Joy DeKok Reminded Me of a Rifle
Last time Mom visited at my house, around eight or so years ago, we shot down a tree with our .22 rifles. She hadn’t been target shooting in I don’t know how long, so I pulled out the rifles and some paper plates and tacked one plate on some sort of tree that was growing between two others. It was a sapling, really. Just two-three inches in diameter. Mom was a bit rusty, making some wild shots before getting the hang of it again, but it wasn’t long before we were in a heated contest over who hit the most bull’s eyes. By the time the tree split and fell over, we were about tied.
What most folks don’t know about Mom is that she was a sharp-shooter when she was young. At one point, she split a sheet of paper in half. Her date at the time hung the paper, slim side toward her, and dared her to shoot it in half. She did. When Dad took her to meet his family, he bragged on her eye. Granddaddy was the ol’ “Prove it!” type. They mounted a penny in a crack in the fence post, and stood clear for her to shoot. She brought the .22 to her shoulder, drew a fine bead, and shot a hole through the middle of the penny. Granddaddy kept it on his key chain for the rest of his life.
Whoever has it now–if they still have it–doesn’t have a clue about the history behind that penny.
Grandaddy died the day before I was born, roughly six years after this event. Since Dad was the youngest in the family, most of the witnesses of Mom’s sharp-shooting have passed on. Dad’s gone now. Mom was an only child, and I’m the only living child in our family. After I go, there won’t be a living soul who cares that at one time my mother could shoot a hole through a penny or split a page of loose-leaf paper in half.
So what does this have to do with Joy DeKok?
She wrote a book, Your Life a Legacy: Explore and Record the Times of Your Life. In it, she recommends that we write about our lives, the good and the bad. Like she says, including the bad also is “sort of like whole-grain bread. If the whole kernel is ground into flour and then baked into loaves, we get a healthier sandwich.”
Joy’s right when she says, “families have at least one box full of photographs. Unless there are names written on the back, you don‘t know who they are, let alone what role they played in your present. Does that mean their lives are without value? No, but it does mean their stories and the priceless lessons you could be learning from them are lost. Without a written record, their Legacy is gone.”
The point of her book is for us to keep from becoming that unidentified photo in someone’s box. We have stories to tell, good, bad, amazing, mundane. From our life experiences, others can learn lessons, see a bit of history through our eyes as we live it, discover the source of certain traits they thought were unique to themselves.
I haven’t finished Joy’s book yet, but just what I’ve read of it brought a ton of memories to the surface–and standing on my back porch, shooting down a sapling with Mom, is one of my favorites.
Writing and the Family
On virtually every authors’ site I’ve belonged to, someone has mentioned the lack of family support when it comes to her fledgling writing career. When a writer can’t share her passion with those she loves, the pain is real and runs deep. She feels torn between her love of writing and her strong desire to keep the peace. Sometimes, she feels belittled, like her goals aren’t worthy of all the time she spends trying to achieve them. Working without the support of those you love is lonely, and it isn’t limited to women. Many men face the same problem.
The most dissension-causing aspect is the amount of time a writer spends on the computer. And we do spend a huge chunk of the day staring at this one-eyed monster. Though we can limit our time doing some things, we can’t eliminate our online activities. Networking, promoting, writing, editing, all are vital to our success. The most logical thing we can do is to carve out a time when our preoccupation will cause the least amount of disturbance to the rest of the family. But we also have to stand our ground when the time we’ve carved isn’t honored by everyone else. We may have to argue or fight or borrow Katie Weiland’s flamethrower, but after we’ve bent over backward to appease everyone, we must demand respect for our wishes.
Another complaint is that nobody in the family cares enough to read our work. We have something we’re proud of, and no one to share it with. How I wish I knew the answer to this one. Getting published actually helps to make everyone take our work more seriously, but until we do, our writing buddies become the source of our back-pats.
But there’s another problem those who have the courage to write about their unsupportive families face: the need some of our colleagues have to sing the praises of their own supportive families. It’s great that they’re so fortunate, but hurting writers don’t want to hear this. We want to know we’re not alone in our struggles. We want to hear how others like us are coping. We want a bit of sympathy and understanding. Although it’s not the fortunate author’s intention to rub our noses in her blessings, that’s the way it feels. “Sorry you’re not as lucky as I am!” is what we see whenever someone writes about her loving, understanding spouse. What’s worse is the wonderful Christian who hints that if an author is having so much trouble at home, perhaps God is saying he needs to quit writing. Just what we need to hear.
