Tag: Days Off

It’s gonna take patience and time to do it right, child.

Sara Mazariegos

Days off in the middle of the week. Last week, I had Tuesday and Wednesday off and it was so nice to have a break in the middle of the week. It gave me some much needed rest, even if I did wake up early both days to get Disney reservations. It gave me more time with Luis, which is always wonderful. And it made the weekend come sooner. The only downside is the weekend ends up feeling too brief. But then, weekends are always too brief, arent they?

I do intend to keep this in mind, though. Having days off on Monday or Friday to stretch out the weekend is good, but there’s something to be said for having the middle of the week off, too. Especially when I’ve been as tired out as I have been during this summer’s Metro construction. Only twelve more days until things go back to normal and I get to have my shorter commute back! Yes, I’m counting the days.

Spider-Man and potlucks. We were planning to see Spider-Man: Brand New Day again last weekend, but our movie theater unexpectedly closed for maintenance. I was really looking forward to seeing it again (especially not so up-close this time.) We ended up having a nice brunch instead, and watching Jaws, which was nice. There was a “Vinyl Day” at the library nearby, and I’m pretty sure it had a huge turnout because people couldn’t go to the movies. Could’ve been worse. It’s good to support your local library.

Also on Saturday, we went to our neighborhood’s block party. Luis made tostadas that were a big hit. It was nice to see everyone, but we are the neighborhood shy people, so we mostly sat quietly and ate food together. Some ladies introduced themselves and were very into talking about their fresh bean orders online, which was amusing if a bit strange. We have a friendly neighborhood. Oh wow, that’s what I could’ve called this section. “Friendly Neighborhood + Spider-Man.” D’oh!

Disney excitement. On my days off last week, I watched some YouTube videos on how to walk from our hotel to the Magic Kingdom, and how to take the Skyliner into Hollywood Studios and EPCOT. I love that there’s a video for everything these days. The hotels in the videos I found are even the exact hotels we’re staying at, so we don’t have to try to transpose the information for ourselves. There’s a delicate line between avoiding spoilers and knowing what we’re doing so we don’t arrive and feel lost. I love being in the know about stuff. It makes me even more excited. And I also feel dorky watching a ride-through Skyliner video, because it’s literally just a gondola on a line going from a hotel to a theme park gate. But I like to be prepared!

Planning our trips is sometimes more exciting to me than actually being there and doing the things. Sometimes, the being there and doing the things part is more stressful, but imagining doing the things is fun. Also, everything happens so quickly when we’re actually there. But in the twoish months leading up to it, I can daydream about all of the things we’ll do. At the same time, I cannot wait to be at Disney again and experience the new things and the old things we love!

Telling myself the story first. One of the more frustrating things to get in my head is that writing the first draft is me telling myself the story first. It comes out as the messiest version. It’s basically improv so far, making it up as I go along with the aid of some notes/prompts. I’m getting the thoughts and ideas written down so future me can go in and make sense of it. Then the second draft will presumably be better. And then the third draft, etc.

This is the first story I’ve written from the beginning in a long time, because the last two stories I wrote came from previously-written drafts that needed to be heavily rewritten. This time, I’m starting from scratch. And it’s scary. It’s daunting. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought, “well, this is hard. I don’t have to keep writing it.” But that is the trap! Every novel starts out in the frustrating, ‘this isn’t coming out the way I envisioned’ phase. Every author goes through this, probably with every novel they’ve published. It’s hard to imagine, and hard to feel like pushing through the self-doubt and the “grr, this needs to be better” will eventually be worth it. But I know that it will. And then I’ll have a completed novel I can be proud of.

And maybe eventually send to agents. But I’m taking the pressure off myself. For now, it’s best to focus on the enjoyment of writing and discovering things as I draft it all out.

Time to stand up and steal the show.

Sara Mazariegos

Days off. It’s funny how vacation is so needed and restful and fun, but then going back to work feels like this insurmountable burden. I guess “funny” isn’t the right word. But I’ve noticed every time there’s a holiday or a vacation from work, coming back feels like such a big deal. It doesn’t help that the system is currently down at my office and one of my monitors decided to die. That just adds to the feeling of needing a break from my break before I feel like I can work again. 😅

Elio and the loss of originality. During our long holiday weekend, Luis and I watched several movies. We watched Dreamworks’ Sinbad which was… all right. We also watched Get On Up starring Chadwick Boseman. That was quite good. And sad, since we lost him so young. He was really talented. But the main movie I wanted to write about here is Elio. I wanted to see Elio when it was in theaters, but our theater did not really give us a chance. It came out at a time when several other big movies came out, but still… Disney movies are usually out longer. I’m glad we finally saw it, and it got Luis and me thinking about how none of the action hero in space movies have been successful. Even Lightyear did poorly, and people love Buzz Lightyear.

