Inspiration

Sometimes inspiration strikes at the darndest times. I was in the middle of taking an exam today when ideas came out of nowhere for one of my novel-length wips. Trying to jot down the thoughts was impossible. I had nothing to write on other than my test paper and that was being turned into my professor. Then, of course I had to concentrate on answering the questions on the test, but it was really difficult to focus on the exam when all I wanted to do was write down the character interaction that was dancing in my mind before I lost it.

It's not the first time story ideas have come to me at an inopportune moment. I've taken to always keeping a small notebook in my car in case inspiration hits me as I am barreling down a highway or stuck at a red light. But I can't keep a note book in the shower, or pull one out during lunch with a friend, or in the middle of coaching gymnastics. So what's a writer to do?

I don't generally lose the entire epiphany, but invariably bits and pieces go unrecalled, leaving holes in what had been a complete thought. Just the way it is I guess. That thought doesn't make losing the muse any less frustrating, but it does support my assumption that every writer undoubtedly experiences the same problem at one time or another.

What makes it more frustrating is that there really isn't any way to change it. How do you prepare for an idea that hasn't actually come, but might, and possibly in the shower? I can't think of a way, but I can't spend too much time pondering it either. I guess it is just a matter of timing and hoping that yours is good. With any luck, the perfect idea will hit at the optimal time.

At least it is something to wish for.

Late Night Write

I love to write late at night. I don't know what it is exactly that I find so pleasing about it. Perhaps it is the quiet of the house, my kid is asleep, no neighbors are mowing their lawns next door, no doorbell rings, even my three dogs are settled and don't come up to nudge me for a treat or a pat on the head. Heck, they rarely even bark this late. So, maybe it is the peacefulness that causes late night writing to be so appealing to me. Maybe it's just that I am more creative at night. I always was a bit of a night owl. Even as a young child I could never fall asleep early. Could also have something to do with my current genre. I am working on two fantasy novel-length fiction manuscripts. Might be that I feel night time is more conducive to writing about my created world replete with non-human characters. Possible I suppose.

Honestly, I am not sure why it is that I seem to always do my best writing after midnight. Editing I do better in the daytime, but my creative writing is definitely a late night pursuit. I do notice that I fall asleep quicker after I have written. As if allowing the characters in my stories to spill onto the page somehow quiets them and allows me to sleep rather than lie awake thinking about what they are going to do next or how they are evolving.

Maybe it is just that I have trained myself that if I am gonna be up late - I may as well write. I know other writers train their creative focus to allow them to pursue writing morning pages. I keep telling myself that I am going to mix it up a little and start getting up early to write rather than stay up late, but there is something about getting up at 6am to write fiction that seems insanely barbaric to me.

For now, I will probably stick with the late night write that I have become so accustomed to. You know what they say; if it ain't broke...

I wonder though if fixing it would actually repair a weakness or cause it to break down all together

Crossing the Finish Line

I never thought that this semester would utterly consume my every waking minute. Had I known though, I don't think I would have changed anything. I'm excelling in all of my classes and can finally see the finish line looming ever closer as the end of the semester draws near. After that I will be taking six classes through summer session, as long as my grant holds. Yeah, I did say six. It's going to be mountains of work but I want to get through to my degree and following summer session I will have only two classes that I need to take to graduate in the spring. The prospect of finishing is both exciting and exhausting. I can't wait to complete my degree, though I know that after I do, life will become more exhausting because I plan to plunge right back into the University. My dream is to earn a doctorate in English and an MFA in creative writing.

It has occurred to me that plodding along through school has not been at all unlike plodding my way through writing my two novel-length fiction works-in-progress. They too present their own set of challenges, sometimes on a daily basis. There have been days when I toy with the idea of abandoning the stories and not finishing. If you write at all then you know what I mean. The days when you're all out of fresh ideas, or you've reread over your material and decided it is terrible, and you have no talent and you might as well throw in the towel and go take a job in retail or some other underappreciated service industry.

But then after the whining and feeling a bit sorry for myself I return to my keyboard and pound out some words.

I have a rule that is working quite nicely for moments like that: I force myself to write 50 words in my manuscript - even if they really make no sense whatsoever. This always works for me, because before I know it, the ideas are flowing again and if nothing more is accomplished at least I feel better afterward because I was able to work through the creative crisis. It reminds me of the way I will push on through schoolwork even if it is something difficult, or far out of my comfort zone.

