It’s Erotica Week over at the Community Storyboard! The “Submission” post can be found here http://neverendingstorydepository.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/erotica-week-submit-to-us-he-he/
I’m finding myself rather distracted by all this. I know what I want to write, so I should probably just go ahead and do it. I’ll probably submit more than once before the week is finished anyway.
So check it out! A few things have gone up already, so to speak. Come and join us, won’t you?
I have to say, I’m probably enjoying my online courses more than I have a right to. When I was a teenager I hated school. I took off every chance I got – would drive to Niagara Falls for a day instead of going to classes. But now that I’m an adult I don’t understand my mindset back then. Okay, sure, to me high school seemed pretty useless. After all, what better way to learn about life than live it? The walls of an institution didn’t seem the most conducive setting for LIFE with capital letters. I suppose, now that I’m writing about the life of a teenager in my novel, it’s good to look back and remember as much of that time as I can.
But I digress.
This post is supposed to be about my current schooling. I passed my grammar course with a fairly decent 83% and now I’m on the last phase to getting my certificate – Writing Short Stories.
Before the course started I thought I was just going to sail through it, much as I thought I would with the grammar course. Why wouldn’t I? After all, I can bang out a respectable short story in an afternoon. When I received the lesson plan however, I was stopped in my tracks. You see, the course will take me almost up to Christmas and I will have one short story to write. First I must submit an idea. A few weeks later, my task is to hand in a first draft, and at the beginning of December I must write the final draft.
So I’ve got all this time to write a short story. No problem, you would think. But I’ve got all this time to write a short story, and that’s the problem! To come up with ONE idea and ruminate over it over the course of two months is torture to me. You see, I’m what is commonly referred to these days as a ‘pantser.’ I get an idea, but I not only have to write it down right away, if I don’t actually write the story right away, I’ll lose it.
You might say, so just write the story and have done with it. Hand it in when it’s time. That would be fine, except my OCD won’t allow it. If I know myself well, I will write it, review it, edit it, edit it some more, and given that much time and that much editing, it’s going to look like a pile of steaming crap by the time I go to submit it, because I’ll have overthunk it to death.
I have decided, then, to try for once to actually take my time. Do the whole outline thing, maybe even draw myself a storyboard; create characters before I write the thing… I’ll treat it like an experiment. Do it the way the other half – the non-panster – does it. It’s going to be a challenge.
This is the next installment from the epic Community Storyboard’s Chain Story Event.
Continued from Part 12 by the lovely and talented Belle, found here: Squirrels: This Time It’s Personal (part 12)
“Put us on speaker-phone!” The whiny chittering voice grated in Gandalf’s ear.
“What for, you mealy-mouthed-flea-infested-nut-breath’d…”
“Not so fast!” came a shout from the door. “Treebeard! There’s something in your hair!”
Gandalf turned to see the luscious-locked Aragorn, standing in the doorway pointing at Treebeard’s upper branches. Gandalf’s gaze followed the finger. “A spy!” he exclaimed.
The twittering giggles emitting from the speaker of the phone were making his head ache anew. He slammed down the telephone but then remembered it was a cell phone, so he picked it up again, turned it off and threw it over his shoulder. Meanwhile, the emerald clad Ent was flailing around his living room, simultaneously bashing at his own head to squash the intruder, and fighting off Aragorn, who was attempting to climb the less-than-limber fellow.
Just as Gandalf decided it might be a good idea to join in the fray (because Aragorn was making it look like so much fun) the sneaky squirrel reached Treebeard’s topmost limb and squeaked in triumph.
“Ah ha!” he taunted, one stubby finger in the air. “We have Darlene and now we know to get her out of Fangorn Forest!” The unscrupulous creature slapped his hand over his mouth with a muffled, “Oops!” Quickly forgetting his faux pas, (for squirrels have the attention span of, well, a squirrel) he held his scrawny finger up again and exclaimed, “You’ll never catch me now!” and with that he scampered out the door.
Aragorn perched his fists jauntily upon both hips and turned to Treebeard. “Don’t you ever comb your hair, Entwhistle? It’s a man’s glory, after all, to be well-groomed!”
“Don’t you think we have something more important at hand, ranger?”
The future king looked stunned. “Like what?”
“Like catching yon rodent,” Treebeard explained slowly, as though talking to a toddler. “Freakin’ showoff,” he mumbled as he ambled out the Ent-sized hole in Gandalf’s front entrance. “I’ll go find the critter!” He didn’t look back.
“I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, trying to get him to take care of his looks,” Gandalf said. “Did you see that suit?”
They had a chuckle and sat at Gandalf’s kitchen table.
“Coffee?” the wizard offered. “It doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any sleep tonight anyway,” he murmured more to himself.
“Sure, but no sugar. I’m sweet enough.”
