Tag: The Healing Spell

Menopause

A Day in the Life of a Menopausal Writer (and Three Book Giveaways!)

Barbara Younger

The Healing Spell paperback cover

A post by writer Kimberley Griffiths Little:

A Sample Daily Schedule in a household with several adults in college, an Asperger son, three toddlers, and a Menopausal Writer:

6:00 am – Wake up freezing—if I’ve even slept in the last 3 hours or one of the kiddos hasn’t come in at 3:30 a.m. – or 1:00 a.m. Pull on warm blanket. Put in ear plugs and fit eye mask over face. Go back to sleep while hubby takes shower and heads out to work.

6:15 am – Roll over sweating. Take off blanket. Try to go back to sleep.

7:00 am – Toss and Turn and finally get up to start working on having a Productive Day.

7:05 am – Decide to check Emails, Facebook, Twitter and the daily blog roll while eating yogurt and prunes – with 1-2 toddlers in lap or wanting breakfast, etc.

9:15 am – Realize what time it is but decide to send just one more email.

9:45 am – Finish Email and rush in to start the shower. Realize I forgot to exercise so quickly lift a few weights or run through an abdominal DVD. Promise myself I will do aerobics or take a 2-mile walk tomorrow. I will lose this ten pounds. I mean twenty. Well, maybe thirty if I’m completely honest.

10:45 am – Finish getting dressed and have a rather large depressive episode that the day is already half over and “Nothing has been accomplished!!”

11:00 – Pick Self up from sobbing Hysterics on the floor and lock self into “Creative Room” to begin writing.

11:20 – Exit “creative room” to get cold drink to deal with hot flash.

11:25 – Return to “Creative room” and start working on Manuscript.

1:00 pm – Realize that it’s lunch time and go prepare food, usually leftover pizza and a Dr. Pepper. There is a reason I need to lose that annoying 30! But I’m into fast meals. More time to write, right?

2:30 pm – After nearly dying from another heat flash, drowning myself from drinking cold water and running to the bathroom every hour, I chase it down with chocolate chip cookies, and finally return to writing.

4:30 pm – Feel nearly frozen and wrap self up in my purple blanket.

Proceed to have a panic attack about the looming deadline as I worry about the 5 guest blog posts I need to write, the editorial letter I don’t understand, the late advance check, the new workshop I’m presenting in two weeks out of state that still needs tweaking, handouts, and a Power Point, that new story idea I keep twiddling with in my Shiny New Idea File, my mother’s birthday gift, the package of giveaway books sitting on my desk waiting for autographs, bookmarks, and addressing, the bills that need writing, the phone call to my sister as well as my son who is out of state at college and needs to talk since his girlfriend just broke up with him.

Tuck chin down and Keep Writing Anyway (and needless to say the heroine of the story is now in mortal peril because of the mood)! Peek at I-Pad just one more time to see if agent or editor is offering me a six figure deal or Oprah is dying to have me on her show.

5:30 pm – Establish safe route for heroine to rescue herself and go inside to prepare dinner.

7:00 pm – At conclusion of dinner, spend time with family so no one feels neglected.

7:30 pm – After spending a significant amount of time with family/special someone and watching the news or So You Think You Can Dance, I return to writing or the new pile of Emails and Blogs to read. Or Twitter. Facebook. Pinterest, Tumblr . . .

9:15 pm – After ensuring that the heroine has indeed survived, Save and Finish Writing for the day.

9:20 pm – Do the rest of the dishes, scrub counters, pick up house, check email and pop off a few more, read for a few minutes on the latest critique I’m doing, turn off lights, lock doors, see a thousand things that still need doing, stumble over toys, make tomorrow’s list of chores, phone calls, and errands, and finally prepare for bed with a great big sigh.

11:00 pm – Remove PJs because it is WAY too hot to go to bed with them on and proceed to climb into bed and go to sleep.

11:15 pm – Hate self for being so silly, replace PJ’s, add extra blanket and go back to sleep as hubby snores, blissfully unaware of anything.

Point of View From My Significant Other, Who is a Robotics Engineer:

“After being married to my loving wife for many years I have determined that Menopause has made her insane. After reviewing our in-home security cameras out of curiosity as to what she does at home all day after these many years, I was disturbed to realize that the calming image of her doing housewifely chores followed by a simple writing session was extremely inaccurate.

Years ago that may have been the case but as of late she has been mildly disturbed. She awakens and does as many women do and proceeds about the day. But without provocation she randomly participates in crazy activities such as binge eating, hysterics, stripping out of her clothes or piling on more layers than should be acceptable during the season. Out of concern for her I did some research on “Menopause” and none of the symptoms seem to compare to what she does.

My understanding is that she has a few deadlines for her writing but not enough to justify this strange behavior. I fear that I may need to seek some professional help for her.

A warning to all husbands out there: Beware the insanity of being married to a menopausal writer!”

And there you have it, folks! A Menopausal Writer living with NINE crazy people in her household . . . they simply do not understand how much chocolate I need on a daily basis to survive . . .

Many thanks, Barbara, for having me today!

Giveaway:  For a chance to win one  of Kimberley’s novels, simply enter a comment by August 25 saying you’d like to win.

Butterflies

“The first butterfly comes the day after the funeral . . . “A magical, breathtaking mystery full of loss and love, family and faith.

Circle of Secrets

“The Day I turned eleven, I found out that ghosts were real…”

The Healing Spell paperback cover

“An incantational tale of Cajun magic and gators in the bayou and of the love and silence between mother and daughter.”
Richard Peck, Newbery Award-winning author

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Kimberley Griffiths Little is a native California girl, but a current resident on a dirt road along the Rio Grande in New Mexico where she lives with her robotics engineer husband and three sons. She’s the author of The Healing Spell, Circle of Secrets, When the Butterflies Came, and the upcoming The Time of the Fireflies (August, 2014), all with Scholastic. She recently sold a YA trilogy to Harpercollins which will debut Fall 2014.

Kimberley has received the Southwest Book Award, the Whitney Award for Best Youth Novel of 2010, Bank Street College Best Books of 2011, is a Crystal Kite Finalist, and winner of the New Mexico Book Award. Kimberley is a co-founder of SPELLBINDERS, an online newsletter for Educators/Librarians/Parents and helped launch the popular Middle-Grade blog, From the Mixed-Up Files. She makes way too many cookies when she’s revising and the best MG book trailers in the universe – for reals! Check them out here: www.kimberleygriffithslittle.com.

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