Sherri Cornelius

The morning has a ethereal quality to it, as I’m still carrying the feelings from my emotionally-charged dream. So often my moods are shaped by what I was dreaming when I woke up that morning, and while the images sometimes don’t make enough sense to hold on to upon waking, the emotion always does. I’ve battled strong emotions my whole life. Defined them, boxed them up, let them peek out in situations my forebrain deems appropriate. Sometimes they sneak out on their own, and that’s mortifying.

Lately I’ve realized that’s not healthy. Emotions are not a deformed and murderous twin who must be chained to the basement floor. They are part of me. So I’ve been working on feeling whatever emotion comes to me. Not necessarily letting it manifest outwardly, but looking at it, accepting it.

Well yesterday morning I sat down to write, and got that same old butterfly nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes when I get that feeling, I stand up and do something else without even thinking first, just my instinct telling me I need to run when I feel that dread. But yesterday I looked at it and wondered about it, and opened the document anyway. The next scene to be written was a hugely emotional one. When I finished I was drained and lonely, needed a hug so bad, but there was no one here but me.

Huge breakthrough. Because I’d examined my emotions at every step, I was able to make an important and previously unseen connection. The dread came from subconsciously knowing I would end my writing time feeling lonely and lost. All those emotions swirling around, yet there was no one I could unburden myself to. Even if my husband had been home, I couldn’t very well expect him to understand what was bothering me. He would probably just tell me, Get over it, it’s not your problem, it’s your character. No wonder novelists, actors, and other artistic types seem to have so much trouble with substance abuse. We take on emotions which aren’t our own, and which in the context of our lives have no ground. There’s no event to pin them to, yet we carry them with us. It can make one feel quite bonkers.

But seriously, now that I’ve realized this, I can start working around it. How about you? Do you find that your character’s emotions affect your life?

My mind is sort of a blank this morning, but I feel like connecting with the world so I’m posting anyway. I apologize in advance for any inanity which may follow.

Over the weekend a couple of my first readers got back to me with comments on my long synopsis. Their advice was right on and exactly what I needed, pointing out things I am too close to see. Really invaluable. I’m sure the rest of my readers will have just as much insight. I’ll do an in-depth report once it’s a done deal, probably by the end of the week.

While I’m waiting to finish my synopsis, I have my editing job to do. Last week I received my next two assignments from Eternal Press. To my surprise, they are both classified as erotica. Now, I’ve never edited erotica before, although I did go through a time when I thought I might be able to write some. (Not.) By the way, the link goes to my old blog because the comments somehow didn’t get imported over here on my older posts. The comments are funny.

So anyway, yeah, I’m editing erotica. So far it’s been very–ahem–interesting. It’s smashing my preconceived notions of erotic literature and bringing to light some personal attitudes which have always operated unseen. Eye-opening, in a number of ways.

On the health front, I found out toothpaste irritates my skin and is probably why my tongue always feels burny. On the other hand, the knuckle on my broken finger popped and I regained some range of motion. I hope this bodes well for having a full recovery.

I pulled all my WIP files to one location and started organizing them. Cuts, backstory, notes, different chunks of chapters, the working doc, 3 different synopses, etc. I’m a very sloppy saver, so my file names are not nearly descriptive enough to immediately know what they are, and also they are saved to two different computers and a backup hard drive. I have the same file name 10 times on 4 different documents. It’s atrocious. If anybody has any thoughts on a better way to organize and evaluate what to save and what to delete, please let me know. If nobody has a better idea, I’ll import all the files into Page Four, see how that works.

Have a great week.

Had a couple of breakthroughs over the weekend.

One is measurable: I’ve jumped the last hurdle with the 15 page synopsis I’ve been working on for five weeks. Does that sound like a long time to be working on 15 pages? Well, it’s not as straightforward as that. I’d already written a short synopsis for my agent Sara to send around with the sample pages. The ending had been sketched out for the regular 3-page synopsis, and I planned to fill in the blanks as I worked on the book. I knew the basic structure would stay the same, so it was a safe gamble.

