I want to befriend other aspiring novelists or full-fledged authors so that we can talk and share ideas and offer support but I have no idea where to meet them. Hello? Writers? Are you out there? Can we chat?
Writing
Feel like beating my head against a wall!
I feel like I’m never going to be a productive writer again. I have tiny, fragmented ideas for three separate novels bouncing around inside my head like fireflies on a summer night. Nothing is longer than a few lines, and the scenes are fleeting at best, coming and going before I can even begin to write them down. I have no idea which one to settle on and how to ignore the other scenes from the other stories once I start working on one particular idea. UGH! How does anyone ever get anything done?
Seattle, writing, and… Honey Boo Boo?
I’m going to Seattle in one week!!!!!!!!!!! Those that know me know how freakin‘ excited I am about this trip. Plus, it’s a business trip, fully paid for by my employer, and I get to spend five nights in the city I’ve been dreaming of moving to for at least two decades. (I’m also legitimately excited to see the corporate campus. It’s apparently huge and pretty awesome. Maybe I’ll run into a certain world-respected technological revolutionary who happens to be the CEO of the company, too!) I’ve never been to Seattle, no, but the weather and the location have always called to me. I thrive on wet and/or gloomy days, and Seattle seems to have their fair share of them. I’ve set several stories, both fanfiction and original WIPs in Seattle, and I hope to do some recon while I’m there to come up with new and original settings for stories. I want to be inspired and be filled with ideas for writing once I get home! Anyway, those that follow me on Twitter (current Twitter is this, but I think I’m moving over to this one), Tumblr, and Instagram better be prepared for a ton of pictures. (And I know I’ll be putting some on here, too.) I’m going to be burning up my iPhone snapping shots of every possible thing. And as of right now, the forecast for Seattle is saying sunny days. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. I want rain, and I want a lot of it. For the full Seattle experience, I want to be soaked from the rain. Got it, Mother Nature???
On the writing front, I have an idea that’s been percolating in my head lately. It’s a World War II-era story and it’s slowly coming together. I’ve written a few paragraphs here and there, just little snippets from that moment or this moment as I see them clearly in my head. Maybe nothing will come of it, but at this point, I’m thankful for any writing inspiration I get!
Anyway, I have a busy week ahead. I have to wrap everything up before I leave so that I have no loose ends waiting for me here while I’m out there. I’ll hit the ground running when I get back and then, in mid-April, I get to go BACK to Seattle for another week of training!!!!
Also, we discovered “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” tonight, and, like most of America, we were unable to look away from the redneck trainwreck. What. the. hell? We were flipping channels and I saw a toothless man speaking the southern version of American English and they had him subtitled. Within three seconds, I realized what we were watching. Within five seconds, we were both sucked in and howling hysterically. While that family frightens the ever-lovin’ hell out of me, I couldn’t stop watching. Also, it’s fairly obvious that Alana aka Honey Boo Boo, is, at 7-years-old, the smartest one in her family by a mile. Oy. Stupid show!
Question for the writers out there:
Does music inspire your writing? Do you hear a song and envision a scene, or do you write a scene and then connect the perfect song to it? Or does music not move you at all when it comes to crafting your story?
Please share, if you don’t mind!
It’s beginning to feel like home!
It’s been three weeks since we moved and we’re finally, FINALLY getting this place unpacked. I’m on call this weekend, but things have been relatively quiet at work (I’ve checked my email about 10 bajillion times). I decided that today would be the day I’d finally get the last 10 boxes in my dining room unpacked. We ended up throwing away a lot of stuff because we went from a full sized, eat-in kitchen at our old house to a galley-style kitchen in our townhouse. There just isn’t room for all the junk we had. So we downsized, and I have to admit that it feels nice to do that! I also rooted through box after box tonight looking for these:
A few years ago, my mom found these dishes on FreeCycle and snagged them for me because they were clearly vintage. They have “Syracuse China USA” printed on the back, so I started to do a little (well, a lot of) research. As it turns out, Syracuse China made dishes for the restaurant industry. These particular ones are in a pattern called Millbrook and they’re from 1938!!! I’ve had them in boxes for a long time but at long last, I have a place to display them so out they came today. I always picture them being used in my WWII-era novel, when Lila goes to help out at her aunt’s diner. I can practically hear the sound of the utensils scraping against the plates as the patrons eat, talk amongst themselves, and listen to the radio that Aunt Beth constantly had on in order to catch the latest war news. *sigh* I need to get back to writing!
