Wow, maybe there is something to the writing by hand thing. I printed out a bunch of stories I had started, but never finished and took them with me to the library.
I read through them and decided to work on one I titled "Spooning with My Mother". It's a story about a woman who is divorced from her husband and feeling lonely, and trying to decide if she should sleep in the same bed with her 13 year old daughter for comfort.
Anyway, I read through the 3 page freewrite and decided that before I could finish the story, I'd write an outline so I could see how it would end. I started outlining the story I had written and was just about to write the outline for the rest of it, when I realized I didn't know what the story was really about because it had been so long since I wrote it.
I started to write a Q&A session with myself, which soon turned into a Q&A session with the main character. I just ended up asking her how the story ends, and I wrote what I popped into my head. Once I knew how it ended, I knew I could finish the story.
So after a 3.5 page outline and a Q&A freewrite, I wrote 16 handwritten pages and finished the story. YEAH ME! My first completed short story in a really long time.
Of course it's only a very shitty first draft, but at least it's done, and I can start typing it up and deciding whether I want to work on it some more or just leave as is.
This is good. This is exciting. A completed short story.
I'll post the opening for "Spooning with My Mother" tomorrow.
YEAH! I'm writing again!
Monday, June 16, 2003
Love and Darkness and a Sidearm - a scary freewrite
The cursed say they are damned for all eternity. Me, I say, sometimes it’s just plain dumb luck that you get caught and then people go ahead and make up a big fuss about it, when secretly you know they are happy you did it. Delighted, is even a better word. They are delighted that you rid the place of a bad human being. Sometimes people don’t get what’s coming to them soon enough and you’ve got to give nature a helping hand.
I didn’t mean to shoot him, but he just kept coming at me. Paul was always a little crazy, you know, especially when he drank. Liquor is like a demon, a gold liquid demon. When you drink enough of the demon, it makes you do crazy and mean things. It’s like there’s this little voice talking inside of your head and telling you to do things, thing you would never normally think of doing. And the devil, he’s like an old cowboy who’s bent on breaking you. He rides and rides you and you can’t buck him off and he digs his heels into your sides, till pretty soon you get used to the pain and the hurt. He knows and you know that it’s just a matter of time, before you become his, his prize. And Paul was definitely one of his prize specimens.
Poor Paul, he couldn’t go more than a couple of days at least as far as I could tell without a drink. And when he didn’t drink, the devil would dig his spurs into old Paul and Paul would get all mean. But nasty mean, even meaner then when he did drink.
Whenever Paul got mean, I poured him a whiskey in one of those little glasses with the oranges on them, that mama gave me years ago. I’d hand it to Paul and he’d look at me, the hate coming out of his eyes like an icy heart stopping wind. You know, the kind that whips right through you in the dead of winter and chills you to the bone. But after a minute, he’d laugh, take the glass and down the content in one gulp without spilling a drop. Then he’d be okay, at least for awhile.
The cursed say they are damned for all eternity. Me, I say, sometimes it’s just plain dumb luck that you get caught and then people go ahead and make up a big fuss about it, when secretly you know they are happy you did it. Delighted, is even a better word. They are delighted that you rid the place of a bad human being. Sometimes people don’t get what’s coming to them soon enough and you’ve got to give nature a helping hand.
I didn’t mean to shoot him, but he just kept coming at me. Paul was always a little crazy, you know, especially when he drank. Liquor is like a demon, a gold liquid demon. When you drink enough of the demon, it makes you do crazy and mean things. It’s like there’s this little voice talking inside of your head and telling you to do things, thing you would never normally think of doing. And the devil, he’s like an old cowboy who’s bent on breaking you. He rides and rides you and you can’t buck him off and he digs his heels into your sides, till pretty soon you get used to the pain and the hurt. He knows and you know that it’s just a matter of time, before you become his, his prize. And Paul was definitely one of his prize specimens.
Poor Paul, he couldn’t go more than a couple of days at least as far as I could tell without a drink. And when he didn’t drink, the devil would dig his spurs into old Paul and Paul would get all mean. But nasty mean, even meaner then when he did drink.
Whenever Paul got mean, I poured him a whiskey in one of those little glasses with the oranges on them, that mama gave me years ago. I’d hand it to Paul and he’d look at me, the hate coming out of his eyes like an icy heart stopping wind. You know, the kind that whips right through you in the dead of winter and chills you to the bone. But after a minute, he’d laugh, take the glass and down the content in one gulp without spilling a drop. Then he’d be okay, at least for awhile.
I'm still having a hard time writing in front of my computer. I haven't done it in so long, that it feels strange.
I watched the 60 Minutes interview with JK Rowling, and it looked like she still writes her first draft by hand. I'm getting desperate so I think I'll go back to writing by hand. Maybe if I get used to sitting at my computer and typing things up, I'll be able to one day sit down and just start typing, which I how I used to prefer to write.
Most writing books have at least one chapter devoted to ways to trick yourself into writing, so it must be a common writer's problem. One book said that every writer has "inner writing child" and that you have to pamper it, cajole it, so it wants to write.
I'm like, I wish I could slap it and get it to work.
