My parents and sister were down last weekend. Right before they left, my mom looked at me and said, "You seem happy." And she's right -- I am happy fairly consistently right now.

I would say I'm in a good place, only I no longer believe in good places and bad places, only places. One might think I'm happy because my novel just came out, but in actuality, I got totally anxious and angsty when I signed my contract, so good things happening for me professionally don't necessarily translate into good things happening to my mental health. I'm sure that seems ridiculous, but it happens all the time. Look at how many people -- particularly creative people -- fall apart a little right after they get a break. I think change is hard no matter what type of change it is, because it's fucking scary. Putting out a novel means I have to up my game next time, and people will read it and maybe hate it and talk about it -- so many things for my anxiety to grab onto.

I'm actually shocked I'm happy right now. Even though that sounds ridiculous.

Last Saturday I woke up snarly and snarled at Beloved and the little angel before I took her to ballet. As I was sitting there waiting for ballet to be done, I realized how familiar that snarl had felt, how I used to an extremely frequent snarler, and how I had committed to myself and my husband a few years ago to really stop snarling and try to look at the world more optimistically. I'm by nature melancholy, and it's a real effort for me to instantly see the good instead of the bad. However, I've noticed the more I work at it, the easier it is. When I snarled, he responded with, "Why are you yelling at me?" and I didn't know the answer to that question. I think I surprised him because I have not snarled quite like that in so long.

I sat there worrying I'd introduced a new tone into our house that was going to creep back into our lives. I texted him, called him, made sure he knew I didn't mean it and wanted to start the day again. And then we did, and my family showed up, and my mother's takeaway is that I seem happy.

I've learned to work toward happy. I still have mood swings, sometimes very bad ones, but I try not to show my irritability or randomly thrash those around me when my heart beats fast and the hair on the back of my neck stands up for absolutely no reason but my body chemistry. I pray with my daughter, and we talk about the best part of the trip instead of what went wrong, and I pet the cats and wish for the thousandth time I could invent a purring, warm neck wrap to wear around when they aren't available. I try to take advantage of sunny corners the minute I see them, even if it's just for a few minutes. I try to do one thing at a time and give that one thing my full attention.

And even then, sometimes it still doesn't work. Sometimes I find myself deep breathing and staring at the wall without knowing why, and in those times I've learned to ask myself what human need could be met right in that moment that would make me feel better. Am I cold? Am I stiff? Am I thirsty? Am I tired? Would I like some music, less music? Are my clothes itchy?

I tell people I spend as much time managing my anxiety as some people do managing diabetes or asthma. I no longer look at these little breaks as wasting time, because that makes me more anxious, and the faster I can get things under control, the more productive the day will actually be, the more creativity I will be able to bring to my work. If I am not anxious, I won't foist that tone on my household.

And so when my mother told me I seemed happy, I actually took it as a compliment more than an observation. I haven't always been a happy person, but I'm working toward that. I want to be a happy old person one of these days.

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• The Obvious Game review and giveaway on What If No One's Watching?
• The Obvious Game excerpt and giveaway on A Dream Within a Dream
• The Obvious Game excerpt on Book Maven's Picks
• Interview on I Like These Books
• Review on author Kelly Hashway's blog

Hi everyone-

There are a few giveaways running right now for THE OBVIOUS GAME. I thought I should tell you about them before they expire! I will most likely do another giveaway on Goodreads in a month or so.

• 1 copy on Want Not (ends February 1, 2013)
• 1 copy on Rancid Raves (ends January 31, 2013)
• 3 copies on LibraryThing (ends February 27, 2013)
• 3 copies on Goodreads (ends February 5, 2013)

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Obvious Game

by Rita Arens

Giveaway ends February 05, 2013.

See the giveaway detailsat Goodreads.

Enter to win

I'm headed out tomorrow to join my friend Erica at the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting in Seattle. Through a series of fortunate events, it's going to be an extremely inexpensive trip for me, so I figured why not? I really have no business being there, as I'm not a librarian, but it seemed like a good way to meet librarians. Librarians and book bloggers are about the best word-of-mouth referrers an author could ask for, and librarians often double as book bloggers, so, there you go.

Except I'm feeling shy.

I've been going to blogging conferences for seven years, and I haven't felt shy at them in six. I thought I was past shy.

This whole book thing has been such a roller coaster. I go from being excited it's finally coming out to worried nobody will read it to freaked they will read it and they'll hate it. I worry it won't sell and then nobody will buy my second book. Then I think publishing will probably change so much by the time that book is ready that the rules will all be different, anyway. It feels like the rules of publishing in some ways are changing on a daily basis and in other ways 50 Shades is still on the bestseller list, inexplicably to me, and nothing will ever change at all for the little guys.

This particular adventure is so personal to me -- it doesn't really matter to anyone else. I mean, it's nice and all, but my personal and professional lives have not changed just because my novel got published. That's what's so weird about the whole experience -- the anxiety I feel is mine and mine alone.

I remember walking around BEA last year when I was asked to speak at the BEA Bloggers Conference about book marketing because of my role in the BlogHer Book Club. There were hardbacks just stacked in the booths, free for the taking, and eventually I stopped taking them because they were so heavy to lug around and get home on the plane. I left someone's blood, sweat and tears in a stack on the floor because it was heavy, or because I didn't like the cover, or because I just wasn't in the mood.

When I go to the library now, I don't see shelves of books, I see shelves of dreams.

So I'm worried about tomorrow and this weekend, although I can't figure out why. I guess I have a few days to figure it out. I've been moving so fast for so long, maybe I'm just afraid of having time to think about what to do next.

