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Blog started in Jan 2005: 1st entries for Write in Every Genre. Then the REAL ME begins |
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It Hurts When I Stop Talking Sometime in Fall of 1998, when a visit from Dad was infrequent, and primarily at the mercy of his 88 Toyota making the 50 mile journey, I was being treated to lunch. The restaurant was my choice, I think. Sisley Italian Kitchen at the Town Center mall was somewhere my dad had not yet tried, so that was my pick. Either I was being treated to the luxury of lunch and adult conversation without my husband and 5 year old son in tow, or that's just how the moment has lodged in my memory. The more I think about it, they probably were there, but enjoying the Italian food too much to bother interrupting. Daddy and his lady friend at the time, Anne, came up together and made a day of it with me and the family. We were eating together and talking about some of my scripts, stories, coverages, poems and other creative attempts that really were not seeing the light of day. I think I'd just finished a group reading of The Artist's Way and was in a terribly frenetic mood over my writing. I think I'd just given them an entire rundown on a speculative Star Trek script. My Dad asked me point blank, “Why don’t you write it?? Anne agreed. It sure sounded like I wanted to write it. Why wasn't I writing seriously? It's what I'd set out to do when earning my college degree in Broadcasting many years earlier. Heck, I should, I agreed non-verbally. “I will.” But, I didn’t. Blogs can be wild, unpredictable storehouses of moments, tangents, creative dervishes, if you will. I'm getting a firmer handle on my creative cycle. My mental compost heap (which is a catch phrase from Natalie Goldman or Julia Cameron - I can't think which, right now) finally seems to be allowing a fairly regular seepage of by-products. That may be a gross analogy, but I give myself credit to categorize my work in raw terms. It proves that I'm not so much the procrastinating perfectionist that I once was. Still, I always seem to need prompts and motivation. Being a self-starter is the next step. My attempt to keep up in the Write in Every Genre Contest at the beginning of the year seemed like a perfect point to launch the blog. |
| A life slice -- Thought this morning I should write a short story (recollection or fiction not sure yet) about what I remember about turning nine. I have a niece turning nine this month. In mulling my own childhood over, I knew tht I wanted to recall the birthday party attended by my entire 4th grade class (I was out several months of school due to a surgery). The large Magnolia trees in the park across from our house...I'm pretty sure my mom must've supplied a pinata. The other thing I recall was all the at-home study I had to do on the explorers (de Gama, Columbus and such). Details of that year not as clear as even earlier...when we lived in San Pedro: I have so much memory of the exact structure of the stairwell for the Apt we lived in. since it was two or three sets of stairs, which my mom had to help me up (leg braces and/or full leg casts on a three year old -- imagine that! |
| NextStage, Story Number..., and What it is -- Why it is important labels are three interrelated ideas Iam puttting down this morning. Suddenly it is like 10 weeks of lockdown layered by a week of local curfews have appeared in the form of these ideas. Not so much working for someone or "getting a job" "side hustle" but creating my lifeswork based on all the things I have ever remembered / valued. I am certain that it has crystallized now after a mind space of three and a half hours with little need for conversation, while being focused on trying to make it home by curfew on June 2nd. Everything from my enjoyment of the space program (viewing the live televised record of U.S. spaceflight; stages of rockets) being referenced in the name, NextStage. To the distinction that I am the family member responsible for numbering Mom's recollections in the form of, "Story Number ... (unearned, I think) at Mom's recent (February 2020) retirement. ; although, I am now seeing a way to utilize that as a website / business in making custom archival labels for family items that need to get passed on into the greater world, but not have their stories forgotten. |
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