...and then Reality went and hit me upside the head...

A few years ago there was a commercial for Staples that ran during the November-December holiday season.  (If you're not familiar with it and want to see it, I'm sure it's out on the interwebs somewhere...but it's not important to this, because I'm a writer and can paint word pictures for you.  ;)  )  


The commercial itself was okay, but there was one part that made me laugh hysterically like a three year old discovering their uncanny ability to make adults do their bidding with repeated funny faces and/or pratfalls.   It's a relatively peaceful scene of a person puttering in the snow outside the house and a GPS device flings out of the sky and hits him on the head, causing him to fall down.  No, I'm not advocating laughing at violence or pain (at least not that I'm admitting out loud), but right at the point it hits, there comes a voice from the GPS saying "You have reached your destination."


Kills me.  Dead.  Every dang time.   Even sitting here recounting it, I'm laughing.   (Shut UP, I do *so* have a sophisticated sense of humor!)


The point of bringing this commercial to bear is that sometimes life hits us with a-ha moments where everything just clicks into place.  For me, many of these occur when I'm struggling with writing something, typically having to do with plot adjustments.  Of course, this is where I let the Muse* and my subconscious deal with it, and as a result, most of my a-ha moments come at the same time as the phrase "Ohgodisitmorningalreadyandwhereisthedamnsnoozebuttonanyway" is mumbled from under the duvet.  


*(tangent):  I've been wondering if I should name the Muse.  It seems rude to just be using a title when we work so closely together.  Plus, when I'm angry with her, it would probably make me feel better to yell right at her.  She probably needs a middle name too for that matter...
(end tangent)


I had another one of those epiphanal moments recently, but it didn't make me burst into joyous song and dance (like all the other ones do).  In fact it was more along the lines of "Oh crap, really?"  And after a few days of meditative contemplation, I'm ready to share.  


Somehow, without my actually being aware of it, I became a Cougar.  No, not a cougar like a wild animal - although some mornings my hair does look like I've been tearing around a jungle all night, but that's beside the point.  A Cougar, like a middle-aged woman on the prowl.


I know, right?  I don't know how that happened either.


Wait, what are YOU talking about?!?


I'm talking about the middle-aged.  (Let's face it, every woman has the potential to be a Cougar.  haha)  I'm not sure how it happened, but it sure did happen in the blink of an eye.  One minute I'm watching this music video and thinking the lead singer is really cute, and the next I'm realizing that I'm old enough to be his mother.


OLD.ENOUGH.TO.BE.HIS.MOTHER.


Then it was everywhere.  Pictures of film stars, the realization that actors and singers from my teens had grown children.


Of course, I did have to check and see if a married woman could actually be called a Cougar, and I was assured most intensely by a couple of people on Facebook that it was definitely a label that could be placed on a married woman.


Drat.  


However in the big scheme of things, I think Cougar is a better title than old cow, so I'll take it.

NaNoWriMo

In a chance of fate or, what I choose to believe, the deliberate dragging of my muse by my hair (dang, just noticed I need to dye it again), yesterday I was reminded of the existence of NaNoWriMo.  Which stands for National Novel Writing Month.  With a goal of 50,000 words (standard novel size) the challenge is to write a novel between November 1st and 30th.  

From what I can tell it started in 1999 and I think I knew about it around 2003 or 2004.  But had promptly forgotten about until someone posted their day total yesterday on Facebook.

Within a few minutes I had joined and committed to the challenge.  Or I was committed.  Or should be.  Or something.

Because to reach the word goal, it's about 1700 words a day.  1700.words.a.day.  

There is a forum for writers in my area, and this may end up harvesting some of the writer's group types I'm needing longer-term.  I'm kind of excited to have a goal and one that is relatively attainable.    Since I woke up at 3 am with novel percolating, it seemed only natural to get up and start writing.  So I did.

Did I mention 1700 words a day?  

I'm already exhausted.

1700 words.  That string together to make sense.  What have I done???

I'm currently at just over 3000 words.  Oh.my.god.  I haven't written that much in one stretch in, like, ever.  

Yes, I'm crazy.  But it's a good crazy.

Acting like an Idealistic Healer

With focus at a premium I was unwilling to pay this afternoon, I was taking a turn about the dance floor with an old partner, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.  Much like a zombie craving brains, I was feeding the randomness of character creation with some good old-fashioned personality/character archetypes.


Really, I had you at zombie, didn't I?


My personality type is INFP, aka Idealist aka Healer, aka Actor (Um, what?  That just seems way too extroverted but okay whatever, internet).  All in all, the available definition is pretty spot on, including the parts about how I basically manage the world through intuitiveness and trying to maintain harmony.  It also reminded me I was creative.  (Okay, to be fair, I've had friends saying the same thing recently, but this is the internet....so therefore it must be true!  ;) )


The issue I'm now facing, is that while my own personality type makes it easier for me to investigate and understand others', I'm not exactly sure how to make it translate into believable characterizations.  It's also entirely possible I'm way overthinking this. 


