Here We Go!

Day one of ScriptFrenzy and I am restless. I haven't written anything, don't even really have an outline, but I do have a goal. I'm not supposed to worry about that at this time of day, but I do. Oh well, getting home will tell the tale. If I write my four pages today, I will indeed be doing something great!

Today I was driving with the windows down. You don't always get to do that in Georgia. Right now, it's the right kind of hot, not the stifling heat that will be upon us in the next 4 weeks. While I can drive with the windows down, I will.

So, every day this month, I will do at least one writing prompt on Little Southern Girl. It will be unedited and maybe not make sense, but it will be done. I'm going to try for mornings, but some days, it will be afternoon. Anyway, if you have anything you'd like me to write about, write it in the comments.

Today's Writing prompt: It's time for you and Writer's Block to part ways. Write a letter breaking up with Writer's Block, starting out with, "Dear Writer's Block, it's not you, it's me ... ."

Dear Writer's Block,

It's not you, it's me. We've met so many times, it seems like we were destined to be together. Do you remember the first time we met, when I was trying to write that romantic short story about two people who thought they hated each other but in the end fell in love? You were right to try to stop me, but wrong for doubting my dreams. I remember you stepping in just when I thought things were going great. With one fell swoop, you took every word that I had in my head from me. You demanded my time, my thoughts, and my attention, as if I didn't have writing I needed to get done. I expected you to be my rock, not my block, and you never had my back. Do you remember when I applied for that screenwriting class in California and I almost didn't make it because you decided to make an appearance and took my focus from what I was doing? I think that's when I knew it was over, even though I didn't want it to be. You're comfortable. Hypnotic. Like staring at a blank white screen, cursor blinking. You knew the end was coming. I saw you less and less. Maybe you went to talk to that guy writing a cookbook - maybe that girl trying to finish her thesis. I know you thought she was cute. But I didn't get jealous and maybe it's better to not get jealous, but when I don't miss you, you know it's time to part ways. So, Writer's Block, I hope you can find someone who will love you like I once did, who won't use you as a crutch, but word of advice: try being a little more supportive of the people you get with. That makes all the difference.

Yours truly,
ThisGirl

Pieces of Me

Some of you know about the complicated relationship I have with my family.

My father, whom I had known my whole life, turned out not to be my biological father. Oh, and I hated him with a cold, emotional hatred for more than 12 years of my life, a hatred I've never been able to resurrect for anyone. Which is a good thing.

I am the alien child in my family. I have never been like them. I have acted as if I were one of them, but I am not. I do like my family, but they don't like the real me, so I have to be another me to them. It's just the way the world works, sometimes. Not that they wouldn't love me, it's just not satisfactory for them.

But then again, that family is not my own. They belong to my non-biological dad. Ahhh, see then, it begins to make sense.

My mother and I are exactly like each other in many ways. We both have a similar sense of humour and anger, although I think I'm a little more explosive than she is. We are both very stubborn. We are both very arrogant. The things that irritate me about her are things that I find irritating in myself.

I don't see my family often, even though I feel like I should see them more. I saw my grandmother (my non-bio dad's mom) the other day and she has lost a lot of weight. We may be going to her funeral soon. But that's morbid.

Yes, I have a complicated relationship with the family I know, but today, something made me consider looking up the family I don't know.

One of the girls in my office learned a couple of years ago that the man she'd been taught to believe was her dad was, in fact, not her dad. She also learned that the man who was her dad had only died a few months before she was told of his existence. Robbed of the ability to get to know him, she set out to know of him through talking to his (and by blood, her) relatives, visiting his grave site, etc. She walked away from that encounter fulfilled. Knowing about her father has helped her answer some of the pesky questions in her life, like why she was so different from the rest of her family.

I'm a big believer in nature vs. nurture, but from all accounts, my bio-dad was not a great guy. Of course, I did spend more than 12 years hating the man who reared me as his own and died never knowing that I knew he wasn't. But what questions do I have about myself that could be answered by knowing a family that has no idea I exist.

