i’ve done it!
Finally, finally, finally…
After two years of my flash drive hanging off my keychain as a reminder of all the writing I wasn’t doing, I put it to good use…I ran it through the washing machine ‘gentle’ cycle forgotten in my jeans pocket.
Once I calmed down from the requisite running around the coffee table with it between my fingers and gasping that I had lost the second best year of writing of my life, I calmed down, gave it 96 hours to dry out (just in case) and plugged it in to see if anything survived.
It all did. And, as it turns out, I had a copy of all of the files on my laptop. BUT STILL, it gave me the jolt I needed. I have printed out the better of my two stories from my senior year in college, and am trying not to despair as I edit it.
With Heinlein’s rules in a permanent place on my cork boards, I am reminded daily that even awful ideas must be given due care and attention, and sometimes, the simplest advice is the best.
So, I will edit this story and then send it out within two weeks. There, the clock is started. Off I go!
turning of the season
I crunched my first fall leaf of the season. Happy Autumn to one and all.
Does anyone agree that once leaves have changed color and fallen from the branch, their entire purpose in life alters? I had a great internal struggle when I was roughly age six regarding whether or not it hurt leaves’ feelings to crunch them underfoot or if it was meant to be. Eventually, I decided that, yes, it was part of their reason for changing. Of course they were there to be crunched underfoot or gathered into piles to be jumped in.
Now, nineteen years later, I cannot help but crunch as many leaves as possible to help them fulfill their autumnal purpose. Just doing my part to keep a little part my childlike sense of wonderment alive and help as many little fall leaves as I can to get what they want. Someone should, right?
Home! Home! England!
When I come back, I will be different. Not in the “lost an arm dueling an angry dwarf” kind of different, but just, well, a little wiser, a little more informed, and perhaps, inspired.
I am, at long last, going to England.
I have been dreaming of setting foot on the Scepter’d Isle for over a decade now. At first I imagined it might be like Robin Hood returning from the crusades–you know, from Robin Hood: Men in Tights where Robin swims the entire way from Jerusalem and lands on a sandy English beach to large block letters a la Hollywood style. Now I know it will be not so arduous, nor so easy. I am taking a British Airline flight (as I’m not comfortable having my face underwater for that long), but I am only allowed one measly suitcase and twelve days to cement a lasting impression of the United Kingdom in my heart.
Oh yes, and two days of it will be spent hopping over to Rome, after which, I can come home, sit down with my friends to watch Roman Holiday, and spend the entire movie saying, “oooh, I’ve been there. See that fountain? I sat there eating gelato. See that old man with the dog? He’s still there. See that bench? I lit it on fire!”
I am breathless with the idea that I will, at last, be able to walk the same streets as the authors I admire so much. I can spend my time hunting down the blue plaques in London I’ve spent hours watching PBS specials on, and I can snuggle down onto the settee Colin Firth sat on when he mooned over Jennifer Elle in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice.
One of Eddie Izzard’s best lines is, “You know, England…where the history comes from.” Well, I intend to soak in as much as I can get while I’m there. I don’t know how I’ll manage to avoid being rooted to the first bit of English soil in pure and unencumbered happiness that I have, at last, arrived at my soul’s homeland, but I’ll try to get a move on, so I have photos to prove I went to more places than Heathrow’s Terminal Four.
