When I'm Not Writing...

After a particularly harsh period in my writing journey, I decided that I needed some time off. Last week, I didn’t write at all. Not a single word. And it taught me a few things about myself:

1. I used to have a lot more time on my hands. Once upon a time, I wasn’t writing, or thinking about writing and I had an incredible amount of empty time. Returning to that this week felt weird, and sometimes I wandered around the house trying to determine what to do with myself.

2. I can only read, and watch television, so much. I’ve drifted through an entire season of CSI, a couple of movies, and an episode of Castle. I also devoured 5 books, but finally got bored with that too.

3. Depression is, well, depressing, and boredom doesn’t help. I’m used to having so much on my To Do list that I’m overwhelmed. This week, I deliberately didn’t keep a list and didn’t agree to do anything. Hell, I didn’t even clean the house until I got so tired of watching television that I had to have SOMETHING to do (voluntarily washing dishes tells you how truly desperate I was…).

4. When I’m bored, I organize. There have been a couple of times in my life when I’ve been incapacitated for a week or more while recuperating, and usually found myself dreaming up ways to reorganize or redecorate my house. This week, in an effort to feel productive, I spent time organizing materials for the raffle baskets for the upcoming HOD Luncheon, redid my daily planner, and cleaned out files on my computer.

5. No matter how much you might wish it, the characters in your head just NEVER SHUT UP! And this is the crux of the matter. I almost wish they would be quiet, so I’d have an excuse not to write anymore. But they won’t. I hope that is a sign I’m a real writer and that with time and hard work I can reconnect with my creativity on a level that is fulfilling and productive.

I haven’t started writing again yet. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, or maybe next week. Right now, I’m simply playing with the characters in my head, just like I did the first time my very own characters showed up. Not characters from someone else’s books, but my own. And I’m also trying to accustom myself to the idea that I’m about to start a book for which I have no avenues for submission, no ideas what will happen to it when I’m done. It’s scary, intriguing, and necessary. Here’s hoping I learn whatever lesson the universe is trying to teach me. ;)

So tell me, what immersion tactic do you choose when you are “avoiding”? Television? Reading (usually my diversion of choice, but for some reason wasn’t working for me this week)? Scrubbing grout?

Angel

Coming Soon!
On Friday, April 23, author Cara Summers makes a visit to the Playground!

Too much time on my hands...

I now know why so many employers block YouTube on their employee’s computers.

Forget the porn; that place is a complete time suck. You click over to watch the video of your cousin’s kid singing in the church choir and an hour later, you’re watching videos of cats on record players spinning around.

You don’t mean to, but you do.

I’d managed to avoid YouTube for the most part. I never wandered over without a reason – a direct link to what I needed to watch. To be honest, I never thought to look there for the any of the hundred thousand “must watch” videos everyone was talking about.

Then, one day it happened. I clicked off a blog link to YouTube to see something I’d never heard of before: people mixing scenes from TV shows with music to make their own music videos.

Like this one:

Or this (Probably not safe for work):

Since then, I’ve killed hours on YouTube – hours I’ll never get back – watching these stupid music videos. They’re oddly addictive. I’m a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I loved Buffy and Spike’s relationship, but why did I spend so much time watching it be rehashed over and over again to everything from “Addicted” to “Glory of Love”?

And, dear dog, the hours spent with Star Trek: Voyager videos..

Then there are the videos where the makers take scenes and manage to put them together to tell a completely different story line. Ever wanted to see Buffy and Xander fall in love, fight, break up and make up? There’s a video about that – even though it never happened on the show – thanks to the magic of clever editing. Really clever editing can put characters from two different TV shows together in torrid relationships.

I also watched a lot of recut movie trailers – “Sleepless In Seattle” as a creepy stalker horror movie, “The Shining” as a feel-good love story.

And these:

Or this:

I thought PhotoShop was bad at distorting reality – movie editing software is really scary stuff.

