Happy to have missed my deadline(s).

Just over a year ago I had a plan.

I would write furiously for a couple of months so that my manuscript would be ready to send out to agents February 2009. I thought that this would be a great time to have my work sitting on agents' desks, because surely they would be refreshed from a Christmas holiday ready to receive new writers such as myself.

Little did I know, fourteen months later I would still be writing and a second Christmas deadline would have passed.

I was going to set a new time limit, until my friend Susan said, "Isn't the writing more important than the deadline?"

How right she was. In fact, if I had completed my first deadline, my book would have simply been a travel memoir. Instead, my writing has taken me on a journey which has led to my book's inclusion of the parallel story of my conflicting and unsatisfied desires as a woman and mother.

Although I know that my book still needs a lot of work, I am (secretly) hoping to have my manuscript sent out by April. If I can achieve this deadline it might be on the shelves by Christmas. No, I am not crazy, just full of imagination. Besides, I have to have a bestseller before Oprah ends her show!

I was on Oprah last night!

Last night I was on the Oprah Show talking about my book, a travel memoir that describes my eight month trip around the world as a single mother with two young boys (even though I am haven't actually finished writing it, acquired an agent or secured a book deal). To be honest, I wasn't physically on the show...

When I was a little girl, I would lie in bed and tell stories to myself; The subject matter would generally be about boys, which as I got older changed to men. Now that there is a complete drought on that front, my bedtime stories tend to be about future book deals (yes, for the book I have not yet completed).

These stories do not remain in my head. I lie in bed verbalizing them, speaking for all the characters and last night Oprah interviewed me. It was fantastic. I was so proud of myself. I had the audience (and O) captivated. They both loved my book. I was so confident in answering Oprah's questions.

Speaking aloud parts of my story made me realize that in comparison, my writing had become too verbal and 'wordy'. I wanted my memoir to be like a conversation to a friend, not some academic essay.

So I decided to buy a Dictaphone. I would start at the beginning of what I had already written and chapter by chapter record the stories. After comparing the recording with my written word I would change any passages that seemed too stiff.

Today I recorded pages 1-4 of my book. When I played the recording back I realized that I had real potential to work as a sex-phone worker (a good option if a book deal doesn't work out). Better go and make some more 'calls'.