I mean, I know what kind of child I was. I was spoiled, moody, willful, stubborn and completely resistant to authority. I'm still that way, sort of, although I've learnt over the years to control myself so I can get things done and get along with people. This is what happens when you grow up basically as an only child of older parents, who are too old and tired to discipline you.
I think I was raised like any hippie child, except my parents weren't hippies, they were just too old and tired.
My friend Mellie Mel says I have an "inner hippie", which is just so gross, disgusting and embarrassing but probably totally true. Mel says it's because she and I grew up on the west coast (Hawaii and California and I think Oregon as well), and you can't help but be a hippie chick because it's all around you and it's in the culture.
You develop and "inner hippie, even though she and I totally detest the smell of patchouli. I know I could out hippie anyone at Rainbow Grocery in a serious second, even though I don't look like someone who would ever shop there, and I've been shopping there since I first moved to San Francisco
For example, I used to really be into eating clover sprouts and used them on everything from pizza, spaghetti and enchiladas. Worst yet, I actually thought clover sprouts added texture and taste to all my dishes.
I spent years eating basmati brown rice cooked in a pressure cooker, with steamed organic veggies and sprinkled with soy cheese. I've been an off and on vegetarian since I was 19 years old, and I've been cleansing my body of toxins since I was 22 years old.
I learned to meditate when I was 13 years old, and started doing yoga when I was 15, way before it was trendy to do and hardly anyone was teaching it. Now yoga studios are sprouting up all over like bad mushrooms after a rainstorm.
I participated in my first anti-government protest rally when I was 16 years old, and then spent my whole internship in Washington DC going to a different anti-government rally every weekend. Singing "We Shall Overcome" still brings tears to my eyes.
Plus the most hippie chick thing of all, whenever I start dating someone new or even just meet a guy who I potentially want to date, I immediately check to see if our horoscopes are compatible. I don't even think about it, it's so automatic, like of course you have to check if your stars are compatible and you have to read all about their sign so you know what you're dealing with.
And yes, I do keep a running tab in my head on what signs I've dated and which ones I haven't, which ones I'd love to date, and which signs are most compatible and the worst for me.
My "inner hippie", how gross is that. I'm an "inner hippie-ess". That's like telling me I drive a polluting gas guzzling SUV! It's so bad and evil!
I watched the 60 Minutes interview with JK Rowling, and it looked like she still writes her first draft by hand. I'm getting desperate so I think I'll go back to writing by hand. Maybe if I get used to sitting at my computer and typing things up, I'll be able to one day sit down and just start typing, which I how I used to prefer to write.
Most writing books have at least one chapter devoted to ways to trick yourself into writing, so it must be a common writer's problem. One book said that every writer has "inner writing child" and that you have to pamper it, cajole it, so it wants to write.
I'm like, I wish I could slap it and get it to work.
I mean, I know what kind of child I was. I was spoiled, moody, willful, stubborn and completely resistant to authority. I'm still that way, sort of, although I've learnt over the years to control myself so I can get things done and get along with people. This is what happens when you grow up basically as an only child of older parents, who are too old and tired to discipline you.
I think I was raised like any hippie child, except my parents weren't hippies, they were just too old and tired.
My friend Mellie Mel says I have an "inner hippie", which is just so gross, disgusting and embarrassing but probably totally true. Mel says it's because she and I grew up on the west coast (Hawaii and California and I think Oregon as well), and you can't help but be a hippie chick because it's all around you and it's in the culture.
You develop and "inner hippie, even though she and I totally detest the smell of patchouli. I know I could out hippie anyone at Rainbow Grocery in a serious second, even though I don't look like someone who would ever shop there, and I've been shopping there since I first moved to San Francisco
For example, I used to really be into eating clover sprouts and used them on everything from pizza, spaghetti and enchiladas. Worst yet, I actually thought clover sprouts added texture and taste to all my dishes.
I spent years eating basmati brown rice cooked in a pressure cooker, with steamed organic veggies and sprinkled with soy cheese. I've been an off and on vegetarian since I was 19 years old, and I've been cleansing my body of toxins since I was 22 years old.
I learned to meditate when I was 13 years old, and started doing yoga when I was 15, way before it was trendy to do and hardly anyone was teaching it. Now yoga studios are sprouting up all over like bad mushrooms after a rainstorm.
I participated in my first anti-government protest rally when I was 16 years old, and then spent my whole internship in Washington DC going to a different anti-government rally every weekend. Singing "We Shall Overcome" still brings tears to my eyes.
Plus the most hippie chick thing of all, whenever I start dating someone new or even just meet a guy who I potentially want to date, I immediately check to see if our horoscopes are compatible. I don't even think about it, it's so automatic, like of course you have to check if your stars are compatible and you have to read all about their sign so you know what you're dealing with.
And yes, I do keep a running tab in my head on what signs I've dated and which ones I haven't, which ones I'd love to date, and which signs are most compatible and the worst for me.
My "inner hippie", how gross is that. I'm an "inner hippie-ess". That's like telling me I drive a polluting gas guzzling SUV! It's so bad and evil!
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