When Wishing Backfires

I've been on a whirlwind reading frenzy the last few weeks. Just take a peak at my iReads icon on my facebook page. I'm juggling way to many books at one, then picking up new ones before I have a chance to finish the ones I'm halfway through.

On Monday, I blogged about Noelle Oxenhandler's new memoir "A Wishing Year" here (just scroll down to my post called Musing in the Valley Vineyards: On Wishing and Writing--not tech savvy enough yet to post the exact url!). The book jolted me back to that land of dreaming big. Oxenhandler had the courage to do it, so dammit, so can I!

A few nights after finishing her book, I spent a few minutes really articulating a few wishes. No, I'm not going to list them all here for the blogosphere to read. Somehow, they feel private. But it's no joke that I write and that I want to publish a book; that my manuscript is in a couple busy agents' hands and that I'm now plowing through a new historical-crossover-YA book using the Book In A Month workbook as a guide. Obviously one of my wishes is to get published, so I wrote it down in a specific way, as well as wishing for focus in my writing practice.

I don't know what it was, but I really have been focused. The last two mornings, I've packed up my laptop,i-pod and notes after dropping the boys off at preschool and have written twenty pages in two days. This is not normal for me. Most days I can squeeze out four, maybe five pages if the creative gods shine on my overcrowded head.

Last night I was feeling pretty sassy for my ten page writing streak that morning. With Robbie away playing hockey and the boys exhausted from swim lessons and nodding off at dinnertime, I rushed to clean up dinner and chill some beers in the freezer to lounge while watching the So You Think You Can Dance finale. (I know, my taste in television can be questionable but hey, it's summer programming!) Shane passed out at 7pm and Bobby was close behind him. As I finished my chores and opened a beer, what should happens.

POWER OUTAGE!!!!

I was calm and cool. I had 45 minutes til showtime and even if I didn't get the power back right away, the show lasts two hours so I was guarenteed to get my fill of dancing drama. I put the boys to sleep and read as the light faded outside, peeked out the window to make sure my house wasn't the only house on the street without lights shining through cracked blinds. It wasn't.

Night fell. Another half hour, then another. I lit candles and pulled out my laptop, with a near dead battery, by the way, and began the slow-going process of charting my scenes so far to check for the 'domino effect', assuring there are no holes or unnecessary scenes. Another half hour goes by. Now I'm starting to get pissed. This was supposed to be my night to lounge with my smut tv, without my husband home to glower that the A's game wasn't on instead, with the boys not wired from unspent energy.

I worked over an hour on my scene tracking just as the laptop faded to black. Just as I pulled out a notebook to scribble about the irony of the universe forcing me to work on my book instead of watch a tv show I've been looking forward to since, well since it was on last Thursday, the lights blinked back on. At 9:55 pm. By the time my satellite signal found my television, the show was summarizing the four dancers and their various routines. I missed every single dance routine.

But I got what I wished for. I found the holes in my novel and did this tedious task last night, rather than this morning where I instead started fresh on more new pages of the book. Wishes are strange beings.