Beyond Cats
A friend of mine, (I’ll call her Jane) was a cat breeder not too long ago. She doesn’t do it anymore but still has a bunch of cats from the old days. Strange looking, these cats have either very short hair or they are bald, I can’t remember. One of them was in diapers, a 4 year old who may have been retarded or something because he wouldn’t use his litter box.
He got run over and killed about a month ago and Jane was devastated. She said even though he was a pain with the pee problem, he was the only one who was happy to see her when she got home. Now, she says, she comes home and “nobody cares.” (When she told me that I imagined a bunch of cats swinging from the light fixtures and tearing up the place instead of getting into formation for her entrance.)
One thing that always stood out about Jane is her no nonsense attitude toward everything. She’s an accountant.
So I was pretty surprised that she called a pet psychic. Not one like the lady on Amimal Planet, THE lady on Amimal Planet. She said she thought the woman would rip her wallet to shreds and was prepared to let her do it because she was desperate to hear from her cat. Suprisingly, the psychic only charged 60 bucks and although my friend says she doesn’t know if she believes “all this crap”, she thinks the pet psychic believes it. You never know.
My Own Three Muses
I don’t think they know it.
Pooks, Max, and Toni. They are my three muses. All writing muses.
The first, Pooks, I’ve had the good fortune to live near where she teaches writing classes at a nearby college. She introduced me to the craft and I kept taking her classes over an over, for years, along with a bunch of other return students. She also taught me how to use the internet and Email when that stuff was new. She is the most resourceful person I know. You got a question, she knows the answer, or where to find it.
She knows everybody too. And everybody loves her. She’s a published novelist and an award winning screenwriter. One day you’ll see her western on the big screen and you will ask, “What was that other western? Brokeback, what was that all about?” Check out her Planet Pooks blog. She loves teaching and you’ll see her step by step instructions on how she writes. Amazing. You will learn something for free there. Because she wants you to. To know her is to know cool. She’s the first to do everything. It’s been too long since I’ve seen her.
Max. Via Pooks, in the online world. After many years of reading her website and forum and never participating, I finally got the nerve and posted in the last year or so. She wrote back.
This is The Writing Godess. Writing to me. Me?
She’s got movies in theatres. A book on screenwriting in Barnes and Noble down my street. I think it only happened because my stars were lined up properly. Max thinks about 10 times faster than most. When I read her stuff I wish I’d written it. Also a gifted teacher, she has that “thing”, that magical gadget which mainlines stuff straight into the brain. You don’t forget anything she ever tells you. Check out her website. Brilliant. She gets about 12,000 hits per month. Damnblonde in the blogroll is her too. You will bookmark them. No matter what you write, even if it is just thank you notes, you must own her Screenwriter’s Survival Guide.
Toni, another friend of Pooks. All it took was the first minute of her telling me about this novel she’s having published next year. I was entranced with her storytelling. I could see she so completely loved this world of her imagination and was so comfortable with it.
While listening to her, I heard a crack in that writer’s block of mine and finally, I too can step into my imagination. So with Toni, it was sort of a permission thing. To really dream. Her blog, is always hilarious. Look for her book, BOBBIE FAYE’S VERY (very very very very very) BAD DAY which comes out in 2007.
The funny thing about these three girls is they all know each other and go way back to the days just before we were all getting started on the internet. They were all over it test driving and making it better for writers. Right now I picture the three of them in a circle holding hands. With me in the middle of it.
Wow. I can embed links. A lot of work so, go to their blogs and websites. Now. Bookmark them.
Talk About A Political Party
I got the coolest “let’s go” email today from Working Assets, a progressive organization.
They want me to pack up and head out to New Orleans to help them throw a party with food, drinks, music and dancing because, “parties at the polls help boost voter turn out on Election Day.”
Wow. You catch that? Parties at the polls. Yeah, me too.
See why I miss Louisiana so much?
Total Freakout Hermit Crab Mobile
I have a conversion van type RV, a very tall one. It was made in Germany, so it has this Euro look. Small enough to fit in a regular parking spot, this thing has a kitchen, a full bath, a dining room and an upstairs bed. I call it my hermit crab mobile after, you know, that thing on the beach that carries his house around everywhere. No I am not a hermit.
Today I pulled into a Russian market and this man at the checkout said in his Russian accent, “You arrre a leettle woman for such a big carrrr.”
I told him, “That is not a car. *That* is a house.”
I used to feel uncomfortable when out driving it at first because people stare. I bought roll down baby shades to put on the side windows so they couldn’t see me giggle back.
I’m used to the stares now and just love looking at people’s reactions to it.
Some of them point and look astonished. Some laugh. Some tell me, “Man, that is a cool ride.” That’s the younger crowd.
If they are over 50, they have this dreamy look. They roll their heads back like Pez dispensers and take it all in. If they are walking, they stop, their bodies rotating as I roll by. They get giddy looking. They know what this is.
Independence.
This is the life.
Dogs In Life And Death
When I was little, our dog had ten puppies. One of every color and according to our math, two for each of us. This was Pluto’s first set of pups and she was too young. Two of them died within the first few hours.
I had an idea. Steal some holy water from the church. The stuff works like magic dust I told the others. My brother, the meanest bully in the world even drove me there. On his bicycle. It was sleeting and dark, and on any other occasion, he would have just made me do it. Maybe he wanted to make sure it was the real thing.
It was. We got it. We blessed the dogs. I wish I could tell you that they all lived, or that just one of them did. But as I said, Pluto was pretty much a pup herself. My brother never said I jinxed them because the holy water was, after all, stolen. But I thought it anyway. Don’t even think it had anything to do with us touching them. We didn’t, we sprinkled the magic from afar, just like the priest does it.
Dogs bring out the best in people. In life and in death.
Writing Again
I’m back on the horse, writing again. After going round and round with the question of whether to write this story as a a novel or a screenplay, I just dove right in with a novel. One paragraph into it I realized it is too visual for a novel. So screenplay it is.
And I’ve been writing like a maniac even though I’ve forgotten how to use my Screenwriter 2000 program.
And the damn thing has a history of not saving my work.
But I’m not letting scary things stop me.
Exercise Surprise
I’ve been exercising on my treadmill for about 8 weeks now and am finally seeing some results. I’ve dropped a few pounds, not as much as I’d like, but muscle weighs more than fat I keep telling myself.
The best thing to come out of it is that big door that swung open. Passage to the Place I’ve been trying to get at for 3 years now but kept finding blocked. Shut down.
It looked a bit like my body had before the exercise. A bit run down. It took some sweat and copious amounts of perserverance to get this engine room revved up. Now that it’s going, I know I have to keep adding to it every day, shovelling that coal.
For writers, there are no matches to get it going. We have to rub sticks together.
