Reading

I managed to pull out the eight boxes of books I had in storage last week.  About half of that are books I've gotta read of research on different historical and political topics.  I still have to track down another 8 or so, as well as some articles that are about 100 years old.  Its tough to read dozens of books when you're not in school anymore, because there are more distractions being a married guy who has a day job, and writing is sort of the non-paying night job.  Its also tougher because married me has more things to worry about than single me.  I have to impose some form of deadline or something on myself so I can get things finished.  Fictional projects are much easier because you don't have to do anything except write, but non-fiction projects take some much longer.  There are quotes to write down, indexing, referencing, its a bother.  Guess I gotta start taking books everywhere again.  I did manage to get some good starts on my non-fiction projects though.  I got the first few paragraphs down that are just perfect, now I just have to come up with another few hundred pages of writing.  No biggie, right?

The Little Woman

I'm 33, and my wife is 45.  This works well as I lean a bit towards the cougars.  Cougars are great.  You don't get mixed signals, and they tend to have settled down a lot emotionally, so you end up dating or married to someone who's more stable professionally, and emotionally.  You want to get older but not old.  My wife's name's Elena, but I call her Ellie.  She does a lot of different things in regards to real estate, most of which I don't understand, which is fine by me.  She also happens to be a former model, so naturally thats bragging rights for me.  She passes for someone in 30s and even 20s on a regular basis.  Because of our age difference, which is no big deal at all, she gets to relive her 30s, and I get to live my 40s twice.  She's pretty and has a good desk job, I'm rather gruff and have a manual labor job, so things like my back and knees feel like they're in their 50s or something.  I've got the best wife.  She kisses my head out of nowhere when I'm working at home, and encourages me all the time about my pursuing my dream of being a writer.  A dream I've been chasing on and off again since I was a kid.  I've got a daughter from a previous marriage, and my wife has got a couple of daughters, both in their 20s.  No sons.  I'm completely outnumbered here.  Even our 2 dogs are girls.  All these girls...that would probably explain why I've got a lot more gray hair now.

But back to the wife.  She sometimes talks to me about writing more than I talk about it.   We got married not even 2 years ago, and I've already gotten more ideas for writing projects, and gotten more writing done being married, than I have in my entire life.  I guess I'm just bragging, but I've got the perfect little encourager, motivator, and spouse a guy can ask for.  She helps me a great deal even more than she knows.  No, you can't have her.  She's mine. 

Historical Fiction

I recently revisited an idea that I had for a historical fiction book.  And I guess I'm back to being drawn into about 6 or 7 or too many different writing things now.  The good thing about this is that if I write this historical thing, I don't have to research for it too hard, but I still have a colossal load of reasearch for a couple of political books I wanted to write.  Its nice to have an idea, but its horribly time consuming if you have to do any sort of preparation for anything you write.  Its tough to say you're "working" on a project when you've gotta read 50 books on the Middle East for something. Though I suppose that goes with the territory.  You can say you're a "writer" even when you're researching I guess.  But back to this novel thing, I think this is the 6th idea I've had for a book.  I guess I can impress the wife and tell her how busy I am.

Branching Out

I've been thinking about doing more writing than I thought I was going to do.  Originally I wanted to write a bunch of books, but finally settled on just doing one novel, but I'm seriously considering writing three more books, two on politics, and one children's book.  Part of the reason I shelved these other other projects was because of time.  We're sort of in this perpetual move phase, where half of our stuff is still in storage.  My wife and I are living with her parent for at least a year to help them move back to California, and most of the books I wanted to use for research are in a storage unit because we don't have the book shelves I need yet.  I've just been focusing on the novel for now, because it made sense and I didn't really need to research for it too much.  But I've always had these other ideas in the back of my mind, so I think I'm going to try and give it another go.  Could be fun.  I just finished another page of my novel today too, and I really needed that today.  I ended up taking a few days off from writing this week, and its nice to have something sort of tangible goal done today.

Pretty Dumb Weekend

As part of my paying job, I'm on my feet a lot.  So I went to ice said feet in a large container of ice an water the other night.  I moved my little tray with laptop, and various other electronics away from said bucket with the idea of not dropping anything into it.  Of course I get tangled into a cord and my ipod which my wife spent a lot of money on, the big one with 160 gb, that they don't make anymore, takes a nosedive into said bucket of water.  So I've been sulking for a few days now, trying to find the best ipod Apple made, but they don't make anymore.  Needless to say, I turned into Job or something the last few days, and its understandable considering how often I'm on it.  I play music off it to sleep, listen to audiobooks in traffic, watch things on it, and listen to music when I'm working on writing.  So essentially this thing is on all the time, and I rely on it all the time.  So I'm either being a giant baby, or a giant reasonable person, who has to find some money so I can have my expensive toy again.  You decide.  Also I may have finished another page of writing, and gotten some more cool ideas for my story.