Hello again.

It’s been a while, which seems to be how I start every blog post.  I am back, at least for today, with goals to write more (as always).   Lately, other than multiple deadlines, I have been going through “some things”.  “Having issues”.  Cryptic enough for you?

We will boil it down to, “taking care of parents”, and for now, we’ll leave it at that.  I am probably saving it for the dramatic memoir worthy of the Oprah Book Club.  Although the ship for Oprah books has sailed, since she has stopped telling America what to read.  But at this point, I can tell stories that would make James Frey ask if I was full of shit. And things just keep getting weirder.

But, aside from all the drama, I have been saving up a few stories that are blog worthy.  I went to the RT convention and The Chicago Spring Fling Conference, and had a good time at both, meeting several fans.  Shout out to Daria!

You probably thought I’d forgotten you.  But you totally made my day at that signing.

And now, for the rest of the story.

#2 son, Sean, is due back from college tomorrow, and will be returning mostly in one piece.  And with most of the money he left home with.  In our last conversation, he told me he did not need more phone minutes because he has “13 texts left” before he runs out of time.

My apologies to his girlfriend, but I seem to have raised one of the cheapest human beings alive.  Although they seem to be well suited.  They spent one date together in the freezing cold, waiting for a pizza place to open, and both won a year’s supply of pizza coupons.  And she went willingly.

Sean told me that, at one point, he took off his glove and was convinced he had frostbite.  And then realized that it was chocolate from a brownie on his hands and not blackened flesh.

So it’s all good then, I guess.  He is eating for free, and still has all his toes.

But before we turned him loose, we seem to have forgotten one lecture.  Ever seen Teen Wolf?  It is an awful movie, except for one line, which, as I remember it is:

Never play poker with a guy named after a city.

This rule is good for most betting.  Realize that, when  something seems like it can’t lose, there has to be a catch.  So if, in my son’s case, you have never seen the track team’s steeple-chaser run, you probably shouldn’t bet on him at all, much less betting against him.

Or maybe, after growing out your hair for a year, until it reaches ridiculous lengths and is do thick and curly that it makes the labradoodle jealous, maybe…

Just maybe…

You will lose your hair in a bet.

With my son in a tank t-shirt with his nearly shaved head, Sean feels he is 30% more likely to commit a hate crime.  Not with a Nerf gun, you’re not.  Although he does kind of look like he’s seeking a summer internship in a meth lab.

Since no one was close to the chosen title Two Wrongs Make a Marriage I threw everybody’s name in a hat and had objective (or is that apathetic?) #2 son pick some names.

Cristine C, send me an e-mail with your contact info, and I will send you

The Ladies in Disgrace trilogy.

Likewise,

Deililly

and

Dori

Send me addresses and I will send you each a copy  of Lady Priscilla’s Shameful Secret (or the book of your choice).

And thanks for playing!

I spent the month of February at the doctors.  For no particular reason, other than that I am a fan of preventive and diagnostic medical care.  So I go all the necessary pokes and prods and tests to prove that I am good to go for another year.

The final result?  I am healthier than I have any right to be.  Everything is normal, or damn close to it.  Medically normal, anyway.  Still crazy after all these years…

But I need to lose weight.  I announced that going in, to save the medical professionals time.  My favorite LPN replied that she asks “How can I help?” instead of telling people that they need to go on a diet, because they already know.

And she’s right.  It’s not like any fat person goes to the doctor, steps on the scale and goes “#$%#$%%$# where did that come from?  I was 120 pounds when I woke up this morning.”

Any way.  I decided to take action in advance of the appointment, and dragged my husband onto Nutrisystem for a few months.  And I am sure it will be only a few months, because I am traveling in April (see my updated appearance page). And if I am still eating out of little plastic trays and moisture sealed bags, you had all better keep out of my way.  I will be so hungry by then that I will leap over the autographing table and savage you like a wolf.

It’s hard to get noticed at RT because the place is so big and so busy.  But I’m betting the Regency historical author in the M aisle, chewing on a bloody bone, would make all the authors behaving badly blogs.

Let us say that, after a month, the pair of us left in casa ‘almost totally cheese-less’ are smaller, but a little sensitive to the presence of food.  When anything with fat or flavor passes by, our heads come up to track the scent like we are posing for National Geographic.

