Proud writer mom

I just got to say to my kid, “Don’t stay up too late - your characters will still be there in the morning.”

A whole new world

When people begin to pursue a new hobby in earnest, it frequently changes the way they view the world.  Take, for instance, three people walking on the beach.  The amateur photographer is noting the direction of the light, and the shadows, and mentally framing shots as he walks along.  The surfer is noting wind speed and direction, gauging the swells, and wondering how long she has to walk before she can head for the car for her board.  And the marine biologist is wondering how long it will take the surfer and the photographer to notice the pod of dolphins a few dozen yards off-shore.  Same light, same sand, same water - but a totally different experience for each of them.

I tend to latch onto my hobbies with both fists and a wrap a leg around them, too, so my approach to many situations is, shall we say, unique.  I'm a writer, so I'm always making note of bits of dialog I like and ideas I might be able to use in the future.  I'm a knitter and a crocheter, so I'm likely to pause a movie for five minutes just to get a closer look at the male lead's sweater or hat.  I'm a cook and a baker, so I'm always on the lookout for ways to try foods or techniques that are too complicated or annoying for me to want to make at home.  I'm a photographer with a love of macro lenses, so I'm always getting up close and personal with the strangest, most mundane things in the world ... and usually making a fool out of myself to find them. 

Like skipping part of breakfast so I could wander around in the rain with my camera sheltered under a plastic bag, so I could photograph a drop of condensed fog on a dead grass stem (with bonus upside-down totem pole inside):

I ignored the beach and the boats and the pool at the resort in Jamaica last November, but I came home with 20 pictures of a flower the size of a pencil eraser:

Well, I didn't entirely ignore the beach (there's lots of fun stuff in the sand, like bits of coral):

I also spend close to an hour in the glass house every time I go to the Botanical Garden, communing with the butterflies.  You'd be surprised how close they will let me come ... my lens was less than an inch away from this guy's face:

But most of all, I'm a blogger, a multi-media photojournalistentertainer whose interests range from the mundane (look what my kid did today!) to the introspective (news flash: depression sucks!) to the humorous.  It changes how I look a the world, and how the world sees me.  It means that when I'm having a particularly funny exchange with my doctor, I'm mentally taking notes to use later.  My friends have learned to shout, "You can't use that on your blog!" really quickly when I get a certain gleam in my eye.  And it means I occasionally find myself trying to document a Monarch butterfly migration while wearing only a towel:

Or, like today, when I decided to take a shortcut across the tree lawn to get from the sidewalk to the street, and I discovered that the ground wasn't nearly as solid as one might have hoped.  I stepped, my shoe stayed behind, and I was left hopping around on one foot in the street, fumbling for my camera so I could get this shot:

There are times when my compulsion to photograph and document and fictionalize is annoying - ask Jason how much fun it was in Virginia when I decided I wanted to photograph as many kinds of moss and lichen as I could find, so every hike took three times as long as it should have.  But most of the time, I love the way I see the world, and I pity the people who just see the surface of everything in life.  I love that I look at a forest and don't just see trees, I see shapes and textures and good places to find rotting logs and cool fungus.  I don't get bored waiting for my Butterfly Whisperer to finish in the glass house, I just take more close-ups of foliage.  And I don't have any problem remembering what I did last year, because it's all in my blog or on my photo stream.  There are certainly worse habits to have.

Be prepared ... and fabulous

I grew up in the age of Civil Defense Drills, during which my fellow students and I would huddle in the halls of our school, kneeling down with our hands over the backs of our necks, talking quietly about how if there was ever an actual nuclear attack, our town would be instant collateral damage to any missiles fired at Washington, Baltimore, or Philadelphia, so there wasn't any point to us practicing how to "duck and cover."  My parents weren't big on disaster planning - anything weather-related we probably would have time to run away from, they figured, and things like fire ... well, I believe at one point I was told I should knock out my window screen, then jump from the roof of the kitchen down to the ground and try not to break my legs when I landed.  Thanks for the tip, guys.

We moved to Japan in 1998, and we were amused to find out that everyone at work had an Earthquake Kit they had to keep in their desk.  These backpacks included such handy items as hard hats (which were too small for our heads), reflective insulating blankets (most of the time we spent in Japan was during the warmer months), a liter bottle of water (which is enough for, like, half a day of survival), and various energy bars and snack foods (which most of the employees snitched during the year, so they would all starve if they actually needed them).  Our employers were kind enough to send two extra kits home with us to keep in the apartment, where we stuck them in the closet by the front door, along with some extra bottles of water and a ziplock baggie of food for the cat.  When the largest earthquake of our time in Japan actually occurred on a cold day in December, I was barefoot and wearing nothing but a sports bra and leggings, having just returned from a run.  I sat there in shock while the building shook and heaved, but eventually I came to my senses and ran to grab the backpacks, while Jason - in his pajamas - spent five minutes trying to coax the cat out from under the bed. A few granola bars and a mylar blanket would not have made much difference in our ability to survive in a post-earthquake hellhole that day.

