I Suffer From A Lack of Passion...

It feels like battle fatigue.  I had a form of that growing up and it never quite ran away. 

I look back at that sentence and my first impulse is to fix it, but that Freudian quality is just what I'm talking about.  I thought it would be easier after I recovered from being my mother's caregiver, but the financial disaster her illness created for me is still (six years later) rippling out into the rest of my life. And it makes me feel like selling my jewels to keep the farm.  Instead I sold the farm to keep the farm.  This is the magic of the Reverse Mortgage.  Next, if I can find that top hat, I might try a rabbit trick.

The book I wrote, The Narcissist,  is about my nightmarish relationship with my strange mother.  I thought when I finished it things would change.  I now wonder if I can't write a query letter because I'm not done with the book yet.  Does it need a rewrite?  Why can't I write a synopsis?  What's the book about again?

I felt a few moments jubilation when I thought I finally figured out the device to bring the narrative into the first person present tense, to hold the story together, to give it a focus, to keep it in the moment, to give it life.  I did that last rewrite and thought I was finished.  But then the next step would have been to write a query letter and a synopsis.  I'd have had to pick a genre, and sell it like cereal.  Is it my desire to be discovered and thus forgo all the grubby work of finding an agent and getting published?  Oh fiddle de de.  Am I just a dabbler?

I did have a Scarlett O'Hara moment, thinking "I'll think about that tomorrow" the last time I pondered the Query quandary and then promptly followed my bliss into a flirtation with a man I've never met (nor ever will) which temporarily revived my libido and was cause for some slightly reckless solitary celebration and that turned into the first six chapters of a new book.

Then someone talked me into joining Facebook.  I wish I knew which one of you to blame for this time-sucking obsession but it's the reason I can't writing anything except the occasional comment.  It isn't Twitter's fault this time.  Facebook has me stalking the great news story and friending my favorite reporters.  It's Facebook's fault. 

At about the time I joined up, Fairlane (a man who used to scare me) asked me to contribute to a new blog, Black Magpie Theory.  I kind of worshipped Fairlane from afar, years ago (how sick is that to worship a man who scares you) so my ego made me say "yes" without giving much real thought to it.  (I think some version of this is what was wrong with all my relationships with men.)  And then insecurity set in.  And then the invitation became a meeting, and then the deadline became a reality.  I couldn't meet my deadlines.  Other writers (like Lisa and Tengrain) said it better, and I wasn't posting much on my blog either.  You know the rest.  I'm not writing. 

When will the dry spell end?  Your guess is as good as mine.

The Well Is Empty

I feel I have nothing to say. If someone asks me a question about politics, I can answer it,  but I can't write about it anymore.  It's just as well since there are a million things that need doing in my domestic life.  The yard's too big and too much for me to handle alone.  I wish the boys would step up to the plate and help out a bit but it isn't going to happen.  They're into sports in a big way and into their girlfriends, which is as it should be.  I'm so glad to be rid of the black cloud that was the couple before the boys, so I do the minimum necessary to keep the trees alive and don't water the lawn much because I'd just have to mow more often if I kept it greened up.  All my neighbors have taken out the grass on their parking strips and have zeroscaped.  It's the smart thing to do, and I plan on doing it every year, but just don't get around to it.  Maybe next Spring.  But now it's time to get the yard and garden ready for Fall and then Winter.  It will be a lot of work for the next three months. I have so many trees and none of them are on the same leaf drop schedule.  It all begins with the biggest tree in my urban forest and for two months I'll be cleaning up leaves.

I worked pretty steadily on enlarging my walkway and patio space back here, around the gazebo, until it got too hot and then I moved inside and stopped doing anything as I got my Facebook addiction up to the level of my Twitter addiction.  Cyrus died, Roscoe moved to Savannah, and then Bob showed up.  I'm happy to have a cat again.  I didn't realize how much I've missed having a cat.  Now I want to get or make a big scratching pole for Bob. I'm also happy not to have to pick up fifty pounds of dog shit a week. I'm glad I no longer have the big Vet bills that taking care of Cyrus generated.  He had so many health problems.  And yet, there isn't a day that I don't look at Cyrus' bed area expecting him to be there and most days it feels as if he's still with us.  He and Roscoe ate mass quantities of dog food.  Marley and Bob are very dainty eaters in comparison.  Well, Marley isn't exactly a dainty eater, but you know what I mean. 

The Writing Life

I know I said this last year as well, but this IS the year I'm going to get published and in order to get published I have to submit something.  I did submit a few things last year, but in late November and early December so even if any of that finds its way into publication it won't be for a while.

I have finished the rewrite on Maggy, which is now The Narcissist, but that doesn't mean I'm through editing.  When you've worked on a book for twenty years or so, it's hard to come to the absolute end point with it unless someone else takes it away from you.  The rewrite I just finished was a drastic reworking of the material into a new form.  The whole story is now told as if it were being remembered in present time and in therapy, so there are millions of tense changes.  I will be editing to find missed tense changes.

I've been doing the last two hundred pages of rewrite on Word.  I had an unfortunate accident on Blogger.  I wrote a whole new chapter and was delighted with it.  The whole chapter was dialogue.  I saved it and went to bed.  When I woke up the next morning it was gone.  So I will not do my fiction writing on blogger anymore.  Phillip tells me it must be here somewhere, since blogger autosaves all the time.  I know that's true, but...  Where the hell did that chapter go?