This morning, my breakfast was a protein shake, and a patty that did not have the nerve to call itself sausage.  I share an office with my husband, and was sitting at my desk, hunched protectively over the little thing.

Between us is the dog, who is a bag of bones under a cloud of hair and cannot spare a pound.  In the last month, his begging has taken on an air of desperation.  I should probably order him a pizza just to keep up with his metabolism.

On the other side of the room, the DH’s chair spun to face me.  “What are you eating?”

I waved the empty plate at him.  “You can smell it?”

DH:  “It smelled like sausage.  Or maybe urine.”

ME:  “ So you wanted to know if I was having breakfast or had wet my pants?”

DH”  “Yep.”

ME:  “It was a maple flavored.  Kind of sweet.  If it was the other,  I’d have had to be diabetic.”

In other news:

A title for the next book has been chosen:

Two Wrongs Make a Marriage

So, no one called it.  But it matters not.  Thanks for playing, and I will gather the names this week, and give away some books.

This week, the fish went belly up.

In summer, I have a pond full of goldfish.  Once you start having a pond, it is kind of hard to stop.  A pond without water is called a hole.  It would need to be drained, filled in, planted, etc.  And of course, there are the fish.  I assumed, the first year I did this, that raccoons would use this as their personal live bar, and I would be replacing them several times a year.  I was actually on my second school of fish in 17 years, although all but one of the seven I had left in fall were born right in my front yard.

It seems, if you give four goldfish enough space and enough food, you come back and find you have forty goldfish.

But this year,  they did not survive the winter, which is spent in a stock tank in the basement.

Oh, well.  In spring, I will have to decide if it is worth the effort to get more, or if I should stick to plants.

But within a few hours of my DH’s official declaration of aquatic death, we had seven new animals ready to take their place.

I came home from a trip to Madison, and as I neared the house I could see, in the distance, something moving around by our mail box.  As I got closer, I could see that it was a group of somethings.  LARGE somethings.

Cows.

Did you know that, if you are driving a Prius, you can get quite close to a herd of cows without spooking them?  Gotta love that electric engine.  But once I was a few feet off from them,   I kind of ran out of ideas.  Although I had uncles who were dairy farmers, the one we visited most often, Uncle Freddy, would not allow me to see the cows.  He said they were sensitive and would give less milk, if I went near them.

I was never sure if this meant that all Holsteins were drama queens, or if there was something about me, personally, that would dry up a cow.  To this day, I do not take chances.  I stay as far away from the neighbor’s cows as I can, not wanting to be responsible for the economic collapse of the area.

But there was no avoiding these cows.  They were right in front of me.  If I got out of the car, they would likely run away.  I could not exactly abandon the new car in the middle of the road while I went to get help.  My husband was not answering the home phone or the cell. I did not have the phone number for the neighbor who probably owned them.

I put the hazards on.

The cows stared at me.

I honked the horn.

The cows looked mildly indignant, wandered across the  road, and down into the ditch.  Then, they found our empty pasture, which is surrounded by a broken down barbed wire fence used for keeping the weeds inside from mixing with the weeds in the yard.

The leader stomped down the weakest point and led her friends inside.  They made themselves at home, penned in by nothing stronger, as far as I can tell, then Merrill hospitality.

Shortly after, the neighbors showed up on four wheelers, and herded them back up the hill to their home.  This is what ‘cowboys’ look like in Wisconsin.  They are as likely to be female as male, they ride ATVs for work and horses for fun.  And they wear winter coats and sensible rubber boots that manure will wash off of.

And they call, after to apologize when part of their herd has run through your yard.  To this, I laughed.  We are not much for gardening.  There is not much of our land that would not be improved by having a herd of cows trample it.  But I expect the dog will have an interesting time tracking them.  Labradoodles are easily amused.

Where do your ideas come from?

The boring answer is, the ideas come when my subconscious, or barely conscious mind starts making connections between random scraps of information I’ve picked up, keeping my eyes open and absorbing my surroundings.  I think Stephen King describes it, probably in “On Writing”.  He’s driving down an empty street, and asks himself where the people are, and comes up with an entire book.

It’s like that.

As a writer, you keep your eyes open, ask yourself a lot of WHY questions and don’t discard any of the answers (no matter how stupid) until you find one you like.  Basically: brainstorming.

Writers come up with lots of ways to describe the part of them that does this.  Crusie has girls in the basement. I’ve heard Barbara Samuel talk about the Goddess.  Some people talk about the Muse.