For what it’s worth, I think Elio is very cute. The aliens are all designed uniquely, and it has little nods to other sci-fi movies like E.T. and Terminator 2. I don’t understand why people didn’t go see it, unless theaters everywhere didn’t show it for long enough. But it seems like original movies are falling by the wayside at Disney, and it’s so sad. I hope we can see Hoppers in theaters and it won’t suffer the same fate as Elio. Streaming is nice, but it’s not the same.

Limping to the end of Seeing Other People. This sounds more serious than it is. It’s taken me longer than anticipated but I’m slowly finishing up reading Seeing Other People by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’m not really feeling this one. It’s got moments, but it’s been a slog. Do you ever read a book and the words start to just roll through your brain like you’re not actually retaining any of them? I feel like that’s been happening to me with this book. It’s not holding my attention, and the plot bums me out. In the relationship part, it seems like they suddenly liked each other and I missed something. I guess not every book is for me, unfortunately even the ghost ones with pun titles.

Feedback and getting back into the writing groove. I edited my It’s A Wonderful Life-inspired novel with my dad’s notes and I’m feeling pretty good about it. We had dinner with my parents on Saturday and Mom gave me some notes as well, so I’m going to be pondering some more. Nothing major though, which is awesome. Hopefully this can be the year I actually send out query letters for it, but we shall see.

I’m going to be starting up work on the major rewrite of my Nerdfighters-inspired novel soon. As it approaches, I’m getting nervous. I haven’t taken such a long break from writing in a while. I think it was a good refresh for my brain, but I hope I haven’t lost my groove. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, though, so it’s not as if I’ll be going in with no plan. Luis read my outline and said it was good, too, so I’m also not going into it with a lot of garbled ideas. (We’ve all done that before, right?)

And before you think, “But Sara, your stories are inspired by other stories. They don’t sound very original either,” I’ll remind you that they’re inspired by, they’re not the exact same stories of anything else. It’s not even the exact story of how Luis and I met anymore. That was at least six drafts ago. C’mon.

Until next time, stay safe out there.

Do you wanna know, know that it doesn’t hurt me?

Sara Mazariegos

I had an idea for a new blogging format. Let me know what you think.

New knee pillow (am I old?) I’ve noticed my lower back and knees are often sore when I wake up in the morning, particularly when I sleep in on the weekends, so I ordered myself a pillow to put between my knees or at least legs. So far, it’s helping me sleep in a better position. I read that sleeping on your side can cause spine twisting so it’s better to separate your legs to realign your spine. But it’s awkward if I want to move, because I have to move this rectangular pillow along with me every time, and every time I get out of bed I have to move it away. It may end up on the floor one of these days. I guess I’m too old to be naturally comfortable when I sleep now.

Days getting so dark by the time I’m on my way home. I love autumn, but I hate the daylight going away so early every day. I commute home after 5:30 so it’s always completely dark while I’m traveling. It lowers my motivation, which is especially bad because then I get home and I should be able to enjoy being home, but all I want to do is sleep. I’m looking forward to the longer days again in spring. At least there are more months of daylight in the year than months with early sunsets.

Holidays on random days during the week. Veterans Day was on Tuesday this year. It’s nice to have a break soon after a work day, but it makes it difficult to plan anything too exciting. Luis and I went to Subway and saw Bugonia before having some cake with his parents for his stepdad’s birthday. So I guess it wasn’t nothing, but being off on Monday as well would’ve been extra special. At least I only have to work three more days! A short week is always nice.

Book reading/Novel reading progress. I got some good reading time into this weekend. I would’ve gotten more if I hadn’t played The Sims 4 for two hours on Sunday, but I felt inspired to play after a long time, so it’s fine. I really like The Love of My Afterlife. It’s going along the way I figured it would, but it’s cute and funny. I’ve noticed that English romance novels are quirkier than American ones. I think English writers have a fondness for bizarre side characters that are not as common in American novels. Think about Bridget Jones’s friends. It builds out the world of the main character a little more. I like that and want to do that more in my own writing. Obviously without making my novel too silly, but the citizens of Bedford Falls are quirky characters, so I should have some funny people in my version, too.

I successfully completed my first read-through of my novel last weekend. Now I’m back into it, reading it and making notes of things to change. I started out thinking I’d only make change notes for this draft and then make a new draft copy for the actual rewrites, but I’ve started just rewriting and making the changes directly in this draft. Why wait, right? I have a lot of notes from beta readers in this draft already, so I’m using them as a guide and making my own changes as well. Hopefully, by editing and rewriting now instead of waiting until after another full reread, I’ll be finished editing this story before February.

The story is good, I just need to make it as close to great as I possibly can.