We moved back to America, and 9/11 happened, and people started talking about sarin gas and biological warfare and stuff, and officials suggested we all stock up on plastic sheets and duct tape, just in case.  We threw a few dropcloths and rolls of tape on the pile of stale bottles of water and canned goods that were gathering dust in the basement.  I didn't make any concrete plans for what we would do in case of a big emergency ... honestly, I'm always halfway serious when I joke that I hope I'm the first to get slaughtered in whatever horrible thing happens in our town, because I'm not constitutionally suited to living through adverse times.  As a kid, I was always somewhat comforted by the idea that our town would probably be obliterated during any sort of attack, so I wouldn't have to worry about surviving the fallout and the famine and the lawlessness.  I am just not designed to soldier on through immense adversity.

We moved to Kentucky, had a kid, and my emergency preparedness focus shrank to making sure I had a spare change of clothes for everyone in the car, because you never knew when a diaper disaster was going to hit.  I cared less about mylar blankets and first aid kits than I did about having enough snacks and diapers to make it through the next 12 hours.

We moved back to Cleveland, and for some reason, emergency supplies just never seemed important.  We were always tight on space at the last house, and when we ended up using our supply of stale bottled water to refresh the backup battery on our sump pump, we didn't replace it.  I canned ridiculous amounts of food, and we always had packaged snack food, so I figured we could probably weather a few days without power if we needed to.  Then there were hurricanes, and tornadoes, and other weather situations that made it difficult for various family members to get necessary supplies, and making up an emergency kit didn't seem like such a waste of time after all.

A few weeks ago a friend of ours was showing off his "bug-out bag," which he has prepared in case he and his family need to make a quick escape in the face of an emergency.  It's got first aid supplies, and water, and food, and a Bowie knife as long as your forearm.  "I call it the 'Zombie Apocalypse Bag,' because seriously, when would we need a knife that big during an ice storm or a hurricane?" his wife said.  "Besides, if it was really a bug-out bag, it would need to have extra gas for the car in it, since we never have more than about 1/4 of a tank in either of the cars on a regular day."  I agreed that no gas + giant knife = zombie apocalypse bag, and the conversation moved on.

Earlier this week the weather was so cold that it froze the intake valves for the water treatment plant that supplies several of the communities near us, including our town.  We were cautioned to conserve water, refrain from taking long showers or doing laundry, because while there was enough water right then, there was no way to refill the storage tanks when all of it was consumed.  By Wednesday night we were told to use water only for essential things like brushing teeth, drinking, and cooking - flushing toilets and taking showers were frowned upon.  Communities near ours were still well-supplied with water because their intake valves were lower in the lake and hadn't frozen yet, and a heat wave was predicted for later in the week, so it wasn't a crisis.  And yet, within ten minutes of hearing about the water restrictions, a friend posted on Facebook that we shouldn't bother going to the grocery store to pick up bottled water, since the shelves were entirely sold out.  All around us, the cold weather was causing power outages and gas supply problems and busted pipes, and people were having to hunker down in their houses for days at a time because cars wouldn't start and the roads weren't fit to drive, even if you could find a store that was open.

It was the first time in my life that I actually thought, Well, crap, I guess we should have gotten that emergency kit together after all.  We had plenty of food in the fridge, and even if the power went out, it would keep in the cold temperatures.  We had propane tanks and a grill we could use if the gas went out, and a ton of frozen food we could thaw.  But water ... that we didn't have much of.  We shut off the ice maker, didn't take showers, didn't wash the laundry, didn't wash the dishes.  We tried not to think about how as soon as you aren't supposed to use water, all you want is a drink.  Jason took the World's Least Satisfying Shower the next morning, and we waited to see if school would have water in the buildings and be able to open.  In the end, the water company devised another way to supply water to the plant, so the restrictions were lifted, and life went back to normal.

