Virgin writers advocate heavy petting

Check out this fun piece that I submitted with fellow writer Esme Foong over at grubdaily.org, the fantastic writing blog hosted by my beloved grub street!

The purple couch situation

One of the craziest things about writing, and life in general, is what I call the purple couch situation.

You've got this couch, dark velvety purple. Maybe it's tufted or just a big oversized purple couch, but you love it. It's not easy to work with a purple couch, but you congratulate yourself on being willing to take a risk. You buy orange pillows to go with it.

Then one day, something shifts. You turn on a light or your flip the blinds a certain way and it hits you -the couch is actually brown.

You are not a purple couch person. You are a brown couch person. The orange pillows are fine, but still, now everything is different. Had you known you had a brown couch, you might have taken other risks. You might have, for example, picked up some hot pink pillows to go with it.

With the writing, it happens when I look back on a completed draft. For a little while, purple, but then later brown. Brown-brown. And then butt ugly brown. This has been really freaking me out.

But I wonder if the trick in a revision is to keep trying to write the purple back in? To try to get back to the delusional state, but in a new way, until the couch stays purple or the draft feels complete.

I have this thing about honesty, yet with writing a certain level of self-deception must be cultivated. If this were just about life, I'd say face the brown! Embrace it!

But this isn't about life. This is about fiction.

Cranky

Whoowee. I have been a little in the dumps this week. I'd like to blame the weather, but it has actually been nice for the last few days. Maybe some sort of post trauma thing? The longest winter ever followed by the little spring that could?

Anyhow, looking forward to a three day weekend with the Hubs (poor guy is heading home from NYC with a terrific head cold, and I swear I'll try to feel sorry for him). I've got a few things on my mind.

1. Picking up some freelance work. I need to just outright ask a friend for a favor which I hate to do, but I really don't think I've gotten something for almost nothing since 1999 when we sold our Atlanta condo in less than two years for a tidy little profit. So that was like, more than ten years ago. Time for another spot of undeserved luck, no?

2. Summer vacation plans. Or how to do this on a shoestring. Looks like lots of camping, day trips to the Cape, and my margarita machine to give the ol' New England backyard that whole South of the Border vibe. Wheee!

3. Winter weight. Turns out all that sitting by the fire with a pint does a little damage to the nearly forty year old tush. Love it here in Boston, but I was so much prettier in Phoenix.

So that's about it for me. Started a new short story this week centered around a convenience store in the deep south where the Mama is pissed and the weapon of choice is a flyswatter. Not autobiographical at all. I swear.

Visualizing world peace

My lovelies have been fighting, so I've been reading about how to manage anger when disciplining children. It seems, unjustly in my opinion, that you really can not effectively get the point across while totally losing it yourself. One of the techniques is to picture your older child as a baby. In the heat of the moment, this is supposed to have some calming effect.

Of course, I remember when my beasties were babies. Right after Girlie was born one of my friends said "there is nothing better than just sitting, rocking a baby." But Girlie was one of those crying babies. Exhausted and sleep deprived I thought, yes there is - putting that sleeping baby in the crib and leaving the room. Pronto.

Maybe there is some age window I should be targeting. Not a newborn, but some kind of sleeping through the night baby.

Or someone else's baby.

So slow it might be stopping

Do you hear that puh puh puh sound? It's the last bit of gas in my tank. Losing momentum by the minute and frankly, looking for any excuse NOT to revise a short story that is due in one week.

This morning I woke up and did not get out of bed at 5 AM. I figured what the heck, the little earlywakingsoandso will be up soon enough. Why bother?

So you know what he did?

Slept til 7.

Yep.