Monday, January 6, 2014

WHAT I WANT AND WHAT I GOT...

Due to circumstances beyond my control this will be a late Monday Musings and early IWSG (click to get a list of other participating blogs) I just combined the articles. I'll be visiting blogs over the next few days and cracking the whip to get back into blogging after some much needed time off.

WHAT I GOT THIS MORNING AT THE FEEDERS AND
WHAT I WANT IS THE LAST PICTURE.


I've noticed a difference in what I'd like to see happening and what is happening—what I want and what I got. For instance, my editing tasks. I've been helping hubs edit his book. It's a good story but lord have mercy, the man is heavy into he said/she said. That drives me nuts. He's actually very good with dialog but when he wrote these stories they were done with old school tags. Pulling his mind from then to now has been...a struggle. Magnum PI and Spencer meeting Burn Notice. Don't get me wrong, Magnum had some great story lines and some great oddball humor (and my husband loves oddball and corny humor) and Spencer did as well, but if they were written for today's market they'd have to have some major updating to grab the audience. Same genre different methods of telling. 

What I want is someone who likes to read those sorts of detective stories read for story content and word usage. What I got is me. 

Then there is my writing. Talk about insecurities and frustrations. I have two manuscripts completed in a series I wrote. Mine had to go on a major word diet. In fact the first in the series lost 10k. I was very proud of that. Now it's in pieces—kinda like Humpty-Dumpty with all king's horses and all the king's men at the ready to put it back together again but they've all gone into stasis waiting for the orders to proceed. Sigh....

What I want is free time to concentrate on that and what I've got is itty-bitty sound bytes of time to do it.

Then there is the weather. 

What I want is green and flowers. Like my brother Rob’s house in early May.



What I got is the heaviest snowfall in our area since 2002 and minus 2 this morning.



Hey, the sun is shining on this bright Monday and that’s good. It’s actually beautiful but wicked cold even with the temps up to almost 15 degrees, but the wind bites hard.

Hubs is bundled up in multi-layers of clothes (he loses 10 lbs and 10 inches once he peels that bundle off) and you can see how much we've accomplished after a couple hours of work. We haven't even started on the driveway to the roadwhich is also unplowed and likely to remain so, unless our neighbor decides to run his tractor over our road a mile down to the blacktop which is also not plowed. They rarely plow it. Getting anywhere is problematic.  

Then there is the driveway. 

What I want is a nice cleared driveway. What I got is this—can you even tell where the driveway is?



Uh, no. 

Just in case you're curious, curves around the little oak tree and out the break in the hedges. I'm standing in the cleared area to take this shot. 

We've already been out two hours this morning and barely have made a dent in clearing the snow from the garage so we can open the doors. It’s several more hours of shoveling time to get down to that break in the hedges.

And then come Wednesday afternoon we get more snow and sleet (I much prefer the snow over icy slush) and again over next weekend.

There you have it. The battle of wants and gots. I suspect it will be an ongoing battle this year, especially with writing.

What's your ongoing battle right now? 

Happy New Year!



WHAT I WANT TO SEE. TOMORROW WOULD
BE GOOD