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.

I'm at it again

Well, here I am again. It's raining, it's 6 o'clock in the morning, two of the three kids are staying home because they have nasty colds, so I'm up working now. Well, not working yet, but I'm writing here, so that's good. My toe is owie, but I think that's the rain, so I'm trying to ignore it.

I've let the third story in my FBI series go for the time being to work on my collaboration. Things are going well with that. I'm over 10,000 words and well into the third chapter of my six solo chapters. My characters are finding their groove, my locations are settled, and there have been points where the story almost wrote itself. It's been fun to play with a story that is set in the past, especially my past. It's been really fun to revisit 1985 and some of the ridiculous things that we did back then. What the hell were we thinking with the jeans that were so tight that you had to lay down to zip 'em up? Weird, but it's what it was. Oh, and who ever thought leg warmers were a good idea? Besides Jennifer Beals and Olivia Newton-John, of course.

We had a small production meeting last night (I say that 'cause it makes me feel important, like a big stud Hollywood director), and got some stuff worked out regarding the aspects of the story that D and I will be writing together. I'm really excited about the project because it's coming together so nicely. I hope that it continues that way, and I have no reason to believe that it won't, so things are looking good. But then I ask myself why wouldn't it? It's a great idea (thanks to D for that), it's a romp complete with a really hot Russian spy babe, guns, KGB goons, chase scenes, and more than a couple of surprises. It's right up my alley. My dark little alley with bad guys waiting at the end.

No distractions today

Well, today was a good day, especially in terms of writing.

I managed to hammer out over 4,000 words for the collaboration that I'm working on. I finished chapter 1 and got a really good running start into chapter 2. All good stuff and I was really happy to be able to work today. Through the writing today, the story has changed slightly from the original plans, but it really has no effect on the overall planning that went on with my collaborator last September. Just little things here and there, so it's all good. I'm eagerly awaiting Chris' return from taking the kids' friends home so she can do her editorial magic with today's work. Then I can send it off to my writing buddy and I do so hope that she likes it. I think she will.

Chris asked me a pretty important question about the story last night. She was wondering how D and I would compensate for the differences in our writing styles, but I think since we've created a story with two heroines, that it only makes sense that their respective points of view would read with a different kind of voice. I hope that's what will happen anyway, and I refuse to believe that it will become a problem. Paragon of optimism here, remember?

Anyway, that's the good news. Here's the not so good news:

Yep, it hurts. It hurts in a pretty special way, but I'm not going to worry about it too much. There's no sign of infection...just lots of bruises, so whatever. I went to the medicine cabinet today to see if we had any arnica gel, but alas, there was none, so I'll just keep my sock on and try not to obsess about it. Nothing I can really do, right?

Anyway, the kids have the day off school tomorrow, so I don't expect to get much done. I may have to go take a nap in a while so I can stay up late tonight. I'm rolling now and I'm eager to keep going.

Also, Chris just returned with the mail, really nice birth announcement from a good friend. She has the cutest kids and I'm so happy for her and her partner and their adorable new baby. Congrats, ladies...well done.

More Distractions

Let's continue in the same general direction as yesterday and discuss a specific kind of distraction that can submarine one's efforts to write. This is a big one, and while it may not be familiar to a lot of younger people, it's basically the only thing on my mind right now.

Pain. The pain that comes from a really stupid injury. Here's what happened:

Last night, somewhere in the general vicinity of about 9:00 pm, I decided that it sounded like a good idea to go down to Neighbor's (the Exxon station/convenience store close to our house). The six wooden steps that lead down from my front porch to the gravel walkway below were icy. Like a skating rink, that kind of icy. The first thing I remember thinking as I stepped onto the front porch was, "Easy, Diane...the steps look pretty icy." The next thing I thought was, "Oh, shit... I'm falling," followed shortly thereafter by, "Okay, I'm not falling anymore, but I'm pretty sure I broke something." Turned out that it was my toe that was broken. The orange Croc on my right foot flew off and out into the snow when I started to fall, and about three steps down, I managed to somehow hook my toe onto one of the vertical supports for the handrail. Needless to say, my toe stopped while I continued to fall. It was one of those physics lessons where momentum was stopped by an immovable object, and the only variable reaction that could take place was the breaking of a bone in my foot.

Ouch!