Damn, I hate the muse.  She is a contrary bitch who is never around when you need her.  She’s the roommate who eats all the food in the fridge and then is late with the rent.  She is prone to wild mood swings, she drunk dials you when you are too busy to talk, and she is always off with some other writer when you are ready to have a girl’s night in.

This is why I have something more practical.

I have a hamster.  Hamsters don’t do much other than eat, chew and run on the exercise wheel.  And occasionally drive around in KIAs, looking for robots to have LMFAO dance battles with.  Watch out for this breed.  This is really more of a wangsta hamster.  Or Hamsta.  Fun, too undisciplined for this analogy.

Get a regular, naked, hamster, and hook a generator and light bulb to the exercise wheel.  Run him ‘til the light come on.  Hey, Presto!  You have an idea.

So the actual question is “How do I get a hamster?”

(You already have one.  It’s your subconscious)

“I think my hamster is dead.  What do I do now?”

Your hamster is not dead.  It is asleep.

Have you cleaned the cage? (See previous post about getting rid of toxic things in your life that are sucking time, and making you worried and miserable.)

What are you feeding it? All writers will tell you to read.  The ones who say it loudest are men with wives to take care of their small children, buy groceries, balance the checkbook and keep the house.  I am not saying you shouldn’t read. I’m admitting it is hard to find time to do it.  So:  Read.  Watch TV.  Watch movies. Observe. These are all stories, and they can all teach you plot structure.

Watch the real life, too.  It is good for character, conflict and scene, but it blows for full plot development.  Fiction has to make sense.  Real life does not.

If you want to have a live hamster, you don’t get to sleepwalk through life.  Be aware of your surroundings, and look for patterns. You are going to use those patterns to create stories.  You give everything to the hamster, and let him chew on it for a while.

What is your hamster’s schedule? You can train a dog, but a rodent is going to try to train you.  When you get an idea, take note of what you are doing?  Are you in the shower?  Half asleep?  Driving?  It is often going to be while doing repetitive actions and it has something to do with increasing gamma brain wave activity.  (Seriously people.  This is chemistry and biology, not miracles.)

You have to learn to store these ideas, and move the recording of them to desk time.  I just remember my stuff.  Write it down if you have to.  Record it on your phone.  But if you are actually driving, for God’s sake, keep your hands on the wheel.

But once you have the kernel of an idea, repeat it to yourself until it sticks, adding a little more detail each time.  You don’t need an entire book.  Start with a scene and work out from there.

Now it is time to move these ideas to paper (or, since this is the 21^st c, the computer).    You need to develop some sensory triggers that say to the hamster “Time to run”.  Light a candle.  Wear lucky socks or a soft sweater.  Play the same music, over and over again, until you can’t hear it any more.  If it is Party Rock Anthem, check to see if your hamster is wearing a hoodie.  Then take his car keys away.

Michael Crichton used to eat the same food for lunch every day, for an entire book.  I’ve done this for some books.  Not only does it help with concentration, it removes that troublesome “What’s for lunch?” question.  Michael had someone to bring him the lunch.  Most of us do not.

What I’m suggesting is basically self hypnosis.  Every time you have writing success, take note of your physical environment, and tell yourself that the two are related.  Repeat the conditions over and over until you begin to associate lighting a candle, having a chicken sandwich (or in my case, doing an online jigsaw puzzle) with beginning to write.

Try to have several cues.  You don’t want to become so dependent on any one thing that you get writer’s block every time you run out of matches, or have to throw your sweater in the wash.

So now you know. Ideas come from hamsters.  Kind of makes you wonder why so many writers are cat people.

First off, a commercial.  If you want a chance to win a Kindle Touch and a copy of Susan Mallery’s next book BAREFOOT SEASON or a bunch of books, including one by me, Click here to enter The Bouquet of Books contest:

www.susanmallery.com/members/contest.php

You’ll need to join Susan’s Members Only area to enter, but it’s fast and it’s free! Enter now!

Now back to answering questions about writing.

Do you hear voices in your head?  Do your characters talk to you?

Yes.

Because all writers are crazy.

And hoards of them are headed towards me right now, to argue (perhaps violently) that they are perfectly sane, thank you very much.  And that I have no right to project my problems onto them.