Only now I'm thinking that we really should get that emergency kit together.  Water, packaged food, a decent first aid kit, a can of gas for the car, extra blankets and socks, and of course the plastic sheeting and duct tape.  Maybe extra socks and a pair of cheap shoes for all of us (because I don't want to get caught barefoot during the next earthquake I live through, thankyouverymuch). A book on first aid and survival techniques would be helpful, too, since I couldn't actually treat any injury worse than a sprain, and my knowledge of making shelters comes entirely from watching some Mythbusters specials about the uses of duct tape.  I think I'll skip the Bowie knife, though, in favor of an extra can opener, some form of alcohol, and a few days' worth of all the prescriptions Jason and I take.  Because when the zombie apocalypse comes, how can I expect to be one of the first ones put out of my misery eaten if my brain isn't jacked up on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs?  And how will Jason cope with my loss and soldier on if his blood pressure skyrockets and his asthma flares up?  And how will Liza ... well, Liza is healthy as a horse, doesn't actually eat food most days, hasn't willingly taken a drink of water in years, and runs around all winter in tank tops and shorts - she'll outlive us all, no matter what the disaster.

I can't put Liza  in charge of picking out emergency supplies, though - every time we have a winter storm warning or a thunderstorm, she packs her own kit of supplies she needs if we have to take shelter elsewhere.  These kits usually include things like a pillow, 48 books, a granola bar, a flashlight without any batteries, a candle (but no matches or lighter),three extra outfits with lots of sequins and glitter ("so the rescuers can find me"), and a backup toy to sleep with.  Perfect for a sleepover, but not so helpful for the zombie apocalypse, unless you're planning on smothering the walkers with a pillow or pelting them with paperbacks.  She may not make it through the disaster, but with her fashion sense intact, at least Liza will be an attractive corpse.  Maybe I'll go add some mascara and a tube of lip gloss to the emergency kit.  After all, if we can't be prepared, we can at least be fabulous, right?

Not my favorite kind of parade

This week I got a full physical from my doctor, courtesy of my 40th birthday.  That birthday, mind you, was two months ago, but January was the earliest I could schedule myself in one of the coveted 8am time slots.  Fasting bloodwork + limited number of days in the week = you practically have to kill someone to get a slot for a physical.

The doctor's usual nurse, Rachel, wasn't in that day - the first time ever that I've been in the office and NOT seen her.  Her replacement, whose name I never caught, was competent, but I was disappointed.  If I was going to have to have a female witness on hand for my exam, it would have been nice if I at least knew her name.  I mean, I'm open to meeting new people, but I do have standards.  She could have at least bought me a drink first....

It also happened to be my doctor's week in the "let's have medical students shadow our practicing doctors" rota, and the Nameless Nurse asked if I would mind if a medical student sat in on my visit.  No problem, I said, remembering that 3/4 of the visit was just going to be me answering only mildly uncomfortable questions.  My doctor brought in Eric, who was blandly handsome and looked like he was still wet behind the ears.  He shook my hand with just the right amount of respect and geniality - good training on handshakes at Case, apparently.  Nothing creepy there, no vibe of, "Boy, am I excited I get to look up your hoo-hah today!" so that was okay.

Endless questions.  Who died when, of what?  What do I eat, drink, do for fun?  How often?  Seriously, every time I get a physical - which isn't that often, maybe once every five years? - the number of questions doubles.  Meanwhile, I'm sitting there, hunger and a caffeine headache gnawing away at my insides because I haven't eaten in more than 12 hours.
Dr: "How much caffeine do you drink every day?"
"Not enough today, let me tell you."
Dr: "Okay, on a normal day when I'm not torturing you, how many caffeinated beverages do you drink?"

My doctor isn't much older than I am, and one of my main goals when I visit him (aside from getting my prescriptions re-authorized at the pharmacy) is to crack him up.  It's usually not that hard ... or that intentional, actually.  Can I help it if strong knee reflexes and a pair of slip-on shoes are not a good combination?  Anyway, he's rattling through his standard list, I'm watching him type the answers into his laptop and waiting, because I've got a good answer prepared for one of the questions.  And, sure enough, it came:

Dr: "What type of birth control do you use?"
"Condoms.  Well, condoms and excessive irritability, if you want to know the truth."
Dr: "Nice," he said with a grin.
"Bet your questionnaire doesn't have a code for that one."
Dr: "Nope, but it probably should."

Questions answered, he shined a funky light in my eyes, looked in my ears and up my nose, and explained a few things to Eric the Med Student about how the software was set up to track when various vaccinations were due in the future, so you don't have to calculate them yourself.  Apparently, in 2020 I can look forward to my tetanus booster - awesome!

Dr: "Okay, so we're going to step out for a minute while you get out of your clothes, and we'll do the pelvic exam when we get back."
"So can I leave my top half dressed, or do you need the full monty?"
Dr: "Full monty, including socks.  Gotta do a full skin exam, too."
"Yay. So, do I at least get a drape?"
Dr: "Oh, right.  Here you go," the doctor said, and he rummaged around in the exam table drawer and got a gown and drape for me.  "I thought she had already gotten one laid out.  Be back in a minute."

