Home from work today. I came close to finishing my second draft over the weekend, which was my goal (as if it matters to anyone else) but ended up adding an extra smut scene for good measure, which put me behind schedule and leaves me with a bit more work to do this week.
It hasn’t been a good few days. The ex is insisting on an amendment to our court order for the two summer months between when we leave Vegas and when my daughter turns eighteen, even though I’ve acquiesced to all his demands and my daughter has agreed to stay with him until her birthday. He keeps reminding me that we both have “legal obligations” and that the court order “must be amended” since I’m apparently violating it by stepping foot outside the city limits without his express written permission–or something like that.
I don’t cope well with conflict. (No! Truly, Averil?) Even though I’ve told him where to stick the court order and that should be the end of it, my stomach is in knots. I worry about my daughter being stuck in a house with this lunatic, and feel guilty that I’m leaving her in a pickle in order to get our living situation squared away in Oregon before my youngest starts school next fall. Oh, to be cloned. Every mother’s wish.
So writing has been an uphill slog this weekend. I keep finding myself daydreaming about my ex-husband rotating on a spit over a blazing fire, with an apple in his mouth and a burn mark on the seat of his trousers.
How do you write when your head’s not in the game? How do you pull yourself together?
Photograph by Ellen Von Unwerth
