Ready set write.

Last night I watched Julie and Julia. It was a pretty good movie, although it did leave me with a lingering, intense, hunger for rich, buttery foods, which was especially difficult given the current state of my refrigerator- celery stalks, carrot sticks, low fat yogurt, apples and oranges. Not that I'm on a diet or anything. I'm just in between groceries right now and only the sucky- er, healthy-food is left.

Anyways, at first I related to the character of Julie, who blogged out into that immense cyber beyond with disappointing results. I took a certain amount of smug satisfaction in seeing her flounder as a writer, thinking "I know that feeling, sister." And then, the plot twist. Suddenly she becomes inundated with messages from editors, publishing houses and literary agents, all scrambling to sign her. I felt, at that point, a little like Kathy Bates character in the movie Misery. I wanted to stand up and scream, "NO you Dirty Birdy, that's not how it happens!! That's not reality!!"

But alas, for Julie, it was her reality.

So the movie ended on a high note for both Julie and Julia, and on a low note for me. I climbed into bed, asking Geoff "Do you think I'll ever really make it as a writer?"

He answered me, and I'm pretty sure I didn't just imagine this, after a slight, almost imperceptible, moment of hesitation. "Of course you will, dear" he said with enthusiasm.

Which should have been reassuring, and perhaps it might have been. If only I did not recall that same false bravado infused into conversations like this:

"Daddy, do you think the deer that Grandpa hit with his truck will live?" (Payton)

Slight pause. "Of course he will, dear. He'll be just fine. The mother deer will take him to the deer hospital and he'll get all better." (Geoff, enthusiastically.)

Anyways.

Well whatever.

Screw Julie. And Julia as well. Although personally, no disrespect to either of them.

So then I thought, maybe I need to do what Julie did. Set a deadline. So I'm going to set myself a goal: finish the two books I'm working on in one year, which is a lot. But it's doable, if I really commit to it. Otherwise my writing is so sporadic that it just never seems to get anywhere. So my new goal: 365 days, 400 pages (typed, single spaced). My one book, The Deal Breaker already has eighty some pages. The other, Having Faith, is just started but coming along at twenty pages. Anyways, if I could just figure out how to put a little countdown dealy thing on here, I'd be set.
So anyways, I shall be going, to write.