Well, maybe a few minutes.  It's a good thing I asked for the gown, because I was in there forever.  First, the Nameless Nurse came back to give me my flu shot, while my doctor went in to see another patient.  Then, the doctor was ready, but the nurse was filling in paperwork.  Then they all were ready, but the nurse hadn't laid out the exam equipment that my doctor preferred, so they had to get that set up.

Meanwhile, I'm starving and rapidly approaching being late for work. I was stuck naked in The Most Boring and Chilly Exam Room Ever, texting a friend to set up a play date for Liza and sending messages to Jason to jokingly complain about the physical.
- "Rachel the nurse has the day off so there's a sub, and it's medical student following day.  There's going to be a parade of strangers looking at my privates in the next few minutes.  Yay!"
---"I always say no to that."
-"That's because you hate learning and don't want the next generation of doctors to know what they're doing.  Loser."

Honestly, I thought, I don't care who all is down there, as long as I don't have to see them around town on a regular basis.  I'd much rather have a dozen med students down there taking notes and drawing diagrams, rather than walk around naked in the women's locker room at the gym.  At least the med students I can justify as being for the greater good, whereas walking around in the locker room is just icky.  Then again, maybe I was just a little lightheaded from the hunger and lack of Diet Coke.

The Pelvic Exam Parade eventually was ready to start, and it was even more fun than normal, since my doctor was taking his time and explaining everything he was doing to the student.  I distracted myself by trying to figure out how old I would have been when I gave birth to him if the student was my kid, and the answer was "not that much younger than some of my friends started having kids."  Those medical students are getting younger all the time (insert obligatory old woman cackle here).  This somewhat distressing thought was effective as a distraction, though, because I managed to ignore most of the exam, other than one strangely off-putting comment from my doctor to the student: "Sorry you can't see what I'm doing here, but it's all up on the top floor.  I think you'd have to stand on your head."  Okaaaaaay ....  Time for the patient to ask about something that's been bothering her for a while:

"Oh, I meant to ask you, ."
Dr: "Huh.  Well, that's unusual."
"Yeah, I kind of figured that.  Heck, if I could get a camera up there, I could probably make some money from the video on YouTube."
Dr: "I am so glad you said that, because I was totally thinking it, and I'm not allowed to say stuff like that."
"It's like a party trick."
Dr: "I do not get invited to those kinds of parties."
"Yeah, me neither, so it's kind of a waste."

The doctor filled in some paperwork while I sat on the table and tried to not look like I was ready to gnaw off my own leg.

Dr: "Okay, so here's the order for the lab work, and another for a mammogram.  You get to start having those, now, too, by the way."
"Yeah, I know, all of my high school friends were complaining about it on Facebook in the past year."
Dr: "Really?"
"Yeah, well, it came up a lot.  It's not like they were posting pictures or anything."
Dr: "I hope not."
"Dude, knowing my friends, I'm lucky they weren't posting live video feeds of the procedures."
Dr: "..."
"Again, I could totally make money with that on YouTube."
Dr: "Again, I'm glad you said that, not me.  Go get the lab work done down the hall, and I'll see you in three months."

A few minutes later I was sitting there, trying not to watch the technician fishing around for a vein (mine are dainty) and I looked up when another patient entered the waiting area  ... with Eric the Med Student trailing behind him.  I gave him a faint smile and tried very hard not to concentrate on the fact that he'd been trying to check out my top floor just a few minutes before.  I said thanks to the technician, grabbed my coat, and headed for my car.  With any luck, the Pelvic Exam Parade would not follow me all the way to Subway, because while Eric may know all about my party trick, that didn't mean I wanted him to know what I order on my sandwiches.  Some things are just too personal to share.

This post brought to you by the makers of Crest, Wellbutrin, and Eos lip balm

My past few posts have been stale, and for that I apologize.  If it makes any difference, the REALLY bad ones never made it online, they're still stuck in my drafts folder awaiting editing or execution.  It's starting to look like an emergency room in there, with all the gory mistakes I've got piling up.  In my defense, I think I've discovered the problem, and I'm taking steps to correct it.

You see, for the last few nights I've gotten REALLY good ideas for blog posts, generally while I'm in the middle of brushing my teeth.  Not just topics, no, but whole paragraphs of comic gold.  I blame these bursts of inspiration on Jon Scalzi and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, whose books I've been reading at bedtime.  They're just such great writers, and their voices, while totally different, are very much in the same vein as how I'd like my blog to sound.  You could say that, for right now, at least, Scalzi and the Yarn Harlot are my spirit guides, or totems, or mentors, or something equally New-Agey and woo-woo.