It gives me some peace realizing that I can work through enormous challenges by myself and that understanding of how I work and why the hell I do it in the first place encourages me to push on through school and my creative writing, because I know if I do, I will eventually cross the finish line.

Easy Work

There is something to be said about preparedness. What it is exactly, at this point, I don't know... but I know there must be something. After all, aren't we taught all our lives to follow little golden rules of preparedness? Gosh. One rule that immediately springs to mind is: Do your homework. Why? Why, do people have such a hard time with this one? Literally and figuratively it seems to me that we are swiftly becoming a nation of bumbling, fly by the seat-of-our pants - idiots.



Take for example, a college class that I am currently enrolled in. I am an English major, not to mention a freelance writer. As such take my writing classes extremely seriously. This particular class requires a good deal of research for writing analytical essays on the literary fiction we are studying this term. Of course, research translates to citing various sources. So, anyway, there is this one girl, um, wait... girl is an inappropriate description, as this girl is probably in her mid 30's. Anyway, put delicately, this young woman is driving me nuts!



First, she is often late for this class. She blusters in, loudly, I might add. Hey, I could live with that - but for the fact that no matter where I sit in the room - she weasels her way either right next to me, or across from me, or worse - behind me. It's moderately bothersome, but I could still tolerate that, were it not for the fact that she then proceeds to address me with whispered questions. She'll ask what she missed, or if I did the reading assignment - I mean - DUH!!! I didn't become an "A" student by blowing off my reading assignments.



Regardless, it gets worse. She is forever fielding me questions about her written assignments. I feel for her in a way. She is, after all, to be counted among the walking clueless of the world. Blissfully unaware of how ignorant and tactless she appears to others.



So, good person that I am, I try to help her here and there. I offer advice. I have even gone so far as to edit a draft of one of her essays at her request. Mercifully, I have taken courses taught by my current professor previously. She had definitely noticed my unease at being targeted by this classmate as her personal tutor. She has tolerated the disruption up to this point, but I know the unprepared student is in for a rude awakening if it continues.



I have tried to distance myself. This week, after class my classmate approached and asked if we could exchange telephone numbers, you know - in case she had questions about the upcoming research paper. I was aghast. No. Not going to happen. I explained that I am an extremely busy writer, student and single parent. That while I do not mind helping her from time to time, I cannot spare a moment on work that is not my own. I told her, and honestly so, that I am lucky that I manage to get my own work done.



Well, she became frustrated and pushed the issue. After all, she only has a few questions and surely I can take a few minutes to help her out. Then she blurted that I should help her because writing is easy for me. EASY! Pardon? What say?



She said it in the same accusatory way that former coworkers have in the past. The ones who assumed that I would pen their reports for them because writing came easy for me. Friends who have needed help sprucing up a resume, would offer a similar tone, when they would promise me that it would only take a few minutes. After all, writing was hard for them. But not me. It's easy for me.



My professor glanced up from stacking papers on her desk. She had taken notice of the exchange between myself and my unprepared classmate. Part of me wanted to humiliate this girl, by informing her just how much work goes into writing well, and do so in front of our professor who undoubtedly understands the complexities to which I refer . But I thought better of it.



What I did instead was suggest that she seek out the free services of the tutoring lab. I assured her that writing comes easy for them too, and that they would be pleased to spend as much time helping her as she might need, so that next time she might come to class prepared. She left in a bit of a huff.



My professor didn't say a word about it, but the approving look she gave me was enough.



Tomorrow we have a quiz on two short stories that were assigned a week ago. Afterward, we will have open discussion, analyzing the works. Then we will shift gears and review twenty research questions that we should have completed with sources cited on a separate page. Invariably, there will be a few students who "forgot" to do the reading assignment, or perhaps one or two scrambling to complete the research questions.



All I know is that I have done my homework. Then again, writing comes easy for me.

Lesson in Courage

Iraqis turned out to cast their ballots in their first free election in over fifty years. It is remarkable that the elections proceeded as scheduled. More astonishing is the sheer number of Iraqi people who rose up and exercised their new found right to vote under the threats of death by radical insurgents.



The numbers are staggering considering the circumstances. It is estimated that between 60 to 72 percent of all eligible Iraqi voters actually voted. Weigh those numbers against the estimated 50 percent of all eligible American voters who participate in our democracy by voting, and it is clear that the Iraqi people have sent a message to the world: they are willing to risk everything to embrace democracy.



Americans would do well to take note and reflect upon the dear price that has been paid by those who came before us to ensure our right to vote. We have taken our open elections process for granted for too long. How shameful it is that in our free nation so many fail to take part in the democractic process that is the model for the world.



