snarky husband | Beth Hull

Too Many Notebooks

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Beth Hull

You might as well face it, you’re addicted to notebooks.

I remember being nine and putting “notebooks” and “diaries” on my birthday and Christmas wish lists. We’d go to the drugstore and I’d salivate over a pink, three-subject, college-ruled, spiral-bound notebook (still have that, although the cover came off). And I’ve rhapsodized about old diaries here.

But now, as I outline Books 2 and 3, as well as craft pitches for various ideas I’ve had over the last year, I’m finding old ideas everywhere!

The problem with this, is that the reverse is also true: I can’t find anything! A few days ago (and I posted this on Twitter), I said to Homes, “Where is that prophecy I wrote?” His response: “In a big vault, with rows and rows of other prophecies, trapped in spheres.”

I never should have made him read Harry Potter.

There’s a line in Zero Effect that goes: “Now, a few words on looking for things. When you go looking for something specific, your chances of finding it are very bad. Because of all the things in the world, you’re only looking for one of them. When you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good. Because of all the things in the world, you’re sure to find some of them.”

So true.

Clark thinks it’s too many notebooks, too. She bats at them in disapproval.

So what do I do? Something must change because I’m going bonkers trying to find pitches I may or may not have written months ago, and prophecies I apparently didn’t write months ago (because I read through six months’ worth of diary angst, obsession, and drivel, and never found the stinkin’ prophecy), and random scraps of ideas and half-formed Blake Snyder beat sheets. Maddening, I tell you.

And I LOVE Scrivener and always will, but there’s something grand about opening a notebook and jotting down ideas. There’s no screen involved, and my eyes thank me for that. And I can curl up on the couch more easily. It’s peaceful.

So…maybe limiting myself to a set number of notebooks? Say, seventeen?

PS: In the middle of writing this post I went to Target and bought two more notebooks. It’s a disease. I rationalize the purchase by exclaiming, “Back to school clearance!” but in truth, disease.

Maverick – Instrument of My Destruction

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Beth Hull

I don’t want to complain.

Why is it that whenever someone says that, they follow it with a lot of complaining?

So let’s talk, instead, of the third trimester of a woman’s pregnancy. The third trimester has a firm, distinct purpose, and it isn’t what doctors may tell you, some scientific mumbo-jumbo about the baby growing and developing. No. The purpose of the third trimester is to put the mother (or “host,” rather) through so much discomfort that she actually begins to look forward to, and happily anticipate, the painful ordeal of childbirth.

Welcome to the third trimester, sucka.

Two nights ago, when I tried to heave myself over in bed like the large sea mammal I am beginning to resemble, I felt a very intense pain in my pelvis. Later that morning, I had a conversation with Homes:

Ever-Suffering Mother: Homes, I feel like someone took a hammer to my pelvis last night while I slept.

Snarky Husband: I didn’t think you’d notice.

Ever-Suffering Mother: And then they pieced the bones back together with screws.

Snarky Husband: I used the tiny ones.

The pain could have been a hammer-and-screw-wielding Snarky Husband, or it could have been my new Just Dance 3 game. But more likely, it was Maverick.

About Maverick. We like to give our unborn children nicknames in this family. Before we learned Z was a girl, we called her Perry. Short for “Parasite.” And even though we know this one’s a boy, we still haven’t decided on a name. So for the time being, I’m calling him Maverick.

(Cue jet engine sound effects.)

Highway to the danger zone!

But after the broken pelvis incident he gets a subtitle. Now he’s Maverick: Instrument of My Destruction.

(It’s either that, or Renesmee, after the famous literary half-vampire baby freak who famously tore apart her own ever-suffering mother.)