So, this morning, my foot looks as if someone smeared it with a whole palette of bruise-colored paints, mostly purple and dark red. While it may fall into the category of too much information, there is a similar collection of bruises elsewhere, mostly on my lower back and butt. I'm not sure how it happened, but I did managed to cut my finger too, but that seems pretty insignificant in the whole collection of injuries. Fortunately, Emma (Chris' daughter) and her friend Ryan, were right behind me, and quickly went inside to get help. Ryan later declared that I was "badass, like you were so calm and all. I would have been all (insert all of the gutter, truck stop colorful epithets that you know), but you were just like...." Well, more just like that. Ryan has somehow decided that I'm the coolest thing around, and it was important to me to be cool for him. Believe me, every colorful epithet that I knew swirled through my brain in that instant, but I just gritted my teeth and asked Emma to go inside to get her mother to help me up. Once inside, Chris pulled the sock off my right foot, and I was greeted to the sight of toe number three, as it pointed decidedly toward the east while my other, uninjured toes pointed happily to the north. That's when I almost lost it.

Anyway, here's what greeted me this morning:

Yes, it's still pointed the wrong direction, but more toward the northeast than true east now. And yes, it hurts like hell. As does my lower back, but I'm grateful that my injuries weren't more severe. I'm lucky that my knee didn't blow out or something to that effect. I didn't go to the hospital, because broken toes usually require little care, and I didn't want to pay for an x-ray to tell me that, yes, my toe was broken. I think you can clearly see from the picture that it's broken.

So, to sum it all up, I might or I might not write today. I'll most likely sit in my big comfy chair and watch football with my foot in a bucket of ice water and take lots of ibuprofen. We'll just have to see what the day brings.

Distractions

Distractions... part of the process.

I suppose that I'd never really stopped to think about it, but distractions and how we deal with them are as much a part of the process as anything else.

First, a couple of things about me. I have Attention Deficit Disorder. Full-blown, diagnosed at the University of Michigan Medical Center, used to take Ritalin for control, the whole shebang. Great. So I deal with it. I took the medication for something close to six years, and I was the picture of pay-attentionedness (I know...I made it up). I was a dutiful little pharmacy tech, filling medication carts in two different hospitals with an efficiency rate over 99 percent. I also quit writing, stopped being a musician, and basically gave up my creative side in order to make a living. Then I moved to Virginia and decided that, regardless of the fact that I might lose that medication-induced power of control, my creativity was too important to me to continue to squash. So I stopped. I haven't had a dose of Ritalin for over six years now, and I've written two books and several short stories. I've also become a musician again, so it's all good.

Well, it has often been said that you must take the bad with the good. So here's the bad.

Distractions. They stop me like the proverbial freight train. I can't write with a TV or radio turned on. I can't write if there is anyone else in the room. There are two words that once made me the happiest kid on the planet, but now only fill me with dread and anxiety. Snow day. A house full of the teenaged members of my family, sometimes their friends, always accompanied by the sound of the television, phone conversations, iPods and the inevitable, "Turn that down, before you rupture an eardrum." Even if they're quiet, they're here and I can sense their presence. I love them all dearly, but they create a situation in which I cannot write.

Why am I telling you this? Because that's part of my writing process as well. I try to find ways to compensate. I managed to bang out 300 words yesterday. Managed? I should have said struggled. I tried working with my own iPod stuffed in my ears, but as ridiculous as it sounds, I found myself singing along with the Latin text of the Mozart Requiem. And then, I turned off the music and went as far as to put on a pair of earmuffs. Not your usual fluffy, keep-your-ears-warm earmuffs, but the hard black plastic earmuffs that I wear with my brother when we go to the pistol range to shoot guns. Did it help? Sort of. Did I feel like the biggest dork on the face of the Earth? Definitely. Is it a solution? No, it's not.

So here's where I am now. Since my last post, I've written very little. It's nice to be home, but there really is little progress on the book. I've talked about it a lot. I've worked out some story details. I know where I want it to go, but until I get a little peace, or until I get an office with a door that I can close, I'm pretty much stuck. Chris made a really interesting observation last week, in the midst of my trouble, that I was basically a solitary person. Unfortunately, I'm a solitary person who hates to be alone, so I take the good with the bad, the peace with the distractions, and do what I can.