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Warning: this blog is haphazardly maintained. I blame the author. 

Creature of Habit

1/24/2016

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I live by routine.

Every day, barring some kind of deathly illness and even on vacation, I'm up by 6 o'clock. Usually, it's even earlier - my mental alarm clock waking me before the one set on my iPhone. Also, there's the matter of Bax, the anxious beagle waiting by the side of my bed; when I stir, he nudges a wet nose under the sheets, connecting with my hand for his first rubdown of the day.

I wake up LG, our rat terrier who could sleep until noon, and the three of us head outside, where I shuffle from foot to foot in the cold, planning out the hours in front of me. Later, over breakfast and coffee that doesn't have a chance to grow cold, I'll sketch this out on a scrap of paper, sometimes, in my more obsessive and busy moments, with a little time stamp. 
Dog walk 6:45-7:15
Gym until 8:15
Shower 8:30
Answer emails/start load of laundry...


We take our walk at sunrise, while most of the neighborhood is still asleep, their houses dark, only the occasional car engine or bark of a dog stirring the air. I'm writing while I walk - not a phrase or a sentence, but a next scene, a new direction. I let my mind play during this time, while my feet move idly forward, LG and I following Baxter's sense of smell. 

By the time we're back home, all muddy-shoed and wet-pawed, I've got a rough map for the day and a sense of direction for my writing. 

**

Each semester, my life changes with my teaching schedule - an early class here, a late class there, sometimes Monday through Thursday, sometimes marathon Tuesdays and Thursdays, where I come home exhausted and shaky and strung-out, like I'm coming down from a high. I try to grade as many papers right then and there, until my handwriting becomes increasingly illegible or I find myself rereading the same simple sentence five times without any comprehension. (Although, to be fair, sometimes these sentences do defy comprehension.)

Luckily, I've learned to be flexible with my writing life - I can do mornings four times a week and evenings twice; I can pull long Sunday afternoon shifts. I travel with my MacBook Air, since it's slim enough to slide into my bag along a stack of student papers, and I have no shame in setting it up on a cafe table or when I'm waiting for a seat in a diner. I believe strongly that the words will come, and they will beget more words, and more, and the individual circles of story will eventually overlap, like that most beautiful and basic function of existence, the Venn Diagram. 

**

This semester, though, I'm struggling to find my groove. I know it's because of a holiday weekend and a temporary relocation while our very ugly bathroom became a very lovely one; during this time, I craved the few minutes alone I could scrap together here and there--the morning dog walk, the tedious commute south and north on Highway 99. Thursday, I found myself with three hours to kill (normally, a prime writing situation), and my mind was too scattered to write anything other than a few stilted sentences. I kept drifting - my mind to a daunting to-do list, my browser to other websites, to The Atlantic, to Pinterest boards, to Google a phrase that had been haunting me and figure out once and for all who said it. (But not once and for all - the knowledge is already gone, stored in a temporary brain pocket since turned inside out in the wash.)

I know I'll get it back-- I'll find the rhythm, get my foot back to tapping the beat. 

Maybe tomorrow, then -- I'll wake before my alarm to a beagle's nudge and slip outside while the world is asleep, and begin one more time.
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Life of Crime

1/15/2016

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Today --in fifty minutes, to be exact-- my fantasy life stops and real life begins again. At that time I'll be in my car, laptop bag packed, on my way to a meeting that will launch the new semester. 

Which is why right now, I'm speeding through the last two episodes of Veronica Mars. 

Here's the thing: I missed VM the first time around. This was 2005 or so, and I would have been teaching high school by day and grading English papers by night, and I'd pretty much reached my saturation point with teenagers in real life. 

But I've had a blissful month off from teaching, and somehow I managed to fill that time quite handily with binge-watching sessions of the world's feistiest teenage detective, interspersed with the housekeeping chores I'd ignored for the last six months. I watched Veronica and Duncan while I sorted through my closet (he was kind of a bore, frankly). I watched Veronica and Logan while I emptied out the boxes and papers and assorted other junk that had gathered in the spare bedroom. And I watched Veronica and Piz while sorting through a basket of toiletries (why, oh why, would anyone ever bring home tiny bottles of shampoo and lotion at the end of a vacation?).

It didn't stop there. Last year I was too busy to take on Serial, the This American Life podcast, and so I binge-listened to the story of Adnan Syed while I took down every book from our bookshelves, dusted and re-alphabetized. Have I mentioned that we own four thousand books, give or take?

Around New Year's, W. and I started Making a Murderer, and we were instantly hooked. I have two connections that made me even more interested in the Stephen Avery case-- my dad's family is from Manitowoc, and every bit of scenery felt familiar to me. Also, a friend at Netflix helped bring it to life. Basically, there was zero chance I wasn't going to watch this. 

In other words, for the past four-ish weeks, I've been doing nothing but solving crimes -- call me the armchair investigator, if you will. I've gone to sleep with visions of crime scenes dancing in my head. I've theorized and discussed in an endless loop -- what if, and why didn't they present this evidence, and is it possible that. I haven't solved anything, mind you, but I've given my brain a nice little workout. 

But now it's time to hang up my crime-fighting hat (is there a crime-fighting hat?) and get back to real life. There are lectures to be planned and students to advise and yes, soon enough, papers to grade. 

Just don't get too comfortable, criminals. 

I'll be back. 
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I'm a little rusty.

1/6/2016

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I'm back. Where have I been, you ask?

It's a fair question. I used to blog every week. Monday mornings, like clockwork, I posted my random thoughts, which were usually based on things I'd observed or things my husband or pets had done, and it was all good. 

And then, and then. Life became complicated. I mean this in a good way. 

Writing used to be something that was purely a creative outlet for me, a way to burn off steam, a place to create and move on. And then a crazy thing happened. I became a professional writer, which means that I have a publishing contract and deadline, and I started taking my little creative hobby a lot more seriously. Which meant, I figured--there's no time for a blog. I've got to get my act together! And so, the blog languished, and other parts of my writing life thrived. 

But now, before the dust settles on this new year, I'm going to try to do both. 

So watch out, because more random thoughts are coming your way. 

Cheers, 2016!
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  • Home
  • About paula
  • Books
    • Here We Lie
    • The Drowning Girls
    • The Fragile World
    • The Mourning Hours
  • paula's blog
  • MISCELLANEA
  • What I'm Reading
  • Contact