What will I be? Does it matter? Because I will still mourn the unloved books hiding on the shelves, hoping that they are not the weeds that will be pulled.

And in-between writing sessions I’m brainstorming. Ideas keep appearing right before my eyes; I suddenly know not only where I’m going, but how to get there. Last night, for instance, a character spoke to me and her role in the novel has greatly expanded.

Still, I estimate I am only about 10% done with my work. I have a good outline to keep me on track, and I’ve written many, many scenes. But right now the scenes are only patched together. They do not yet make a cohesive whole. Ultimately my work is still a sketch with many scenes resting only on a post unconnected to the rest of the fence.

My plan now is to read. That’s right: not write, or edit, but read. I need a break from my work and I also need to study how my favorite writers sew their scenes into a chapter, their chapters into a novel.

And so Happy New Year’s to all, and to all — read a book before you turn out the light.

At the same time I reject (or at least dismiss) definitions from the outside. Many have tried to define me. In fact it’s a standing dare. But outside definitions miss the mark. They can only view a fraction, a faction, of that which is Me. I exist on a timeline, but also outside the continuum, when my past self flows to the present and tandoms along. “I am complex.”

What bothers me most, or perhaps frightens, is being defined by my characters, which I am unable to dismiss as easily. I used to have alter egos, personas I used in my place in my stories. One was unsure and blundering, one sweet and happy, one wild and unhappy…. But now my characters are not me. They are amalgams, pieces of me that want out in random order. When my thoughts become penciled words on the page, when these words begin to breathe eraser dust and exhale an exclamation of characters and plots and settings, I no longer have control over what they say. I’ve loaned them bits of myself to guide them through the novel, but do you know which bits? Do you? Will you assume the worst, or deny that it is possible? Would you consider that I am both or neither? “I am undefined.”

And don’t you forget it.

I can get an idea from anything. Sometimes ideas come to me out of thin air, in the middle of the night. Sometimes I write about something that happened to me or someone I know. I have favorite subjects (baseball!) and themes (Grecian Urn Theory) and character types (strong independent females) that populate my stories regularly. Actually, a great number of my story ideas are re-imaginings and extrapolations of real life. It’s both fun and therapeutic and the end result is good fiction (I hope).

My characters, all of them, have some piece of me in them. Their motivations, their mannerisms, their dreams, their nightmares… something was mine and I have loaned it to them.

Now my biggest problem is this character won’t stay in character. She’s supposed to be passive, but she keeps speaking up. At times she’s a know it all.

I think I may need the Internal Editor to come out of hiding and beat this character down. The only problem with that is then I may not get the Internal Editor to leave. She’s a pushy one.

I did my job. I took care of my babies. I kept the house from completely falling into disrepair. But November came and all I had were the basics, the undistinguished memories of one day flowing into the next.  I wanted to enjoy the falling leaves. And carving pumpkins. I wanted to drink some apple cider and take a hayride. I blinked and the moment was gone.

So here it is November, and I am trying to slow things down. But I don’t know if it’s possible to slow life down. I think that’s part of getting older. I remember how long the school day, the school year, felt when I was a kid. Now I feel like I’ve just dropped my kids off and school when I’m picking them up, and the school year is flying by.

November shall be savored.

The stitch marker in the middle is where I’m considering a bit of embellishment. Originally I wanted to work an intarsia snowflake there, but when choosing between working in the round and working instarsia, dpn’s won out. So now I’m thinking about doing a little duplicate stitch (also called Swiss darning) to get the same effect.

Whatever I decide, I first need to finish paw number two, which should be easier now that there’s a bit of a chill in the air. There’s something a bit odd about knitting hats and mittens and gloves in summer.

Jake was in preschool when he had his first encounter with a Sox fan. “Mama, are the Cubs my team?” Yes, baby, they are.  “But K- says the Sox are better. He won’t play with me because the Cubs are my team.”

What’s a mother to do?

Well, I’m teaching The Boy to be a good sport. I tell him that when he’s confronted by one of these self-righteous little buggers (as he was today) to just shrug it off and say, “I guess we don’t agree.” I don’t know if that’s the right tactic to take in the baseball world of little boys, but he sure makes me proud that it’s not my boy out there putting other kids down.

So today Anna comes from with a little booklet of environmental words that she’s supposed to read to me. She says her teacher told her to sound out the words if she didn’t know them. Turns out she was only familar with one word: Cheerios. Everything else — Hamburger Helper, Velveeta, Lucky Charms — were things she’d never seen before because I’ve never had them in the house. I’m certain she will be able to read without the ego boost of easy environmental words, but there’s a bigger question here. Are my children being deprived of American food icons? Is it a bad thing that they don’t know about Hamburger Helper? And are there really that many people who use Velveeta that it can be considered an environmental word?

Just a thought.

For me, I like to write somewhere familiar, but private. When I lived with my parents, I wrote in my room. On the floor, on my bed, at my desk, in a pink Queen Ann chair. In my first house with Diver Dan in Kansas, I wrote in the dining room or on the back deck. Now I’ve claimed the sitting room off our bedroom as my space, and I write at a desk facing the windows (I promise, no stories about squirrels!).

My refusal to go Walden like these writers is because (gasp) I don’t take my inspiration from nature. Sure, spring makes me slow down and traispe through the mud, but I’m most likely headed to a baseball field to sit on the bleachers and daydream about baseball stories (but I do that any time I see a baseball field). And winter’s just cold.

So where does my inspiration come from? Random things. A name overheard at the airport. The smell of new books. Pictures. A good workout. Stuff I wrote years ago. And none of it is tied to the season or the sight of squirrels frollicking out my window.

And speaking of stuff I wrote years ago, it seems that I’ve been inspired in spurts. 1987 was a prolific year, as were 1995 and 2000. The years inbetween? Well, that’s when I worked on the ideas that I had in my banner years, and, as I told that college professor when he asked why I didn’t have more to show him after the summer break, I was living life. And now that I think about it, that’s really where my inspiration comes and why I could never isolate myself from the world:

Living my life inspires me to write.