I guess I’m on a bit of a soapbox about this, but I’ve seen it so often, I wonder if people think before they chime in a conversation in which someone has revealed his pain.
Next time you see a struggling author looking for a kindred spirit, think twice before you respond with anything other than sympathy. You’re perfectly welcome to start a thread on “The World’s Most Wonderfully, Incredibly Supportive Spouse!” but try not to brag on your family when someone else is hurting over theirs.
Mom, Cancer, and the Attack of the Implants
It’s 4:30–the time my head starts telling me to get up and write my blog post. Frankly, after the past couple of days, I still don’t have much to write about. For those who know and are interested, Mom came out of the surgery just fine.
Several years ago, she had breast cancer and opted for a double-mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. Well, last year, she developed an infection around the right implant, and since it was one of what turned out to be five things wrong with her, her symptoms kept getting misdiagnosed. Finally the infection caused an abscess, which focused attention on the implant and the necessity of getting that darned thing out of there. Recovery was slow and miserable. The wound itself took several months to heal.
Then, in November 2011, her left side began giving her trouble, and she was afraid she’d be going through last year’s mess all over again. She certainly didn’t want to wreck the holidays with another surgery, but didn’t want another abscess, either. We hit it with a double round of Leviquin, a high-powered antibiotic, to get her safely into the new year and to yesterday’s appointment with the surgeon.
Praise God!!!–no infection and no problem! The surgeon slipped the implant out, checked for infection, and sewed up her tiny incision. The entire surgery took under an hour, and I brought Mom home soon after. The doctor did take a culture to send off and check for cancer, but we’re believing her to be cancer-free, just as her oncologist declared a couple of years ago.
So, I’m happy to say she’s doing great. I’ll be with her a bit longer, but it’ll be fun this time and not as filled with worry. Mom’s not just a cancer-survivor, she’s an implant-survivor!
Maybe Monday I’ll have a good, mind-challenging, informative post for you, but today, just celebrate with us, okay?
Peppermint Hugs and Candy Cane Kisses!
It’s Another Hair-Pullin’ Day . . . Already
I didn’t know what I was going to write about today, but, as my head screamed Get Up! at 4:45 this morning, I knew I had to write something. It is Wednesday, after all. Monday, Wednesday, Friday–my blog post schedule, and if I don’t pre-schedule my post, I have to get up early to write it. So, as I was saying, 4:45 this morning, my first thought is, What am I going to write?
Which turned out to be the least of my problems.
I’m at Mom’s house. Last year around this time, I got Verizon to wire her up for WiFi so I could work, because I’d already been living with her for two months (she was one sick kitty). So, I was looking forward to clicking on my computer, pulling up 777 Peppermint Place, and writing whatever came to mind. Except I couldn’t get on the internet. Verizon wasn’t working. I flipped through the files in my mind and remembered paying the bill, so it wasn’t that. I poked the button on the router, and that didn’t work. Then, I relied on the ever-popular unplugging routine.
And it didn’t work.
Talk about panic! I had visions of being here during Mom’s entire recuperation-from-surgery period having to rely on my Blackberry to connect with my cyberworld. My heart raced so much, I almost didn’t need the caffeine kick-start. Notice I said almost.
I ran diagnostics on my computer, which said to unplug the modem, so I unplugged the modem, which didn’t help. Again.
Before I threw the entire thing out the window–modem, router, computer, and all–I decided to take a coffee break. Five-fifteen. Start the coffee, catch the morning news, fume at Verizon for not working.
Go back, try it again.
Better results this time. I’m hooked up and ready to rumble, except for some reason this super-fast internet service we’re paying for is moving slower than a snail in a molasses spill.
More coffee, more news, check my email on the Blackberry. Go back, try it again. I shut everything down, left it all off for ten minutes, hooked it up again, and Bingo! We’re movin’! The snail is out of the molasses. At least, that’s what I thought until I decided to run to Flickr and find a picture of a snail. Then, the psuedopod returned to the molasses spill–I don’t even know if the word “pseudopod” is right because I can’t get into Dictionary.com.
Go back, try it again.
Same results. Still can’t get to some of my sites.
Headline News flashes about SOPA and some internet sites’ blackout protest.
Okay, maybe that’s the problem with some of the sites, who knows?
Try it again. I can get to my blog, so no more complaining.
