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When Life Pelts You With Lemons….

…put them in iced tea. This is not a complaining entry. It is, however, writing, which is a much better thing than endlessly hitting “refresh” on Facebook and Twitter. Writing can be a difficult thing in the best of times, but when dealing with DH’s health issues for the past week, working on very little sleep all of that time, and hassles with work being done in our apartment, this week, it’s been insane.

There are times when real life is going to have to take precedence. “Sorry, honey, can’t go to the ER with you; I have to finish this chapter” isn’t going to cut it. Getting back to the writing life when things have eased out of emergency stage can be a struggle all in themselves. Like today.

I spend my weekend mornings at the Panera on our street. Normally, that’s enough for my brain to understand we are at the office now and kick into gear. I have my story notebook for “Nothing Short of Heaven” with me now, and I have…oh, whoops, I don’t have my playlist cued on Rhapsody. Fixing that now. Whoops. Server not responding. No matter, I have my plan B, http://whitenoise247.net/ If that doesn’t work, there’s always YouTube and I can minimize the window. I could store music on the laptop, but I don’t like to clutter my hard drive.

Getting back to work after dealing with other stuff, emotionally and physically draining other stuff at that, is tricky. There’s the feeling out the whole story part of the brain? Still there? Yes. Crabby at me for having wandered off? Heck yes. Welcoming me back? Kindasorta. Actual new writing has not happened as of yet today but see what I’m doing here? Blog entry is writing. Writing begets writing, so I’m on the right track.

Also nudging brain storyward by looking at another chapter for a critique partner. Emailing writing buddies about trickiness of getting back to work also gets partial credit. I know I’ll get a mixture of “be good to yourself” and “b*tt in chair, fingers on keyboard or else.” Knowing my friends, I do not want to explore their or elses.

Even when life pelts me with lemons (and really, ‘pelt’ is more accurate than ‘give’ in this situation) writing is the happy place. Though, considering what I do to my characters, what does that say about me? No matter what’s going on in ‘real’ life, my story people are still there and they need me to. It’s only natural to feel a little fuzzy shifting focuses (foci?) but it’s one of those things we each have to figure out how to do on our own. How do you get yourself back in gear once the real life tides recede?