We are shaped by summers past

     I believe that who we are is determined by the summer night sounds that sang us to sleep as children and no matter how far or how long we run, our journey's end will almost always be right back where we started...more or less. For me it's in the rush of cars passing by on a distant highway, the urgent howl of midnight freight trains, the persistent cricket song and the rise and fall of the cicadas' high summer drone.
     I may have become accustomed, for a time, to wailing sirens, the beat of salsa music floating on the breeze and the buzz of a million lights, TVs and conversations but home will always be staring at the night-clad world through the metal mesh of a screen window wondering where those people in those cars whooshing by on that distant highway are going. A corn and hay scented breeze wafts through an open window, I turn my face into it and I am seven years old again...wondering. Laying in my bed, I pick up my tin can phone strung between my room and my brother's next door. I ask him where he thinks they're going, those people out there on that highway. We talk for awhile until he tells me it's time to sleep and if I go right away we can meet in our dreams in Candy Land which was to me a world of endless shelves piled high with every color and flavor of candy imaginable and it was all free for those who could dream themselves there.
     My journey took me far away from home, from myself, for many years and I haven't thought about Candy Land since before my brother was lost to me but I never stopped wondering about the people traveling highways late at night and I've come back now to the place I started and it feels right...more or less.

Turning the dreaded Facebook photo tag into something useful

     I have a growing collection of scenes without books to call home. I wrote one last night. See, what I do is when something happens to me or I observe something that strikes me as a good scene for a story instead of journaling about it, I go ahead and write a scene around it. Often it's just a kernel of an idea and writing a scene about it creates something noteworthy out of a moment that usually wouldn't be significant enough to remember for a journal entry at the end of the day. Sometimes these scenes give me ideas to build an entire book around and sometimes they just sit waiting to be fit into some WIP in the future. This is what works for me because journaling bores me and, later down the road, embarrasses me. Nothing makes me cringe more than going back and reading old journals. I want to die of shame just thinking about my angst-filled journals from the teenage years. Which are, by the way, missing since I moved. Oh yeah...THE HORROR. I live in fear of someday stumbling upon a recently-gone-viral website made up of my journal entries from ages thirteen to seventeen.
     Anyway, this is part of my writing process and below is an example which I wrote last night. Enjoy, judge, ridicule...in your own mind or behind my back please. Feel free to comment.


         Man! She felt good this morning. Energized. Ready to meet the day head on. She felt optimistic like....like she'd just had the wind knocked out of her. There alongside her coffee and chocolate croissant, smack dab in the middle of her morning internet routine of Twitter, e-mail, Facebook, seemingly larger than life was an old picture posted by an older friend. In it she stood in a group, smiling, her ex standing next to her. Not just any ex...THE Ex. You know the one. That one Ex that everyone has that they never fully recover from, the "what might have been" Ex. What stopped her in her tracks and held her spellbound was how she was transported back to that exact moment. She remembered everything about it, the crunch of the white rock under her shoes, the laughing voices of the others in the picture, the quip of one friend as they shuffled into position. She squinted at her computer screen as she remembered the sun that day and how she tried not to blink as they waited for the photo to be taken. The content cheerfulness she'd felt that morning passed through her again like fingertips lightly brushing the rungs of a banister as their owner passes by. Then she recalled the joke she'd made to Him just before they took their places, that quip that would haunt her for years wondering if it was the trigger that began their long, slow demise as a couple. How odd it was to remember the exact moment captured in the image. How often does that happen? She couldn't think of a single instance before now. Her "can do" spirit of the morning was shattered and gone as she stared into the distance at nothing. Her memories swept her into familiar reminiscences and the same old questions and yearning she'd convinced herself years ago she was no longer holding onto. The bittersweet ache that filled her was actually a relief. It was so much more comfortable and familiar than the sunny optimism of moments before and the past five years.