After all this, my post is roughly four hours late. Mom has already gotten up, had breakfast, and landed for her morning nap, and I can’t get the snail out of the molasses. The snail I can’t find a picture for because both of my photo sites are shut down.
Sigh.
Dear Lord, thank you for slugs, syrup spills, strikes, and slow internet service. At least I had something to write about.
Off on the Wrong Foot
My AuthorCulture article, “Lessons from the Pros: Bad Guy Protagonists” was inspired not only by the books I mentioned in the article, but also by how much difficulty I’ve been having developing Debra Chandler’s character for Corporate Ladder. Back when I first started the manuscript, I presented it to the good readers at Christianwriters.com to give it a quick test drive.
Almost everyone who read it disliked Debra–my “Bad Guy Protagonist”– but some still found her sympathetic. Some hated her. Hated. Those folks didn’t give a bean what happened to her.
Yikes.
Well, recently I pulled the manuscript out and took it for another test drive. Same results, along with the reminder that Debra’s fiance, Tyler Wallace, is no peach either. One of my first round readers loved Debra and hated Tyler. Some of my second round readers hated both.
I understand people hating Debra. When she finds out her mother’s live-in has been beating her, Debra goes on a mission to earn enough money to get her mom out of that situation. And the higher she climbs up the corporate ladder, the lower she sinks morally. Most of my readers believed she was a Christian on the descent. Something else I have to fix–she’s not a Christian. She only thinks she is. Subconsciously, Tyler is her savior, and if she loses him–which she ultimately will–she’s truly lost.
Tyler is her moral compass, the one who tries to bring Debra back around from the self-destructive path she’s racing down. But because that’s his mission in the book, readers find him judgmental. Overbearing. Insensitive.
Double-yikes.
What to do?
Since I began the book with the first action of Debra’s moral faux pas instead of the reason for her actions, I had to back up and present the characters in Debra’s pre-downfall state, when they were loving and happy. In other words, I began with action–but it was the wrong action. I started with the inciting incident and skipped the book’s set-up.
Each genre usually dictates where a story should start. With romance, you start with the two potential love birds meeting (if it’s a boy-meets-girl format, or meeting again if it’s boy-gets-girl-back). With mystery, you start with whatever it is that needs to be solved as the story progresses. In both of these, it is the story itself that is the focus–how two people fall in love or how the murder is solved. Characterization is important, but not quite like it is in women’s fiction.
Women’s fiction (literary fiction in general) is all about the character. Totally about character arc. Who she is, what she was, what she wants to be–and how she gets there, if she does, and the changes she makes along the way. This isn’t to say the arc isn’t important in other genres, but in women’s fiction, it’s everything. By skipping the set-up, I left out a huge chunk of that arc.
Backstory often plays a more prominent role in women’s fiction than in other genres. Books like While I was Gone, The Memory of Water, and To Be Sung Under Water spend a large number of pages on backstory because, as I said, the point of this kind of fiction is to show the character’s growth.
For Corporate Ladder, I don’t need quite as much backstory, because what Debra was, although important, isn’t as important as the trek she’ll make to becoming what she wants to be. Still, to develop any kind of sympathy for her, I must show from her past–which is part of her present–why she takes that nosedive into moral decay.
One of the keys to starting off on the right foot is to know what your genre’s requirements are for the first few pages of your book. To discover what these are, pull several books from your shelf and read the opening scenes. What are the common components? How do the authors differ when presenting these components? How does your work compare?
I Called Him Dancer, by G. Edward Snipes
He’ll scope out your motel room, your car, your apartment. He’ll break in while you’re gone, or knock you out if you’re there. He’ll steal from you anything of value so he can buy his next fix.
And he’s one of the most sympathetic characters I’ve met since Brady Darby in Jerry Jenkins’ Riven.
There was a brief time in Michael Camp’s life when things were promising, golden. There was a place into which he could disappear from all pain. The time: whenever he was on stage; the place: the dance, where he could cut loose from his loneliness and misery. “Michael closed his eyes and allowed the music to carry him to the secret place where dancers lived . . .”
“With graceful movements, he retrieved stars from the night sky and spread them on the ground before him with a bow.”
What happened to the magic?
Raquel’s life is entwined with Dancer’s, whether he likes it or not. She’s in love with him–whether she likes it or not. God has put love for Michael Camp on her heart, and she can’t turn her back on him. Even now.