Suddenly I had to fill in those blanks– blanks that I had not only neglected, but avoided like the plague. And to tell you the truth, I needed those blanks to be filled in to continue working on the book. Thank God for this exercise which forced me to finally make those decisions. I feel free.

The other breakthrough is immeasurable: I learned something about how I work as a writer. I want to be an utterly confident and steady producer, the kind of person who works best during Nanowrimo, but apparently that’s not how I work. My usual MO is to write until I come to a problem I can’t immediately figure out. I’ll keep figuring until I’m in a corner, there’s no answer. I’m done, I can’t do anymore, I suck. Finally, I’m so upset I throw it down and stop thinking about it. When I get back to it, I’m more relaxed and the answer just…comes to me.

This has been happening my whole writing career, but I never thought to work with it. Pretty dumb, huh? I guess I just work better in fits and starts. So this last problem I had, I allowed myself a lot of breathing room, and it worked. I knew what I wanted to happen in the ending, but I had never figured out the motivation. Yesterday this huge question of motivation was solved, with a tool I’d already written into the story.

Here’s an interesting post by Rachelle Gardner ( in which she says,

I work with a lot of first-time authors, because that’s part of what I love to do. But something I’m learning is that we may be doing you a disservice if we contract you when you’ve only written one book. Yes, writing that book was a huge accomplishment. And if your very first book garnered positive attention from editors and/or agents, that’s even more of an accomplishment. It’s terrific!

But it’s not enough. The hard truth is that it takes a lot more than one book to really know “how to be a writer.” So if you get contracted after that one book, over which you slaved for years, and then you’re under the gun to produce another book on a deadline, what’s going to happen? You are going to have a very, very difficult time.

When I read this several days ago, I tweeted the link immediately because it hit me so hard. I think that’s what’s been going on with me. I’ve been writing for a long time, but always on my own time. I didn’t know a person had to figure out “how to be a writer.” Although I don’t have a deadline, per se, people are ready to leap into action when this book is finished. The self-imposed pressure was surprisingly crippling. I’ve had people get very upset with me because of this. “You have an agent, you ingrate. If I had an agent, I’d be set.” Well, sorry to burst the pre-agent bubble, but having an agent isn’t rainbows and roses. It’s a business. It’s work. It doesn’t solve all your problems and, as in my case, can magnify some.

My expectations are about 50 times higher for myself than they are for you. I build boxes around myself and then stay there, so for me the key is to relax and allow other possibilities into my consciousness. There’s so much advice we hear all the time: to write every single day, no matter what; to write our way through rough patches in our stories; to set goals and stick with them. For someone like me, with a corncob up her butt already, this advice is to be avoided at all cost. I wish there were more advice to relax. Please pass this advice along.

So, yeah, I’m pretty excited now that I finally figured out how to be a writer in my own way. Have you figured it out yet? How has it opened up your writing?

It’s one of those blank-brain mornings. Hubs woke me early this morning, now he’s snoozing and I’m wishing I was. Takes me a lot of time and care to get to sleep in the first place. I can’t just “fall asleep” like he can. There’s no “falling” about it. More like “dragging under.” So it’s not worth the effort. Since I didn’t get to wake slowly on my own, I can’t even remember my dream or I’d blog about that. I think it was interesting…

So what about dreams? On some list somewhere I read that people don’t like to read about other people’s dreams, but I like reading about them. Am I unusual, or was that list writer just a cranky old goat?

Do you know what I hate about writing? It’s not how long the business process takes, not anymore. It’s how long I take. It’s always longer than I think it will be, and then I feel like a failure, even though I’m the one who set the bar on impossibly high pegs. I never adjust my timeline, either. Once the date passes, I just have a constant feeling of lateness. What a self-defeating attitude! To wake up every morning feeling like a failure already because I didn’t meet some arbitrary goal and don’t have the brains to realistically adjust it.