Is it an adventure I want to go on? Is it worth examining? I feel like I've filled in the gaps of my difference with being as me-like as possible. I owe my personality to accepting and rejecting things that other people think I should do. Do I have questions? Can they be answered? I don't know.

For years, my uncle was like my father. He asked about my schooling, he kept up with my awards, he watched a particular news because I worked for it at one time, he read all of my writing... Maybe my dad did the same thing, but he never told me, never talked about it. My bio-dad died in 2000, many miles from the city, from the state, in which I live. I want nothing to do with the personality of a man who, from all accounts, was an abusive, drug dealing thug. But I hear that his brother, my uncle, is a stand up guy. Why is it that I can't find the right father? Why is it always someone else who is willing to invest in me like a daughter?

So, I'm asking the questions now. What do you think? Should I try to find out about these people? Should I risk having another set of people that are disappointed because I'm not what they thought I would be after all the work they put into making me that way? Can I deal with another disappointing family? Is it worth it as a person? As a writer? What do y'all think?

Month of Discipline

Ahhh, it's that time of year. I would say again, but I can't remember the last time I was actually disciplined.

So, the game plan. This year, I'm doing ScriptFrenzy, hopefully getting a first episode of an original spec and writing a spec for a current show. So, getting disciplined about my writing.

Start walking for 30 minutes - 1 hour a day. Disciplined about my health.

Stop going out nearly every night. Pick nights and times and stick to them. Disciplined about my time.

Stop drinking as much, which goes back to my health. Not cutting out drinking, just not drinking as much.

Get a little more organized and set up a schedule I can (and will) follow.

I'm hoping the month of "practice" will give me the impetus to follow this discipline for the rest of the year. I will add more socializing, but I kind of want to start from nearly zero and go up from there. I also want to get some of these projects I've had in my mind for a while and put the down on paper, finally. That's my problem. I don't get everything on paper like I want.

Maybe it will work, maybe not, but at least you will get to hear me complain about it. That's right, one of the disciplinary things I'm adding is to write about my day on this blog. I may also post my entries for my writing prompts. I need to write everyday, not just on my scripts for ScriptFrenzy, but also on the other things I want to write. So yeah, writing prompts, and story research, and grant finding, and all the like...

Only a few of you know how badly I want to be able to leave my job and just write. My job isn't bad, it's just no longer satisfying. My job is frustrating and uninspiring. Writing is frustrating, but when you break through and have a finished piece that you're even partially satisfied with, that is something. I want to do work and feel like that. My students adore me and listen to me and talk to me and that is satisfying, but they don't agree with me and that's the hard part, seeing them after I've taught them and having them say they wish they'd listened to me. It's hard and that part is not satisfying. Of course, I've talked to one student who said that they're glad they listened to me. That is satisfying, but it doesn't keep me going and striving for the ends I strive for when I teach.

Anyway, that's another story and one not thankfully told. I have other thoughts that reside outside of this post. I'm just challenging myself by letting you know. At least two people who read this page will keep me accountable (you know who you are) and maybe, just maybe, I can emerge from the month of April with some new habits for becoming a more successful writer.

St. Paddy's

Wednesday nights are trivia nights, and occasionally - or maybe a little more than occasionallly - followed by Ladies Night. Ladies Night is the night when ladies drink for free at a local bar.

Ladies Night fell on a St. Patrick's Day this year. Double Trouble.

Not only were there ladies getting drunk as hell, but the drink specials convinced the fellas to do the same. Normally, this isn't a problem, but there must have been a full moon or something that night.

The music was the same. Lame. We usually sit through the music for the free drinks, but 2 gin and tonics and a couple of 12 oz beers later, I knew I was gonna get on the dance floor, even if I also knew I wasn't going to have any real dancing fun.

My thing is dancing. Oh, I dabble in televison (and I know a lot about television) and I knit and spin yarn, and I love to write, but give me a good dj, some music made for dancing, and my feet will hit the floor and I won't sit down. I start dancing as soon as the music is up and won't sit down until it's over. I don't need alcohol to dance, like some people do, but it never hurts to have it.

