The Scribble Pad
The mental meanderings of a slightly loose screw.
JULY 09
Thursday July 30 - New book, new hope
One of life's little pleasures is opening up a box full of nice, crisp copies of your latest novel, and I had the pleasure of indulging when my author copies of Meet Me in Paris arrived out of the blue this week.
After more than 2 years' worth of labour pains, in which my book was shifted from Arabesque to Kimani, and cut back by 12,000 words, it's all worth it just to hold my new baby in my arms.
But like most pleasures, this one is tinged by a little sorrow. My mind rolled back to my last new book experience, in April last year, when Dear Rita came out. Oh, I was all bliss, signing them and sending them out to reviewers and newspapers, happy happy joy joy. A week or so later, my father was dead.
I remember how, just days after his funeral, I accepted an invitation to speak on an early morning news magazine programme. My journey took me into Port of Spain, and to get there, I had to pass the spot where he died...for the first time. I remember sitting in the TV studio lobby and crying quietly before they called me on the set.
Oh, I was a trouper; I breezed through the interview as if all was well with my world, but the joy of that book was never real for me. It straddled a time, a before and after in my life, from blissful unawareness to sober reality.
It's nice to know, to believe, that this one will be different.
Friday July 24 - New muscle found. Film at 11.
Stop the press! I've discovered a new muscle. Well, I'm fairly sure there are one or two biologists out there who have a few general ideas about its existence, but the catchy thing is that I've discovered a new muscle on me!
I was lying around, reading or something, playing incy-wincy spider with my fingers on my hip (no, not like that) when all of a sudden (now there's a phrase you won't see in my books) I felt it. A thick, ropey, resilient thing, (yet another phrase you won't see in my books, retch, retch,) that was definitely a muscle, right where a flabby lump of lard was supposed to be.
Thank you, treadmill! Thank you Wii! There actually is a spot, several square inches in size, on my body that's toned! This kind of thing makes me feel I can kick old age in the nuts! As God is my witness, I will prevail against the droopy ass of time!
Damn. This calls for a celebration.
Hagen Dazs Belgian chocolate, here I come!
Thursday July 23 - Right. Because I'm an idjit.
I had an aha! moment the other day. I'd been working on this story since bloody last year, and I'd been struggling with a plot point that was really getting on my tits.
Turn it left, turn it right, turn it upside down, I couldn't figure it out. So stumped was I that I actually shelved the damn book.
Then there I am, reversing out of my driveway or doing some automatic left-brain thing (right brain? never sure) when boom went the dynamite. Problem solved.
Now I can get on with my book. I should be happy, right? All I could think of is what a jackass I was for not coming up with that sooner. I feel like banging my head against my front step. Roslyn! You eeediot! That's what had you stumped for 5 months? This is what you couldn't come up with before? My 4 year old coulda solved that problem.
Shit. Sometimes, I disappoint me.
Friday July 17- 28/7
I wish I had a time portal. I shoulda-been a chrono-scientist or whatever you want to call it. This is ridiculous.
There are simply not enough hours in the day to do everything I have to and no amount of temporal gymnastics is going to change that.
What with management of the kids, their lunch kits and book bags and laundry and dirty bottoms, and running around in multiple directions like a two-headed chicken looking for freelance work, I'm lucky if I get to work on my novel for one hour a day.
Ridiculous.
You know what my definition of irony is? Irony is quitting your sweet-paying job so you can stay home and write more books, only to discover that you logged more hours writing when you were gainfully employed than you do now.
Who is responsible for this discrepancy, why was I not told about this earlier, and, most importantly, with whom must I lodge my complaint?
Mardi le quatorze julliet (Vive la Bastille!) - Extortion!
Okay, so suppose someone calls you up and says, "Hey, we have your kids. Send us some money and you can have them. Otherwise, we're going to squash 'em to a pulp."
Disturbing, no?