Well at least I finally realized what I’m doing. I’m always telling everybody else to take it easy on themselves. Well now I’m going to take my own advice, whether I’m feeling like the greatest writer in the world or a complete hack, I can only do what I can do, sometimes that less and sometimes more, but it’s always adequate.

I think it’s probably less about my goals and more about giving away my power. Putting other people’s intentions for me ahead of my own. Trying to live according to other people’s standards, even when I’m not entirely sure what those are. I’ve been doing it my whole life but only recently realized the full impact of it. I think if I can get out of that habit my whole life will open up before me. It’s not even a habit at this point so much as a personality trait, I’ve been doing it so long. I don’t have my own standards, I’ve been living by other people’s for so long.

Is this what middle age is about? Finding out about yourself? Throwing off the mantle your parents and husband and friends and in-laws set on your shoulders in the first half of your life? If so, no wonder it causes crises, because I’m just about ready to tear off that mantle, stand naked if necessary before I wear someone else’s mantle ever again.

It would be good if I could find a way to do that without bothering anyone.

I hope the pictures show up right. That’s my IBM Selectric II, all 40 lbs of her disco-era goodness. I got her for free on Craig’s List from a guy who just wanted her out of his closet. This is very close to the kind of typewriter I learned to type on back in the 80s, but I think my high school’s typewriters may have been Selectric IIIs. It uses a ball instead of a wheel or arms. What a blast from the past it was remembering how to take it apart for cleaning and re-install the ribbons.

I have to give a hat tip to Professor M for the idea. The typewriter was his solution to being distracted by the internet. It really does help. Feels weird to be physically unable to check Twitter while writing. Exhilarating in its freedom.

Nothing feels like a typewriter. I love how tangible the output is. I mean, on a computer your stories don’t really exist. You always have to have that interface: a machine to view it on, electricity to run the machine, the correct software to open the “document,” a printer to whisper out pages…

With a typewriter, you feel the creation of your words with your fingertips and in the vibration of the table. The volume of that creation announces to the world, “I AM WRITING NOW. DO YOU HEAR ME WRITING? Thinking… WRITING AGAIN.” You can hug your pages to your chest or rip them up and throw them wadded against the wall. You can fold up your creation right away, put it in your pocket, and take it out to show someone later. Also, typewriter ribbon is way cheaper than printer ink.

There is only one con, as far as I can see, and that is the inability to easily correct a typo. But even that isn’t a con to me. I have to type it into the computer later anyway, so I’ll just mark my edits on the page and rewrite as I go. Or I could scan the pages into Word and do a spell check.

I wish I had gotten a typewriter long ago, and I recommend all writers do the same. Typos schmypos.

I’ve spent the past six months or so hitting the ol’ reset button. (Search on “reset” to find related posts.) It’s a sticky little sucker, and I have to hit it several times before it takes. This is my year of renewal, my year for re-evaluating my priorities, my year for growing a backbone and becoming my own woman.

I hope.

I’ve been trying new things, like editing, and letting go of things which don’t serve me, like an unhealthy preoccupation with what other people want of me (still working on this one, but it’s getting easier). I’m tired of fighting. There’s such an attitude of “go get what you want, no matter what! Don’t let anything get in your way! You can do it if you never give up!” in this world that I wondered why it wasn’t working for me. I’m a really tenacious person, taking those sentiments to heart. I’ve spent the first half of my life wondering why I couldn’t make things happen like Trump or Oprah. So I decided since taking the path of most resistance wasn’t working, I’d try to take the maligned path of least resistance.

Well now I forgot where I was going with this.

I think I was going to talk about my writing attitudes. Before, I always wrote to please someone else. I listened to other people’s advice, and as you know, there is a lot of it on the Internet, consumed and regurgitated over and over without thought. Tried to please everyone, you know? And half–no, most of the time I had to guess at what people wanted–readers, agent, potential editors, critters, family. Each of them seemed to want a different thing, and it was impossible to please everybody. Froze me up. Too much resistance.

