Writing isn't always easy. First, you have to know your market. Then you have to have an idea. And finally, you have to be self-disciplined enough to churn that bad boy out. Recently I decided it was time to write the Great American Young Adult Novel.

First, I researched the market. Survivalist stories are big right now, like the Hunger Games trilogy. So of course, my first task was to come up with a cool title. Something that captured the essence of The Hunger Games without blatantly plagiarizing it. The Most Dangerous Game? The Lottery? No, ripping off those stories would be too obvious, and the general public would never stand for it. The Most Dangerous Hungry Lottery? Bingo! I had a title!

Next, my novel (which I now called TMDHL for short) needed an idea. Clearly, I needed a strong central female character. I decided to make her a brunette with freckles and call her Kate. She would wash up on an island, some sort of creepy, remote island, not on any map, with monsters and polar bears and such. She needed a romantic love interest - a love triangle, really! - so I decided to have a couple of guys crash on the island, too. Let's call them Jack and Sawyer.

Wait - this all sounded a little familiar. Uh-oh! Looks like something similar had already been done! It was an easy fix, though. Kate's love triangle would now consist of Jake and Sailor. Problem solved.

Now, when writing a story, you often have to stop in your tracks to do a little research on Google. Now, I had invested six years of my life in Lost, and I still didn't know what the heck it was all about, so I turned to the internet for an explanation. Six hours later, I still didn't get it. But it did remind me of how totally hot the guy who played Sawyer was. This called for even more research, in which I discovered that he's married. Things were not going well at all.

Back to the novel. The basics of every story go like this: character, conflict, crisis, change. My characters: Kate, Jake, and Sailor. The conflict: they're stuck on a desert island with just the three of them, some polar bears, and the occasional random wild boar. Kate quickly learns how to hunt to keep them all alive. The crisis: Kate's getting a little tired of supplying all the pork chops while Jake and Sailor hang out on the beach, getting nice tans. Time to get off this island! The change: Kate builds a raft and sails off with her new boyfriend, Wilson.

Done. That wasn't so hard, right? It took longer than I thought, though, because I spent several days playing Deer Hunter: Reloaded trying to get a feel for what it was actually like to hunt wild boar. Time well spent, I feel.

There's nothing quite like the feeling you get when you've poured your heart and soul into a story and you've finally completed it. I felt like shouting "Look what I've created!" and dancing around a fire. Until I realized that I'm not nearly done, not yet. Next up is editing, making sure I didn't accidentally call Sailor "Sawyer" anywhere in the manuscript, sending it out to beta readers, reading their thoughts and suggestions, querying agents, and then waiting for TMDHL to be sold to a publishing house, go through a million rewrites and more edits, and then sell a few copies.

I'll get to that ... soon. First, I want to check Netflix to see if Lost is on streaming. I'll worry about all that other stuff later.

Writing: not the best craft for procrastinators.

None of my pants fit any more, except for one pair that I think were my sister's maternity jeans from 2000. No, I'm not pregnant - just a little, teeny bit tubby. I needed to lose weight, fast!
We have a lot of diet books in the shop, so I started poking through a few. Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution  promised that during its Induction phase, followers would lose weight, fast. Dr. Atkins warned that it absolutely, positively should not be used as a crash diet for a few weeks just to lose 10 or 15 pounds. The effects on one's health could be devastating and irreversible. Since I just wanted to go on a crash diet for a few weeks to drop about 15 pounds, it sounded like the perfect fit. Goodbye, carbs, hello, size 10 corduroys that have been giving me uncomfortable wedgies for months now!
Day 1 of Induction went fine. I ate eggs for breakfast, chicken on a bed of greens with oil and vinegar for lunch, and tuna salad for dinner. I'd picked up some Atkins caramel chocolate mousse bars for a snack, but they kind of tasted like dirt, with snail mucus dribbled on top. No problem, I had a few slices of bacon instead.
Day 2, I woke up with a massive headache. I recognized this pain - it was the same headache I get when I don't have enough caffeine. But I'd had my usual four cups of coffee yesterday - what was the meaning of this?
I was an absolute bear all morning. I yelled at Jason for driving too fast, driving too slow, driving medium speed, driving while talking, driving while listening to the radio too loudly, and for driving while breathing too loudly. (Turns out the last one was because he was fuming over my helpful driving tips, thus the breathing like an enraged bull.) I hadn't been this cranky since the first time I'd quit smoking. (The second time, I had some wonderful drugs.) I flipped through the Atkins book to find out what was wrong with me.
Dr. Atkins gently suggested that I might be going through withdrawal from my sugar addiction. This was crazy, of course. I have no such addiction, and Dr. Atkins was a LOUSY QUACK WHO WOULDN'T KNOW A SUGAR ADDICT IF IT HIT HIM IN THE FACE WITH A BANANA CREAM PIE!!!! Okay, maybe he was on to something. After all, I've eaten cake every day for the past two weeks as one or two or all three of my major meals. I often followed this with frosting straight out of the can for dessert. Maybe - just maybe - I had a problem.
I stuffed an Atkins caramel mousse bar in my mouth to see if it would help. Suddenly, on Day 2, it tasted like silky smooth chocolatey goodness. It helped for a little while, but then Jason started LAUGHING AT A PICTURE OF A FROWNY CAT ON FACEBOOK WHICH WAS JUST DUMB!!! Clearly, more Atkins bars were needed, ASAP.
I'm now on Day 3, and I'm happy to say the headache wasn't as bad today. There is a STUPID @!!@$! blizzard going on, and Jason and I are trapped in the house together all day. Gotta run - Jason's trying to force-feed me Hershey's kisses and cake. What's HIS problem?

I live in Connecticut. This statement alone explains why I was in long underwear at work last week, wore no coat on Tuesday because it was positively balmy out, and find myself today making a note to turn the heat up in the basement tonight to make sure the pipes don't freeze. If I had a time machine, I'd go back to Ellis Island and find my great-grandparents, just to whisper in their ears that the Carolinas are a lovely place to settle. (That's right. With the power to go back in time, I have no noble cause like trying to save President Kennedy. I want my ancestors to move somewhere warm.)
I have found, however, that there are certain traits Connecticut residents have that you just don't find anywhere else. So, for your enjoyment, my winter edition of "You know you're from Connecticut if..."

• You are not surprised when the snow starts falling before the leaves do.
• You get irrationally furious at people who can't drive in snow.
• You own a generator and know how to hook it up.
• You love hockey, and miss the Whalers, but you don't want to leave your warm house to actually attend a hockey game, which is why the Whalers left in the first place.
• You refer to four 40 degree days in a row in January as a heat wave.
• You throw your leftovers on top of the snow in the back yard because the coyotes look hungry.
• You're up to date on all of the latest styles in snow pants.
• At least one of your cars has 4-wheel drive.
• You think nothing of driving in a blinding snowstorm to get to Dunkin' Donuts. That's why you have 4-wheel drive, after all!

Well, I'm off to try on my new sporty pink snow pants. And if anyone has a time machine they can lend me, please let me know!