anxiety

A Halloween With Few Decorations

One advantage of cold weather is that insects disappear. The temperatures in western New York have been perfect. Wrong, but incredible. I honestly don’t remember such a long streak of lovely autumn weather. If this were September, fine, but it’s nearly November and the ticks are still biting.

My writing spark dimmed if not went out. Pushing myself has never worked well. Recently, the thought of going to AWP to “work” it with and for my writing club friend to get her book represented, published, and marketed brought an excitement I haven’t had in a while, but it might be due from AWP being in Chicago next year. I do love visiting that city.

Chaos reigns in the vortex of families. The time has oozed along and I find myself thinking about another novel or maybe a series of flash writing in the new month. I cleared such clutter, ready to embrace whatever. I finished another 10-minute play and several more bloomed as soon as I started thinking about doing a full-length screenplay. Focusing on plays led to the AWP thoughts which are now feeding the non-NaNoWriMo NaNoWriMo thoughts so I’ll have a product if I go to AWP.

Endless circle, really. The writing life…

Otherwise, I have a flash coming out on 9 November at Matter Press and if I’m cleaver and remember, I shall link “The Wombat Job” here and oh, how I hope you enjoy it. The final revision seemed to hold the voice the right way, but that’s my egotistical-self speaking. And that was another thing drawing me to revisit flash – I read a story someone pimped and A) I found a venue I didn’t know about and B) I read the flash and knew I could write better than that.

My voting is out of the way, but my anxiety over the lies and delusions…nonstop. And there in lies another problem, is it “safe enough” anymore to enter the flow stage? The last two times I meditated, I was jolted out of calm by loud noises. I’m sure that’s a sign of something, but will I figure out what it means?

Ah well, time will tell, ring a bell, I started to rhyme so it’s time, to say ciao and climb into bed. Happy Halloween! Thank you for stopping by and for the read!

New Year! New Printer! Clean Desk!

On the recommendation of my “ink guy” at Rapid Refill, I bought a new color printer/scanner on Monday. He’s the one that steered me to my black toner workhorse of a printer so I trust him. He pointed out that I’d spend roughly the same amount for new cartridges for my old printer and those aren’t refillable – and the one he suggested was on sale. I removed the Lexmark and cleaned the spot, then decided to clean that whole corner of my work area. That led to clearing off the desk. Since I was getting rid of the one printer, I cleaned the drawer with all the computer paperwork. And the next one down, and the middle, then another…

All of which is to say, this is what happens when I’m anxiously waiting to hear from beta readers:

clean-desk

I just got off the phone with Nina and her niggles and quibbles are easily fixable. I took six pages of notes, which sounds like a lot, but I doodle. I’m looking at adding seven sentences and adjusting seven more. Mere tweaks! Well, compared to full out rewriting…

Yesterday, I met with Kim Moritz, the superintendent of SGI and picked up my laptop, learned passwords, and found out when the agendas were available. Looks like I’m really doing this Board of Education gig; it’s still surprising to me that it happened at all.

Lake effect snow is piling up and I have no interest in going anywhere today, so I’m off to fix the quibbles, work on a flash for Jellyfish Review, and after dinner tonight, make stock because I do that now – make soup the old-fashioned way with no cans.

20degrees

Thanks for stopping by!

*These are my Creekside Reflections, not yours. Your experience ought to vary.