“Mmmhmmm”  I say, nodding skeptically.  “You either have a problem, or you are in denial.”

But let me amend.  All writers are crazy (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

In 50 years, I’ve had at least three careers I am willing to count.  First, I worked in professional theater, as a first hand in a costume shop.  That’s a job title about as confusing as key grip.  I was in charge of stitchers (non sexist seamstresses) and supervised by a cutter (who did pattern making and draping).  Despite their titles and mine, I did the actual cutting and stitching of fabric.  And occasionally pattern making, tailoring, etc.

A lot of people I met were, shall we say, theatrical. Temperamental, moody, given to excess.  Every costume shop I worked in had a bottle of vodka somewhere, to get the smell out of costume arm pits.  And because it was good with orange juice.  We had no logical explanation for the beer in the fridge, or tequila…

Theater attracted a certain personality type.

Next, I became a librarian.  I used the part of my theater brain that had the patience to sew beads onto hems that would probably get stepped on, and work for hours over costume details that were too small to be seen by the audience.  In short, I used the OCD, anal retentive, got-to-do-it-right and there-is-only-one-right-way part of my brain.  Because librarians are a little nuts, too.

Not very, of course.  Librarians are the sanest of the bunch.  Although I heard that there was a shelver at the main branch who was autistic, and really good at his job (as long as you didn’t want to make eye contact).  And then there was the guy that did my inventory, who went back home and filled his apartment with gas cans, and…

Let’s just say, I only met him once.

Like theater, certain types of people are drawn to library science.

Now, I am a writer.  I use the theater part of my brain to be wildly creative and emotional.  I use the librarian half of my brain to be picky, technical, hyper-critical of my own work.  And when I am in the thick of a story, the plot and dialog are running as a continual sound track in my head.  At its best (or worst) I can shut it off.  At its worst (or best) it is like having a TV on in the next room, turned up loud enough to distract you from the people standing right in front of you.  And that TV is tuned to a really interesting show, while your family only wants to talk about boring stuff (like what you’re making for dinner and why it has to be pizza again).

Like the other two jobs, there are aspects of my work day that can be treated with psychotropic meds.  But writing has both other jobs beat, in the smorgasbord of mental illness.  Normally, if you tell a therapist that you spend your day disassociating from reality, talking to people who aren’t there, and laughing and crying over things that haven’t actually happened, they will write you a scrip, or at least begin furiously scribbling notes on your file.

Because people who are 100% sane don’t do that.

I don’t envy them their rationality.  It must be very boring. And it is probably lonely to have one person in your head instead of a whole bunch of imaginary friends.   And really, now that I have learned that I am ‘a writer’ I am much more sane and balanced than I used to be.  I spend a lot of time rooting around in my own subconscious, trying to understand myself, and the people who I am making up.  I also spend more time trying to understand the real people right in front of me.  I bleed off some of that excess emotion and fantasy, and can clear my head for reality.

And I am a good ways ahead of my mother, who had a really good imagination as well.  Which is my way of saying she was, totally psychotic.  When she made something up, she believed it was real.  I can separate fact from fiction.

And then sell that fiction to pay the mortgage.

For those of you who are now worrying that you are either too crazy or not crazy enough to be a writer, my next post will be on the care and feeding of the subconscious AKA “Where do your ideas come from?”

In another of my series of examples on ‘what not to do’ I’ve written a book that can’t be titled or described.

Not really.  I’m sure we’ll come up with something eventually.  But my editor says in the acceptance letter , “…this story is quite simply mad if you try and explain the plot to anyone (I know because I have tried!) “

She also says it is “fabulously, amazingly brilliant!”  Figured I’d better add that on there, so you didn’t think I’d gone totally off the rails.

But neither one of us has any ideas for a title.  I am seldom any damn good at them.  My working titles have been

“The actor book”   (like ‘The blind guy book”.  But, you know, with an actor!)

“The Actor and the Lady” (because the finished manuscript needed a header.  But someone should erase that immediately.  Ugh.)

And

“Jack and Cyn”  (Because the character’s names are less offensive to the eye than any of my other attempts.)

So, I am turning the project over to anyone who is reading this blog.  To sweeten this deal, I will give a signed copy of the “Ladies in Distress” trilogy (as soon as I have all three books myself) to the person who can come up with a keeper.  If we don’t use anything, I’ll throw the names in a hat and give away some free books.  But I could sure use some help.

