Winter doldrums

What's a woman to do who feels like crap. I am stuck in the house with three warring boys, not necessarily at each other but I can hear "Black Ops" going on from the down stairs and the upstairs loft. My youngest is now happy for the moment playing with play dough :-) Otherwise he is quite happy irritating and aggravating his older brothers. And I can't think straight or spell because I am all stuffed up and congested... Whine,whine,whine...!!!
Well it could be worse I suppose. It's just when I feel this bad I can't think and or write and to read and get to read one page is like pulling freaking teeth. One of my sons just came in and got bent way out of shape because I didn't want company.
I have two projects(Books) that I am working on and I am at an impasse. One is just a plain romantic suspense. The other is a historical romance. Plus I am doing research for the sequel to "The Kings of Angkor: Army of a Thousand Elephants". The nice thing about that book is it is sitting at the Copy Right office but also with a publisher right now.
I think what I am going to do is go on a hiatus from writing and just do research. My eleven year old son said the other day when he saw me reading and doing research on my favorite subject, the Apsara's of Angkor Wat. He said "They (meaning the experts in the field of Angkor Wat and Apsara's and Devatas) couldn't possibly know more then you Mom. You have lived in Cambodia..." I went on to explain that is a field of study for them. They have money to do research and can travel to Angkor Wat if they don't already live n the country. I have to do any research by books and the internet. They have fallen in love with the country and now the Apsaras and Angkor Wat. BUT I appreciate his faith in me. His eyes became glazed over soon after I had gotten into detail about the fact that I think along with some of those experts that all of the reliefs are individual portraits of girls at the Angkor Wat Complex.
I can tell you I had quite a few serendipitous moments while writing that book. I had already decided about the characters and how they would be related to one another through the story. It's a story that takes place in the current times and then goes back in time or as a SCIFI relative told me who is only 13. It's a parallel time .(Yes!! He understood). I had to two main male protagonist as cousins in modern day and back in the time of the building of Angkor Wat. Then I find out through more research that Suryavarman II who build Angkor Wat was indeed a cousin to Jayavarman VII. I can tell you I got chills up and down my spine. I had quite a few of those moments.
Well anyway now that I feel better I will get back to research and check on my soup.

Things

Well another snowy morn here in Mid-Coast Maine. Is that surprising? No, not really. They were talking another storm for today last week. I don't think it will be a storm like last weeks but we are getting snow non the less and I get a few more minutes of 'peace and quiet'... like in the movie "What about Bob" that is one of my all time favorites, like when Bob is eating corn on the cob or when he and the son of his doctor are screaming names at each other and his doctor and wife come in and they (Bob and the young son) sit down trying to look like good little boys... and his doctor says I want peace and quiet and Bob says , "Well I'll be quiet' and then the son says "and I will be peace" which makes them all (except the doctor) start to laugh, even the wife.
I had a wonderful day yesterday. Saw an old knitting mentor of mine, got to talk with her. Walked 2 miles. Most of it power walking. Got a lot of writing done. Though it wasn't like 20 pages. I was at some times on my last book putting out 20 pages a day. Sunday I got 10 pages done. Yesterday it was only 3. BUT when writing the 1st draft some days I can fly with the words, other days it's like pulling teeth and my brain is seriously taxed. Yesterday it was working on words and scenes and conversations. Trying to create word pictures... That's where going over my work the next day of writing comes in handy and helps. I always read over what I last wrote. It helps me to get into the story again event though I am still thinking about the book long after I get done writing for the day. Sometimes I go to bed with music that I call my books sound track on my ipod. The other night I went to sleep listening to Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata". Though it's not part of the book that I am writing now it will be for a later part and scene. It's hard to explain but I know of other writers who do that. They have a sound track for their book, music that just kinda jumps out at them when they were writing. The curent book that I am writing is from listening to WWII era music, Glen Miller in particular and "Moonlight Serenade"
So that's my thoughts for this snowy morning. Some of my boys are up and my cats are sitting here waiting patiently for me to feed them their hard food. I feed them first thing in the morning with their soft food. They plow past me to get to the cellar so they are all lined waiting... they crack me up.

My thoughts for this morning...

Well we are suppose to be getting the mother of all storms today. I got up at 5:04 am to write...made my tea and sat down. Then I heard a "Mom?" It was my youngest and it was 5:30am... So now I have a very chatty Danny on my hands. No amount of "I'm writing" or "Mommy got up early to write" or "."If you don't be quiet I'm going back up to my freezing bedroom to write,"deters him. Wow, he has been quiet for two minutes...
I have a very hard time sleeping past a certain time. Also there is the fact besides wanting to write that I have my daughter's puppy who will need to get up and out... so I get my sleep knowing I will have to get up early. So what better time to write BUT when the house is quiet and I can piece two thoughts edge wise together in a coherent fashion without being interrupted?? All the boys aren't up, fighting or aggravating one another to distraction. So most are still asleep... ahhh. Thank goodness.
Research is a wonderful thing for me. I will be writing and then a thought will come to me. I am actually glad when these stray thoughts come to me. It gives my brain a break from working out scenes and thoughts. Trying to work inside the brain of one of my characters can be exhausting. Multiply that with working inside the brain of someone of the 1940s and how they would talk, think and or express themselves is not the same as we would today. Things were a much slower pace. Just like I am reading a book to Daniel and to any of the other boys who will listen called "The Winged watchman". Takes place in Holland during the 1940s and the occupation. I had read this book to my older children when they were younger and they really enjoyed it. It makes me think of another book of the same time period, actually a few. I can remember one's title but the other one is a blur and escapes me. Maybe a bit of searching will bring the title and author to mind.
I was reading a book yesterday at work at my desk. it's by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, better known as the Yarn Harlot. The books title "Things I learned from knitting whether I wanted to or not".
One quote is "You don't knit because you are patient. You are patient because you knit." A monogamous knitter is a rare thing indeed." Meaning and this is where her name comes into play. You will be knitting happily on a project and then you see this seductive little project that just begs to be knitted... SOooo you pick that project up and then another and another... and there you go. I think all of us knitters have a bit of 'yarn harlot' in us whether we want to admit it or not.
Back to research. I was talking to my 82 year old aunt the other day on the phone. Since she grew up in Camden, was a young teen during WWII I wanted her take on what she remembers. So I mailed her a list of questions and she called me. Like where Marshall Hill was on John Street? Since she grew up on John Street and still lives there. We finally figured out through my memories of my other Aunt and Uncle telling me to run across the road to see if the "Holy Rollers" were rolling down the hill... I would run across the street and my relatives would be heard laughing up a storm... We figured it was Josh Marshall's hill who was another relative. I asked her about going out for ice cream sodas, the movies. Where the hospital was. She told me her father was a Air Raid Warden, who would go up and down John Street with a flash light to make sure all lights were out till the "All Clear Signal" was sounded. How black masking tape was put on car head lights on the top to make them dimmer. I wrote to my mom and she is going to write down her recollections of growing up during the war in NYC.
So there you have it. My thoughts for this snowy morning. Somewhat scrambled but there they are .