Well, I’ve had almost two months of forced time off. When I first broke my finger, it didn’t seem real that I wouldn’t be able to truly write until it healed. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I was really angry at first, had major withdrawals, not only from the book itself but also from the idea of writing. God, that was hard.

Now I see I should have done this a long time ago, but I was too busy trying not to let anyone down, including my dream. I wish I hadn’t forced Fate to break my finger and my laptop in order to get me to reset this aspect of my life. But now I feel cleaner, like I might actually enjoy writing when I get the chance to start up again, and it makes my eyes well up to feel that love again.

Anyway, that’s my ramble. Have a good weekend.

P.S. Got tired of scrapers stealing my content, so I’m syndicating only an excerpt till I see if it helps. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I went ahead and deleted the CSS file for this blog. Why put it off? The template is now the standard one, and though it looks basically the same, it has lost a bit of its oomph, don’t you think? Just ready to weed the garden to make way for whatever is coming. Get rid of distractions, one at a time. The challenge is not getting rid of the old, tired ones but keeping new, exciting ones from creeping in.

Ha, I just realized I missed my 3-year bloggiversary. Funny, but it seems like longer.

I’ve been thinking about the human tendency to expect things to stay the same. Especially people. When we meet someone, our brain creates a Base Model of the person for reference. Like say you meet a new woman who’s really nice. The Base Model is “Nice”. A few months later you accidentally cross her in some way, and she turns into a raging bitch. There’s a moment of bewilderment when the current model does not match up with the Base Model. Somehow it hurts worse to be yelled at by a person who had previously treated you kindly than by someone whom you always knew was a raging bitch. Just like it’s hard to accept kindness from a “raging bitch” Base Model.

I’ve noticed this with new people I meet. If I go through an introspective jag, the people who find me during that time seem to always connect with me on that level. If I’m writing about racy topics, I meet a whole ‘nother set of folks…who always connect with me on that level, and seem unable to change the Base Model Sherri. And the same goes for humorous times, and writerly times, and all other times. I do it, too. I’ve probably done it to you worse than you’ve done it to me. I like putting things in nice, neat boxes, and it bothers me when they don’t fit.

It might just be an unchangeable human trait, but I think it helps to be aware of it.

I’ve been off line for a while, battling the annual ant invasion and healing my hand and planting a garden. By the time I get done with the fence-building and tilling and wheel barrow assembly, my hand is too tired to type. Thank goodness we got everything finished just before the current stretch of rough weather. My muscles are sore, but glad for the exercise; my hand is not glad at all.

Reminderfox has been the godsend I’d hoped, but it only runs in the Firefox browser, which means you IE and Safari peeps are out of luck. It pops up reminders for upcoming events every two hours; so far I have only bills on there, but I will add birthdays as I go.

I am in the midst of a major life change, but not sure what it is; like ta’veren Mat Cauthon in the Wheel of Time books I can hear the dice tumble in my head, telling me the Wheel weaves around me but not the nature of the weave. When the dice come to rest I will know. Probably a mid-life crisis, which I prefer to call a mid-life awakening. It’s only a crisis for the people who can’t (or won’t) accomodate your growth.

Some brief points:

• coffee is as enjoyable as ever
• got three strawberries out of the garden yesterday…before the fence went up I found the first ripe strawberries nibbled, still on the plant
• a stray cat has started hanging around…it’s nice having him here
• lately I prefer analog life to digital life; still keeping tabs on you, just lurking
• feel like I’m missing someone, but don’t know who that would be
• wondering if the average person has a life purpose, or if that is reserved for the really special people

Random thought: does anybody else have a crush on the “FreeCreditReport.com” commercial guys?