I went to see Sapphire read from The Kid a month or so ago. I already had a copy of the book for BlogHer%20Book%20Club, but I got another one to give away on BlogHer.

Here's an excerpt from my post:

Sapphire started out as a poet, and as she read excerpts from her book, her voice changed, her meter changed, rising and lowering, now chummy, now threatening. She's a powerful performer, perhaps as powerful a performer as a writer, or maybe they are impossible to separate. She says she never cared about her poems as much as she does The Kid, though.

"It's going to take people a while to get this, but I know I have done something good, something strong," she said.

(It's a heavy, heavy dark book.)

So, if you're interested, go enter -- there are a few more days before we shut down the giveaway. I'm sorry I forgot to say anything earlier, but I was, um, on vacation. If you've read Push or The Kid, perhaps you'll join me in being somewhat amazed at the sunny nature of her autograph.

I'm sitting here typing in my Grateful Dead t-shirt and glasses. I should be in the shower. I need to leave for the airport soon.

But the strangest thing happened yesterday. Two phone conversations I had in the past six months turned into something. Not by me -- I just happened to be the person listening raptly on the other end to the aspirations, to the story -- but still. It is so cool to see plans unwind as they do.

So! First, see my friend and colleague Kim Pearson's mind-boggling post about how ankylosing spondylitis has changed her worldview and then back again. I honestly did not think she would ever write this post, and it is so inspiring and so humbling. I'm so glad she did. Also, I love seeing her doing the electric slide.

Second! I've gotten to know Kamy Wicoff over at She Writes over the past few years. I'm so impressed with what she's doing and what she's done, and this latest contest for fiction writers is such an incredible opportunity.

And now, um, SHOWER.

Yesterday and Wednesday I was off from work to add a Part II to my novel (fingers crossed, it was a specific request). On Wednesday, even though I forced myself to ignore my work email, I checked my personal email and immediately fell down the rabbit hole of responses and responsibilities and lost almost two hours.

Yesterday, I took a complete and total Internet hiatus. No blogging, no email (!), no Twitter, no Yammer, no Facebook, no LinkedIn. I did text with my sister a little, but I also actually spoke to her on the phone for more than an hour. And last night I called my parents and told them a bunch of things I'd forgotten to tell them in the mad rush of email that is usually my life.

My life is email? Yeah, it kind of is.

At the same time, I'm reading Super Sad True Love Story in fits and bursts, which is a novel about a bunch of people trying to stay young forever who spend their lives completely immersed in little personal data devices that hang around their necks.

A while ago, the little angel asked me if I loved my phone more than her.

The last two days while I've been off, she's gotten off the bus at home instead of after-school care, and we've set up the sprinkler and invited friends over to run through it. The weather has been glorious.

Today I'm back online, back at work, back on email. And I'm determined to not become a Super Sad True Love Story character.

But it's hard, in this world we live in. It's hard.

I'm working on my novel as often as possible now. Over the weekend, Beloved and I dropped the little angel with Ma and Pa and Blondie and checked into a hotel in Omaha for some much-needed alone time. Over dinner, I told Beloved about the progress of my novel, and specifically, the high school characters.

"I think they need nicknames," he said, with the brilliance with which he'd said I needed to point out the narrator lived close enough to town to see the water tower, but not close enough to read it. "Kids -- especially boys -- rarely call each other by their given names."

I chewed on that with my sea bass, thinking how I'd never in a million years have thought of it, but it was one element of authenticity -- among many --  the rough draft is currently lacking. He's right, of course. It's a young adult novel, and I've forgotten how to be a teenager. 

So here I sit, momentarily distracting myself with this post, trying to remember what it's like to be a teenager, to live with names given me by friends that were not my own as we tried on identities like Halloween costumes.

Every year I have goals. As a mother. As a wife. As a citizen of the world. But I also think for a long time about my goals as a writer.

I know you may sigh and roll your eyes when I trot out that bullshit about having to write down your goals to make them come true, but, um, it's for real. If you don't write them down (or at least think them out well enough to write them down), then you can't break them down into steps that get your butt propelled in the right direction.

I have three major writing goals for 2010. Last year I had two. I accomplished my two last year, but having written them down made me break a cold sweat when I got to July and realized I was in danger of not kicking one out. Writing down those goals puts on a little pressure, even if nobody on God's green earth besides you cares if you accomplish them.

And probably, when it comes to writing goals, nobody but you DOES care. That's what makes it so easy to ignore them.

There were many years when I didn't have writing goals, and in those years, I barely wrote anything. Without something to work toward, writing itself felt like work, a pointless chore that nobody but me cared if I did.

I think my three goals for 2010 are achievable, but they'll require a lot of work. The second and third goal are harder than the first, because I need people besides myself to make them happen. Editors, publishers. That makes it tough. Especially with the publishing industry going through what it's going through. But I have to try -- trying is what makes me a writer and not a hobbyist. Not someone who would like to be a writer, but really never writes. That's what I was when I wasn't working toward writing goals.

Now I'm a writer.

The other day when I was driving home, I saw the end scene of my novel. Today, I sat down and wrote the last 40 pages.

 

Many, many Fridays.

There are still a few scenes that I really want to include for which I haven't found a place yet. And the sentences -- oy, they're not good yet. And also? I think a bunch of the details don't yet agree. I haven't read the first few chapters in months. I can't remember some of the middle. So I'm nowhere near ready to let anyone but Beloved read it yet.

However, the rough draft is done.

 

I wish I had more to say, but I seem to be all out of words.

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