The Scribble Pad
The mental meanderings of a slightly loose screw.
MARCH 08
Sunday March 23 - Where ya been, Jean?
I case you were wondering where I've been all this time, not blogging (and certainly not writing), I've been back at my old stomping ground. No, not in the Attic Pub parking lot necking with sailors...come on! I mean my other stomping ground. My old alma mater, grading undergraduate papers.
It's been 17-odd years (very, very odd years) since I started there as a teaching assistant. Life really does come full circle.
I need to focus to get my chops back, but there's one thing I've noticed, and it's a very sad thing. These kids, who were in training pants back when I last worked there, are no better at slapping together an English composition paper than their predecessors, even with all the resources available to them today. Frustrating. Sad.
Wednesday March 12 - Me. In a urinal. Really.
Okay, so my 10 year old clunker called it a day as I was dropping the kids off at school. I rolled onto the shoulder, threw up the hood, let the kids off their leash and contemplated my next move.
The primary problem was that it was overheating. (The secondary problem is that it's a pile of crap, but let's not hurt its feelings.) No biggie. I'll just sit here in roaring rush hour morning traffic and let it cool off.
As a social experiment, I kept an eye in my rear-view mirror, watching cars as they thundered past. Would anyone stop to help a lady and two kids? Not that I needed it, mind you, but...would they? Well, let's just say that if you believe that chivalry is still alive, prepare to be disappointed. The only cars that came up on me were the assholes barreling illegally down the emergency shoulder, turning it into an extra lane, only to find me dead in their path and have to execute Evel Knievel-type maneuvers to avoid having anal sex with my tailpipe.
So I hummed a few dirges to the times when gentlemen stopped to help ladies, and when my radiator no longer resembled a hot spring, I rolled gingerly off in search of some water for it. I stopped at the nearest gas station and put on my "Help Me" face.
A vaguely surly lady manager whose cropped top and low waistband revealed a belly the size of a kettle drum was kind enough to allow me to fill a water bottle at the back of the station. From a urinal. A flooded urinal. In my slippers. In plain view of a man who was peeing...not in the urinal, mind you, but against a wall which must have seemed more inviting.
With more than 30 years' writing experience under my belt, I am still unable to describe the stench of the place, the gray-green moss growing everywhere, the discarded bottles and assorted junk...and the way I felt when I realised that, with my tiny water bottle, it'd take me 4 trips into that grotto to fill up on water.
Honestly, I'd almost rather smell napalm in the morning.
Monday March 10 - Savin' her bacon
I saved a pig the other day. Well, at least I delayed the inevitable, because we all know lil' pigs like her aren't kept for the companionship.
I was driving out of my street, which is a strange schizophrenic combination of mild, boring suburban and well-farmed country, when who should I encounter but a pig.
The wee-wee-wee kind, not the road hog kind. Happily munching grass and assorted garbage at the roadside. I drove past, marveling at the sight, but didn't get very far. A few yards down, watching her little curly tail in my mirror, I got to thinking. I know my countrymen. And I know that, for many of them, the perfectly normal reaction to the sight of a pig in the road is rapid acceleration, a loud thump, and the quick toss of 250lbs of fresh pork into the trunk.
So I turned around and looked for the probable provenance of said pig. I spotted a dirt track that I'd never paid any mind to, and drove down it. An act of courage in Trinidad's current social climate, lemme assure you. Somewhere in the back, not visible from the road, was a huddle of hovels, a few piles of rotting wood and bricks that I'm dying to put in my next novel. I tooted the horn - I wasn't getting out of my car to save my own life - and hoped that nobody in those piles of wood had a shotgun and a bad temper.
Out pops a guy. I describe the predicament, and he immediately sets off to save Miss Piggy's sorry ass. To my relief, she was still on the hoof, rather than on the barbecue, so all ended well. She trotted back with Master like an obedient dog, I gained points in heaven and got the hell out of there with a great setting for a story embedded in my brain.
I like pigs. They're smart, friendly and cute. Don't mean I don't like bacon, though!
Wednesday March 5 -Downtime Day
Dropped off the kids at school. Came home. Decided to have a lie-down and a read before I started writing. Woke up covered in drool thinking, Oh my God, I dozed off. It's gotta be at least 10:00. Checked the clock. 12:07 p.m., baby.
A whole day floated past, and nothing to show for it. Drowning in that nasty, torpid, post-midday nap kind of stupor where I can't do anything other I can't dredge up the energy to do anything other than sit around and let my tongue hang out.
Slick. Real slick. I've decided to write it off as a "downtime day." Justify, justify, justify.
Monday March 3 - Two months down; how we doin'?
Okay, so I've been home on my own for round about 60 days now. Writing most days, flobbing some.
My stellar achievement for January was just getting this site up. Great, but what have I done in February to justify the air I breathe? Let's see:
Books reviewed: 1. (By the way, the URL for Romance in color has changed to www.romanceincolor.org)
Shipments of author copies of Dear Rita received: 1. Boo-yah! I love it! Read an excerpt from it here.
Words of my newest oeuvre drafted: 28,413. (Although technically I only actually wrote 20,000 words in February, since the original proposal was about 8,000 words long. Not bad, but I'm a little miffed at having lost about a week's work for several stupid reasons.)
Money earned for the month: $6 US. (I sold an author copy of Dear Rita to a friend.) I guess it's better'n last month's $0.
This month, my goals are to write at least 25,000 more of the draft, and to start getting those review copies out there where they belong: in the hands of reviewers and booksellers.
On that note, if you're a reviewer and would like a copy, or if you have a book club or anything similar, drop me a line. Thanks!