The 1 hand + 1 finger typing is getting easier. I miss being able to watch the screen while I’m typing because watching the keyboard reminds me I’m putting my thought down, rather than just watching them flow onto the screen automatically. It’s distracting. Plus my hand gets tired easily. It seems to have reached a healing plateau, maybe because I started using it before it was ready. I think now that I did crack a bone, maybe two so I’m keeping it braced. Forcing myself to give it the time it needs, no matter how cranky DH gets for having to do the things I normally do, like cantaloupe chopping and opening jars and doing dishes. Actually, he’s been pretty good about it, and the kids have, too. they’ve been doing most of the dishes, so I bought Abby a pretty pink sponge to fit her small hands.

It’s only partly because of the hand that I haven’t been online much. I’m having one of those shifts in consciousness that comes every so often where I reassess my interests. The kids are old enough, the marriage is stable enough, and I have no worries at the moment. Oh, I have plenty of things I could worry about, like having no health insurance, but I’m tired of worrying about those things. I’ve got it pretty good here in my little corner of the world. Maybe it’s the bad economic stories I keep seeing on the news, or maybe it’s because I have a decent car, but for some reason I don’t feel as poor as I did a couple of months ago. It’s a nice feeling.

Ready to find a way to make some money, get in shape, make a difference in other people’s lives. I’d like to do all those things in one activity. I’m trying not to worry about the financial aspect, instead trusting that enough money will be there if I find my calling. So what do I enjoy doing? Where do my natural talents lie? What are my limitations? Those are important questions I need to answer, and I may explore that in the next post.

Well, folks, I did it. I bought the ’97 Saturn I talked about in the last post. It’s just big enough to seat two adults and three tiny-heiny children. I wrote the check Friday afternoon, and couldn’t even look at it sitting in the driveway. What if I didn’t do enough research? What if I look outside and all four tires have gone flat and the door has fallen off? What if my intuition failed me?

I finally drove it Saturday afternoon, expecting to crash at every lane change on the way to Wal-Mart, expecting the brakes to fail at every red light, expecting the engine to fall out when I hit 60 mph.

None of that happened. In fact, I fell in love a little more every moment. The car runs great. It stops like it’s supposed to. All the accessories work, with the exception of the rear passenger window. It’s cleaner than any 12-year-old car I’ve ever seen. Somebody took care of this car. I didn’t think it was possible for me (me!) to have good luck with a car. I drove it many more times over the weekend, and now I’m comfortable that I got a good deal.

I mentioned getting a Carfax report on Twitter, and a Carfax employee contacted me and offered me a free report. I didn’t see the offer until I’d already bought the car. I almost got took the free report but thought, nah, the point is moot now, and I want to honor my intuition. From the moment I saw the car I was drawn to it. I looked at all the other cars, even chose a second-favorite, but I just kept going back to this one. It was difficult to tell if the nerves surrounding the whole thing was my intuition, or if the initial draw to the car was. Knowing myself pretty well by now, I decided that the nerves were layered on after the initial attraction, and so I should honor that first feeling. I did the same thing with this house, and it has turned out to be just the right house for us.

Still, I wait for the hammer to fall. It seems that Murphy’s Law ruled my life for so long that I still can’t shake it, even though since I moved into this house, the planets align in my favor more often than not. So since I have confidence in my new car, I feel it’s too good to be true. I wait for my new-found freedom to be snatched away when the old van breaks down and the hubby starts driving my car to work.

There’s also an element of selfishness that I have to get used to. Yes, we needed a family car. Yes, I did all the work to buy the car. Yes, it is a totally modest used car. But I’ve maintained a certain level of self-denial for so long that I don’t know how to just enjoy something that costs money. Heck, if I spend $10 on a pair of shoes I get the anxiety. I felt the same way when I got my much-needed washer and dryer, even though we got mismatched, dented models at a deep discount. There’s no extravagance going on here. I just have to get used to it.

Sometimes things go my way, and it’s usually when I honor my intuition.