So, for anyone reading The Narcissist on the blog, it's incomplete and unedited.  But once I have it finished to my satisfaction I'll probably repost it.  In the meantime there are several chapters from Maggy that have been dropped from The Narcissist.  This means I have work that can be turned into short story material.

I hope you all had a lovely New Years Eve and are now embarked on a lazy New Year's Day.  I went to the best New Year's Eve party ever.  I spent last night partying on Twitter.  It was so much fun.

Don't forget to eat blackeyed peas and cornbread today.  It's for good luck in the new year.  Besides, it's good for you.

Yes, I'm Still Here

I don't have burn out or any other loss of desire or time. I'm just working elsewhere. I've been rewriting the novel. It's an entirely new frame for the story. So much of the material is written, I still need to work on almost all of the chapters. I'm now doing that at the novel site. It is no longer called Maggy. It's now called The Narcissist. I'm begging for feedback so if you feel like reading, please let me know whether this is working or not.

I apologize again for not visiting you. For the time being the muse is with me, and I need to take advantage the opportunity to work with her again. I'll be back. If not here, I'll see you on twitter. Don't be shy.

Another Award to Pass Along, Thanks Naj

Naj from Neo-Resistance has honored me with this award. I'm sorry that it took me so long to discover its existence. I have been avoiding my short stories. In fact I have been avoiding most writing. I'm in the avoidance phase of editing. Some people call it
"Writer's Block," but in reality it's more a blank space when all ideas go away. I'm in that dormant phase of the creative process. I'll get over this soon and then I'll wow you with my razzle dazzle once again. But for the moment (in my case a moment could be years) I'll be roaming da blogs stealing good ideas from all of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And just so I don't have to do it when I rip you off--I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll be sorry for the rest of my days. Because, I'm guilty, oh yes I'm guilty, and I'll be guilty for the rest of my life.... Because I never do the things I'm supposed to do...

Randy Newman tells the story of how an old writer feels when he runs out of material and finds he's dead...

Here is Randy Newman's take on Writing

I pass this award along to:
Randal Graves
Dcup
Diva Jood,
Linda Sama
Frieda Bee
Beach Bum

A Bush By Any Other Name

I was supposed to be writing. You know, serious, real writing. After I finished, or thought I finished, The End of Love, one of the commenters wondered if I shouldn't put some meat on the bones of poor Junior. Then a new commenter, a man I'd never seen around these parts, suggested that I was awfully hard on the poor guy. Had Judith tried an intervention for Junior? Obviously one doesn't leave a dying drunk without trying everything to save him. Forget love, what about human compassion and kindness, and simple human decency. Junior? Really? Okay, let's give Junior's side of the story, or at least the early years or even just the first couple of months. That should set the stage for what comes later for Junior, right?

So I started, and it was interesting going for awhile looking at the world through Junior's eyes. But dammit, Junior doesn't really interest me that much anymore. I got over Junior pretty fast. I stepped over him on the way out the door. What got me interested again was when, in giving the back story on Junior, my focus turned to Judith, and what they hell was she thinking to leave her husband... Well, that's not hard to figure out. That's the problem with all of the Judith stories. What the hell was Judith thinking to end up with this schmuck? That's a big question for me. But I think now I know the answer. It's complicated psychological stuff. But to the outsider, it's a head smacking question. How could she end up with this guy??? Why did she do it? And then I got bored with her story, and went looking for diversion. So much for work.

I went to visit Dcup's where I'm always entertained, and challenged, or moved, and what did I find but a serious discussion of vaginas. Having had one all my life I thought I knew almost everything there was to know about the vagina, but I know so very little, it turns out. This might have been part of Judith's problem. She knew so little about her own vagina.

When I was little, it was called a twat. In my house I had heard someone refer to what I knew of the place I pee peed from as a twat. We lived in Texas. I guess that explains something, but I pronounced the word tock. So for my very early years it was my tock. As in tick tock. When I was in need of relieving my bladder it was my tock that needed attention--I knew nothing of bladders.

I think what started the interest in vaginas, as a subject at Dcups, was the revelation that there is a booming new business amongst the most famous and renowned plastic surgeons in Vaginal Reconstruction. This goes way beyond tending to the bush. This is much more than mere grooming. We're talking vaginal ideal. Think of that for a moment. VAGINAL IDEAL!!!! What does it look like, you might ask? Well it's small and pink and it's clit peeks out at you and probably winks and smiles. Open wide, but not too wide. Show pink. Like a nine year old. Apparently internet porn has made the fashionable pussy, the pussy that looks like a little girls. This creates lots of jobs. Since women of sex having age don't have little pink pussies. God for fucking bid that you've had a kid or three, it is this very motherfucking fact that creates this need for women who wax other women's twats. You need a housekeeper and a what!!? And if that wasn't bad enough, there is now the burning need for plastic surgeons to make them look virginal again. Well that's a relief. Create a need, and then the need creates a demand, and that creates the Specialists to fill the need. Capitalism at work. Isn't America a wonderful place.

P.S. Tomorrow will be my 200 post in six months of blogging. Scary, huh?