The time on the dance floor started out like any other with this particular DJ. Dance for 2 minutes, stand on the dance floor holding my drink for the last 3 minutes of a song he'd decided not to change. During the second song, however, I was joined by a friend. By friend, I mean some drunk frat guy, a little taller than me with about 50 lbs. on me, who decided that instead of dancing, he would simply back into me. Putting my hand in the middle of his back, I gently, but firmly, pushed him away from me. He didn't acknowledge me nor did he do that thing that most people do when they bump into someone on the dance floor. Apologize. Even though it's unnecessary, it's a common courtesy thing that is welcomed. Rudeness aside (and he was pretty drunk), I kept dancing. The next thing I know, that same dude is backing into me again. I push him away again and this time I give him a dirty look. His friends get him off the floor.

Cut to about 20 minutes later. Little Sister is swing dancing with a guy we know when our friend from earlier decides he needs the dance floor, and he needs the space where Little Sister is. She pushes him away, but this time, he turns around and tries to start something with the guy. Little Sister steps in front of the guy to confront our friend. Usually, that makes a guy back down. Who yells at girls?

Drunk ass frat boys, that's who.

Of course, with this idiot yelling at my sister, I drew myself up to my full 5ft11in height, moved Little Sister out of the way and politely screamed that if he loved life, he'd better not get in my sister's face again. He then proceeded to tell me he was a man and that I couldn't talk to him that way. I told him that as long as he kept yelling at my sister, I was gonna talk to him however the fuck I pleased. We continued our repartee nose to nose for nearly two minutes before his friends pulled him away while I stared him down. He resisted, hoping to fight me I assume, and to be honest, I wanted to punch him myself, but I did the responsible thing. I watched him until he was pulled away then searched for the owners. They were nowhere to be found. So, on a cocktail napkin, I wrote, "There is a guy, blue shirt, khaki trousers, who is drunk as hell and bumping into girls on the dance floor. I just thought you'd want to know just in case I need to kick his ass." I passed the note when I got my drink and two seconds after I got on the dance floor, the bartender I'd passed it to was there to make sure that asshole didn't mess with another girl.

I avoided the guy, but Little Sister said that our friend kept staring at us for a bit. She said it looked like he considered coming back to start something, and while he started towards us a couple of times, he always thought better of it.

Both my maiden name and my married name is Irish. It's always been a joke that I'm more Irish than my husband, who has the most Irish name I know. A "black" Irish joke is usually imminent. Wednesday night, I almost got into a drunken brawl, and it's the most stereotypically Irish I've felt since the last time I wore my Kiss Me, I'm Irish t-shirt. Which was a long time ago.

Trying Not to Revert

Remembering to write is not as easy as you might think, even for someone that's a writer.

I mean, I'll eventually get words onto paper or finish a story at deadline, but remembering to visit this site to put down a few words... yeah, sometimes I forget.

Also, I've been a bit morose of late. Things get you down and it's hard to come back up from that. So you take part in pursuits that have no enduring value to the things you want to do just so that you're not reminded of life's shortcomings. I just have to remember, I'm not the first going through this, nor the last, and others are right there with me right now.

I can see why people become mommy bloggers. Kids do crazy things all the time. I've been fighting the urge to write about the cats - well, at least not write much. We have two cats. One is sweet and just wants to be cuddled. One is into everything and just want to know what "that" is. Oh yeah, "that" is everything. I want to get good video of her playing with her toys. It's the funniest thing that you will never care about.

Even though I have scaled back on some social activities to concentrate on writing, I'm still going out an awful lot. Well, this week, little sister is visiting, so I'll be out. That means I have to finish my articles because she's going to be taking up my non work times. Even though I'm going out a lot, most of the activities I engage in are nerd activities. Trivia on Tuesday and Wednesday nights at different bars. Cocktail Hour at different houses on Thursday nights. This week, a free concert Friday celebrating Anti-Valentine's Day (oh how I love this!), a friend is putting out a free album Wednesday, another friend is playing a small concert at a local bookstore on Tuesday - Not sure what is going on Saturday, but I'm pretty sure friends will try to get me to go out Thursday night to a college bar that I feel too old to even look at and Saturday night to sit in a smoke filled room drinking and listening to somebody's southern rock and screaming over the noise. I hope somebody brings a banjo.

