Field Trip

Today my BFF and I made a pilgrimage to Toronto for Word on the Street, the annual literary Festival that takes over Queen’s Park. Imagine, if you will, a line of tents stretching into infinity that hold representatives from magazines and publishing houses, self published authors, writer’s organizations, discount books and magazines . . . you might come close. For a better idea of what went on, go HERE

We parked at the Yorkdale shopping centre and took the TTC in, probably the easiest time I’ve ever had getting to an event in Toronto although it did involve a lot of walking and stair climbing before we even got to Queen’s Park.

The weather forecast was for cool and overcast weather with the chance of a drizzle. The weatherman lied! It was sunny and hot hot hot! After meandering up and down the displays for almost three hours with the sun beating down on us, I started to feel a bit light headed. Could this be because I didn’t think to bring any water with me? The sun has never been my friend. So while my BFF stood in line for fresh squeezed lemonaide, I sat in the shade trying not to puke.

After about ½ an hour we felt up to continuing. Lunch was a slushy for me and an ice cream for BFF. We were on the home stretch. Just a few more booths to go and we were done. Our butts were truly dragging by the time we got back to Yorkdale.

On the way home we decided we felt up to solid food now, so we stopped in Oshawa on the way back for some New York Fries. Oh, my! Did I park in front of Chapters? What a shame. Now we have to pass more books on our way in and out from the mall. I still had money left over from my day and treated myself to the latest Lynsay Sands vampire book. How apropos - I’m about halfway through re-reading her vampire series.

The perfect ending to a perfect day.

If you want to see the loot list from Word on the Street, you’ll have to check out my writing blog.
:-P

Things to remember for next year:
water
hat
water
wear something cooler and bring a jacket if I have to
water
go directly to the Harlequin tent before all the good books are gone
and there was something else . . .
oh, yeah, water

Que Sera Sera

Let’s just pretend yesterday never happened. ‘Kay?

There must be some kind of energy sucking virus going around and I apparently have a double-dose of it.

I had an meeting with my career counsellor this morning - I’m still undecided whether it was a good or bad meeting. The woman is pretty clueless, but she appears to be trying to be a little more open minded.

After that I decided to get my hair trimmed. It was getting kinda raggedy looking. The hair dresser didn’t take as much off as I thought she would, but to be fair I told her to take as little as possible.

When I got home again I found a letter address to me from the Attorney General’s Office waiting. Eep! My first thought was, this can’t be a good thing. I knew doing taxes for other people on the side would come back to bite me in the ass. But no, it was a form to fill out and return regarding jury duty. Most people I know have never been called to jury duty in their lives. This will be my second time in five years!

And now, here I sit. Eating gummi worms and procrastinating. What a life.

Hump Day Blues

I’m tired and cranky and headachy. My energy level is at an all new low. Writing was a real struggle for me today, as was pretty much anything else.

I opened up Driving Into Forever because I thought it would be easier to work on because I’m just re-writing it, but I was wrong. I thought it would be more like just heavy editing but instead I’m actually re-writing the whole thing. Most of it’s being scrapped completely. And why? Because of the other two projects I’m working on.

That’s the problem with writing. It’s a learning process. The more I write, the better the writing gets. By working on the other two projects it’s easier to see where I went wrong with the first one and the re-write is becoming a much better story.

But it was still a great effort to get anything done today. Even blogging.

The Rooster Crows

Just as the weather has been changing lately (from hot and humid to crisp and clear) so have my sleeping habits. In the winter months when I was on a midnight shift, I had no trouble sleeping during the day. But once I was off that shift I became a day person again.

I like the mornings and I’ve never had any problems getting up early. If I have a good reason to that is. When you have to set your alarm to get up and go to work, it’s a whole different ball game than when you can get up any time you like. It leads to staying up later, which leads to sleeping in later . . . A truly vicious cycle.

My most productive time seems to be the afternoon, from lunch to about supper time. So the time I get up in the morning shouldn’t make any difference, right?