Right, so, anyway, I'm standing there at the sink, and I'm all, "Aha!  I can write about procrastination, and how nothing would ever get done in the world if we weren't all fundamentally lazy!  Here's a three-point list of funny examples, and the perfect closing statement."  I'm trying to get in the habit of not staying up until 2am writing, though, so I don't rush off to the computer right then, toothbrush in hand.  No, I haul out my phone and jot these ideas down in shorthand in a blank blog post, save it as a draft, then return to it the next day to actually write it.  I don't feel like typing in everything I've thought of with my lefthand thumb, though, and besides, my ideas are so good, they will surely occur to me again once I start writing, right?

Yeah, um, no.

In the morning, I look at the three words I've managed to save, hoping that autocorrect hasn't mangled them all into insensibility, and I draw a blank.  For example, last night's gem reads "news blackout."  Now, I remember I was going to say something about how when I'm on vacation I don't listen to the radio, so I don't know what's going on in the world, and it only rarely changes how my life runs on a daily basis.  I was going to contrast that with my parents, who always wanted to watch the local news every night, ostensibly for the weather forecast (but we all knew it was so they could tut-tut over the crime situation and how awful whatever the current war had been that day).  There might have been something about Jon Stewart, twitter, Facebook status updates, and stuff I happen to see on the home screen of my computer.  But this morning, I sat there looking at it, and nothing came.  So I closed the file and went on about my business.

So now it's 10:23pm, Jason just asked me plaintively if I'm planning to come to bed anytime soon, and I'm still tapping away on the computer.  I think for the next little bit, until I get back in the habit of writing regularly, I'm going to just have to say, "Screw bed-times, I'm writing when I get the inspiration."  Because it'll be fresher, and full of all the awesome stuff I think off while taking my pills and washing my face.  Eventually I need to find a balance between a) actually writing, b) writing well, and c) a reasonable sleep schedule.  But tonight is not that night.

Tiny Scrap of Fiction: "End as you mean to go on"

     "'End as you mean to go on.'  What a load of superstitious bullshit," she thought, throwing another load of laundry into the washer.  As if the Fates cared whether her house was clean, her fridge was full of food, or her wallet was bulging at the seams.  Her family had been following the New Year's tradition for as long as she could remember, and it hadn't done them a bit of good, as far as she could tell.  And yet here she was, scrubbing and mending and filing as if her life depended on it.  Ridiculous.

     Truth be told, she wasn't sure she wanted her life to go on at all, regardless of whether it was full of luck and prosperity.  Things had just gotten to be too much - too much work, too much hassle, too much heartbreak.  One setback she could handle, or maybe even two.  But losing her job, and her marriage, and her father all in one year?  There wasn't much left to look forward to in the new year.

     All around her, she could practically hear her neighbors hastily scribbling their resolutions.  Lose weight.  Work less.  Take up a hobby.  Cook more and eat out less.  Nicely defined goals for the new year, with results that could be measured and graphed and analyzed, if they wanted.  Of course, most of her neighbors would have abandoned their goals by February and gone back to business as usual, but that was beside the point.

     What was she supposed to resolve, when so many of her heartbreaks were so big and completely outside of her control?  "I resolve that this year will suck less than last year" wasn't even necessarily attainable, given the way things had been going recently.  She had gone to her oncologist a few weeks ago for a routine check-up, and the look on his face when he reviewed her scans made her heart stop.  Nothing was certain, and it wouldn't be until she had the in-depth tests done in a few weeks, but she knew what they'd show.  It was back - maybe in its old stomping ground, maybe in a satellite colony somewhere new and exciting, but the cancer was back.  That was a great way to start of the new year, with a diagnosis of recurrence after all those months of being cancer-free.

     "Fuck this," she said out loud, throwing the toilet scrubber down in disgust.  End as you mean to go on, indeed.  She poured herself a drink, turned on the television, and called up her favorite episode of Dirty Jobs.  If Death was going to make a play for her this year, she wasn't going to waste her time cleaning.  It could just pick its way around the piles of mail and laundry if it wanted to get to her.  She had more important things to do.

    

My name is Gretchen, and I am scared spitless

I am a writer.

I write all the time (not that you'd know from this blog over the past year or so).  I write Facebook updates, and captions for my photo albums.  I write the school newsletter, and I helped write the content for the school website.  I'm helping write the expanded content for the website of the store where I work.  I journal.  I write notes to my daughter, notes to school, notes to myself so I don't forget to write notes to my daughter or to her school.

