In which the author dreams of sleep...and a finale

Cora's asleep right now and I am vigorously hoping she manages to get a good, solid nap today that lasts well into the afternoon. She seems to be coming down with a bit of a cold today, which isn't much of a surprise since we just returned from a trip to San Diego and I am recovering from a small cold myself. Either that or she just has a runny nose because she's teething again, as she continues to point out by poking her finger in her mouth and opening wide to show us the little tooth that's coming in. Oh, to be almost two.

Almost two. This is one of Cora's favorite things to say. People ask her what her name is and she pats her chest and says, "Cora." Then she holds up her little fist with one finger up and the rest at half-mast, her hand trembling with the effort of not putting up two fingers--yet!--and says, "Almost two." Sometimes she'll start singing Happy Birthday to complete the picture.

I am lost in a book these days, which is helpful, because I seem to be trying to hide from some more pressing realities...like, for example, that it's already September. Mid-September, actually. We have our house on the market, still, and it's nearing the time of year when we'll be bundled up in sweaters and crunching through leaves, making bubbling pots of soup and baking bread, carving pumpkins and getting rosy cheeks from the impending chill in the air. Where will those pots of soup be bubbling? Here? Somewhere else? Crap.

Where on earth has the time gone? I am nearly at my one-year anniversary of being a stay-at-home mom and writer. If I am going to show anything for this year of writing except a few first drafts of starts of novels, I need to start getting up early every morning. I also need a day or two a week of childcare so I can really focus on this endeavor. Either that, or I need to start drinking a ton of coffee. Maybe I need to try all three. I have managed to write quite a bit, probably several hundred pages of stuff, these posts included, and I am happy that I have an idea for a novel I'd like to finish, but I seem to be missing that creative genius spark, that thing that pushes people beyond their limits in pursuit of their dreams.

In my perfect, ideal picture of heroic extremism, I should be able to push myself to new horizons, get up at 5 every morning and go to bed late until the draft is done. I would be sitting here, neatly arranging the crisp white pages of my opus, primly writing comments to my editor in the margins, calmly sipping a bit of tea before writing the last and perfect sentence.

The only problem is that my spark seems to be perpetually tired.

I am sitting here with a plugged up nose, crumbs on my plate, and a house on the market. Not exactly forcing myself to the finish line in a frenzy, not quite the picture of vigor I'd envisioned. Huh.

Thus, the coffee. Perhaps if I drank more of it I could conjure up a semblance of such perplexing anxiety and angst that I could write this thing. If I had a little teapot or coffeepot sitting down here by my computer and I dragged myself out of bed at the crack of dawn (or before), and plodded through, could I manage to complete a draft before 2010?

TWENTY TEN! Two thousand and ten? Holy crapola. I need to set deadlines for myself and work toward something I commit to as singularly important, otherwise I risk falling into a pattern of distraction and lost opportunities. Oops, I think that was me falling between the cracks over there. Yep, I just checked and there I am, staring up at the sky while life goes marching by.

TWENTY TEN? Am I the only one who stumbles when I write that? Weren't we supposed to be able to drive flying cars by now? Or skip the airplane in lieu of beaming ourselves there?

Life goes by so ridiculously fast. I wish I had a way to extract every bit of goodness from it every minute of the day, so that I wasn't so afraid of finishing up short.

So, here's my pledge to myself and to you, even if you don't care: I will finish a draft of this novel by January 1, 2010. I'm not promising it'll be perfect. I'm just placing my hand down on my book, looking at the possibility in there, and pledging to get there somehow.