When I read back on my creative writing from years gone by, I'm always surprised at how together it seems...like I was present for the writing.  I don't know if that makes sense, but I spend so much time now trying to focus, I have no true idea if what is being produced is even comprehensible, much less entertaining.


I did also learn today that my personality archetype's standard disorder is histrionics.  Which is a word I've loved since a child...it just reminds me of dramatic tantrums.  And almost (almost) makes me believe I'd be allowed to get away with that.  

Inspiration

I'd love to say that inspiration has struck, but it's more like it has crept in, nestled behind my ear and started whispering sweet nothings to me.  Although that's a bit of a misnomer, since they're not sweet and certainly not nothing.  Between us we've conjured a prologue scene of medieval torturous proportions.  And that's all I'm saying about specifics for now.  

Needless to say, with a whole three hours of sleep under my belt and a less-than-riveting workload today, it's a tad challenging not to just immerse myself in my own head and let it flow.  Of course, that's also the beauty of composing in my head...no one has to know what the wheels are turning.

So inspiration this time started with a dinner date out with friends last week.  Two sentences from someone whose opinion I trust and who has always been unfailingly supportive and I'm off and mentally running.  (Thank you again, Lady!  :)  )

For the last few days, amidst catching up episodes of Battlestar Galactica (yup, I finally caved on that) and calming the felines from the noise of the fireworks, my brain has been churning the pieces.  Threads from random thoughts have cast on and are beginning to weave.

I just hope that it will yield a complete project this time.  Fingers crossed!

Discipline and habits

One of the biggest hindrances to writing for me is making myself sit down and write when I'm feeling uninspired.  It's so much easier to start surfing or facebooking or cleaning (yes, shocking to those of you who have seen my house, I do use cleaning as a diversion too!).  Yet everything I've read from successful authors states that discipline is the key...getting into the habit of writing daily.


The trouble I have with this is that my writing is not particularly a cumulative process.  Most of my writing is churned (like butter!) in my head and doesn't make it to paper/computer until it's basically complete.  Imagine Aphrodite springing fully formed from the ocean in a beautiful Hellenic vista and you'll get my drift...or distracted by the nudity.  


It becomes a case of discipline.  Whether I decide to focus on getting some writing in every day or to allocate specific time out of my day for the mental processing, what's needed is the habit to be formed.  "They" say it takes 3 weeks for a practice to become habit - and extrapolating that, presumably the same amount of time for negative behaviour to be changed and/or modified.


Now it comes to my attention (with a big whap upside the head) that this is the key to several other goals I'm trying to achieve.  Whether they be house projects, craft projects, schoolwork, or health results.  


And now that I've come to this epiphany, I just have to figure out how to implement it...  

Well, it's a start...

For the past several weeks I've been hungering to write.  I've had the time in some small respects, but not the head space.  Or when I've had the head space and drive, no convenient time.

Which may just be excuses anyway.

I have a lot of stuff in my head.  Lists, ideas, characters, nonsense, sense.  Prose and poetry, unicorns that sparkle and ghosts that haunt me (ooh, Crash Test Dummies song in my head now!).  I've been trying to start a novel.  I've been trying to finish poetry.  I've been thirsting to drink from the bounteous fountains of my muse.  (Wow, just flows off the tongue, doesn't it?  Or rather, off the fingers on the keyboard.  ;)  )

This morning I got to the new old office, less the soul-destroying stress-making place than it had been three weeks ago, and started my new, usual, routine. 

It was the eggshells peeled from breakfast's hard-boiled egg.

You know those little actions you take through the course of the day that are performed by rote with your mind elsewhere?  Brushing teeth, making food, tidying....all the while your mind is whirling and processing.  Trying to solve that one thing that's bugging you, way back in the depths of your subconscious.  Something you may not even have realized you were working through, or on, or around.

I dropped the broken shells into the garbage, little white jagged pieces fallen haphazardly amidst the scattered coffee grounds from yesterday's brew...and thus came the epiphany.  A blog!

Which explains the title of the blog.   Kind of reminds me of "Afternoons and Coffee Spoons" (another Crash Test Dummies song), lyrically rolls off the tongue, but alas, doesn't rhyme.  I can live with that.

So what will this be?  Right now it feels like the open road.  I feel the wind on my face and that feeling of being alive and free as I zoom along the highway at incredible speeds.   And if no one reads it but me, that's okay (although if I know my media junkie friends, you'll be along with me for the ride!).  This is the "me" time that my soul craves and I see no reason to deny it.

And really, why should I?