So I’ve wasted hours of my life watching these videos – and I’ve only seen a fraction of what’s out there. But what amazes me is the amount of time someone had to put into these videos. Three minutes of video – properly edited, synced to the music, lots of cool effects – must take hours and hours to produce. Just searching the DVDs for the perfect one second clip to put right there at the big cymbal crash could take hours. And some of these folks make dozens or hundreds of these videos.

Where do they find the time? Trust me, I don’t ask that question lightly. I’ve had too many people ask me that question about writing. I know the correct answer is “You make the time.” Call me a cynic or whatever, but there’s no way I’d spend that amount of time doing something (that dances on the edge of copyright infringement to begin with) and then post it on YouTube for free.

Am I missing something? Am I too selfish? Too greedy? Too stingy with my time? If any of our blog readers does something like this – recut trailers, make music videos, heck, run an unofficial fan site (one of those big ones that are obviously labor-intensive) please let me know. I feel like I’m missing a piece of a puzzle.

Alternately, you could all confess your guilty pleasure internet time-sucks and make me feel a little bit better.

PC

***Don't forget: The (Modern) Heat Up Your Winter Contest ends on Saturday. If you haven't entered, now's the time! Click on the icon in the sidebar --------over there----------->> for info on how to enter!

To Friend or Not to Friend

Friend – noun – a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard; a person who is on good terms with another; a person who is not hostile

Friend – verb – to add someone to your Facebook community.



Facebook is a free website used to network people by various factors such as location, school or workplace among others. Members can add friends, send them messages, post about themselves and create photo albums to share. Facebook was founded in 2004 by a Harvard student. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but later expanded to include other Boston and Ivy League colleges as well as Stanford University. It later expanded again to include any university student, then brought in high school students and now is open pretty much worldwide to anyone over the age of 13. Today Facebook has 150 million active users.

It has been blocked from time to time in Syria and Iran, and is blocked by many workplaces to increase worker productivity. Duh. If I were the boss, I'd block it too.

I joined Facebook on September 8, 2008 and to date I have 284 friends. I have a few requests outstanding so maybe I'll hit 300 soon. I tried to find out who has the most friends on Facebook but couldn't find anything definitive. I mean, it's not like "He who has the most Facebook friends wins" or anything. I also belong to some groups including one for the elementary school I attended, I have a corkboard with some Flair and I enjoy playing 52 Pickup to help Save the Planet.

I started thinking about my Facebook friends and came up with ten kinds of friends on my list:

1. My husband

2. My boys and daughter-in-law

3. Family such as nieces and nephews and my daughter-in-law's mother and sister

4. People I went to school with in elementary and high school and in college

5. Writers and their friends -- we're a very friendly lot

6. Former business associates

7. People from message boards and Yahoo loops I belong to

8. Friends' spouses

9. Small world friends

10. Friends who are the result of keen detective work


I'll tell stories about 9 and 10. A while back I added the mother of one of the groomsmen in my son's wedding. Mostly we just see what's going on in each other's lives. But yesterday a woman with a very familiar name commented on groomsman's mother's site. I messaged her and asked if she was so and so, and she was. Our boys all attended the same elementary school and were in Cub Scouts together. She knows groomsman's mom through club work. And interestingly enough, the familiar name moved a number of years ago and lives within two miles of me now. Small world, huh?

In the keen detective work arena, one day I was just typing in surnames of people I'd known and got a hit on a woman I believed was the daughter of a high school chum. I messaged her and asked if she was so-and-so's daughter and if so, would she pass my email to her mother. A couple days later I got an email from the mother who just signed up for Facebook a day or so ago.

I typed in another name of a couple we were in Germany with. They had twin girls names X and Y. I got a hit on a young woman named X and in her friends list was a woman named Y. I messaged her, explained who I was and she emailed me back with her mother's email address but with the caveat her mother was out of the country for ten days. I honestly forgot about emailing her until I wrote this blog yesterday afternoon. I dashed off an email and two hours later she replied with "Hi Marilyn!!! How exciting to hear from you after all these years! I must get on Facebook, clearly it's THE thing to do." She filled me in on what has happened with her and her family in the 28 years since we've seen each other.