And even when I'm not writing, I'm thinking of what I'm going to write about when I get the time.  I'm brainstorming photo captions even as I press the shutter button.  I'm making note of funny conversations to use as fodder for future blog posts.  I get up in the middle of the night and write two full pages of ideas for a story, then stuff it in a drawer until I have time to work on it.

"I am not a fiction writer.  I write essays on my blog, and while they may stray a bit from the strict truth sometimes, they're still non-fiction.  I don't write stories."

That's what I told my mother every time she would encourage me to write a book.  I don't have time, I don't have any story ideas, I can't write dialogue to save my life, and I really don't have any desire to get rejected over and over by strangers who hold my future career in their hands.

Then in January I decided to take a writing class.  I hoped it would light a fire under me to actually write some blog posts.  But it turned out that it wasn't that sort of writing class ... but it was exactly the class I needed.  Because somewhere during the first week or so of class, A Story appeared in my brain, and it wouldn't go away.

It was all there - plot, characters, setting, format - and after about an hour of roughly outlining the story and the characters, I knew it was something I wanted to work on.  I started writing The Story in addition to the work assigned for the class, and I loved it.  I wrote longhand, and by the end of January I had most of the rough draft of The Story finished.  I typed it into the computer, made some edits, and set it aside for a while so I could forget it enough to edit it properly.

I did a major edit around Valentine's Day, then shoved it back in a drawer to stew for a bit.  Things had changed massively in the format of the story, and some valuable early feedback made me completely rework the opening and closing chapters of The Book (for by now, at almost 50 pages and 14,000 words long, it would indeed be considered A Book in the children's market I'd be selling into).

My class was over, but I tried my best to keep up the schedule I had started as part of it.  I read books on writing, I worked through exercises in some of them.  I reworked some parts of The Book to meet some of the suggestion I'd found in the writing books, and I was happy with how they had turned out.  But there were still big sections that said things like ******INSERT SOME KIND OF ACTION-Y SEQUENCE HERE TO DRAW OUT THE TENSION*******,  so it was by no means a "finished" manuscript.  I didn't have to do anything with it.  Nobody had to read it.  It was just a draft, in a drawer.

Today I finished the third round of revisions.  I work on paper to make the edits, then type them into the document, page after page, and it sucks big sweaty donkey balls, especially when you realize that out of a 50-page document, you have exactly ONE page with no changes.  One.  But it's done, and I'm happy with The Manuscript - because it is a manuscript now, it's got all the parts I think it needs to be "done."

But today is the day I have been dreading, because today is the day I admit to the world that The Manuscript is as good as I can make it on my own, and am going to need help to make it the best it can be.  I hate asking for help, I hate putting things that aren't what I consider "perfect" out where people can see them.  I hate being unsure that what I've written is good, or worthy, or whatever.

I have a cadre of wonderful friends who have volunteered their children to be my test readers, and I need to send my manuscript out into the world.  I feel a sense of accomplishment at having "finished" it, and an overwhelming sense of dread at having anyone other than me, Jason, and Liza read the thing.  The thought of people I know reading it makes me want to build a blanket fort and hide there until it's all over.

But I can't tell my test readers that.  If I come off as too fragile, they won't tell me the whole truth, they'll tell me pretty lies and reserve the truth for when they make fun of me behind my back.  And that doesn't do me any good.  If I'm going to expose my precious darling to the scrutiny of chest-high strangers, I want to at least get honest feedback when they're done.

So I procrastinate.  I write a rambling blog post.  I make turkey broth.  I hit Facebook like a crack pipe, as Ze would say.  I watch Ze's invocation.  I do laundry.  I wash the freaking basement floor (it really needed it, but still - really?).  I watch Ze's invocation again with snot running down my face and a huge ball of horror in the pit of my stomach.  I tell myself that I can't send it out until I have a questionnaire to go with it, and then I procrastinate about making that, because really, when that's done, I'm out of excuses.  I have to send The Manuscript then.

And that thought scares me spitless.

ETA:  I just sent it.  Excuse me while I go throw up.

(slightly more than) 30 minutes with the prompt: Write about a party that goes horribly wrong.