Eddie takes his reader on Michael’s hungry journey from small town America to the World Youth Grand Prix in New York through Pahl School of Dance, and back to New York–to Broadway!–and to the streets, where Raquel finds him once again.
I Called Him Dancer will rip out your heart and soul, and put them back again, changed for the better. I’m proud to include it in this year’s festival season for The Canopy Bookstore.
Eddie has been actively writing since 1998 and balances it with a full time job, a wife, and five kids. If you want to learn more about him, check out his site, Confessions of a Dyslexic Writer.
Joab’s Fire, A Distant Hope, by Lynn Squire
Don’t let the cover throw you–this is not a children’s chap book.
Although Joab’s Fire is set in Canada’s Northwest Territories in 1903, the story itself is far older, predating Christianity by roughly 4000 years. It’s a cleverly written modern rendition of the story of Job.
Lynn wove the lives of two men, Joab Black, who suffered from all the same arrows Satan aimed at Job, and Sgt. Clarence Dixon, who watched his struggle. Dixon, an official in the Northwest Mounted Police, is haunted by a past he believes God will never forgive him of. And as he watches Joab’s suffering, he no longer cares. If such a righteous man can suffer such atrocities, there either isn’t a God, or God isn’t just. Either way, Dixon insulates himself from the still, soft voice calling him to repentance and salvation.
Although she currently lives in California, Lynn was raised on a farm in southern Alberta, Canada where she “spent her days playing a pioneer or a character from a book (and every so often succumbing to her parents’ work ethic).” She chose the setting based on her great grandparents’ struggle to settle the wild and vast land. The occurrences in the book are actual events in Western Canadian history. Lynn did her research, and did a wonderful job blending Canadian history with the ancient story of Job to come up with a page-turner of a novel.
Because of its compelling story, Joab’s Fire won a spot in the Canopy Bookstore. I’m anxious to present Lynn’s book to festival-loving Texans during the coming months!
You can learn more about Lynn at her site Lynn Squire, Author, Speaker.
The Canopy Bookstore
How do you like our logo? It looks better in “person.”
I think I’ve mentioned before that MSB and I so enjoyed selling books at the festivals last year, that we’re going to go to more festivals this year and take along with us more titles from more authors.
Although we’re both looking forward to this, we’re well aware it’s a losing venture. Even with the 20% we get from each book we sell–even if we sold every book from every author we carried–we won’t cover vendor fees and travel expenses unless I sell out of my own books every time too. If I do, depending on the vendor’s fee and the price of gas, we may be lucky enough to break even.
That’s why we’re considering this a labor of love.
I started preparing for this year’s festival season by asking on the ACFW main loop for submissions from authors with small publishers or who have self-published, and I’m reading each submission. I know bookstores don’t do that, but I have several reasons:
- 1. Distribution is hard for these authors outside the internet. When we concentrate only on internet sales, we’re dismissing a huge chunk of the reading public who wouldn’t know how to shop online if they wanted to. (Yes, believe it or not, there are people who have lives outside of cyberspace.)
- I want the name of our bookstore to be associated with the best books. Carrying only small- and self-pubbed authors presents a risk to this goal.
- Consumers ask questions. If they’re gonna pay cash and carry around a book–or bunches of books–on a hot day with the sun beaming off the asphalt and enough people to kick the temp up another ten degrees, they want to be sure it’s money well spent. A buyer can look at a crafty little gizmo and see what they’re getting, and be satisfied with it–they can’t do that with a book. So they ask questions, and I like to answer them. I believe that being familiar with the titles we carried last year helped sell the books.
I’m tickled pink with the number of submissions I received during my call in December. We have a terrific variety written by both male and female authors with audiences ranging from children up. It’s going to be hard to limit myself to ten titles, the limit I think, that we can handle in the small space we have to sell in (not to mention having to carry these suckers from where we have to park to where we can set up!). So far, I’ve gone through three of them, and two are terrific, and I’ll share more about them later in the week.
The kicker is, I don’t know how many festivals we’ll be able to go to. A couple that I had in mind don’t allow “manufactured items”; in other words, they’re for arts and crafts only. It’s a shame the books don’t fall under the category of “art.” They should. Others we’d hoped to get into have vendor fees from $250 and up, and we aren’t even looking at the big festivals. Some of these fees I’ll probably pay because of the location–places MSB and I have lived and still have friends and connections.