A question to the writers out there…
…do you ever feel like you’re going to drown in all the stories that are tumbling around inside your head, just waiting to be written?
I do. There are so many, and they come at me in flashes and tiny snippets. Moments of dialogue. Flares of pain from a particularly sad monologue. The connection to the characters are fleeting because as soon as I’m invested in a scene that’s playing like a Spielberg flick inside my head, it fades away and makes room for another one from a completely different story, with yet another set of characters who have a story to tell. And they come at me, firing like a barrage, when I’m at work, perhaps counseling an employee or working on a spreadsheet and can do absolutely nothing about them other than jot down a few notes and try to refocus on my day job (the thing that makes me money.)
When I finally do have a few quiet moments to write (after the mundane chores of daily life are done), I have to listen to who’s the loudest, which story is burning inside my mind during that particular moment. Then, I can finally pound out a scene, where I imagine it being pulled from my brain in a wispy, silvery strand like a memory going into the Pensieve in the world of Harry Potter. Only once I have a few scenes down can I breathe easier. Finally. They’re out. My brain has room to focus again.
But the respite never lasts too long. There’s always something to be written.
The unexpected perils of writing
So the remnants of Hurricane Isaac finally made their way to Indiana. As someone who is obsessed with rain because it fires up my writing muse, I was only too happy to move into the living room and set up shop by our huge picture window. I turned on my netbook, lit my oil lamp, pulled back the curtains so that I could watch the downpour, and let out a happy sigh. And then, not even three minutes later…
Plop.
Plop.
Plop.
Water. Right on the trackpad of my netbook.
What the heck?
Lifting my head, I spy five cracks in the ceiling, one of which is allowing Isaac right inside my home.
Oy.
Calling the landlord tomorrow…
Nostalgia and whimsy and…. travel trailers?
Superman had Kryptonite; I have nostalgia and whimsy to bring me to my knees. And it strikes in the oddest of ways. I can’t predict when I’m going to be caught in the headwinds of fanciful dreaming – it just happens and sometimes it lasts for days on end. I woke up this morning feeling moody and exhausted, but once I got to work, I settled into my new, much more private and quiet office (which I just moved into on Monday), popped in my earbuds, turned on my iPod, and called up the playlist of some old friends. Okay, so I don’t actually know Jim and Marian Jordan, who played Fibber McGee and Molly on a radio show of the same name from the 30s-50s, but I feel like I know them. Honestly, I’ve been listening to the 800+ episodes I have for so many years now that their voices are comforting to me. When I can’t sleep at night, I listen to a few of their shows and they lull me to sleep. When I’m stressed to my very limits, their voices help ease me into a quiet calmness. They make me nostalgic for a time I never lived through and for things that I couldn’t possibly experience during my lifetime.
Today was one such day where, after listening to Fibber and Molly for most of the day (in between an endless stream of needy employees parading in and out of my office), that sentimental feeling stuck with me. I came home, fixed supper, and then Tim and I got Roxie ready for her walk. We went down my favorite little stretch of road in our neighborhood. Lined with trees and horse pastures, it reminds me of the solitude that my country-girl soul misses since we live within the city limits. I began telling Tim about my hopes to someday own and restore a vintage travel trailer to use as a writing office. I want to plop it right in the middle of a field, maybe near a big old oak tree. We actually owned one a few years ago but it was just too far damaged to be restored without costing us an arm and a leg, so we sold her (a 1971 New Paris Traveler that I named Gracie) to someone who could restore her. Even though Gracie is gone, my dream for a travel trailer isn’t gone. I can practically hear the plunking of the raindrops on the metal roof as I sit inside, sipping on tea and tapping away at my laptop. This strong desire to get a travel trailer right this very nanosecond led me to tincantourists.com, where the classifieds, filled with pages and pages of adorable travel trailers for sale, invoke such strong stabs of whimsy and longing inside me that it almost hurts. I mean, here are just a few samples from what is currently for sale on that site.
HOW CAN YOU NOT WANT ONE, TOO???
Anyway, as my Friday night wanes into a 3-day holiday weekend that’s supposed to be filled with rain and relaxation, I hope these gushy, dreamy-eyed notions continue. They usually lead to creativity and a feeling of lightheartedness – both of which I need right now.
Life on Wild Hare Farm 