   "Do I really have to go through this again?  I've already told the other officers my story, like, 10 times now."
   "Yes.  Now, I believe this all started with a party?"
   "Yeah.  My job as an investigator has me mostly working with the big three communities, you know - Fae, Furry, and Fanged.  But I do a lot of work with the lesser Supes, too, and I make a point of trying to stay neutral and treat everyone the same.  So when it came time to invite past and potential clients to my holiday party, I didn't think twice about inviting them all.
   "Before you start, yes, I know - usually the fairies, vampires, and wereanimals don't get along so well.  And when you throw in a bunch of brownies, trolls, mythological animals, and even the last dragon on the East Coast, you're brewing up a cauldron of unrest.  Except at Solstice, it's not like that.
   "Solstice is the one time when all of the clans have something to celebrate.  The weres are happy about the full moon.  The vamps celebrate the longest night of the year.  Brownies, pixies, elves - all of them are sorely in need of some time off from the toy factory.  Witches celebrate the return of the sun, and even plain vanilla humans celebrate the birth of their god around that time.  And we all know the Fae will use any excuse to throw a party, so they're easy to please.
   "It used to be easier to throw the party when my client list was smaller.  Back then I could rent a ballroom, bring in a blood fountain and a pen of some rabbits, rent a band, hire a caterer, and I was set.  But now it's gotten so big and complicated ... it's really getting to be more trouble than it's worth, especially after this year.
   "As I mentioned, I've done some work for Slorth, and you don't NOT invite the dragon to your party, not if you expect to live long enough to actually attend said party.  But he's so big, and insurance companies aren't exactly thrilled with the whole fire-breathing thing, so my choices for venue are really limited.  When I heard that The Hollow was unexpectedly available on Solstice, I knew it would be just right.  I could rent some tents for the warm-bloods, put up a big dance floor around the bonfire, and there would be plenty of room for Slorth.  Perfect!
   "Nobody at the rental company mentioned WHY The Hollow had become available.  If I had known about the spell the previous renters had left lingering around the place, there's no way I would have chanced it, at least not without hosing the entire site down with a strong anti-magickal salt solution.  But the rental company conveniently left that little detail out ... and I booked the party.
   "Everything started off well.  My guests know to be on their best behavior, at least for this one night, because I won't work for them again if they cause trouble at my party.  For Solstice night, my party is the one true neutral ground in the area - and I won't lie to you, I'm quite proud of that fact.  I've been able to get rather a lot of goodwill work done at Solstice parties, getting warring factions together around the bonfire to work out their differences in a place where no one can fault them for 'talking to the enemy.'  How do you think I got the dwarves to stop undermining the troll caverns in Malvern?  Solstice party, and the liberal application to both parties of some seriously spiked punch.
  "Like I was saying, everything started great.  The humans and witches were having a great time on the dance floor, there was a constant buzz and hum around the food table, and even the trolls were swaying pounding along with the music.  About an hour into the party, it was time for Slorth to light the bonfire.  As he did, I noticed a little shiver in the air near the entrance.  The Fae were just arriving, and there was an audible gasp that spread through the crowd as people turned to see them.
   "The Fae are so beautiful and graceful, they always make a grand entrance.  I didn't see anything that unusual about them - they were wearing almost no clothing, just a few spangles here and there to make sure they were public-legal, but that was nothing new.  I realize now that the salt-scrub I had used to polish my skin before the event probably protected me from the effects of the spell lingering in The Hollows, but the rest of my guests were not so lucky.
   "I've had a chance to talk to some of the survivors while I've been waiting here in the lock-up.  Good call dousing everyone in salt-water at the site, by the way - that probably saved a few lives.  Anyway, it turns out that the Fae had decided to pull out all the stops this year and really glam it up.  And by 'glam,' I mean the actual Fae 'glamour,' the magic they can work to change their appearance at will.  It's not easy magic, and they hardly bother to pull it out anymore, except for special occasions.  So I guess I should feel honored that they gave it a try for my party ... I just wish it hadn't backfired on them.
   "You see, the fairies who are still able to talk told me that their glamour for tonight was supposed to make them more attractive to the other attendees.  Pretty standard stuff, right?  Except this wasn't specific - a fairy would look different to each person, because each partygoer had a different idea of what makes someone attractive.  So a human would see a really handsome man, while a troll would see someone of a more rocky persuasion.  It was ingenious, really, and should have been the hit of the party.
   "Unfortunately, there was that stray spell lingering in the area, and it latched onto the Fae magic and gave it a nasty twist.  Instead of just looking attractive, the Fae appeared to be what each person most wanted, most desired, most craved in the world.  Didn't matter what that was - could be a mate, or food, or a protector, or even wealth or fame - that was how the Fae appeared to that person.  This was a problem - a big problem.
   "Despite the usual detente that reigns at my parties, things got out of control, fast.  Imagine being confronted with the thing you most desire - say, your soulmate.  Great!  So you go over to your soulmate and begin talking with her.  But at the same time, another being sees the same person, and sees them as food.  The other person attacks the Fae, trying to gnaw off an arm, while you are trying to, ahem, get to know them.  Meanwhile, another party guest sees the Fae as a protector, and is trying to hide under her arm.  You can imagine the bedlam that erupted just minutes after the Fae arrived and their spell was corrupted.
   "We might have been able to get things back under control without too many casualties, if Slorth hadn't been there.  Slorth, as I mentioned, is the only dragon left on the East Coast.  Slorth is, apparently, a lonely, lonely dragon.  Every Fae he saw - and from his height, he could see pretty much all of them at once - seemed to him to be a potential mate, and he decided immediately that they would all be his.  He started rounding up the Fae, fighting viciously with anyone who got in his way.  Nobody wins against a dragon, not unless you've got some asbestos underwear and a very, very good plan.  Nobody had either of those tonight, and Slorth laid waste to a huge number of my best clients.
   "And that's how it happened.  Slorth ended up setting the woods surrounding The Hollows on fire, which attracted the attention of the fire department, and then the police.  Your department was quick enough to come up with a way to break the hold of the charm, and once we were all sopping wet and salty, the Fae just looked like fairies to everyone, and all of the fighting petered out.  Not knowing who to charge for the incident, you locked us all up until you could get it sorted out.
   "So, who do you blame?  Me, for bringing everyone together?  The rental company, for not telling me of the rogue spell at the site?  The Fae, for attempting to deceive everyone, no matter how benignly?  Each party attendee, for trying their best to get what they so desperately wanted?  Or Slorth, for the swath of destruction he created as he tried to satisfy his most basic need?"