Wrong. I miss the early mornings, when everything is just waking up and it’s quiet and peaceful outside . . . And the reason I don’t really get anything done before lunch is because I get such a late start. I don’t get much accomplished in the evenings either, other than reading or watching TV, there’s a lot of wasted time there.

So I’m going to try an experiment this week. I’m going to set my alarm and get up at a normal time and then come into my office to get to work. Writing is my new job. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Ask not for whom the rooster crows, my friend, it crows for you.

Happy Hump Day

If you’ve been wondering lately where I’ve wandered off to, then you obviously haven’t been using the link to my writing blog. :-P

I’ve been writing up a storm lately, and more importantly, having fun while doing it. I was doing my usual whining to my friend last week and she told me I needed to find the joy in writing again. I think I’ve done that, with my current WIP anyway and obviously it's making a difference.

Must be the change in the weather, even the cats have been acting crazy lately. Well, crazier than they normally do.

On the weekend I had the misfortune of being part of the race track as they went flying around the living room and ended up with two gouges in my arm. We’re not talking scratches my friends, we’re talking a six inch divot in my arm, the kind that leaves scars.

Just be thankful I still can’t get my digital camera to work. I’m not above posting pictures.

Pattern Breaking

Whilst taking a break from writing (yes, actual writing today) I started checking out some links I had saved from my old computer. One of those links led to my very first blog and I started reading some of the posts with interest.

I have to admit that I was just a little appalled at how little has changed in the last couple of years. This blog was started at the end of 2005, when I was still on a medical leave of absence from work. I’d started it to encourage myself to write, but for all the free time I had it didn’t seem to be working. Sound familiar?

* * * * * * *
Something that has always fascinated me is psychic phenomena. I was talking about this with a friend the other day and she casually mentioned she could “read” people. And then she told me I was “just putting in time in this life until it’s time to move on”. I don’t even think she was aware of telling me this, but it really struck home.

* * * * * * *
I’m not trying to turn this into a “poor pitiful me” post. On the contrary, I’m seeing a pattern that my life has taken and I want to find a way to break that pattern. It’s a lot easier said than done, but I’d like to at least try. No more “putting in time”, I need to start making things happen.

Okay, to reward you for putting up with the above post, here’s a quiz for you:


What Tarot Card are you

You Are The Chariot

You represent a difficult battle, and a well-deserved victory You tend to struggle to get what you want, both internally and externally You excel at controlling opposing forces, getting down the same path. In the end, you bring glory and success - using pure will to move forward. Your fortune: There is great conflict in your life right now, either with yourself or others. You must find a solution to this conflict, which is likely to be a "middle road" between the two forces. You posses the skills to triumph over these struggles, as long as your will is strong. You are transforming your inner self, building a better foundation for future successes.

What Tarot Card Are You?

A Matter of Perspective

I had an interesting chat with a friend of mine today. I was telling her that despite the fact that I’ve written poetry since I could hold a pencil and I’ve often been told my poems are “good” , I really don’t “get” poetry. At least not so-called modern poetry.

Poetry is like art. I either like it or I don’t. It either speaks to me or it doesn’t. I will never be able to understand why one painting has so much more value than another. I don’t get why Picasso ended up so famous (I can hear my daughter, the art major, gnashing her teeth as I type).

I then related to my friend the story of the only painting I ever saw that I felt was worth the ticket price. I saw it a long time ago in a little gallery in Stratford, Ontario. The painting itself was done in either watercolour or pastel, clouds of mist from which emerged the half-formed figures of Arthur and his knights, but they were skeletal, ancient. The painting seemed to pull me in until I could almost feel the mist . . .

My friend turned to me and said, “So, you were always bent then?”

*sigh*

It's all a matter of perspective.

The Truth North

Canada . . . where else can you go from sleeping with the fan on to keep you cool, to needing a blanket on the bed to keep you warm in less than a week?

Don't get me wrong. I really like the weather we've been having. It's bright and sunny with just a hint of cool in the air. When the sun sets it takes the warmth with it. But everything's still fresh and green outside. If I could freeze a moment in time, this would be it.

