5-4-7

I can only come up with five reasons for seven weeks of blog silence:

1) I'd rather be in Ireland. We've been back from our trip there for over a month, but every time I sit at the computer I get distracted by my own photos. Here are three of 216:

2) It's summer. My brain is out the window and my feet are out the door. Day after day of gorgeous weather means each morning I walk the dog, then go for a run, then walk the husband, then go to the beach or farmers' market or town or any place except my office.

3) Minimal discipline level. The few hours I manage to force myself to work are devoted to revising the novel. I'm depressed by how many mistakes I make and by how dumb my sentences sound. It's much more fun to look at those photos of Ireland.

4) No ideas. Except...in the middle of the night. 3:14 a.m. to be precise. I'm wide awake and the ideas for blogs and stories are buzzing around like dozens of mosquitoes. Totally annoying and impossible to ignore. Shouldn't there be a collective term for mosquitoes? Maybe a "vexation" or an "itch"? Ah, well, I digress. Curse of the writer's mind.

5) Digression. Just finish the damn thing.

Excuses, Excuses

The dog ate my homework. Yeah, sure.
My printer didn't work. My server was down. The techno excuses are just as lame as the old dog was. Unless, of course, it's true and it's happened to you.
Two days ago, I walked into my office to discover my hulking surge protector--the superhero guardian of my electronic world--screaming in agony. Something was seriously amiss. It took only seconds to determine that my wireless router fried and died, but it's taking (note present tense) days to correct the problem.
This is my reality check. Every time I think I'm getting sort of cool and know my way around the modern world, something like this happens, and I become a terrified child lost in cyberspace. Hopelessly ignorant. Woefully inadequate. Unable even to speak the language.
Shouldn't it be as simple as plugging the damn thing in, typing in a security code, and hitting "apply"? That's what it says on the new router's box.
But inside that box, there's a "resource CD" that has the real directions. You put the CD in the computer to read it, which is dandy, except that the very first instruction is to shut down the computer. How exactly does that work when you can't remember step 9? It gets better, too. Everything was all set to go, or so I thought until I got a "non-viable configuration" warning. Huh?
So while I wrestle with something interesting to blog about, I might as well blame technology for sabotaging my pearls of wisdom.
Maybe by the time I've sorted out the router, I'll have a better idea.

Gone, Baby, Gone

Sometimes it takes a while to figure out how to write about things I've seen during my walks and travels. I know there is some sort of a story in these two photos, but I haven't figured out what it is yet. The first picture needs explanation: a tree that was cut down during the burn off at the shoreline. In the photo, all that is left is a pile of charcoal. When I walked past this scene, I decided to draw the old tree stump with the tree's charcoal remains. Later, I wanted to take a photo, but the stump had already been removed. Therefore, this is a picture of something that isn't there. The second picture is the sketch I made of the tree stump, using the charcoal that used to be the tree. One of these days, I might figure out a story that relates to these images.

Tweet'll Dumb

OMG. I've been blogging for a year. Last week, I bought the book Blogging for Dummies because I am a dummy with this social media stuff. Recently, through various channels, it's been brought to my attention that my blog is SEVERELY LACKING.
I had no pictures, so I reluctantly put something in the profile section. With a B.A. in photography and fine art, you'd think I would do better with the visuals. Oddly, I had the idea that a blog principally about writing should involve words more than pictures. Silly me. Being eager to please, I promise to have photos in my future posts.
I'm also deficient when it comes to tags and links. It seems that if I mention and tag people like Sarah Palin, Justin Bieber, and Kate Gosselin, I'll get thousands of hits. I will not do that here--or ever--because I want nothing to to with them. As Michiko Kakutani writes in Texts Without Contexts, her very excellent NY Times article, "funny, snarky, or willfully provocative assertions often gain more traction than earnest, measured ones." (See? I can link if I want to.)
Finally, I've been criticized for posts that are too long, so this one ends with a little ditty suitable for the slightly snarky tone of the day:

A blog is tough
Enough, I fear,
To fill with words for
An entire year,
But
A tweet'll dumb
Me down, I think,
To writing that would
Really stink.