A small thought

In days gone past, the volume of one's writing or correspondence was important. People loved getting personal letters that ran for pages, and poems ran for line after line after line.

Now we pride ourselves on fitting communications into 140 characters, or even less if you know the right abbreviations. When was the last time you looked at an e-mail and was glad it was 5 pages long? When you research something on the Internet, don't you skip over the articles that have 10 pages of material in favor of something that is summarized in one or two screens? When did haiku become the "cool" form of poetry?

Somewhere along the way we lost the ability to appreciate longer communications. No one writes letters anymore - heck, most of us barely skim the Christmas letters we receive each winter, so why would anyone bother to write more? We read the first few sentences of facebook status updates, rarely clicking the link to see the whole message unless those first few lines are either shocking or funny. Heck, even audiobooks now have a feature that lets you listen to them at twice or three times their normal speed. For shame, Audible, for shame.

I don't really have a point or a manifesto or anything based on this. I'm not going to run out and write 7-page letters to all of my facebook friends (hell, I don't know half of their addresses, anyway). But it is something worth thinking about next time you dash off a one-line tweet, or try to condense a message to fit in a text. Is this really the way this message deserves to be shared? Or is your zippy approach to it going to just lead to a string of clarifications and explanations going forward? Is this something you might need to devote a little more time, space, and attention to doing right?

Blast from the past

I'm taking an online writing course this month, and today's discussion made me remember a journal I used to keep back in the dark ages when I traveled a lot and didn't have a kid (or a blog).  I took it with me to write down all those random ideas and overheard remarks that you promise yourself you'll remember, but never do.  I found it a few months ago, and it was pretty cool to see how my mind worked back then.  Below are some of my favorites, collected over about three years (and a billion miles):

" ... but that involved a much higher annoyance factor than she was willing to cope with just then."

" The only part of a museum I enjoy is the sight of it in my rear view mirror as I drive away."

"Sorry, buddy, I couldn't hear you over the accordion music."

"comprehensively sick"

"I hate it when hotels close the bathroom door when they're done cleaning - I always expect to open the door and find a dead body in the bathtub."

"She was a cleaner of inconsistent standards, one who would lecture about the evils of uncooked chicken juices while standing in a kitchen remarkable for its grease-filmed cabinets and food-splattered floor."

"Other women fall for their bartenders; I fell for my waiter.  I even know what it was that put me over the edge.  After several nights of struggling to provide English translations of the daily specials, one night he approached my table, laid my napkin in my lap, and spouted out the specials list in obviously rehearsed, perfect English.  Neither of us could understand a word the other said, but from then on, it was love."

"I think there must be one line on the job application at the DMV that asks, "Are you a bitch?" and the answer choices are, "Yes," "Hell, yes," and "What do you think, asshole?"

"Talk to your mother fast, because we have to eat dinner soon so she can go draw pictures of naked people."

"I've got a whole fuckload of fruit salad I've got to power through before it goes bad."

"'How was the meeting?' 'The speaker was boring, the food was awful, and afterwards I was surrounded by a pack of people looking for new jobs.'"

"She had skin so fair she could sunburn in a thunderstorm."