Gandalf looked up and winced when he saw a glint shine off Aragorn’s tooth. Damn, but he was handsome.
“It seems we have a problem,” the charming ranger said, flipping his shimmering tresses over his shoulder. “Did you know Gosling and Mc Adams were murdered in cold blood?”
“I heard.”
“Ah, but there’s more of a problem than meets the eye. You see, I anointed Gosling with a mission…”
“What do you mean, ‘anointed’? Did you drop it on his head?” The wizard sat and rested his elbows on the table, across from the man.
“As a matter of fact I did. Don’t interrupt. As I was saying, Gosling was on a mission of my anointment,” he challenged Gandalf with his menacing but well-plucked eyebrows, but Gandalf refused to take up the gauntlet. Aragorn went on. “But now it seems I have forgotten what the mission was. I know it was important.”
“Oh, for the love of…” Gandalf facepalmed.
“But all is not lost!”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, you see, I’m working on resurrecting Gosling. I found his missing kidney and between myself and Legolas I think we can have him up and working on the case within the next few hours.”
“And Mc Adams?”
Aragorn looked sincerely forlorn. “I’m afraid our only hope is to find her missing heels. Those gams…” He stared off into space.
“Ranger!”
“Oh, yes. Sorry. I had Smeagol sift through the rubble at the Burgundy Herring Seafood Shack and Pool Hall. That’s where he found the evidence that they’d taken Darlene. But devastatingly, the second heel was nowhere to be found.”
The old man shook his wizened gray head. “What a shame. I suppose we should get out there and search for the waitress. She might have gathered some information on the ‘Goddess’ since she’s been in the slimy paws of those…” He shuddered.
“After coffee.” Aragorn lifted his cup to his full lower lip and Gandalf couldn’t help notice the rippling of well-toned muscles under the man’s tunic.
Get ahold of yourself man! Gandalf thought. Too much time hanging around with Dumbledore.
“…a shower.” Aragorn had been speaking while he was off on his own little fantasy-tangent.
“What?” he asked the glimmering king-to-be.
“I’d like to have a shower before we go, too. Do you have any Pantene?”
This is going to be a long night, Gandalf grumbled to himself.
And that’s my bit. I’m passing the gauntlet to Briana Vedsted. Take it away, Briana!
Last week I found this:
Empty shell
It is the empty shell of what I believe is a June Bug. I didn’t even realize they shed their skins, but there you go. [Edit: It’s a cicada.] The thing is, I’ve been contemplating these remains for the past week, and how they relate to my life.
The fact is, I am full. It would be easy for me to say I need to shed my skin and let out the real me, but that isn’t quite the case. For many months I have felt oppressed by a relationship in which I felt unable to speak my mind. In those months, feelings, thoughts, visions, and opinions have built up which I have repressed, for fear of pissing someone else off. It’s no way to live, especially for a writer who lives to put to paper her every inspiration. It’s difficult to function in every facet of life, for me, when I am unable to express myself.
There’s a teaching in Taoism, in which the example of a full cup of water is used. At first glance, a cup filled to the brim with water may be considered a positive thing. And yet, a full cup holds no potential. The usefulness of a cup is its empty space… When I’m full of thoughts and ideas, I’m also of no use to anyone.
My problem now is twofold. Although I’m out of the relationship that caused me to keep quiet, I am so full of the things I want to say, I don’t know where to start. The other part of it is that I know the person involved may be reading my blog. So, do I say to hell with it and speak my mind, the other person’s feelings be damned? Or do I continue to tread cautiously?
I found, in examining the second of two pictures I took of this bug, there is something that looks like a face inside it. This picture is not doctored. But the face inside the empty bug shell, I think, may be me, still afraid to come out.
Look closely to see the face
The dynamic that makes up my family is so unique that I don’t imagine there is even a statistic out there which would cover it. Since this is the case, I will describe it so that you can imagine.
Having grown up an only child, I always said that I would have more than one, so that my children would have a sibling to play with. So I gave birth to one beautiful little boy and then another, 14 short months later. When my second turned four years old, things became complicated. He was diagnosed with autism. After months of therapy and learning to read, he finally began speaking. Yes, reading taught him to speak. But being autistic meant lining up toy cars all the way around the dining room table, not playing with his older brother. To this day, he prefers to be alone all the time, and rarely interacts with us.
Then came the decision to have another child. Although there was going to be five or six years difference, at least when they were older my first child and my third would be able to get along perhaps. My third son was born Deaf, however. Imagine it. Having someone in your family, who you gave birth to, who speaks a different language.
Yes, we have all learned to sign. But there is no doubt that my youngest son is most at home with people who can not only speak his language fluently, but who can teach him what it truly means to be a Deaf person in a hearing world.
So there you have it. My family consists of three children who essentially have lives which are fundamentally different from each other’s.
Nothing in life is guaranteed, and anything is possible.
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