May is here! And I don’t know what you’re writing these days, but I’m taking a giant stab at Story-A-Day May. I’ve managed it before, but I’m not sure this time how chemo treatments are going to get in the way. To be accurate, how the side-effects are going to get in the way.
But don’t we always have things to get in the way?
I like to post my stories in their rough, rough form over at my other blog The Fairy Tale Asylum. If you’re participating, let me know.
don’t stay in the cup
Sometimes the mind just brims over with ideas. Do you ever have trouble deciding what to focus on or what to pursue?
I’m going to pursue as many as I can.
One is the idea of a princess detective. I want to try to write a princess that isn’t what most people think. I’m writing about her over at The Fairy Tale Asylum.
Another idea goes back to my love of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and Agent Dale Cooper. Cooper is one of my most favorite characters on television ever. Twice readers have said that my writing reminded them of Twin Peaks! I don’t know why since I don’t have a murder nor do I write about the northwest, logging, or the FBI–but my character do drink a lot of coffee.
Anyway, I’ve started another blog for a character in love with Agent Dale Cooper and determined to find him in the real world. For her travels and travails, read searching for Agent Dale Cooper. If you want to help her find her man, feel free to leave a comment.
I’ve got an art show coming in October as well. Projects will be posted over at Words Are Art.
And finally, there is always facebook.
What projects are you juggling in life?
Have you ever seen something–a garden gate perhaps, a picture hanging on a cafe wall, an odd, unexpected object in an odd and expected place–that made you stop and look again. That stirred your heart, maybe your gut, a place deep within?
I love connecting with a picture, a story, a random object.
Imagine if something I made did the same for someone else. Even if I never publish anything, connecting with someone through something I created would mean wonders.
When I was 16, I read this book, The Truth about Unicorns. I’ve blogged about it before. I loved that book so much, when I got to the end, I went straight back to the beginning and read it again. Why did I love it?
I don’t know.
But that book reached me. Maybe this is problem. I want to write a book like that book made me feel.
Or how Watership Down made me feel.
Or The Phantom Tollbooth.
Mama Day.
But how does one write a book like that?
I don’t know. But that’s why I write. Eight novels and a pile of short stories, and I haven’t written that story yet as far as I can tell. I believe in that story, and one day I’m going to write it.
What book do you aspire to?
Have you heard the theory that there are countless parallel universes, that at particular moments in your life when one decision was made, another universe began with another you who lived the choice you didn’t make.
dad
What moment in your childhood would change where you are now? Of course, perhaps it the small forgotten decision that made all the difference. You’re alive because you took an extra minute to tie your shoe and so you weren’t on your bike in the intersection when the truck ran the stop sign. But those moments you can never know.
When I look back I think about the day when I was in the 6th grade and my dad chose to believe his wife, my step-mother, instead of me. Perhaps I wouldn’t have gone to live with my mother. If hadn’t gone to live with my mother, she wouldn’t have needed to move. If she’d hadn’t have moved, we wouldn’t have ended up living with her boyfriend. I’d be telling a different story today.
What happened though was that my father said, “I don’t understand why you’d say that. She works hard to make our home nice. I want you to try harder. She’s had a hard life, and she only wants what’s best.”
In the string theory, not only is there a world where I stayed with my father, there is also a world where he and his second wife never got together at all. I like to think a me is out there who experienced a tranquil childhood.
That me probably wouldn’t be a writer.
When I decided to live with my mother, I needed to lie. I left for my summer visitation, and on the way out the door, I kissed my dad’s cheek. “See you in two weeks,” I said.
But in two weeks my dad didn’t see me. He didn’t see me for almost a year because the judge wouldn’t allow it. Maybe there’s a universe where the judge told me to return to my dad and step-mother. I don’t want to know that universe.
Our universe though remains the only one we have access to. It doesn’t do much good to tell a child in trouble–you’re okay in another universe.
Believe your child. When they’re older, they’ll remember the person who believed.
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This is part of a blog hop–Self as Child. Plum Tree works to promote children’s art and stories (please submit!).
Other writers participating: Tonia at Passionfind, C.C.Cole, Deb Hockenberry, and more to come.
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On a side note–I’m writing very short stories for Story-a-Day May! Stories are here. Are you writing?
I think the loveliest time of the year is the pub date, I do. Don’t you? Course you do!
Wait. What?
(A gold star to whomever gets the reference in my blog post title.)
I’m taking part in Story-a-Day May. Are you? I’ll post the stories over at The Fairy Tale Asylum. At the end of the month I may be locked up with rest of the inmates…
Do you participate in writing challenges?
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For artists–or rather for parents of artists–remember Youth Tube at Plum Tree Books. We are always looking for submissions of children’s art.
I can’t get myself to close this blog all together. I might want to move back one day and I like the name.
But how I feel about this space needs more than a theme change.
It is called writing in the water and I’ve felt compelled to write only about writing.
But I’ve got nothing else to say about that these days.
So, I want a place where anything goes…well, up to a point.
It will be random, and probably insignificant, but such is life.
If you subscribe or link to me (first, wow and thank you kindly), then you could consider doing the same for the new digs.
But that is neither here nor there–it’s the Internet and where is that exactly?
The Fairy Tale Asylum is still being moved into, but please stop in.
Thank you all.