The Iraqi people have reaffirmed that which our forebearers knew so well; that freedom is worth sacrificing for. The newsfootage of Iraqi women, most of whom have suffered unimaginable oppression their entire lives, casting their ballots should serve as a stark reminder that women in our own country were at one time ineligable to vote. Were it not for the committment, courage and sacrifices of women during the Sufferage movement, perhaps American women would still be refused the vote.



It has been reported that an alert guard at a polling location in Iraq noticed as a man came charging toward the enterance to the polls. When the man refused to halt the guard opened fire, and the man, an apparent suicide bomber, blew up. The Iraqis who turned up to vote at that location were not disuaded by the attempt on their lives, rather they became inscensed and refused to leave the polling place without casting their ballots. What a lesson in courage.

Back with a vengeance!

There is something to be said about being too busy: it sucks. There. I said it. Now I can move forward. I think I need my head examined - as I create my own too busy state. It's not enough that I am a working freelance writer, a coach, a college student, a single parent. No. My life wouldn't be complete if I were not working, albeit feverishly, on two book-length fiction works-in-progress. It's kind of like I can't allow myself to slow down for fear of losing momentum.



Unfortunately, my blog suffered for my tight schedule and the inevitable exhaustion that has plagued my evening hours - the time when I usually would have the time to update my blog. No doubt the stress of suffering a direct hit from two hurricanes within a three-week period between August and September have added to my weariness. I don't know what the main cause for my overall tiredness was; but, I suspect it was simply my pre-holiday, pre-finals workload.



Now that all of my work, holiday and education related goals have been successfully achieved, I've finally had a little time to relax before diving headlong into spring semester and new writing projects. And I mean a little time. It seems as though there is just never any real time off. I swore myself to relaxation and enjoying the two weeks of winter break. No school. No coaching. No work. Just hanging out with my kid, having fun and writing for the love of it whenever I felt like it.



But life isn't like that. No matter how I plan, there is still laundry to do, a house to clean, dogs to care for, meals to cook, the undecorating to do, and bills to pay. I've been off for a week and still haven't caught a break! In light of that fact, I had an epiphany. It went kind of like this: Update the blog dummy!



So, I have - and recognizing that I am never going to have sufficient time to do anything, not blogging, really makes no sense whatsoever. So expect to hear more from me.



I'm back.

With a vengeance.

Does Your Vote Count?

The Democratic process is in full swing across the nation, or at least, we hope so. Getting out the vote is the hot topic in the news today, as well it should be. However, some of the reports coming in are a more than just a bit disturbing. Some major issues have been brought to light, such as pencils sitting on the desks of the absentee ballot processors in Iowa. When it was discovered that a writing device made available to the processors could actually interfere with fair processing, the pencils were swiftly removed. The worry there was that an unscrupulous processor could potentially use the pencil to alter ballots. Then the legal battle waging in Ohio, with GOP watchdogs vowing to prevent voters who were registered, as they claim incorrectly, by Democrats, from being permitted to vote.



Quite frankly, whatever party affiliation a citizen subscribes to - that type of 11th hour partisan wrangling and intimidation should outrage all Americans. In Florida, Theresa LaPore, the notorious Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, has come under fire for altering the laws governing the allowable distance from polling places where reporters, campaigners, and non-partisan voter-assistance groups can gather. Should anyone have such power to change laws without any process whatsoever, to serve their own purpose?



In Philadelphia the latest reports tell of a GOP legal action, claiming that four electronic voting machines are suspect, and the 13,000 votes cast in those machines should be thrown out. Huh? Toss out votes? Is that the American way?



Perhaps the most worrisome of all the Election Day revelations is the fact that in most of the states where electronic voting is in widespread use, there is NO PAPER TRAIL.



In the wake of the 2000 election debacle is anyone really comfortable with that? How could there possibly be an accurate recount, should the need arise, without a paper trail? How could there be any argument against it? And doesn't the suggestion that 13,000 votes be nullified in Philadelphia punctuate the need for a paper trail?



Computers have been known to eat information before, and let's face it - they are susceptible to a certain degree of tampering, either via hacking or virus.



At best these partisan tactics are an annoyance; at worst, and it could easily escalate to worst, it disrupts the process utterly. How sad that in this great nation it has come to the point where partisan interference does so much to dishonor our history of democratic elections. It poses the question: Does every vote really count?



The campaign trail absolutely must be followed by an Election Day paper trail, or literally all could be lost.