Mr. Ward's Letter

A couple of months ago, a grade school classmate sent out an email alerting fellow alumni that a former teacher of ours, Mr. Frank Ward, would be celebrating his 90th birthday. We were encouraged to send cards or call him with congratulations. Probably as a way to procrastinate further work on my novel, I went to the store, bought a card, signed my name, and posted it.
Ward was my seventh grade history teacher, but his true claim to fame was as the boys' P.E. teacher and coach extraordinaire. I didn't think he'd actually remember the odd little girl who tried her best to avoid any attention in his class.
Much to my surprise, a couple of weeks ago, I received from Ward a two-page handwritten letter, two photos enclosed. His handwriting, like the man I remember, is still strong, bold, and absolutely unique with quite grand flourishes on capital letters, and swirling tails on "y"s and "g"s. In one of the photos, he is unapologetically holding a mint julep cup, and on the back of said photo, he has written, "This is not medicine...it is a drink."
I've thought about this man and this letter quite a bit in the past few weeks. When was the last time I received a real, honest-to-goodness letter? It must be a decade or more ago. We don't write letters anymore; we email or text or pick up the phone. And that's a damn shame. Aside from the fact that the postal service has been bankrupted by our new techno habits, what will happen to our history? I don't mean the earth shaking global-economy-who's-the-top-dog-now history, but rather the little history of individuals and families. Without those boxes of yellowing, crinkly missives stashed in attics for generations to come, what will our grandchildren and great grandchildren know of our family struggles and triumphs? How will my great grandchildren ever know the bits and pieces of daily life that helped form their grandparents, their own parents, and ultimately they themselves?
Finding a treasure trove of family letters (as I did when clearing out my parents' house) is finding out much about who you are and how you came to be. So with that in mind, I have vowed to begin writing to my middle daughter (the only one who lives out of state). I hope to send a letter at least once a month. I've already told her she is under no obligation to write back (I'm not silly), but I do hope she will keep my letters. I hope I can chronicle just a little bit of our family's life and times here in 2010 and beyond. And maybe she and/or her children will understand that a great teacher can still teach a great lesson even when he is 90 and the student is...well, thinking about grandchildren.

The Other Zone

In my last post, I drop-kicked myself from one zone to another. Just after that taunting of the Muse, I started novel #4. Well, it's #4 if I'm counting the one that stinks and will never see the light of day, and the one that has been in rough draft form for 3 years. Beyond the World is finished--sort of. Five of my seven readers have returned the manuscript with some great comments and suggestions, but I'm not quite ready to do the revisions yet.
So what comes to mind to keep my idle little hands out of trouble? Why, another novel, of course! What better thing could I possible do with these interminable winter days than go to Fictionland where it is summer and I can reside in the mind of my protag who is young, thin, fashion-cool, and on the brink of...you guessed it--true love. Of course, she must suffer some evil and injustice first, which wil also be fun. (Have I taken cabin fever to a new level??)
Anyway, I've been trying to crank out 1500 words a day, which has put me just shy of 18,000 words so far. I have the characters, the time line, the main plot and the sub-plots (more or less). What I don't have is a life. Two of my friends have actually left messages asking if I am all right because I haven't returned their calls. I go days without venturing farther than the bottom of the driveway for the newspaper, and it's been over a week since I left this zip code.
Honestly, I don't know if this new story is worth the time and trouble, but it has me in its grip. Cue the voice of Rod Serling, "You are now in the Twilight Zone." Ha! I should be so lucky....

The Dead Zone

The start of 2010 has been great: BTW went out to my first "readers" and I have 7 short stories bravely taking their chances as cannon fodder with literary magazine editors. The only trouble is that I'm not currently writing. Ideas flit past and shards of stories litter several spiral notebooks in my office, but nothing is growing. It's a dead zone. The harder I try, the worse it gets. How frustrating it is to have a string of snug winter mornings free of commitments, and.....nothing. Nada. Zip. Brain dead.
It seems to follow the capriciousness of the Muse that whenever there is a quiet spell, she is supremely bored. What she doesn't know is that I can see her quite clearly. Today, she is a lithesome 1920s femme fatale. She wears a tastefully sequined mauve dress; her dark hair is bobbed and wrapped in a feathered turban. She glares at me, her crimson moue tightening slightly, reflecting her disdain. The grasping efforts of mortals are so very vulgar. Raising the foot-long onyx cigarette holder which she has delicately pinched in her right hand, she taps a bit of scornful ash on my desk and stalks off to find a more fun party in someone else's head.