Novel Writing, Chicken Roasting, and the To-Do List.

Note to self (and anyone else out there who may be reading this):

Blogging is fun. Writing songs is fun. Listening to music is fun. Playing music is fun. Roasting chicken is fun. Attempting to write a novel is not fun. Not even close.

Yeah so lest you may think that I've gotten swallowed up by this "novel" thing, I'm here to dispel some myths (and also procrastinate on actually attempting to up my word count). So far, I've written 15,364 words. I'm pretty sure that most of them are shit. It started out as a novel with a very, very vague theme that could not even be called a plot. And it morphed into some character sketches, and morphed again into not even a novel, not even fiction, just me blathering on and on and on about what a stupid idea this was in the first place.

My attention span is short. Songs are short. Blog entries are short. Novels are long and I am not one of the people who writes them. Do you follow me? I hope so cause I lost myself a couple of lines back. I was busy obsessing over roasting chickens and making a to-do list that looked something like this:

1. Learn how to roast chicken; investigate vertical roasting racks.
2. Clean and organize office.
3. Write 3,000 words today.

So tonight I logged on to write a few words about roasting chicken and my new vertical roasting contraption that kicks ASS (and of course, roasting chicken was the only thing on my to-do list that I came close to accomplishing today!).

And then I discovered this blog. And I perused it and I laughed and laughed and laughed as my chicken in pomegranate molasses roasted away in the oven. I made mental note to write more about that later. I made mental note to get back to the actual things on my to-do list.

I laughed and laughed as I looked around my office which is filled with piles and microphones and toy keyboards and amplifiers and sequined dresses and cowboy boots and speaker cables and scraps of paper with phone numbers, lyric bits, song arrangements, recipes, notes that say things like "taxes!", "pay attention!", "prescription" "swim" and "back up files!".

I laughed at all the lists that I have made only to discover them six months later under a pile of "things that I've been meaning to attend to". I remembered a book called "The Power of Focus" that my dear sister gave me a couple years ago, which I would frequently misplace and occasionally rediscover under one of those insidious piles.

So much for my focus. So much for my novel. I don't care. The chicken is just about ready to come out of the oven, the house is warm and smells intoxicating, and tonight, that's enough for me.