOL!  

We finished the ASL video once I calmed down and the rest of the day was great.  

Then comes today.  

Yes, there’s more.  Quit now.

Today is the postmark deadline for the OWFI contest.  I meant to send this out a week ago, but I didn’t have things where I wanted them, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  

I have this tendency to panic and mix things up with this OWFI entry.  There is an entry form that goes to the general contest chair that lists all the manuscripts you’re entering, then each individual entry (there are several categories) goes to a chair for that category.  The chairs then send the manuscripts on for judging.  Last year, or year before—they run together—I decided at the last minute to make a short story entry a young adult short story entry (the protag was young so it could go either way) so that I could send in a different short story I’d finally finished (which took second place in the category!  Wahoo!).  But I sent the wrong cover sheet, or had the wrong category number on the YA manuscript.  I sent it in early enough though that the category chair had time to call me and ask what my real intentions were.  

Well there was no time for that kind of nonsense this year, so I got all methodical and organized and forced myself not to panic about how the day was slipping away from me.  I had everything printed, with the appropriate cover pages by 1:00.  Except for one page.  On the front page of one of my entries, I’d typed a word count reminder for myself that I forgot to delete.  (I should mention that at this point I have promised myself I WILL NOT read anything over again, because I have such a tendency to keep tweaking.)  No problem.  Just one page to reprint (instead of the dozens I’d have tweaked if I’d let myself re-read.)

So I get the page sent to the printer and instead of a stray-digit-free manuscript page, I get a brand new error message I’ve never seen before.  One of the print cartridges is malfunctioning.  It gives detailed instructions on how to tell which one it is.  It’s the color cartridge.  I popped it out like they said.  Cleaned a bit on it like they said.  Popped it back in, and voila.  NOTHING.  

Of course I have a spare black cartridge in the wings, but a color one?  Of course not.  

This means that I need to go to the store to buy ink.  Which happens to be right beside the POST OFFICE!!  I have everything ready but one lousy page, and I’m going to have to make two trips to the same spot just because of four misplaced digits on the cover page of one manuscript entry.  Cheese Louise!

I guess it’s somewhat important to say that OWFI makes it a point to say that they don’t want a manuscript entered that has a contestant’s name covered with white-out.  So I don’t want to tempt fate (and you can certainly understand why at this point) by whiting out the numbers and sending it in.  It could be a four-letter name I’m whiting out. Given the time constraints and my dread of explaining to my dh why I was making two trips (did I mention he’s home today; he finished a job yesterday and is between. Of course.), there had to be a better way.  I finally went ahead and very, very carefully whited out the numbers and then made a copy of the page and called it good.  You couldn’t tell anything had been there.  I was proud of myself.  

I packaged up everything and the glue on the envelopes was too old to be sticky anymore.  (I really should do more submitting!) Had to hunt down the packing tape, which is getting low, but it didn’t run out on me.  Thank goodness.  Then it dawned on me that the second-ounce rate may have gone up with the first class stamp.   Went ahead and looked on USPS to see.  Yep.  Up by a penny too.  Fixed that.  Put on all the 2nd-ounce stamps I had.  Needed four more.  Thankfully the machine was working at the post office.  Of course they only had 23 cent stamps in the machine, but I was not foiled, for I brought along my extra two-cent stamps.  

So all in all, I’m feeling relieved now.  I didn’t eat breakfast, didn’t eat lunch and stayed up till 3 in the morning researching an article I elected not to submit (still to raw) so things could change on a dime.  I think I’ll go eat leftover manicotti, then take a shower and a nap.  Please let the post office do its job now.  Just this once.  

Now I’m panicking again.  LOL!

No more of this procrastination nonsense next year.