A High School Musical Made My Day

While this blog is supposed to be about writing, tonight it's not. I should amend that to say this morning, but no one really cares, do they? Great!

Earlier this evening, Chris and I attended her daughter, Emma's play, Grandmother in tow. To say that I was dreading the evening would be an understatement. I've had to listen to Emma for the last month, dragging in late every night from a rehearsal or a production meeting or something else related to her school's performance of "Peter Pan." Ugh! Emma's complaints were varied and numerous, so I won't get into all of them, but suffice it to say, she set me up to expect nothing short of a total train wreck of a musical.

Joy of joys, such was not the case.

Now, I'm what you might call a "musical queen." Except, you know, that lesbian thing. But "musical butch" just doesn't work. Anyway, I like musicals, a lot, but not this one. It's just, well, random. There's not much to the story, and the music isn't great, but once I saw those kids, Emma included, flying through the air over the stage, I was done for. Hokey, yes, but there was something about watching that beautiful young woman as she sailed in from the wings, landing in a display of grace in the middle of the stage, all alone, that almost knocked the wind out of me. She didn't have a lot of lines, she really didn't have much to do at all, but the quiet elegance of that simple landing made my night.

And if that wasn't enough, I opened the program to the cast biographies and found this: "Emma wants to thank her Mom, her Diane, and her boyfriend Tommy for all of their love and support." Needless to say, I was a goner.

So, I guess what I'm really trying to say is this: To Emma, I know we've had a rough patch or two, and have said some really unkind things to one another, but you made me so proud tonight. You're such a lovely young woman, and your love and support mean just as much to me. Thank you.

Everybody needs a little downtime

Everybody, even those of us who basically just hang out and write, needs a day off. I took one today. No email, no new writing, even though I did take about an hour to tweak some earlier stuff from the collaboration.

What I did do was take Chris to work, go to the grocery, baked a cake and made lasagna for a friend's birthday, put gas in the car, picked Chris up from work, went to the yarn store, bought yarn and a water cooler for the kitchen, went to Lowes, had dinner with friends, stuff like that. All in all, a pretty full day.

Just for fun, here's the cake:












Much fun was had by all, and it was nice to get some things done. I'll be back at the real work tomorrow. I got a really good idea for a character for the collaboration tonight, so I may have to bring him in for the next chapter. Should be fun.

Oh, and I just found out that my ex is going to be a Grandma. Wow. Congrats to Lin and Matthew. She just had to let me know that that makes me a Grandma-to-be-once-removed. Holy shit! Wow.

Dropping the ball

Since it would seem that I am dropping the ball and not keeping up with this blog, I decided to do something about that. Thanks to Deb for the kick in the butt.

Actually, I haven't been blogging because I've been writing so much. Sometimes the muse just won't shut up (thanks to Jen for that one). I've been banging away on the solo portions of my collaboration, and the results have been a lot of fun. The story is coming together, the setting is pretty concrete, and my challenges to write a convincing Russian accent are apparently landing with the desired effect. The story is becoming what I would define as a romp, with lots of action, goofiness, and some pretty "toothy" smut.

I also spent a lot of time today working on email responses. I spent close to an hour preparing a rather wordy in-service on writing mechanics for a friend who actually considered my offer of assistance to be a nice thing and not a slam. I've been doing that a lot lately, and it's nice to know that I hang out with mature people who understand that criticism is not a bad thing, but a sharing thing. If only the younger generation understood that.

I write as a way to share my issues and ideas, and if I just want to help, I appreciate the opportunity to do so.