Writing Pitfalls & Braided Pit Hair

Writing is hard.  It’s just like Barbie says “Math is hard.  Let’s go shopping!”  I wish writing was that easy sometimes. I wish I could just go shopping instead, get some inspiration and still get my pages done.  Nope.  Right now my PC is sooo slow that once I stop typing it takes 30 seconds for the words to catch up on me.  I’m hoping this doesn’t mean the laptop is dying because without a job, I really can’t afford another one now.  Maybe my wifi connection just sucks.  That is possible… Anyway…

But back to writing.  Re-writes are the worse.  Let me give you a front row seat to my brain.  Here is how things are going.  I have the book done… pretty much.  But I need to check for spelling, and words that aren’t suppose to be there and places were I put FIX THIS, or ADD MORE HERE or FLESH THIS OUT or PUT SOMETHING FUNNY HERE.  Other times I have to add pages of new material to “bridge” the gaps between funny bits.  So I go back and start writing again but sometimes I just stall.  I can’t think of anything to say.

My friend Kat said if you want to be a real writer, you have to write even when you don’t feel like writing.  Even when your muse has taken a latte break or even a trip to Boca.  You know what happens when my muse up and leaves?  This happens!

“The bedroom walls were a terra cotta with a sage green trim and the dining room were a terra otta as well.  Thesunroom was a deep yhellow with white trim and the bathroom a taupe with white trim.”

Shoot me now!  A list of paint colors with bad typos?!  REALLY??!!!  I suck but I just keep slogging on.  There are times when I go back through my Moleskine and wonder what the notes I wrote down mean.  Here are a few:

“Focus on bunch of bananas – COCKS!!! LA Weekly is porn – more about the pee response later – I’m ____ with the man in the rearview mirror – Bitch in the Lexus cut me off – Where is the dildo?”

I have NO idea what I was thinking when I jotted those down.  They were suppose to be for blogs but I have no idea where I was going with those ideas so they just sit there, enigmas of my brain, tossed out of the fast-moving car of my conciousness onto the highway of life and utterly discarded.  How’s THAT for a metaphor?

And what does all of this have to do with pit hair?  Well I was writing at The Fireman Store (the Starbucks at The Point across from the fire station) when I saw this guy come in.  If Grizzly Adams and Cher (ala Half Breed) ever had a love child, he would be it.  Full beard, long straight Cher hair, blue glasses, white leather outfit and braided pit hair.  You heard it right, BRAIDED PIT HAIR!!!  This guy is NEVER getting laid!  It suddenly made me feel better about my writing and myself.  Why?  First, because I don’t dress like that.  Second, because I think braided pit hair is gross and third, because if it wasn’t for fashion train wrecks like that, what would I have to write about?  Also, all three of the topics I hit on today (pit hair guy, re-writes are hard and stupid things I find in my notebook) were all abandoned blog ideas that I made work today.  Go me!

Now to get some re-writes done today.  I think I can tackle it!

NaNoWriMo – Novel Evolution

I have heard publishers dread December.  It’s not because of holiday shopping or bad Santas but they dread the flood of book submissions straight from NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).  These idiot authors think writing a book in 30 days means it is fit to be seen by human beings, let alone sold in Barnes & Noble.  It’s not but try telling them that.

My BFF Kat, who is a working television writer, told me the secret of writing is in the re-writing.  Nothing could be more true.  Not even a room full of chimpanses can produce something stellar on the first go round.  Especially for chimps.  You need at least 8 revisions before you start to see something worth while.

So I am now done with the first revision of my book.  Then will have to dive into the second revision including adding a more solid story arch for the essays (thanks Kat & John for the advice) and rearranging a bunch of pages as well as writing new content that will amount to at least 1/4 of the now current page count of 185.

I was planning on enterting Script Frenzy in April to write a 100 page play.  Huh, yeah… right.  I have some ideas… Death Kills, Death Kills 2: Terror in Disneyland, The Night Shakespeare Died, or something totally different.  I have no idea how to write a play.  I have some ideas and I thought it would be a good exercise to bat them around like The Abomination on catnip and see what happens, even if it sucks.

However, I need to start putting my house in order and right now the book revisions from my November project come first.  It is going to be great.  Yay!  I feel better already.  So I will concentrate on the book, bead sleeves and IF I have time will work on the play.  And yes, my sister and Rhonda Frost do get a credit if I decide to go with Death Kills.

I Hate Blogspot Right Now

I have my Disney Blog over there:  http://myunauthorizedirreverentdisneydiary.blogspot.com/

I spent my morning writing the most amazing blog on the planet on the various versions of the Haunted Mansion all over the World.  I just finished a LONG bit on the original Mansion and wanted to delete a small paragraph.  I highlighted it but the sneaky mouse pad slipped UP.  I didn’t see it.  I deleted it and Poof – gone.

I have a Mac so Cnt-Z doesn’t work and by the time I was done messing with it, the sneaky Undo button I just found didn’t work either except to wipe out EVERYTHING!  Another click put me back at square one with my abbreviated version but I suppose it is better than nothing.

I have thrown things, stomped around, threatened to sniff glue, cried and everything else I can think of that would do a seven year old proud.

I know that writing is hard but should it be this hard!  It shouldn’t drive you to drink!  Oh wait, there was Hemingway and Tennessee Williams….  OK, where is the Bourbon?

Nothing Says “Sticky Situation” Like A Wall of Gum

As a California Girl, born and bred, I never had the inclination to travel farther north than Sonoma.  Let’s face it, most Californians think of the upper reaches of our State as Oregon.  Have you ever been to Oregon?  I think there are 5,000 people in the entire State.

However one weekend in late summer I grabbed one of my girlfriends and we made a trek to Seattle.  Why?  We were meeting friends we had met online and were going to hang out for the weekend.  The weather was in our favor, the sun was out, we saw so many cool things that I was shocked.

I had no idea that part of old Seattle is underground and still there to see.  There was the Pike’s Place Market where they toss fish and we gobbled a bag of the most delectable fresh made, wee cinnamon sugar donuts ever!  We had dinner and drank, we went to a bar, watched a band and drank, we drank and we drank.

So what do you do when you are out on the town in Seattle in the Pike’s Place Market area with new friends, old friends and a fleet of whiskey sours?  You go to the gum wall.

The what?!  Yes, I can hear it from here.  The GUM wall as in a wall of gum.  Chewing gum.  People chew gum and stick it on this wall.  Actually it is the side of a building and the gum goes up pretty high.  When I first took this picture and showed it to friends, they thought it was a bunch of condoms.  I can see their point.  But it’s not.  It’s gum.  Real American Chewing Gum.  It’s surreal.

The two bright green pieces are mine and my girlfriends.  The other bright green piece that is stringy and going around our gum is our new friend Miss Amy.  It just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy knowing our friendship is immortalized in gum on an alley wall in Seattle for all to see.  Gum is the glue that holds friendships together.

If you want to see it for yourself, the gum wall is in Post Alley under Pike’s Place Market and is by the Market Theatre.  Locals tell me Theatresports people started sticking gum to the wall in 1993.  Drama people – figures.  The Market officials declared the wall on official tourist attraction in 1999.  It is covered several inches thick, is over 15 feet high and travels down the building for 50 feet.  Now that is a whole lot of gum.