Category: blog

Blue sky

A week of clouds and gray and cooler weather, and, the last two days, rain rain rain rain rain. And then today — look what the universe has given us!
 

 

 
And so today I was able to get sun on my legs while I dug up dandelions, and have lunch on the deck with my sweetie (and here I was about to put away the deck umbrella!), and walk with my neighbor putting Block Watch flyers in mailboxes (yes, I am co-captain of the block watch because apparently I have a need to be responsible for everything in the world!). We heard someone’s chickens cluckerating together; we heard one of our two local musicians practicing his drums. The dirt smelled warm and rich from the rain and the sun. I have abandoned all pretense of editing and am working on my new screenplay and listening to music, and outside my window is blue, blue sky.

It’ll rain later. That’s okay. What a beautiful, unexpected gift this day has been!

The Tourist

Listen. That sigh you hear? That combination of fond amusement and Oh, Chist, not another one already? That is Nicola, who has just been told that my fantasy boyfriend Johnny Depp has a new movie coming out in December.

The Tourist is a remake of a 2005 recent French film, and from the trailer I’m already banging my head that the female character is a Mysterious Woman Of Mystifying Mystery with an English accent that I didn’t believe in Tomb Raider and don’t believe now. I could wish for something a little deeper, and if wishes were fishes we’d all be feeding Copper River salmon to the neighborhood cats, you know? I console myself that the movie has Johnny Depp and Paul Bettany and Rufus Sewell and it’s shiny! What can I say? Some days that’s enough.

Enjoy your day.
 

 

Grin your axis off

There’s the snort-your-wine laugh. There’s the wicked giggle. There’s the private smile. And all the varieties in between. I treasure them all.

Today I give you the “people are amazing” grin, courtesy of the Axis of Awesome.
 

Muchas gracias a Karina, mi hermana de corazon, quien sabe cómo me hace sonrier!

Seventeen years

“Don’t marry the one you think you can live with; marry the one you know you can’t live without.”– Dr. James Dobson
 
(paraphrased, because he should have said it this way. Where was his editor?)

I never expected to be married. But it turns out that my life is full of surprises, and this is one of the very, very best.
 

 

What would you do?

This made me cry today.

The context is that ABC Primetime set up an experiment in how Americans are responding to prejudice. Do watch it all the way through; there are some amazing moments.

(click though here if the embedded link doesn’t work; YouTube’s being unpredictable).
 

 
Of all my many fears, one of the greatest is that my courage will fail me when I need it, or when someone else does.

The wordcount has landed

Write-a-thon running total: 12,032 words out of 12,000.

Well, here we are (big grin). I’m very pleased.

These are first-draft words. Some of them are stinky-bad, but you know, some of them are pretty damn good. And this particular goal wasn’t so much about “finishing” as it was about beginning. I’m glad I have.

Thank you so much to all who have supported me! The fact that you gave money to Clarion West to encourage me to write has made me feel quite humble and, hmm… well, it’s what made me so determined not just to reach a number, but to begin a journey. Going somewhere scary and wonderful, somewhere on the border between familiar and new, that place where we all intersect and story is the line between us. It means a lot to me that people care about a story I might tell. Thanks for helping me begin.

Ladyfight

Write-a-thon running total: 11,136 words out of 12,000.

There’s a particular synchronicity that happens for me in writing: as I start to go deeper into my story, the world around me begins to bring small potential story-things to my attention — some bit of behavior that might work for a character, or a phrase that leads me into a new scene, or… well, it could be anything. My brain knows this work is important to me, and so it points me toward things that might be related. This is actually a well-established brain mechanism (the reticular activating system), but it never fails to surprise and delight me even after all these years. I have learned to trust it as a fundamental part of the writing process and to follow these “twitches” of my attention.

Last night I was flipping through an issue of The New Yorker, past the fiction, because I never read the fiction — I find too often their tastes lean toward precious prose coupled with poor storytelling, and life’s too short. But last night I stopped. And flipped back. And read the whole story because of a phrase that caught my eye. I noticed the phrase because my RAS nudged me, and the story (which was actually pretty good, that woman can write) has given me lots of little pieces of setting, and evoked memories of my own that I think will serve me well in my own book.

Being open in this way is a huge part of being a writer, for me. Then comes the challenge of deciding what to keep of all the shiny things the world brings me as presents. That’s another huge part.

And of course, I’m also finding things on the intarweb and in the real world (not that there’s much difference these days) to amuse me. I may be the last person online to see this video — or maybe I’m the second-to-last (grin). I don’t think there will be any Jane Austen in my book (although there is some fighting), but this is just the ticket for today!

Enjoy

 

Happy birthday, Maxfield Parrish

Today is the birthday of Maxfield Parrish, an artist whom I adore for his ability to tell story in paint, and for his unabashed romanticism that hardly ever feels sentimental to me. It just feels… deep and mysterious and lovely and true. I’ve loved his work since I first discovered it at the age of 13 or 14. I wish I could live in some of his paintings. And my favorite color of sky is Maxfield Parrish blue.

Happy birthday, Maxfield! Thank you for your work that has become such a part of me. Isn’t it amazing, that we can do that for each other?


 

 

Write-a-thon running total: 10,540 words out of 12,000. This is the last week of the Write-a-thon, and my goal is in sight. Thank you to everyone who has sponsored me and all the other writers. And we’re not done yet — if you know anyone who wants to support great writing in the world, please send them to Clarion West to make a donation to encourage any of these fine writers to keep heading towards the finish line. So many amazing novels and stories are being born right now because of your help!

The contra dance

Write-a-thon running total: 8,545 words out of 12,000. That’s 4,000 words in the last week, and I am feeling pleased.

And how I love the unexpected gifts that stories bring me. The out-of-nowhere metaphors that open up new ways of feeling the story, the moments that are beginning to snick together like gears, the sudden rush of a path forward that widens rather than narrows as I follow it. Happy times for this writer.

I cannot help but fall in love with my characters, and these early days are like the first wild phase of romance when the goal is simply to dig into another person, to learn their body and mind and history and heart. For me, writing starts with wandering around inside character. Which is fine — but it’s not a story. In stories, things happen, people collide, the world turns sometimes too fast.

So it’s always a relief to move from finding characters to finding scenes, and I’ve enjoyed this last week writing actual scenes in which actual things happen (grin). We need it all — plot and character, event and feeling, choice and consequence, the external story and the story inside the character. They are like a contra dance, weaving in and out. Do you know contra dance? It’s based on folk dancing, but it’s not a square dance — it’s done in lines, and by the end of the set, everyone in the lines has danced with everyone else. Now there’s a metaphor for story…
 
This one starts a lot on the band (which is fine, they are great) and then moves into video of the dancing:
 

 
And here’s a whole new movement in contra dance. I promise the sparkly bits stop quickly, and I could do without the MTV editing, but it’s a very cool combination of music and dancing:
 

 
Enjoy your day.