This is also the time of year for the new season to start on TV. Since my cable company took away the WB network (it got moved to a higher package that I just can't afford) I've had to look for my old favorites elsewhere.

Space channel has really come through for me though. It's running Lost from the beginning, and one of my favorite Start Trek series, Deep Space Nine. The thing I like about Space is that they run the same episode twice a day so there's no excuse for missing it.

One of the new shows I watched was the Fringe. Very interesting. It's like the X-Files meets Psi Factor meets Outer Limits. I hope it lasts. Last season ticked me off because every time I got interested in a new show it would disappear. Like Primeval and Surface.

One show I was happy to see return was Torchwood. Captain Jack - yum! Captain Jack making out with James Marsters - double yum!

The Good, the Bad, and the Eek!

No, I didn't find a mouse in the box of writing notes, I found something much, much more frightening. My first novel.

This epic dates back to high school, at least the start of it does. I was a hard core science fiction fan back then so natural my first novel was science fiction. Did I mention I didn't really care for science back in high school?

This was written in the days before computers. Back in the stone age when we used typewriters. Manual typewriters. But that was only for the final drafts. Ninety per cent of this epic is written in long hand.

Let's start with the bad. My heroine's name changed three different times, sometimes within the same draft. The leader's name changed five times, and went from being a man to a woman. Oh, and here's the best part. The women were divided into two social classes: beautiful but stupid, and smart but not so pretty. *hangs head in shame*

Can this book be helped? Well, that's the good news. Maybe it can. There's some good ideas in there, and obviously I'd meant it to turn into a trilogy because there's some good scenes written out that have nothing to do with the original. I like the commander of the space ship, and the two heroes.

So back into the closet it goes. I've got enough fish to fry right now. But I'm sure we haven't seen the last of the Valkyrie and "the Temple of the Stars".

Memory Lane

One of the reasons it’s taking me so long to clean out the spare bedroom closet is that I’m trying to purge as I go, and being the pack rat that I am, it’s not easy.

Going through the box that held old craft instructions (books, magazines, articles) was a trip down memory lane. Anyone remember the Macrame craze of the ‘70's? I must have been crazed to buy the number of instruction leaflets I found. Especially when you consider that the only things I remember every making were a couple of belts.

How about crepe paper, that stretchy craft paper that came in a variety of colours? I don’t even think they make it any more, but it was great for making artificial flowers.

I also found quite a few craft magazines that came from an Aunt’s house. I remember how much I loved to visit her when I was a kid. She was the one who gave me my love of crafts. Every time I’d visit she’d have a new craft to teach me. Though she's gone her legacy lives on, passed down to my daughter and hopefully, one day, to her children.

It was hard to give up some of those books, but if I haven’t even looked at them in twenty years, the chances of me using them in the next twenty are pretty slim. Most of these books and magazines are in really good shape so they’re being donated. It helps when I think that someone else might make use of them.

Next up, the box marked Writing Notes.

Organization

You know, the problem with getting things organized is that you have to keep it up on a regular basis, otherwise you end up with just as big a mess as you started with. Well, maybe not quite as big, but a mess nonetheless.

I’m sure it would help if I didn’t wait until stuff (books, papers, etc) was stacked up so high there should be an avalanche warning posted. It would probably also help if I didn’t feel the need to redefine my organizational system when it gets to that point. One of these days maybe I’ll get it right!

Late Monday afternoon I sat down and did some serious thinking about what I’m doing and where I’m going. While others spent the last holiday weekend of the summer at various productive endeavors, I . . . did not. This is one of the pitfalls of being unemployed. The more time you have, the less productive you tend to be.

I thought about the length of time I’ve been writing and what I had to show for it. I thought about where I am in life and where I’d like to be. I thought back over the last 8 weeks (that I’ve been unemployed) and what I have to show for it - I’m not impressed. Changes need to be made.

So I wrote out a list - actually, several lists - of things I could be doing, things I should be doing, and things I need to be doing on a daily basis. I work best with a structure, and while I didn’t write down a specific schedule to get me through the day, I did make a list of things I need to do on a daily basis.

I’ll let you know how it works out.