Blog

  • New Writing Schedule for Fall

    The wife and I sat down and had the discussion about whether we were going to send our daughter to school this Fall. We know that the kid really, desperately, wants to be back in a classroom with her friends and her teacher. We also know that we just aren’t comfortable with the way the world is when it comes to Covid. I also understand that NYC is one of the safer places in America to be when it comes to infection rates, and that precautions are being taken with the interest of safety for students and teachers in mind.

    But, we still aren’t comfortable. And I can admit that this is based off a feeling, and not logic. My feeling is that I don’t want to put my kid at risk. Covid is too dangerous without a vaccine.

    So, we have had to also sit and rethink how we are going to handle the wife working full time from home, a full-time student at home, and this guy looking to steal moments to write. I was hoping that I would have about three hours on days when the kid was in school, but that doesn’t seem likely for the rest of this year.

    I’m not complaining. First, I don’t think I have the focus right now to sit and write for three hours straight. But, most importantly, my number one job is to take care of the kid; making sure she is safe, and gets the best education possible. It’s a small sacrifice to make on my part, and the reward of having this time with the kid is boundless.

  • Covid Blues, But My Wife Rocks

    Just going to brag about my wife for a second…

    She was hired today, for a fulltime job with benefits. She busted her ass and found a job in the middle of a pandemic. It has made life easier for all of us, and we can take a little breath of relief. Maybe only for a second, but it feels like the first breath we have been able to take in five months. I’m very proud of of this amazing woman.

    It has been such a insane and unpredictable nine months for us. From leaving California, and reestablishing ourselves back in New York, only to have Covid pull the rug from out from everyone. There was no way to predict any of this.

    To be honest, I never thought there really would be a pandemic. From the way the world treated SARs and Ebola, even N1H1, it just seemed to me that the we knew how to work together and fight a contagious disease. I really felt like science and logic were winning over ignorance. Little did I know that stupid is stronger than I thought.

    And with all of this, how will we tell this story of disease? That is the question I keep hearing from my artist friends… if we survive. How will this affect the way we tell stories, and how we share this common experience? Only time will tell.

  • Steal That Time to Write

    Last night I was able to get about 500+ words done on the novel. (My goal is 1,000 words a day, but that might be too ambitious.) I had to steal moments to get it done while I was making dinner. The brussel sprouts were sautéing, and I added a paragraph; that sort of thing. It was very scattered, but I am trying to finish a first draft; it doesn’t have to be perfect.

    It reminded me a conversation I had with a playwright friend of mine about setting aside time to write. He is a married father of two, both kids under 10. He is a stay at home dad, but that position does not afford him any additional time to write, as any stay at home parent would tell you.

    What my friend told me was that before kids, he wrote anytime he felt like it. Now, as a stay at home parent, he had moved into a system of taking notes when an idea hit him, and then having to find the time in his schedule to write out the idea. He actually felt it made him a better writer. As he told me, he might only have one hour to work a day, so he knew that if wanted to get his idea accomplished, he had to focus and use every minute of that hour.

    Not that I am at that point, but I am beginning to find this to be solid advice.

  • Coronavirus Downer of a Day

    We are all having a down in the dumps coronavirus day in our home. My wife’s job hasn’t been the most fun of late, and to be honest, remoting into work every day does take a toll on you after a while. The kid had a tummy ache most of the morning, so we passed on going to the park, which, now that her tummy ache is gone, she’s become a rubber ball, bouncing off the walls. I, for my part, got my big chore done today (laundry) but pretty much have farted out on everything else; I have to finish school shopping, and creating a “school area” for the kid as the start of school is closing in.

    I had been hoping that school was going to start in September, and we were going to be able to drop into a normal routine for our family. I have to admit now that it isn’t going to happen. We have to choose, very soon, if the kid will attend classes in the school, or if she is going to continue with remote learning. We have to deal with the very harsh reality that as we don’t have health insurance (the kid is covered, thank God) that sending her to school does create a risk for us to get infected. I am aware that NYC has the lowest level of infection in the USA, but I am still nervous about getting so sick that I or the wife have to go to the hospital. That thought is never out of our minds.

    On a day when things aren’t working out the way we want, it’s easy to start down the path of all the awful things that could happen to us, and then everything becomes unbearably depressing, and the world is coming to an end.

    That’s why I suggest you check out my friend John’s free trivia night, called “Mind If I Ask You Something?” It’s virtual, on Wednesday night, and anyone can play. You can find him on Instagram or on Twitch.

  • Need to Stay Focused

    I do have issues with staying focused when I should be working.

    Case in point…

    So, I have been sitting here on the couch as the kid watches her afternoon cartoons. This is an hour that I can get a blog completed and even get some work done in the novel. It’s in the schedule, and we all know that is what I do for this hour.

    Now, what I have been doing is reading up on Hamilton’s home, The Grange. I went by it the other day when I was walking the dog, and when I opened up my computer to work, The Grange popped into my head.

    Well, I thought, I could take a minute to look it up real quick. I mean, I did hear that where The Grange house is today is not the original location. I wonder if I could find a map that showed where the original location was.

    Sure enough, I did.

    But that made me wonder if I could find a map that showed the plot of land that Hamilton used to own. That was a little tougher to find, and to be honest, I never really found what I was looking for but I did find a map of upper Manhattan that had the house circled.

    And that’s when I saw that my hour had slipped by and I hadn’t written a blog or worked on the novel.

    Oops…