The street I live on is putting on a block party and I think the Honey and his friends are going to play it. I don't think they're going to be the main form of entertainment, but it will be interesting to see him performing in front of a live audience. He's been in bands before. I know he doesn't have anxiety about it - I mean, no more than normal - and he must like the work or he wouldn't have let anyone else hear it. To me, it's fantastic. I already have the melodies of some of the songs in my head. I wish I could remember the words. He hasn't given me a copy, but then again, I haven't asked.

I got into a long conversation with a friend about our connection to Africa. She said she grew up feeling an emptiness that she felt might be filled with knowing her African roots. I said I never felt that calling, as if a part of myself were missing. If, by some miracle of records keeping I were to be able to actually trace my roots to country of origin, I would definitely want to see where I would have grown up should I have survived birth, but I think the complete me is what I am today. Even knowing my bio-dad's family wouldn't offer any form of completion for me. But I remember being on the Zambezi River with the wind flowing through my hair and being very touched by where I was, but also very satisfied with what I'd seen. Not too satisfied, mind you, but enough.

I had my tarot read the other day by a friend who's been dying to do so. The cards think we'll be okay. And who can't trust the cards?

Location, Location, Location

I live near the downtown area of my city. That is enough to take away the suckiness that is my hometown.

I spent the majority of my life dreaming about getting away. I lived in the ghetto, or damn near it if you want to get technical, and as you might imagine, that does not instill a sense of wonder and awe. I wanted to go to there, there being anywhere that was not here. Whether it was Victorian England in the crappy (and not so crappy) romance novels I read, or to the stark northern environment that served as the non sci-fi backdrop of Madeleine L'Engle stories, I always wanted to be somewhere else. I read, I watched tv (when I was allowed to watch tv), I talked to old people at my grandfather's nursing home, people who were more than willing to share about times when they had been someplace other than there, all in an attempt to escape.

Finally, it was my time. I got into the plane without so much as a backwards glance to my home state and swept myself and my stuff up the eastern seaboard to my new home of Boston, MA. Pearl Jam's "Rearview Mirror" was my theme song and the line "I gather speed from you fucking with me" echoed in my head. I was there for two years. When I returned home, which fires and other misfortunes generally make you do, I realized I knew more about my adopted city of Boston, and the surrounding area of Cambridge, than I did about the place in which I lived for more than 17 years.

Actually, first I mourned. Six months in my pajamas, teaching our new dog to love the music of Korn, Pantera, and The Doors, roaming my boring neighborhood freely without knowing that my brother ran interference with every thug he played ball with so that I would be "looked after" but not sexually accosted by said gang members on my runs. I stayed up late, slept long, and ate little until one day my mom told me I was going to have to do something, get a job, volunteer, something(!) if I was gonna stay at her new, not burned down house.

So I got out, volunteered at a nearby school, realized I needed money, got a job, wanted to go back to school, met some nice people who introduced me to Downtown.

Now, at this point, the late 90s, the Downtown area was coming off of an all time low. Prostitution had once been so rampant, there was a city law that stated you couldn't walk down Cherry Street in red heels. I love that that's the sign of a prostitute. Anyway, drug deals and only a few businesses made it supposedly scary to be around Downtown at night, which meant no one was, especially once the drug dealers and prostitutes left from lack of business. Most had deserted this once beautiful area, but not all.

The place was a little nothing of a spot with a beautiful bay window, right next to this elegant, old hotel that had been turned into low income housing for old people. Inside, little cafe tables were spread haphazardly around the floor with clear line to the counter at the back of the store. On the inside of the bay window was a stage where you could get up and read your poetry or play music. It was not my first experience with a coffee house, but it is my most enduring coffee house memory. I went there with friends, some I've lost touch with, some who have died, and others who still remember those days. AOL disks as coasters, the best tea I've ever had in Macon, and delicious deserts, not to mention the bad poems and easy laughs we were always so willing to share, come flooding back when I think of J and the CC.

