to the left. No, to the right. Up. UP! Over a little. No, I am not able to get a good wireless signal from the neighbor's house, but if I jiggle this laptop back and forth verrrrry slowly... I can post this.
So, it wasn't a very productive weekend, but we did do the Indy trip, and our son did place in the top ten so he's moving on to State Finals next weekend for marching band. Concord also placed, so my friend Andie's son is on his way, too. Hoping both bands do well next week! It's always fun to see the state finals. Lucas Oil Stadium is where the Colts play, so if I were a Colts fan, it would be even cooler! Sadly, I couldn't possibly care less that the Colts play there. Sorry, Indiana peeps. I will never, ever, ever consider myself a Hoosier. Whenever my husband crosses back over the Indiana state line when we've been traveling, he sings, "Back home again in Indiana...." I just sit there and think how Indiana will never be my home, even if I do have to live here for the rest of my life.
I was supposed to spend the day removing the fleas from the house, but I decided I need to wait until it frosts to kill the ones outside, otherwise it's a pointless endeavor. I hate fleas, with a passion. I remember Ellen Degeneres' comedy skit about calling God and asking him why there is a reason for everything in the world, except for fleas. God's answer was that the flea removal industry created so many jobs. This was like, her first comedy routine on HBO back when I was pretty young. I've always loved Ellen, even back when she faked being straight. I like her a lot better now, though.
I've been going over a book I finished writing earlier in the year to get it prepared for eBook sales on Barnes and Noble and Amazon's Kindle page. Every time I go through it, I find more things I want to add or change or remove altogether. I suppose it's a good thing I'm not an editor. I'd never be finished with my job. On the flip side, though, I really enjoy editing. When I proofread, I always find errors and fix them. I find errors in books that are actually already published. I'm reading The Ragamuffin Gospel right now, just started, and I already found three errors. It's a great book, though, I can tell. (I do not proofread these blogs, by the way, so if you find mistakes on here it's because I'm just writing and posting, and doing it on purpose that way, for my own growth. I'm saying that so I don't look like an idiot when you find all the typos on here...)
I wish I could sleep better at night. So many of my stories have insomnia woven through them. And one of my favorite Stephen King books is, in fact, Insomnia. Tonight it's my own fault. I slept in late, and I had a Mountain Dew with dinner, so I have no one to blame but myself. Last night I listened to "The Cure" for awhile on my handy-dandy I-am-so-in-love-with-you laptop. I'm pretty excited about everything that this laptop has to offer me. I'll bet if Danny knew that, he would've charged me more for it... :P Although, I wouldn't have been able to afford it, so that's a moot point.
I love thunder. I love lightning. I love thunderstorms, with the rain and thunder and lightning all mixed together. But I sure hate rain. Just plain rain, with nothing exciting accompanying it. It's dreary and messy and I just don't like it. Tonight was going to be pretty cool, but then the lightning and thunder went away and it's just plain rain. Which means in the morning I'm not going to want to get up, because it's going to be dreary and messy. Grumble. But, I guess rain is important or something. Whatever.
I've been going through a bunch of my old writing -- poetry, fiction, papers for college, etc. I've found some interesting things out about myself. First, I write more about relationships than anything else. Emotional issues, mostly. Second, I have written some real crap in the past that I can't quite allow myself to throw away. Third, I have fundamental problems with creative writing teachers trying to quash my creativity by giving me such useless advice as "don't end verbs in 'ing', they become weak'. I wrote a poem using only 'ing' verbs to prove them wrong. It wasn't half bad. Some of the verbs were kind of weak, though. Fourth, there is nothing I have ever wanted to do for a living as badly as I've wanted to write.
In the past I have wanted to be: a scarecrow, a Solid Gold Dancer, a writer, a lawyer, a teacher, and an actress. I very quickly realized that a scarecrow is an inanimate object and not, in fact, a career path. Just as quickly, I realized I have no balance, coordination, or agility and therefore could not be a Solid Gold Dancer, especially after Solid Gold was canceled. I tried teaching both at the high school and collegiate levels, and did not enjoy either of these things. Law school was definitely not an option, though it still interests me, due to financial constraints. I act in my spare time, but do not have the drive or passion necessary to make it as a paid actress. Writing, though, will not leave my brain. For that matter, it won't leave my heart.
I wrote my first story when I was in second grade. We were given a book full of wallpaper samples and some yarn. We cut the wallpaper into book covers, filled it with scratch paper, and 'sewed' the binding on one edge with the yarn. My book was illustrated and called "Tanya the Brat", a true story about my younger second cousin whom I had just met and took an immediate dislike to in Wisconsin, mostly because she was both younger and cuter than myself. In fourth grade, I wrote such masterpieces as "The Library Mystery" in which an elementary school student realizes that the new librarian at school is a vampire, and in which I plagiarized several of the funnier lines from my new favorite movie, "Teen Wolf", because I had not yet mastered the art of dialogue. In sixth grade, I began writing poetry, mostly of the rhyming variety, and a short essay on "My Dream House" became seven pages of description of both the house and my married life to Donnie Wahlberg from New Kids on the Block, and our five children, Donnie Jr., David, Alex, Cynthia, and Christy. (Alex was a girl.) In ninth grade, I wrote my first two mini-novels, for which I received 6% extra credit in my advanced English class. Writing more poetry, of the non-rhyming variety this time, helped me cope with all of the self-esteem issues I had, plus the anger, plus the depression, plus the hormones, dare I keep listing things that teenagers go through?
The point is, even today, my brain is constantly spinning with things I want to put on paper, things I want to share with other people. Ideas I have for characters, names, places, events to unfold. I can't shake it. Sometimes they're good stories, and sometimes they suck. Sometimes I finish them, and most of the time I don't. Sometimes they're just for me, and I can't get rid of them no matter how badly I want to, because I remember the torment that drove me to write them. Sometimes they're for the rest of the world, and I want feedback from everyone. And sometimes... rarely, I'll admit, but sometimes... I want to burn it all and start over anew. I can't, and I won't do that. Mostly because no matter how bad the writing is, it led me to become a better writer, just like the writing I do right now I'll look back on and chuckle someday. But also because there is so darned much of it that if I burned it, the fire department would give me a citation for all the black smoke in my back yard.
Hopefully, though, you'll see some of it for sale very soon... I'll keep you posted!
For now, I'll try to sleep. We'll see how that goes.
SJS
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