Now you know how I feel. A bunch of my novels - including A Thirst for Rain! Gulp! - are being remaindered and....(cue weeping, wailing, teeth-gnashing, etc.) ...pulped!
That is, unless I plan to buy them. Which I can't. Because I don't have the money.
Instead, I get to sit here and imagine my little biblio-babies being dragged screaming out of the warehouse, tossed ruthlessly on the back of and hauled off to the knackers, just like poor old Boxer in Animal Farm.
Oh, the book-anity!
Sunday July 12 - Addicted
Oh my God, I've always heard of the additive properties of casino gambling, but this is the first time I've had the opportunity to experience it for myself.
I went out for a bite with an old girlfriend last night, and the waitress slipped us $20 worth of comps for the casino next door. So, having nothing better to do with our night, and being women of questionable moral fibre, we hightailed it into that den of iniquity.
Needless to say, we were plumb out of luck, including beginner's luck, which I am now convinced is a scandalous myth cooked up by those self-same casinos to get idiots like us to hand over our money. But the virus was already in our blood. We had us some rich pastries at another little nook, and wouldn't ya know it, an hour and a half later we were in another casino, not playing with comped money, but with our own.
Yeah. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Fortunately we got out of there with just about $45 worth of damage, which we lost in a humiliatingly short space of time. Went home laughing and promising not to do it again.
I bet you $10 you can't guess what was my first thought when I opened my eyes this morning...
Wednesday July 8 - Minding my own business
Well, finally, I've managed to navigate my way through the surprisingly efficient government process of registering my own business.
After the initial disappointment of not being able to register Scribble, Scribble! thanks to some joker who'd already registered a similar name, I settled on The Scribble Pad, the same name as my blog, as the name for my new business.
Why register a business, you ask? Good question, grasshopper. Considering the abysmal state of my literary career, it seems that if I am to see my way clear to my next meal, I am actually going to have to find freelance jobs. And in order to get clients, one has to project a certain image that is generally at odds with my usual scruffy and indolent demeanour. And apparently, having an actual real-life bona-fide business can make me come across all legitimatey and stuff. Ergo, I attract clients. Ergo, we eat.
Good luck with that.
Thursday July 2 - MJ and me
Actually there is no MJ and me, in even the most remote sense, but it seems that everybody who had even the most tenuous connection with the man, from the chick who clipped his toenails to the truck driver who dropped off loads of soda pop at Neverland's back gate, is vying for their 3 1/2 minutes in the sun. Reminiscing about their few precious moments with him and trying to sound important.
And I watch the crowds gathering in town squares everywhere for gang moonwalks, and see the fans holding onto each other and weeping, and I wonder what's wrong with me.
No indictment on the man or his music, but I'd be hard-pressed to find myself that emotional over the death of a star. I admit I felt some pain at the death of Steve Irwin, even though I had stopped watching his show after the baby and the crocodile incident, but even then, I appreciate all he did for the world's wildlife and I think he was a great loss. But I shed no tears.
Somehow I couldn't get in touch with any deep well of sadness when Diana died, and now, I can't find it within myself to feel any great loss, even for someone who has made such an impact on the world. Maybe it's just my natural iconoclasm.
And it's not just because I've never met the man; it's just that I reserve my tears for stories that touch me, even when I've never met the person involved. A few weeks ago a 10-year-old child was snatched on her way to the corner store, strangled, and stuffed into a hole. I was driving when I heard on the news that they have found her body and found myself driving through a curtain of tears.
Last week, three idiot carjackers jumped into the backseat of a woman's car and told her to drive. Drive she did--right into the yard of a police station. Furious at being thwarted, these living warts on the ass of society shot her in the heart. She was the wife of a soldier in the mother of a 10-year-old boy. I cried for her, too.
Maybe I'm just not the kind of person who feels a personal connection with stars. Maybe one of my personal icons hasn't died yet, and I have tears yet to shed. I guess if I live long enough, I'll find out.
