Zappos, my new e-BFF

This Christmas was the year of the shoe, y'all.


Before you get jealous, you have to understand that my slogan for Kenny would be:


Kenny Jacobson: Making everyone else's husbands look bad since 2006.


He's just THAT good. 


Every year he buys me one pair of shoes for my birthday and this year I had a pair of worn out boots so he threw in a pair for Christmas, too. (Remember, I'm not quite as spoiled as I sound because my birthday is Christmas Eve.) Anyway, this is what he got me for my birthday:

Yeah, I know. He's awesome! He picked them out all by himself!

Then he got me these boots for Christmas and while I normally go for a higher heel, these are amazingly comfortable:

For my birthday gift to myself, I bought the ones I was eyeing (even though Josi says they look like her grandmother's couch. I bet they're as comfy as that couch, too. Love them!):

Then there was a little (okay, biggish) mistake on Kenny's order from Zappos and he got a $25 credit, so I've been needing some dressy/churchy brown shoes for about a year, and I think I might get these with my birthday money from my in-laws:

To be be perfectly honest with you, prior to this shoe little binge, I hadn't bought myself shoes in at least six months. (Yeah, I know. Cry you a river.) I haven't bought myself much of anything wardrobe-wise in about that long because it's not fun shopping for clothes when I have 20 pounds to lose. But shoes . . .

Well, shoes always fit since I don't gain weight in my feet. My butt and gut always claim it before it makes it's way down there.

I've started my get-healthy plan and I figure four months is plenty to lose twenty pounds, so that's the plan. (Then I'll be jonesing for another birthday and an excuse to go on a spree once more.) I scored Turbo Fire on Craigslist for half price today, I joined two different weight-loss challenges with some money on the line, I've broken out my favorite healthy recipes, and I'm excited.

IT'S NOT A NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION, THOUGH. So don't even say that.

I only made one resolution this year: wish people Happy Birthday on Facebook. That's it.

(Okay, I did do that thing where you pick a word to focus on all year and I picked: kindness. It's going to be SO HARD being as I'm evil.)

Happy New Year!

Bust out the See's, y'all!

I passed my word count goal (75,000) on my current manuscript! Yay!!!!!!!

I have no idea how many words I have left now.

And I don't know what sound effect to use for that.

I know for dang sure that I just earned some chocolate and a pedicure, though.

Penance for publicly whining

Do you know what happens to a girl who is blessed to take an awesome Alaskan cruise and then has the gall to whine about the sub-par buffet selections? Do you?

She gains seven pounds in two weeks. Ha! ha! ha! ha!

The following section contains a bunch of swear words that I would say if I still remembered how to swear except I don't because I'm too virtuous for that anymore: #^#&(*#__)#Q27@^$(^&%^%!$^&()(#%^$&#*#)$@&@$_%*$*56@@*##(%&#%#&()#@@&!*##$*&$#()$.

That's what I get. I sure told me.

So the counterattack begins. Gym everyday (I'll be seeing you soon, personal trainer/Spanish Inquisitor Zeb), healthy cooking (must buy stock in Jennie O turkey), and my favorite: rewards!

I pick:

2 pounds: Yo Yum Yum frozen yogurt, with mochi balls!
5 pounds: Yo Yum Yum and a manicure/pedicure
7 pounds: Yo Yum Yum, a new shirt, and we can eat out once
9 pounds: Yo Yum Yum
10 pounds: Shoes or an outfit

Is it bad that most of my weight loss goals include food? That's probably not how it's supposed to go. &%$*#%^!

I don't care! I get a frozen yogurt treat every time I lose two pounds and who's going to stop me? Oh, and don't tell Zeb. He's big and scary and will glower at me from beneath his unibrow and the frozen yogurt will taste like dirt if he knows I'm eating it. Shhhhh.

Off I go to eat my instant oatmeal because a half pound of crisp bacon from the cruise buffet every morning? Bad idea.

I did it!

I wrote a book! I finished it! At exactly 11:59, I put the last period on the last sentence.

It's done. My name is Melanie Ann Bennett Jacobson and I wrote a book!

10,000 reasons not to write

I have ten thousand reasons not to write today and 1-9,999 are not that my eight month old has appropriated my laptop as his new toy. Or tried to. I am fiercely protective of it.

Hm. Of her. I just decided my laptop is a girl and her name is Bootsie Smythe-Winterford, because she is finicky today. Some days she is called Susan or Jody, but not on high maintenance days. Today is one of those days (go away, Windows Live Mesh update). However, I am careful to treat her gently or else I fear revolt and then I would have to call her things that are barely thinkable and definitely not printable.

No, my ten thousand reasons not to write are the last ten thousand words in my manuscript. The ideas are not the problem. I know exactly where the plot is going (which is more than I can say for when I started). I know these characters intimately, I have the voice down cold, and I'm excited to give these characters the happy ending they deserve. The problem?

Here's an image to blow your mind: in Lois Duncan's Stranger With My Face, (I read this in 8th grade), a character explains that if you had a granite wall that was ten thousand miles long and ten thousand miles high and a bird came by and brushed it with its wing once every ten thousand years, by the time it eroded, that would be like one second of eternity.