Here is what I can tell you, to get you started.  And believe me, if I try to give you the whole plot, we will be here all day.  It is incredibly complicated.

The hero is an actor named Jack Briggs, who has been hired by an earl to play his heir.

So Jack is pretending to be John, Viscount Kenton.

The heroine is named Cynthia.  Her family calls her Thea, but Jack thinks of her as Cyn.  She is a girl of upstanding moral character and impeccable manners, except for… well… tons of things.  But she wants to be impeccable, and is trying very hard.

This is a marriage of convenience, with trickery on both sides.  She thinks she’s marrying money.  So does he.  They are both wrong.  The villain has all the money.  And they swindle it out of him.  Set an episode of “Leverage” in the Regency.  This is my book.

There is more to it than that, of course.  But we can’t put it all on the cover.  We have to save something for the inside.

So:  Any good ideas?

Any bad ideas?

And some people are just plain misguided, or perhaps creepy.  And they come up with things like this.

Twisted Christmas

This is a lousy picture, since we were on our way to church, and I couldn’t exactly stop dead, get out of the car and march up on a strange lawn to get a better shot.  I did not want to meet the people that put these up.

What you have here is two sets of children’s snow clothes, stuffed, with foam wig heads in the hoods, so that blank white faces stare out at you.  Though the bodies are toddler size, one figure has a pair of adult women’s figure skates slung over  its shoulder.

I am guessing that the blades are very sharp.  And perhaps covered with the dried blood of the last person to get too close.

Any Doctor Who fans out there?  Because what I am seeing is this:

Somebody is using Autons as Christmas decorations.

Sure, it’s cute.

Until the shooting starts, and your phone cord tries to strangle you.  And you realize that the Dcotor is on hiatus.

How do I wedge some writing into my busy schedule of knitting and watching Downton Abbey? (Which is what I did today. Watching British TV actually counts as research, if you write British historicals.  So is reading romance novels, It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.)

It helps that it is now my job.  The pressure of contracts, bills and deadlines keeps me on track.  I get up and go to work every day, just as if I had a ‘real job’.

But how did I find time to write when I was working on a stack of unsold and unsale-able manuscripts and had no deadlines but the ones I set for myself?

I wanted to.  So I did it.  There is a little bit more to it than that.  But not much.

This is probably a strategy from Jenny Crusie, since I was following her around the internet, back in the early days, trying to pry as much advice out of her as I could. I’ve personalized it a bit, of course.  But she deserves the credit.

First make a list of all the top 5 things you really care about.

I’ll give you a hint.  There should probably be some people on this list.  Or maybe some animals. Things that are going to die if you don’t take care of them are actually more important than writing a book.

Until “Writing a book” is in the top five, you will probably not do it.

If you can’t get it into the top 5?  That’s OK.  It’s proof that you are busy, and that your life is full.  Some things, like small children, will not be on that list forever.  You’ve got to grab that time while you can.  The book will wait.

But it is possible to write while having small children.  I decided to become a writer in 1999, when my youngest was six.  I sold in 2005.  I never said it was fast or easy.  Just possible.

But suppose you still want to start a novel this year?  And writing is in your top five, and really important to you.  But your life is insane?

Make a list of five things that are part of your life right now, that you really hate.  Stuff that is sucking energy and money, wasting time, and making you miserable.  If it helps, calculate the actual cost of those things, in money and time.

Now dump them.

Your children will not become delinquents if you buy brownies at the bakery.  You do not have to be the chairman of every committee.  If you are involved in an activity that will collapse if you aren’t there?  Then congratulations!  You are the captain of the Titanic. It is not going to end well for you.  Get out now.  Run for your life.  I mean it.  Even if you aren’t writing a book.  Make some excuse and pass the buck.  Delegate.  Get out from under.

Because to be a writer, sometimes you have to seem like a selfish bitch.  Quit something on your bottom five.  Quit a couple of somethings. Teach the kids to cook.  Lower your standards.  Use that time and energy to write.  Because while you can farm out things like housework, you have to write the book all by yourself.

I’d already given up on a lot of things before even starting.  Never was much of a cook or housekeeper.  Also not all that good at holding a full time, demanding job.  So what was on my bottom five?

