Dad comments on this blog, “So, how’s the novel coming?”

Yeah, about that…

That’s what I’m blaming for my 5-month hiatus from this blog. I was writing the novel, and the writing was getting thinner and thinner — like icing running out but you keep spreading it on the cake anyway. I knew it sucked — I didn’t know enough about the characters, their motives, the time period, nothing. But I wrote and wrote, trying to turn out a crappy first draft by the end of the year. Giving myself a self-imposed deadline.

When you’re a writer and you know what you’ve written sucks, you give it to someone else to read in hopes that maybe nobody else will notice its suckitude. But of course, they do. I gave the sucky half-written novel to Bob, in hopes that he would tell me it was a best seller, but after he read it, he disappeared. That’s always a bad sign. Because when you’re a writer, and you give someone something to read, and they love it, and they love you, they usually can’t wait to tell you that the writing is good. But when it sucks, they don’t want to tell you, so they hide for a while until they can figure out a nice way to tell you that it sucks. He was kind and never used the “s” word. He never said don’t finish it.

But I knew that it was broken and that I didn’t know how to fix it. I was so disappointed that I put the novel away. I put the blog away, I put the idea of writing away. But writing pulled at me until I had to try again. I restarted the blog when a poem nagged at me in the middle of the night.

This week I told a writing friend about the sucky novel and that I wasn’t going to finish it. She said, “Ah, finishing is overrated. If it isn’t working stop writing it. Write something else.”

That’s very freeing advice. Makes me feel relieved. Like in yoga class, when we were all doing a one-legged tree pose and falling out of it very ungracefully. The yoga teacher said, in her friendly Brazilian accent, “Ah, balance is overrated.”

I started again with something else. Just a page so far. No deadline. I showed it to Bob and he said, “This is good. Where’s it going?”

I don’t know. And I don’t know that I care. For now, that’s beside the point.

There was a story in the Wall Street Journal today about mommy bloggers who are paid to recommend items on their blogs. Sometimes they’re paid with free stuff, sometimes with real moolah.

A lot of these mommies aren’t telling their readers that they’re being paid to say how cool certain strollers, diapers and pacifiers are. And now it looks like the Federal Trade Commission may be coming up with new rules for these mommy bloggers. They may get fined if they don’t reveal to their readers that they’re getting paid for their endorsements.

So in the interest of full disclosure, I just wanted you all to know that I am NOT being paid by any of the following products/services/entities I have mentioned in this blog. This includes but is not limited to Rider-Waite tarot cards, Monopoly, tattoo artists, the Department of Homeland Security, my yoga teacher, the Beatles, yurt manufacturers, Blackberry, George Lucas, cigar makers, melty bead manufacturers and the TV show Clean House.

I am not in the blog business for the money, people. I’m in it for the fame.

Hey homey, I ain’t got no real tattoo on me. Lemme give you the 4-1-1 on dat:

1. Ain’t no gangsta
2. Ain’t no sailor
3. Ain’t no part of the tattooed generation
4. Already gots a buncha funky looking marks on my skin and getting more all the time
5. Already gots sag on my skin and don’t need no magic marker looking thingy to point it out more

But when my homegirl suggested a tattoo for my Motherguilt logo, I was all like, “Yo my playah, that’d be tight.”

I didn’t want nothing whack for my logo. Not no girly girl colors, or ponies or butterflies. Because motherhood is tough, ya know? Tattoo tough. It’s permanent. It don’t wash off. Sometimes you get stabbed in the heart and you bleed but you survive, Sista Girl, you survive.

So my homegirl came up with this logo and now I’m thinking how fly this would look tattooed across my saddlebags. It would peak out over my jeans whenever I bend over, instead of my granny panties.

Hollah back, ya’ll.