Something to Share!

I just saw this in the library gift store (yes, our library has a gift store...), and thought it would be perfect to send out to family and friends if I ever get my book published!!

Don't you guys all want one? :)

Crack in the coffee

LOOK!

It's another blog entry less than 24 hours later!  This surely makes up for my month...err 2 month...hiatus, right?  RIGHT?

Anyway, I'm going to take this blog entry to talk about how amazingly stupendously awesome I am!!!

And you.  You can be too.  Sure, why not?

Why the amazing stupendous awesomeness, you ask?  Come on.  Do I really need a reason!?  Okay, fine.  Maybe the crack that they obviously add to their coffee at The Continental Coffeehouse is finally making me delusional, or it's really true: writing a book is an AMAZING thing!  And I'm almost done with mine!  And I know most of you, dear readers, are in the same position, so, KUDOS!

Writing a book is hard, and sometimes you probably ask yourself "Why am I doing this again?" and "Is this really worth it?"  Those are some dark and terrible days, and I've been there for the past couple of weeks.

But today, after my cup of crack coffee, I realized Hey!  I wrote a BOOK! And, do you know what?

That is amazingly stupendously awesome!!! 

So, take a minute to pat yourselves on the back, make some tea, put on your carpel tunnel braces, cover the blisters on your typing fingers, and get back to it!

Absolute Worst of the Worst

Fail!  I fail at blogging!

But, I keep telling myself that's okay.  It's not like I want to be a professional blogger when I grow up (haha) so it's alright to fail at it.  I think.

And I don't really have much to write, because I have post-editing mush-brain right now.  So, in the spirit of talking about what I do want to do when I grow up, I'll give you a list of all the things I've ever wanted to be in my life, in as much chronological order as i can muster.

Ages 4-10

• ballerina
• professional singer (never mind that I sound like a dying cow when I sing...)
• aerobics instructor
• chef
• movie star
• bus driver

Ages 11-15

• writer (still holds!)
• fashion designer
• fighter pilot
• paleontologist 
• doctor
• journalist
• peace corps volunteer (for the rest of my LIFE, man.  I'm savin' the world!)
• teacher - mostly just because I thought I could do it better than all the ones I had at the time.

Ages 16-20

• psychiatrist
• early childhood educator (a nice way to say preschool teacher)
• stage actress
• playwrite
• international relations policy maker (yeah, I didn't get that one either)

I didn't decide I wanted to be a speech pathologist (or even know what that meant!) until I was 21.  Went into the program at 22!

In the earlier ages, i really thought I could be all these things.  I guess I'm still trying, too.  I can't just stick to one career!

Anyway, sorry guys for the off the top of my head, unedited post.  I'm over promising good new posts in the near future!  But, I'll touch back in when I can!

In the meantime, you guys can tell me what you want to be when you grow up! :)

change is good!!!

New haircut!

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Santa's a big fat nothin' without his elves...

Okay, peeps, before I get down and into it, I think you all are in need of an apology.  Sorry for the absence!  There's a lot of plates spinning over my head, and the Blog one nearly stopped and came crashing down.  And that's not fair!  So, we're up and running again.  I'm not going to promise a schedule of regular entries for the holiday season - I mean, let's be serious - but I'm going to try to get back on the horse for weekly entries.

Whew!  Okay, all that grovelling out of the way, now on to the FUN!

Let's talk about elves and how much more important they are than big ol' Santy.  There's a lot of metaphors I could use, but it IS officially december now, so none are quite as fitting.  There are very few things one can do in this world without help.  I'm thinking going to the bathroom and cleaning lint from your toes are some of the only examples.  Being a speech pathologist or an author (or Santa!) do not make that list.

I heard an inspiring interview with one of my fav singer songwriters, Feist, today.  In it, she was discussing her new film Look at What the Light Did Now about the making of her latest album Reminder.  I haven't seen the film, but from the interview I gathered it won't be your typical rockumentary.  The main focus of the film is showing that Feist is only one piece of a much larger endeavor.  She, amazingly humble as always, discusses how most of her ideas came from creative "conversations" with friends and peers, and she highlights all of the other amazing artists (like photographers, shadow puppeteers, other musicians, visual artists, and film artists) without whom her whole career would not be possible.  At one point, the interviewer asked her if she ever feels guilty that she is in the limelight, while many of the people who've been instrumental in helping her still go largely unrecognized.

I loved her response.  She laughed and said, "Why do you think I'm making this movie!?"  Then, went on to say how she wants to movie to be more about the people around her and the whole creative cooperative process rather than about her.

It made me think a lot about my own creative process with writing.  I mean, we know the obvious helpers like agents, marketers, publishers, editors, etc, but what about the people nearer and dearer to the process?  I mean all of those (incredibly important!) people I just mention usually come into play AFTER the process is almost done.  I don't know about you guys, but I can't write in a vacuum, and when I do, the ideas are much less articulated.  I have a crit partner (Shout out!) who I bounce ideas off of constantly.  Even before writing a section, I might fire off an email saying "does this make sense?" or "what would you say to this?"

And what about people who aren't even in the field?  My boyfriend and I now have two detailed outlines of novels I'll get on after I finish Drowning.  Both came about as a result of long road trips where we got into in depth conversations about outlandish topics.  (The latest formulated itself after a 3 hour conversation on the Theory of Relativity we had while driving across the Mojave Desert)  These ideas never would have been discovered if I didn't share my creativity and my writing process with others.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is not to forget the elves.  Don't shut out others' creativity at the expense of your own, because look at the beauty that can be created by a collaboration!

Who do you guys let in your creative process?  Who are your elves?