Forget "Ah Hah" Moments. I give you "Duh" Thoughts

     I'm in a weird mood today. That's vague I know but if I knew more specifically what the mood was I would surely use the corresponding adjective. Perhaps some background would be useful.  I've been caring for a very sick kitty all week. He's my mom's cat, and mine too for the past 16 months. Tiger is one of the smartest, funniest cats I've even been around and that's saying something because I long ago beatified my mother as Saint Wilma, Patron Saint of Stray Animals. To say I've known a lot of cats is to use sparse prose indeed. Back to Tiger...we have struggled more than once this week with whether or not it was time to let him go. Deciding whether or not to have an animal put to sleep is such a gut-wrenching process as I'm sure many of you know. They put such trust in us to care for them and their unconditional love such an undeserved gift. To have to make the decision to snuff out the flame of life within their little bodies is a terrible, nearly incomprehensible thing.
     The good news is that round the clock babying and daily visits to the vet for sub-cutaneous fluids appear to be working. He's doing better and seems to be more at the entrance to death's vestibule rather than right at the door. (Sorry, I use humor as a defense mechanism and, apparently, bad humor at that.) He's soaking up the sun lying in the window next to me as I write this. Anyway, with hourly bouts of cajoling him to eat something, anything and bi-hourly walks outside (this consists more of me carrying him around the yard in my arms rather than him walking much) where he loves to hear and see the birds and staying near him because he's never liked being alone, I haven't felt much like writing. But this morning I feel a little optimistic and a lot scared that such optimism will jinx Tiger's improvement. So, yeah. I feel weird today.
     As I was looking down into my coffee cup a little while ago and observing that my coffee was actually boiling, I realized I had microwaved it for four minutes instead of the usual two. I thought to myself, "Well, that's what happens when you microwave coffee too long. It boils. It is too hot to drink." Duh, right? Not exactly a world-changing observation. But don't we all have these "Duh" thoughts from time to time? Thoughts that make us look around sheepishly praying we didn't accidentally say out loud the incredibly air-headed thought that just passed through our minds? Don't you have those moments when your thoughts are as dull as a bread knife and you're glad no one else knows how utterly banal your inner monologue really is sometimes? Well, I thought it might be amusing to start putting these thoughts out there on Twitter for the world to see because goodness knows there isn't enough utterly unedifying garbage on Twitter already. My idea though is to take these "Hey, I'm a rocket surgeon (see what I did there?) thoughts and turn them into flowery prose and then tweet them with the hashtag #NoShitLit (As in, "No shit, Sherlock." Which reminds me, I need to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie.). Then it's kinda fun. Well, I think it is but I'm weird today (just today?) so what do I know?
     My first #NoShitLit tweet went live not long ago. "She peered down at the rolling boil in surprise. This tempest in a coffee cup made her think she'd overheated her drink"
     So, anyone care to join me? Just try it once. It'll be fun. Anyway, this is the best I could do today. I am mentally fried after this past week. Prayers and positive thoughts for Tiger are appreciated even if you think I'm ridiculous ;-)

Bitter Romantic? Hmm

   
     I'll be the first one to admit that I am a contradiction. I hold equal and nearly opposite viewpoints on almost everything. This may be one of the reasons I felt a career in law was suitable (or it could be because insanity runs in the family or because I have a latent masochistic streak). It is, after all, a strength as an attorney to be able to see both sides of an argument. Too bad I usually found myself wishing I was on the other side of whatever argument I had to make. *shrug* The grass is always greener.
     In any case, now that I'm trying to write, I find myself with a WIP that is a romance novel as well as a pretty much finished book of humorous poems written years ago whose humor stems from the bitterness with which they seethe. Trying to write happily ever after and round out a bitter poem collection with a few more rhyming gems is a bit of a challenge even for me to say the least.
     The bitter poems were written to amuse myself and my coworkers at one of my many horrible jobs overseen by one of my many horrible bosses, a kind of gallows humor if you will. I've been thinking I would use them to test the self-publishing waters. They're just sitting here doing nothing after all and they are so odd I can't foresee traditional publishers beating down my door to publish them. So, why not see what this self-publishing thing is all about by putting them out there myself? I need just a few more to have a robust collection. The good news is, I don't have a horrible job anymore and my only horrible boss is myself. The bad news is I have no well of bitterness readily available to tap into like I did before. I NEED to feel the burn of disappointment and disbelief at the stupidity and awfulness of my lot in life.This is where my contradictory nature is a strength again. I am a cynic so I'm not too worried about finding something that will piss me off enough to wax bitterly poetic again. Until then, I'm open to suggestions of topics.
     At the same time that I'm trying to write these last few bitter poems, I'm also working on a contemporary romance set in the music industry between a female record executive and the front man of a rock band. I'm a hopeless romantic. I want HEA's (happily ever afters) and, honestly, don't deal well with too much angst along the way. I believe in true love and soul mates and all that sqooshy stuff. Wait, didn't I just say I was a cynic? Yes. And now I'm saying that I'm a hopeless romantic? Yes. I am both. I am what I am. It doesn't usually give me too many problems in real life (Or maybe it does, you'll have to talk to my ex-boyfriends about that.) My challenge now is to reconcile these two sides of myself without making my characters crazy. What fun!
     Last night I started two different bitter poems about people who sniff incessantly instead of blowing their noses. I can't decide which I like best. I may post both here when they're done and let the public choose their favorite for inclusion in the collection. Just to be safe I think I'll write an argument scene in the romance novel as a buffer before attempting to write a love scene while visions of sniffers are still sniffing in my head.

