So my friend… I’ll call her the ‘Other Tart’ made a list yesterday about ways a person might know she was a writer. It’s a very good, giggle-worthy list, and her readers added some great ones. Go look, if you don’t believe me (or even if you do).
It got me thinking (oh, no—not time to say ‘uh oh’, yet. It wasn’t a dangerous thought)… Thinking about the person who eaves drops not for gossip, but for character quirks, the person jotting notes on a napkin because that brain of hers never stops working, that person who can’t WAIT for everyone to just LEAVE already so she can be ALONE because then she can WRITE!
I took my son to Water Polo last night—it is through the local Rec&Ed, not the US team, unfortunately, and is at the high school on the farthest side of town… Oh, I know, Ann Arbor isn’t so big, but it’s about a twenty minute drive, so to drop him off and go home, just to turn back around to pick him up would be silly… I stay.
There was a dad with a laptop… I suppose he might have been writing. There was a dad pacing, doing everything he could not to dive in there and correct the nice high school kid who is teaching these middle-schoolers. And there were moms… reading… all of them except the insane one with a pile of notes and papers she kept thumbing through… the one who made her list of suspects and made sure each one had a lie they would tell over the course of the book (thanks for that tip, Elizabeth!), and then wrote madly for an hour, and didn’t even NOTICE it was going over until a different mom said, ‘weren’t they supposed to end fifteen minutes ago?’
[gratuitous EXTRA water polo player shot]
I’d been so thoroughly in my world that the lot of them had ceased to exist. Good thing nobody needed saving.
I’m not sure I used to be able to so completely lose myself when there was so much going on. I think this is a new skill… probably not one that’s going to be good for my social life.
Ah well. The first draft of the first cozy chapter is written (sticking to the chapter every 5 days plan, though I definitely need to do finish my Roanoke research to fill in some holes… and I keep thinking of things I forgot to include… should probably fill them in, then tighten, then decide what can be moved until later, as they will probably frown on a 30-page first chapters *cough* In other words, I will have my editing job cut out for me
… but the STORY is flowing… I suppose that is the important point.
Have any of you picked up and quirks or ticks since you committed to writing, or am I slowly going insane all by myself?
8 comments:
Love the pics!! Yummy.. keep going...were all going insane with you dear..it's all good :)
Teehee--Sugar, I knew that Fillion shot exsisted, as I'd seen the episode, but MAN did I feel lucky when I plugged 'water polo' into google images... what a jackpot!
Glad I'm not going insane alone!
I follow Nathan Fillion on twitter. He sure has a nice round behind. Firefly was a great show.
I think I just more comfortable with my nerdiness as I get older. Most youngsters don't want to admit to being a nerd or a dork or even just weird (in a good way).
Nathan's on twitter? you're on twitter? ACK! How am I always the last to know. I am HartJohnson on Twitter... probably he won't look for me... guess I'll have to go find him... I'll look for you too!
And it's true... that we get past the 'what other's think' which is what keeps us from acting like we like...
I think you're right...actually, I'm blogging on this (sort of!) tomorrow. When we're so busy, we forget any self-consciousness and just get buried in the work. Is it a good thing? I think it depends on the situation. But I've gotten to the point where I can be the ONLY adult at the swimming pool in the summer with a laptop. If they're looking at me curiously I don't even register it. I can block out children screaming at a playground and type happily on my laptop at the park. I worked at EPCOT's Mexico for two hours at a table without really looking up. But five or six years ago I would have been in an agony of self-consciousness. :)
Elizabeth
I love it when it happens - when this 'so-called real life' disappears and the other life takes over. Since I often write about places I've visited and since it takes me a long long time to write about these places and since my characters do lots of things in these places that I never did - it can lead to mind confusion of the sort where I might tell someone about a place that I don't REALLY know. So weird.
I do almost all my writing (and reading) during the daily commute. Bombay trains carry 6.9 million people everyday, and during peak hours (when I travel), there are often 14 people squeezed into one square metre.
If you are going insane, Tami, I am going insane with you.
Aha! i will go check it out, Elizabeth! Yeah, can't put me in charge of small children either... bad idea. teehee.
I love it, too, Jan, but that's hysterical, the idea of not being sure if it was you or your character that did something! (I bet I round that bend, soon).
Natasha--yes, noise is one thing, but a good jostling HAS to be distracting! (and how do you also see all the cool things you do for your photos if your nose is in a book? Do you spot THOSE mid-jostle?)
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