A few years later, I was invited by a comic book artist to share his creative space and write with him. Weeks later, he left town and I stayed in that creative art space as a writer for nearly 5 years. That was when I knew that my heart would belong to downtown. I walked constantly, never needing to fear for my life, although some lost possessions and one person lost their life just by being downtown. But couldn't it happen anywhere? I met people, I've seen establishments come and go. Even when I got married, I dreamed of the moment when my husband was as assured of my ability to take care of myself as I was so we could make the move downtown. For nearly three years, I lived and worked away from downtown, but as soon as I saw the opening, I pounced.

I ran into someone at the grocery story yesterday, an old friend from school. She asked me if I saw myself and my Honey moving any time soon. I told her we were going with the winds of grad school when that time came, but for now, I was content to be here because I lived downtown.

Don't get me wrong. The allure of being other places still haunts me. I dream of Africa weekly. I imagine Asia, going to China and Japan, going back to Paris and Barcelona and the want of those places weakens my knees. I think about our last trip to Boston and how walking around Cambridge made me long to be back in that area again. Also, since we drove from California back to Georgia, both the Honey and I have kind of kept Albuquerque in mind as a "someday, maybe" place. There are definitely other places I would like to be, but the friends I've made, the home I've made, and the connections I've made makes me not mind it if I have to stay right where I am for a long, long time.

Sorry for the Silence

I was working on an article that was due last week. Took a lot out of me. But now I'm better.

I've started knitting again. I decided, however, to teach myself to knit in the continental method. I was doing the English method, with is characterized by throwing the yarn (your hands move in much larger swoops) while the continental methods is characterized by picking up the yarn with your needles. The movements are much more efficient.

I mean, it will be once I figure the damn thing out. It's like learning to knit all over again. I'm not awesome at knitting, I have to watch every knit to make sure I'm doing the right thing, whether it be purling or knitting. I'm following a pattern, so you can see it if I mess up... It's completely ridiculous and completely fun.

I need another rotator thingy for my spinning wheel so I can combine to strands of yarn I've already spun. I made the strands super thin so that I could spin them together. I guess I could wind each one separately and use it as sock yarn, but I wanted to maybe put together a shawl or something for my mom. Maybe I will just make it something lacy and use the thin strands. Actually, I just want to get these strands off of my spindles so that I can work on this other yarn I've been itching to spin. It's got tinsel in it. I was thinking of doing it with some thin pieces and some thick pieces so that it would make an interesting looking scarf. I have enough to do that and I wouldn't have to worry about the strands being so thin.

When I told my mom I was spinning my own yarn, she said I was becoming the Proverbs 31 wife. I loved to cook, I had a garden, I was "making" our own clothes and some people have said I could sell my knitting, and if I'm spinning my own fiber, it would not be cost prohibitive. She doesn't think that any more, about me being a Proverbs 31 wife, even though I still do all that stuff. I think the belief in Jesus Christ as Lord has to be present for me to be that, although, technically, that was written without the concept of Christ being introduced to the readers. Also, I don't have a city gate at which I could sell my stuff.

I have a lot of work to do now that I have a rough idea of where I want my writing to go. I'm hoping I get to sit down with this other freelance writer and learn what my further options are. I also need to find a way to take classes. With The Honey going to a better, but private, college, fundage has been $0 at best, -$ at worst. Keeping up with my other website (the one I have to pay for) and taking classes to help me become a better writer is on the agenda, but is rapidly being pushed down past the top 10, even though it is what I need. I'm being positive though. If this next article is a cover story and I can pitch a couple more, I will be rapidly moving towards increasing my income, growing my writing career, and putting myself in a better position to get the further education I need.

Yay!

But the work must begin in earnest. I did neglect a few things to finish, but I didn't really put aside the unnecessary things of life this past week. I did my fair share of going out and I didn't watch enough tv for my tv blog, although I did a little catching up this weekend. I am not as tired as I usually am at this time of day, but I certainly did not want to get up and go to work today. But I do have a job that I can enjoy and that is a good thing.