I gave up giving a damn about what people thought.  For example, my first plan was not to get published until anyone who might be shocked, embarrassed or offended was dead.  Over a decade later, everyone is still alive, despite the fact that I wrote “Seducing a Stranger” and “Virgin Unwrapped”.  The world did not end.

It took some time to work up the nerve to get out of my own way.  Of course, I got my ears pierced in teenage rebellion the year I turned forty.  My father told me not to.  So I didn’t.

And then, one day, I noticed I was heading into middle age.  I was at the hair dresser, admitting that I was ‘going to do that one of these days…’

And he told me that they pierced ears, got the girl with the piercing gun, and BAM, BAM.  Then she gave me a jaded look and told me that since I had been good, I could go next door to Baskin Robbins and get an ice cream, just like all the other little girls who came into to get pierced ears.

So sue me. I’m a slow starter.  But I get the job done.

So write a book.  And then buy yourself an ice cream.

Another winter day in Wisconsin, where you can measure the temp by how long it takes your nose hair to freeze.

Today?  A while.  Which means it is probably in the teens, with no wind.  (Ha.  I am wrong.  It is 3).   And labradoodle, Havoc has gotten hold of my gloves and left enough fingers to make an obscene gesture in Britain.

Thank you all so much for looking in, and for being eager to see me.  This is probably why it seems warm and sunny today.  And thanks to Helenajust for the questions on the Livejournal branch of this blog.

From Helena:

“How (or maybe why) do you manage to continue writing when there are many different demands on your time and emotional energy?

Do you regard it as a job which you have to do to earn money, and therefore try to work so many hours a day/week or write so many words per day/week?

Or does your brain keep plotting and writing dialogue etc. while you’re busy elsewhere, so that you have to find time to put it on paper?

Or do you get withdrawal symptoms if you don’t write? Or…”

Not curious at all, are you, Helena? But excellent questions!

If I want to talk writing, this is the perfect place to start.  Someday, when I do a full day, conference workshop (probably titled, Christine Merrill:  Will she ever shut up?)  I will begin hour one with “The Writer’s Life”, why you do it, and how do you find the time.

Let us start with “Is it a job?”  I can go back to a previous post, from the day I decided to go full time:

http://christine-merrill.com/2006/11/kids-dont-try-this-at-home/‎

The truth is, I accidentally quit my day job. After turning in my second manuscript (which was months overdue)  I’d gotten a multi-book contract without warning, and went into the boss’s office to negotiate cutting back to part time.  He said “No.”  And I gave notice without even thinking.

And then went back to my desk and had a small aneurism.  Did plenty of thinking afterward.  Writing has no income guarantees.  I already knew I was no damn good at being self employed, because I’d done it with theater.  When left unsupervised I was always slacking on deadlines, and a day late and a dollar short with the results.  But then, it was just me and the DH.  Now I had two kids, a house, and responsibilities.  I was totally screwing up my life!

But apparently, I’d grown up.  As a costumer, I was a flake.  As a librarian, I was a slacker.

Probably because I was always writing romance novels at my desk.

But as a writer, I am more reliable than most airlines.  Having bills to pay helps a lot.  I don’t work, I don’t eat.  Not quite that dire, I suppose.  My husband has a job.  But treating writing as a career has turned it from pin money into a significant part of the family income.

I like to do 1000 words a day, when I am on deadline.  I consider that an easy, marathoner’s pace.  I can do it without much thought, seven days a week if necessary.   It takes between one and eight hours, depending on the scene.  I work as long as necessary to get 1000.  Then I stop and have the rest of the day to do something else.

I divide a 75,000 word book by 75, set a deadline allowing for days off, hair appointments, unplanned emergencies, etc.  And off I go.  I write crap, if necessary.  But I write.

With 365 days in a year, this equals 365,000 words, or three and a half single title novels.

In theory.

But I don’t write that much.  200,000 words, or less, is closer to the truth.  I could do more if I shot the dog, threw the cat out, divorced my husband, disowned my kids, and changed my phone number so my parents and friends could never find me.  But this would not be much of a life.  I need time to do revisions, to watch Doctor Who and Sherlock, and have some sort of personal interaction with the people around me.

For example: I had to take a 20 minute break in writing this because the cat needed to sleep on my chest.  I had to tip my chair back so she could be comfortable, and I couldn’t reach the keyboard.

I can probably talk about goal setting and responsibilities next time, since I am so good at setting priorities.