The first festival, if we can get on, is in Walnut Springs, Texas. Get this: Walnut Springs Rattlesnake Roundup! I’m excited about this place, not just because I live in Texas and have never been to a rattlesnake roundup, but also because some of our books are westerns–historical, romance, non-fiction–written by such authors as K.M. Weiland, Heidi Thomas, Terry Burns, and, of course, me.
The Canopy Bookstore is one of the things in my “all-things-writing” career that MSB and I can do together. He can’t edit with me, although he serves as a great resource periodically when I have logistics questions, he can’t write my books for me, he can’t do my cyber-promotions no matter how much I’d love to hand that job off to someone. But he can sell. And he does enjoy working these festivals. We’ll probably learn through trial and error how to turn this into a winning venture for everyone, but right now, we’re just looking to have fun.
Query Time
It’s time to send The Cat Lady’s Secret out into the world in search of an agent. Please, just cut off my arm. That’ll be far less painful.
When I sent Give the Lady a Ride out on the publication trail, I knew–at least in my head–that getting published is difficult. I knew to expect rejection, and boy, were my expectations met. I did get published, though, after treading water for months in a sea of Nos. In fact, Cat Lady has already received its first rejection, but judging from the letter, it had more to do with timing than anything else. I have since discovered that if I’d submitted a month earlier, I would’ve had a better shot. This particular agent had just accepted two new clients to add to her current work load, and I guess adding a third was just a bit too much.
Thanks to Jane Friedman, though, I’m not too discouraged. In her article ”Revising Your Path to Publication” (Writer’s Digest, July/August 2011), she listed “Signs You’re Getting Closer to Publication,” and I hit pretty good on the signs:
* You start receiving personalized, “encouraging” rejections.
Actually, that started happening about midway with Ride, after I got rejected by Oak Tara. The publisher wrote a wonderful letter, telling me precisely what was wrong with my manuscript, and after licking my wounds for a little while, I fixed it according to her suggestions. Afterwards, all the rejections were personalized and encouraging–but still rejections.
* Agents or editors reject the manuscript you submitted, but ask you to send your next work. (They can see you’re on the verge of producing something great).
That happened twice last year. So, of course, Cat Lady is heading out to those agents first. It may not be a fit for them, but we’ll never know if I don’t try.
* Your mentor (or published author friend) tells you to contact his agent, without you asking for a referral.
That happened with Cat Lady–in fact, the agent recommended is the one I was too late for. But I tell you, my author friend’s reaction to Cat Lady was both a wonderful surprise and a huge boost. She wrote several emails praising the book and suggested only one change, which took all of a half a page to do. Maybe her reaction is why I’m nervous about sending Cat Lady out. Not everyone will get it or will endure the writing liberties I took. So far, veteran writers love it, newbies fuss because I’ve “broken the rules.” Oops. Well, rules are made to be broken. We’ll see how many hand-slaps I get over time.
* An agent or editor proactively contacts you because she spotted your quality writing somewhere online or in print.
Nope. That one hasn’t happened. I did have an agent who I met in Indianapolis in 2010 contact me a couple of times wondering if Cat Lady was finished. (Yep, the manuscript is in his office awaiting a verdict as I write this).
* You’ve outgrown the people in your critique group and need to find more sophisticated critique partners.
Actually, a few of us have broken from the pack together. Each of my critters excel in something different from the other, and they’re all vital to me. The only reason I went outside the group with Cat Lady is because they already knew the twists and turns. If my new author friend is willing, though, she’ll be a terrific addition to an already stellar group.
* Looking back, you understand why your work was rejected, and see that it deserved rejection. You probably even feel embarrassed by earlier work.
Give the Lady a Ride is my second completed novel, so to be able to say it’s published by a royalty-paying house is an honor, regardless of how small the house is. My first novel, Shattered Crystal, seriously deserved the rejections it got. It’s beyond repair, and has been deleted from every existing computer I’ve ever owned, and the printed copy is dry-rotting in a drawer. My second novel attempt, Petting Wet Cats, only a quarter finished, is also dry-rotting. There’s no point trying to revive it.
You may be wondering why I’m looking at these signs, since I’m already published. Surely book two will be a shoe-in, right?
In the longrun, just being published isn’t my goal. I’m hoping for a major house. Zondervan, Thomas Nelson, B&H. That’s what I want, and since The Cat Lady’s Secret doesn’t reach the word count–again–I may miss my goal–again. If so, I’ll go back to the drawing board and try again. Cat Lady may wind up at a small house, but I still want to strive for my goal.
