Christmas Musings by Bonnie Le Hamilton

Merry Christmas! I hope your family is prepared since at this point the holiday is just days away. I know Konnie is. But Konnie is ready for Christmas by the first week of December. I’m not as organized as her.

I know her system, I just never get my act together enough to utilize it, and this year I’ve had the added issues with car problems hindering my shopping. I’d normally be done with Christmas shopping by the first week of December too, just not as leisurely as Konnie manages it.

You see, Konnie only shops for like her oldest son in December. That’s her system. Each month of the year she checks who has birthdays coming up and buys both birthday and Christmas present for those who are on her list that month! She ships me both my birthday and Christmas present before our July birthday. Can you believe that?

I’m not that organized. Actually, I’m not organized at all.

In fact, I found several gifts hiding in my spare room the other day that I bought one to two years ago! And the weird part is that I didn’t forget to send those few people a gift for Christmas the last couple of years, so wow. I need to get better organized.

And, on top of being disorganized, I’ve been having car problems making it hard to get any shopping done, ergo, I am not ready for Christmas yet. Hopefully, I can get ready in the few days remaining but going shopping this late in the year is going to be horrendous. For one, electric carts will be scarce, and the stores will be crowded.

If I could I’d avoid the stores from Thanksgiving to December 26^th (you know the day with all the lines of people returning gifts they didn’t like). Yeah, I avoid Black Friday and the day after Christmas at all costs.

And what am I supposed to get?

My supervisor got me a new Nativity. I wasn’t even thinking about getting her something, now what? And I have a friend who also got me a Nativity, but I didn’t get her anything. I usually do, because I know she will get me something, but I haven’t had the means to do any extended shopping.

I wouldn’t be surprised if my neighbors get me something, they’ve surprised me with Nativities a few times. But what I do get them, and their three kids? No clue. And I really should have done that by now, but not only have I had car issues, but I just spent over a week sick. Which certainly isn’t helping the money issues any.

Did I mention my car registration is due this month?

And now it looks like my car battery needs replaced. I don’t have that kind of money. Great.

I’ve honestly thought about starting a GoFundMe page, but I doubt that would help. Who has money to spare? And why would they give it to me, even if they did?

So, I’m short on money right now and will remain short on money for the foreseeable future, which makes fixing my car all the harder.

On top of that, I haven’t been writing or editing. I did get some critiques on my chapter I submitted to a “First Chapter” contest, but I’ve read the first page of critiques, and well one of them essentially wants me to put back all the info dumps I already took out.

Not her words, but that seems to be the gist of what she is saying. She says she’s confused about the time and place of the story, which to me means she wants the time and place spelled out upfront instead of shown in the story. Either that or she missed the part about it being contemporary speculative fiction.

Not sure how I can make it even more explicit about the time and place without an info dump, which isn’t a good thing to have in a novel.

Another lady complained about how many characters were introduced in the first chapter and questioned the title character using first and last names of his family and friends. She has a point, I’m just not sure how to solve that issue.

And, yeah, I know I can’t please everyone but why can’t they at least agree on something. If they agreed on just one thing, I would know I need to fix it, but three critiques and none of them brought up the same issue. NONE! Now, what do I do?

Anyway, what are your Christmas plans? Are you ready?

If you are going to be traveling for Christmas, stay safe out there.

And Happy writing everyone!