Fear of Finishing

     My current WIP was started about three years ago and isn't even half finished yet. It's my WIP because I have the most done on it. I have other partial stories, novels, kernels of ideas that are much older. I can't even remember when I wrote the oldest but the oldest I can remember was written in an English Lit class in college some fifteen years ago.  Fifteen years and I still haven't finished even a short story. I am constantly coming up with new ideas for stories and books, sagas even, but I just can't seem to follow through and finish anything. I enjoy the process of writing once I make myself sit down and do it. There's nothing quite like achieving flow in my writing and looking up hours later and not even knowing what time it is. The feeling I get when I come up with a great line or a great scene can make me smile for hours. So, why am I like this? Why can't I actually bring the story on in? Am I alone in this?
     I suppose I could blame it on procrastination, laziness, or being to busy and stressed from my day job when I had a day job. I don't really think those are the answers though. Now, more than ever, I must be honest with myself. Those are convenient excuses. What I've determined after many hours of conscientious navel-gazing is that I am afraid of what comes after I finish a book. It's not actual rejection that I fear. It's the accumulation of rejection by traditional publishers, lack of sales should I self-publish and the building realization that "it's never gonna happen". If I never finish anything then making my living as a writer remains an attainable dream. If I finish something or many things and no one is interested, the dream will die and then what?
     I'm writing about this and putting it out there as an effort to overcome the fear. I have already squandered too much precious time that could have been devoted to nothing but writing. When I left Chicago and my career behind I told myself it was a blessing because how many people get the opportunity to take time like that to write? And what have I done with it? Not much, not enough, not what I should have done. So, before my time runs out, I must face the fear head on, write and get past it, finish something and put it out there because fear is the mind-killer and a dream kept on a shelf isn't much of a dream after all.

Choosing "Failure" or It's Never Too Late to Do What You Dream

     
     Moving home with my mom was always my "worst case scenario".  I used to refer to it that way a lot. I had considered my 'worst case scenario' many times during years of working for psychotic attorneys with anger management issues and personality disorders. (You wouldn't believe me if I told you. But I will, sometime.) It wasn't just the bosses, bad as they were. The clients had long ago convinced me that humanity had begun to devolve...rapidly. When I found myself starting each day with the thought "most men lead lives of quiet desperation" running through my head and I was "most men", I knew it was time to get out. \
     I still wasn't ready, however, to surrender to the "worst case scenario." I hung in there in Chicago refusing to give up the museums and the nightlife and the CULTURE. I'd spent 18 years trying to get away from the small town I'd grown up in, no way could I survive returning there. I was convinced my mind would atrophy, I would be utterly adrift in a sea of rednecks and white trash, alone and growing more and more bitter by the day. Not to mention I had no idea how I would explain such a move to my friends and acquaintances. Giving up a decent salary, a respectable career and the urban lifestyle isn't exactly what most people I know choose to do at age 35. I felt deep down that people would think I'd failed, that Chicago had chewed up the small town girl and spit her out. So, I stayed in Chicago, unemployed and wondering what to do next. It took a year but I finally realized that Chicago was making me more and more bitter by the day. I was tired of the expense of just trying to live in the city and the inconvenience of everything from carrying groceries up to my apartment to doing laundry to parking during the day. I was beyond sick of planning my life around rush hour traffic. So, perhaps inevitably, I threw in the towel, packed my things and headed south.
     In the midst of my horrible jobs I used to pray for time, time to figure out what I really wanted to do in life. Well, I guess I got it and now that I have it, I spend a lot of it wandering through Walmart but I'm also pursuing my dream of being a writer. It never seemed possible before. With student loan payments hanging over my head and a lifetime of training for a very specific career behind me, writing was not a practical occupation to pursue. It never even occurred to me to write until I was a junior in college and had already been accepted to law school. So, I'm coming to it late and with a tendency to procrastinate that is a real problem. Still, "most men lead lives of quiet desperation" and I refuse for that to be me anymore.
     It's been an interesting year since I left Chicago. I'll be writing about some of my experiences and thoughts from the past year from time to time. Mainly, what I've discovered is, the people who matter don't think I'm a failure and the ones who don't have time for small town me, no longer matter to me. As it turns out, you can go home again. It might be a bizarre experience but you may find that you were small town all along and there's nothing wrong with that.