Does that make sense?
Anyway, how are you doing according to Friedman’s list? How close to getting published are you? What are your publication goals?
The Grand Scheme for 2012
Every year, I lie to myself and my readers. I tell us I’m not going to make any New Year’s Resolutions–which is a resolution in itself, so I’ve already failed.
But I do make resolutions. Secretly, in the darkest recesses of my being, I whisper the hopes, dreams, and goals I have for the upcoming year. I face January 1st with an optimism that has to be renewed by January 7th–and again every Monday thereafter until I realize that I may as well give up on the year. That point usually hits around March. It would be sooner, but I always give myself a boost in February, telling myself that January 1 is everyone else’s new year’s, but mine hits on February 11. That little pep talk works for a while.
This year, I’m going to confess right up front: Yes, I have resolutions. Most are business related~~~
As a writer:
- I’d like to climb out of the muddle I’ve been in since Give the Lady a Ride debuted and develop a viable marketing plan.
- I want an agent for The Cat Lady’s Secret and have a publisher for it at least by the end of the year (a resolution that is totally out of my hands once I’ve sent it out on the publication trail).
- I want to finish The Simulacrum, a thriller I’m co-authoring with the master of great plot lines, Brad Seggie.
- I have an idea for a western romance series that I’d love to start, but I’d also like to write the drama, Corporate Ladder. That one has been on my heart for years, and I’d love to see it finished. Who knows? Maybe I can write it and start the series too. An author ought to be able to write more than one book a year, right? (To see what’s in the works, check the WIPs tab at the top of this page.)
As an editor:
The resolution is simple: Learn to say no! I’m sorry, no more free edits. I got so bogged down in 2011 with paid edits, PYP work, and my own work, that everything else in my life suffered. Granted, it didn’t help that I spent the bulk of the months from October 2010 through June 2011 away from home dealing with various family crises, but I still feel if I just learned to say no, I can pare down my work load considerably. Besides, I’ve discovered that when people pay for my services, they tend to be more serious. I have a lot of respect for those who are serious about their work. (Of course, I’ve already failed in this resolution, but since the failure happened on December 31, it doesn’t count.)
Note to my critique partners: The above paragraph does not mean you! My resolution pertaining to you guys is to go another entire year without ticking you off to the point we’re no longer friends. Work with me on that, okay?
As a reader:
- I want to continue pursuing my 2010 resolution to read every book Donald Maass used as an example in his The Fire in Fiction. I’m not out of the first chapter yet, but I’m still plugging.
- Also, I’m reading A Novel Idea, a comprehensive how-to writing manual co-authored by some of the biggest names in Christian fiction. In the back of the book is a list of all those contributing authors. I want to read one novel each. As awful as this is to admit, I’m so frequently disappointed with the works in this field that I’m beginning to wonder if I’m reading the wrong folks.
- This year, I’m going to keep quiet about some of the novels I’m reading so I won’t get into so much trouble when it comes to writing reviews.
- I wanna read for fun. How I miss some of my favorite authors . . .
Okay, now for the meaty stuff: my personal life. I have all sorts of resolutions for my personal life, most of which are, well, personal, so~~~sorry, I’m not sharing them here. But I will tell you this one: I must get into shape. Because of all the work I do on the computer, because of all the time I spend on my backside, I am now in the worst shape I’ve ever been in before. Let’s skip the evidence from the car, where road vibrations cause my thighs to jiggle like loosely-set Jello. Let’s skip the fact that walking down to the mail box and back can leave me panting and whipped. Let’s go straight to the terrifying idea that my heart’s been acting funky lately, and it scares me witless.
And I’m too chicken to go to the doctor about it right now.
This coming Friday, MSB will be having minor surgery on his eye. On the 19th, Mom will be going through another surgery. I can’t be sick. None of us can afford for me to be sick. Not right now.
So, since the doctor will probably tell me to exercise anyway, I got proactive and — get this — bought an exercise DVD.
If you’ve ever read my blog before, you know how I feel about exercise. You know deeply against the grain this goes for me. You know how much I love to play as long as that play can’t be classified as “exercise.”
And chances are huge you know the likelihood of me keeping this resolution. But I bought the DVD last month, and it came in December 30.
Later on today, I’ll actually open it. I think.
*****
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