Sometimes you have to dig a little, but if you're lucky, you can find the daughter of someone from your childhood neighborhood, the girl who trimmed you hair in the dorm at college and catch up with the boy you took to the Sadie Hawkins dance in ninth grade who now owns a large pharmaceutical company and got an $8,000,000 salary package in 2007.

Of course, I should be working on the WIP, and I have been, but one particular chapter has been a real bear and while I'm sorting through plot points and POV in my head, I'm dabbling with Facebook. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Do you use Facebook? Have you had any small world or keen detective experiences?

P.S. I am nearly finished with chapter 10 of the WIP, which leaves one chapter to go. Yay!

Overnight Getaway

Ten Things I Learned During My Weekend Trip to Atlanta for a Bob Mayer workshop:

1. Bob Mayer doesn't look anything like a Green Beret. And having sold over 30 books sounds like a hell of a career to me, no matter what he says.



L to R: Lynn Harris, Misty Wright, Angel, Bob, and Problem Child.

2. Hybrid cars sound like they aren't even running sometimes.

3. If you put 3 women in front of a dessert counter like this, they'll come home with a trunk full of styrofoam food containers. I even brought home cookies for my kids that were bigger than their heads!


Dessert counter @ Marietta Diner

4. Write the D*mn Book!

5. Don't give up on your dream! What you put out into the universe is what you will receive.

6. Laughter and conversation with good friends is one of life's most enjoyable experiences (and the dessert wasn't bad either).


Here's PC and I with Lynn and author Jennifer LaBrecque.

7. We can still make roundabout jokes when we miss a turn. And they're still funny. But back mountain roads aren't for everyone.

8. Antagonist is a debatable term when it comes to non-suspense romance writing.

9. The unconscious mind is a great thing. Because even if I don't see my "motif", other people will.

10. When the hell do I have time to do all the stuff he said to do?!? Obviously he doesn't have children, housekeeping, laundry, other people expecting him to feed them, a job outside of writing, parent-teacher conferences....

Hmmm.... not sure how much I learned, but I had a great time. Unfortunately, I must now return to real life and learn to write the d*mn book despite children, hubby, laundry... :)

Angel

Interesting Thought

I've been following the John and Anne Darwin story for the last several days. For those that don't know he faked his own death five years ago and last week showed back up at the police station claiming amnesia. Except someone found a picture of him online in Panama for last year...with his wife. Oops!

For some reason the story has caught my attention. Maybe it's the question of why John decided to suddenly resurface. Or the question of why he decided to disappear in the first place. Whatever it is, I've been reading several stories and accounts of their life for the past five years. However, today I read an interesting article that takes the story from another angle.

Anne Applebaum, a columnist for the Washington Post and Slate, has an article posted on MSN today which discusses the pseudocide angle - the surprisingly widespread occurrence of faked death. Here's the link: http://www.slate.com/id/2179604/?GT1=10733 (the article is very good and pretty funny... The Lie, the Switch and the Wardrobe...snicker).

She brings up a great topic - escaping our lives. I don't know about you guys but that's pretty much what I'm doing when I pick up a book (or watch a movie). I need those few minutes or hours to forget about my problems and live through someone else's life - to experience happily ever after and know that if it can happen to them it can happen to me. I kinda get the same experience when I write. however, I don't think I'd ever need to escape so much that I'd leave my entire life behind - including my kids.

That's one theory I've read, that John so missed contact with his sons that he devised a plan to return to the living claiming he had amnesia. Google strikes again. Perhaps he shouldn't have let the real estate agent in Panama post his picture online. Now that was a stupid mistake. James Bond he is not.

Have you been following this story? What's your take on his 'death' and rebirth? Or his wife's roll in it all?

Instigator

P.S. Lynn Raye Harris and Sassy are the winners from the Be Careful What You Wish For contest. Please email Problem child here to claim your prize.