The Wind Beneath My Wings...or not.

Yesterday was a fantastic writing day. I didn't get a lot of words on the page, but I did manage to get through several chapters I was revising and make it to a spot that needed lots of re-writing. I was sooo into the scene. My characters were there interacting with each other exactly the way I needed them to for the scene to work. The ideas were flowing. It was feeling... RIGHT.

Then the baby started crying.

And I went to snuggle him. I fed him and thought, ohh he hasn't slept very long today, maybe he'll eat and go to sleep early and I can keep writing! Well, if this wasn't the exact WRONG thought to have flit through my head. His eyes closed, I put him to bed, turned on the video monitor, put my fingers on the keyboard and got back to the WiP.

The next hour was spent jogging up and down the stairs to shove a pacifier in his mouth every time he spit it out and patting him back to sleep. I thought maybe if I did this enough, he would finally konk out and I could get back to my scene. But, every time I read back a few paragraphs and got my head in the right place again, he'd spit that paci out and start fussing. Finally, I thought, maybe if I just bring him downstairs and put him in his bouncy seat, I could bounce and write.

No. He just kept staring at me like this O_O

Then the dog jumped up on my lap.

Still, I thought, I will make this work if it kills me!!!

So there I was, bouncing a baby who was not only wide-awake but also blowing spit-bubbles, dog in my lap, and hubby decides to go make pancakes.

That would have been fine except that the grill started smoking and our smoke-alarm in the apartment is EXTRA sensitive so I had to open the door. Not only was it cold, but the trash heap just up the road was having a wonderfully potent evening, so the smell of trash drifted in, while I shivered and bounced baby and scratched doggy's ears and pecked on the keyboard with my one free appendage.

I spent the next FOUR HOURS trying to get my kid to sleep. Then when I put him in his crib and came downstairs, hubby said, "At least now you can get some writing done."

And I was all

because really I felt like this had just happened

I genuinely felt like I'd been run over by a truck I was so utterly, completely exhausted. The scene was SO good and my thoughts were SO clear, I just KNEW that it would be easy to wake up early and get some quiet time in the morning BEFORE the baby woke up! After all, he slept until 9:00 every. single. day. this week. If I woke up at 6:30 I'd have SO MUCH WRITING TIME!

Guess what time he woke up today?

7:00 am

Yup. I barely had the time to yawn, pee, grab a cup of coffee, and put fingers to keys before I heard that sweet little coo.

Then I was like this

...and this

I felt completely, 100% defeated. It was exactly like one of the scenes in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World where they hit the doldrums (that's when there's no wind for the sails), and if you know anything at all about a huge ship in 1805, it needed wind to make it go anywhere. I'd been sailing along just fine, the words were flowing, the ideas were splashing around in my head like giant sparkling waves, and then suddenly... nothing. All that motivation was simply... gone.

But I'm still not going to give up. The wind WILL come back. I know I will get a good breeze again and make more progress. For now, I have to make whatever words I can make which is why I'm sitting here like this...

...pecking out this blog one letter at a time. 

Because, seriously. I will not give up.

I'd love to know if any of you guys feel this way sometimes. How do you get your motivation back after the wind has been knocked out of your writing sails?