I Finished Watching Grey's Anatomy...

Spoiler Alerts and Nonsense May Ensue!

In the beginning of May, I embarked on an adventure of sorts.  It involved a comfortable, fuzzy blanket, my puppy curled up in my lap, and Netflix.  It was an epic journey, spanning the course of ten seasons in a matter of some sixty days.  I know, it may not sound as though I have a life.  I mean, who seriously binge-watches ten freaking seasons of a medical drama in two months? 

But I did a lot in these past two months, I swear.  I was a bridesmaid in one of the most ridiculously fun weddings I've ever been to (yes, I'm biased), and did bridesmaid activities.  There was a bachelorette weekend, mother's day festivities, father's day shenanigans, my sister's eighteenth birthday, her high school graduation and the subsequent party I hosted.  We also got our first tattoos (together), I watched all of Game of Thrones Season Four in two days, I worked a lot and spent almost every other free moment watching people fall in and out of love, have their hearts shattered, their dreams realized, their lives torn asunder, and their whole worlds changed.

Obviously, my sojourn into the world of the thrice-named Seattle Grace/Mercy West/Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital has led to a suffering of my writing.  Because how can I write when I am so busy enjoying another fictional world, with people who are as real to me as the characters I create on my own?

It's not that I don't love writing more than almost any other act in the world.  Trust me when I say that I imagine myself as the modern equivalent of a Starving Artist, so in love with my craft that I'd suffer for it.  I would.  But I'm also a modern woman with a real life, living at least part time in the real world.  I have lots of dreams, and while my most ambitious one is to see my name in print, to know that the musings of my silly, tired, sometimes fragile mind made a difference in someone's life, I also
have goals that are more easily attainable.  Like becoming a manager and owning a home, and being a wife, and a mother, and the best person that I can be, and helping those who need it.  And most of those goals benefit from hard work, because hard work reaps a financial leniency that writing has not yet given me. 

As I said, it's not that I don't love writing, because I do.  But writing is like having a second job.  It's consuming, demanding, and often times thrillingly exhausting.  Seriously, it's like I've got a thousand children spread out between all of my stories, developed or not, and they're all demanding my attention.  Tell me what to do, where to go, tell me who I am!  Will I fall in love with Jack or Jim, will I eventually get my happily ever after, what is wrong with me?

As a quick side note--there is a trope that writers depend heavily on coffee and alcohol.  I don't consider myself dependent on any substance, but I didn't miss the irony of my made up Jack (Daniels) and Jim (Bean) example. 

That last question is one of my own, cause after rereading those last few sentences, I sound crazy.  I think you have to be crazy to be a writer of any sort.  Honestly, you have to be nuts to commit to a life of deadlines, interviews, and press releases.  And to write about historical fiction, you'd have to be a few shades of mad.  Don't even get me started on how mentally unstable you'd have to be to write mathematics textbooks for a living!  The point is that I have to share my world not only with all of my coworkers, family, friends, customers, all of you, my dog, and a bunch of insistent fictional people.  It's like having two jobs, and working forty hours a week with all these real people, then coming home to do it all again with even more helpless people. 

It's easy to burn yourself out as a writer, even if it is the thing you love most.  After all, it is a consuming art.  I know when I work at my first job, my mind can engage on other things, like what I'm doing for the weekend and how much I want that pair of boots I saw on Pinterest.  That's not a luxury afforded to writing.  When you're creating flesh and bone people from pen and paper it consumes every spare bit of your brain, which spins in a mad, carnivorous dash to get your fingers to get it out before you forget and move onto the next thing.  I can't speak for others, but that's how my brain works at least, tripping over itself in an attempt to sole everybody's problems all at once, while simultaneously musing over how to improve the tension in a scene that hasn't even been thought of.  Yeah, I'm not one of those organized writers...my brain rebels.

That is why it is important for me to take breaks every now and then.  The aforementioned is why I step back from writing on occasion and binge watch overly-dramatic television or swallow entire books whole.  Because if I try to solve Linden's dilemmas while also helping Lillith find her place in the world, all the while watching Lexie* perform neurosurgery with the love of her life, I'm sure to mix up my details and cross my signals.  And let's face it...vampires don't often find themselves in need of a subdural craniotomy (which I may have just made up, or not),just as in a post-apocalyptic world, my heroine probably wouldn't be concerned with a need for plastic surgery.

If you're confused, you're in good company.  Because the whole point of this post was to let you know what I've been up to, why I haven't updated much, and (SURPRISE, MOTHAFUCKAS*), to get myself a little warm-up exercise for the writing onslaught that's about to ensue.  Sorry I tricked you!  Thanks for listening!

Love, BelleCeline

* Lexie= My favorite character in Grey's Anatomy.  Funny, smart, a chameleon, and a brilliant surgeon.  Rest in Peace. 

*SURPRISE, MOTHAFUCKAS= Famous words of Sergeant Doakes, the intelligent, crazy, too-nosy-for-his-own-good character in Dexter.  Rest in Peace.