That's about how these last ten thousand words are going.

Which is weird because I'm writing them a million times faster than the first ten thousand words, when I didn't know my characters very well and had only a vague sense of what would happen. I'm averaging 1,500 words a day and they're coming pretty easily. And yet every time I chisel at my word count granite, I feel like I'm wielding nothing more than a feather and the end of the story will never come.

I know I'm only guessing what my final word count will be, but I doubt very much that my projected 80,000 will suddenly morph into 110,000 while I blink and try to figure out why. This feels like an 80,000-ish word story and I've actually got less than 7000 words to go. So...

I think these last words are going slow for a couple of reasons. One is that I'm anxious to get to rewrites because I know where the flaws are now. But I won't let myself do that because revisions are often my excuse for not advancing the plot so I have placed a temporary ban on them. Another reason I think it's going slowly is because like the hour before bedtime on Christmas Eve, time warps and stretches when you really want something. And I really want to say I finished my novel. This is one of the biggest goals I've ever set for myself and I can't wait to acheive it.

No, really...I can't wait.

And maybe the last reason I'm seeing these last ten thousand words yawn before me is because although I love these characters and had fun telling this story, I've got another one percolating that I want to start and it seems just a tidge more exciting to me right now. I'm totally cheating on my current characters with my future characters in my imagination.

But this WIP is taking forever! So I guess I better go take another swipe with my feather because like it or not, it's the only way the last ten thousand words are going away.

A Milestone

Today I reached the fifty thousand word mark on my novel. 50,000! And it feels amazing.

I've said for years that I would write a book. I have no ambitions to set the world on fire. I was always the girl to invent conversations in my head where I came off sparkling and witty. In my imagination I said just the right thing to the guy I liked and even better, he said exactly the right thing to me. I always had the perfect comeback for the mean girl in math class or the neighborhood bully. I was lucky: maybe 30% of the time I came up with the right comment in real life, and 50% of the time I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut. But the remaining 20%....

That forms the crux of comedy and tragedy in my life. Sigh.

When I decided to write a book, I picked a genre I like to read, which is light-hearted romance. I read plenty of heavy stuff and thought-provoking literature (I have proof!). But what really tickles me is when I pick up a book where the characters make me laugh out loud and the girl gets her guy in the end. Or vice versa.

And then the idea of a red-headed girl named Sandy came to mind when I was trying to doze a few months ago. She wouldn't go away so I started writing that novel I always meant to get to and it turns out she's the sassy roommate to my stubborn and funny protagonist, Jessie. And Jessie's story has me hooked, too. So I write.

It hasn't always been easy but since I set my daily goal, it's finally become consistent. I'm becoming more self-aware as a writer, too, and each chapter improves a little on the one before. I don't know if when I'm done what I have will be good enough to be published. If it gets picked up, I'll throw a party to celebrate that will have the neighbors complaining for months.

But 5o,ooo words deserves a celebration, too. So I walked over to Steve's Market on the corner and picked up a little bag of Doritos and some chocolate donuts and now I'm going to settle in to finish out season 3 of Battlestar Galactica with my husband.

You know what? It's going to be a very good Friday night.

My Secret Writing Weapon....

My secret writing weapon is....baby crack, otherwise known as a crib mobile. (Is that pronounced like the gas station or the Alabama city?)

Every day my seven month old starts jonesing for his fix sometime around 11. So I gather him up, nuzzle his little neck, carry him upstairs, pop his binky in, and lay him down. Then he watches in sleepy-eyed anticipation as I wind up the music on his mobile. In months of doing this, it has failed only once but by then we were at DefCon 5 and I was ready to start scrambling the fighters on an intercept course. (The metaphor falls apart at the fighters but feel free to interpret it your own way.)

The routine soothes him and he falls asleep in moments, eyes drifting closed as he watches the little animals on the mobile dance in countless circles. Those cues are what help him sleep. It's the same things, in the same order, at the same time.

I recently set a goal to write a thousand words a day. I have no idea if this is ambitious for most people, but it seemed like a stretch at the time. As a stay at home mom, my days are bracketed by my older son's school drop offs and pick ups with a few set gym times in between but beyond that....well, it's a hodgepodge of running the million different places I think I need to be, infant in tow. So like with every goal I set, I made a plan. And the plan was this: instead of baby spending his nap times in various shopping carts, surrounded by summer produce or bargain size vats of mayo or Target clearance items, he would spend it in his crib.

And while he zoned out on his baby crack, I'd apply bum glue and park my behind on my sofa with my laptop ready to go.

It worked. The simple routine we follow each day lulls baby into his nap and it eases me into writing. I've hit or exceeded my goal every day since I hatched my plan. Then there's the other part of successful goal setting: accountability. I update my webpage daily with my word count and gave close friends and family license to nag me if they don't see the numbers changing fast enough.

And to confess, it helps me with my own addiction. I'm a praise junkie. But now instead of needing fifty people to validate my content every day when I haven't even had a chance to edit it and put my best stuff in front of them, I find praise in the act of writing and producing work. And I'm not forcing my gnarly rough drafts down my inner circles' throats. (I'm not even going to think about how wrong that possessive is.)