Reinstilling Myself with the Desire to Write...

...again.

Depression comes in many shapes and sizes and can be triggered by many things. This time the trigger was no job and no money. Each time I have had a crisis of faith in myself it has taken a few months to pull myself up by the bootstraps, but I have always rebounded. This time it is taking me way too long to even reach for the bootstraps let alone pull on them. My life has changed, I no longer read nor write. This is the first time I have put fingers to keyboard and I wasn't playing a stupid game on facebook. My subscription to Panhistoria lapsed and I was too broke to renew it so that fact sent me into another death spiral. But now my job situation had changed for the better so maybe those bootstraps are nearer my fingertips than they have been in a very long time.

So enough with the 'oh, woe is me' brewhaha and on with the good news. I have found a wonderful Thoroughbred mare that moves like a dream come true and whose owner is financially strapped and can't keep her. And she is right in the same barn as my gelding! Lucky me! Now all I have to do is convince the owner to give her to me. If it is meant to be, it will be.

As to my writing? How is that going, you ask? Well I have picked up some of my research material off of the nightstand and dusted it off and even cracked the spine, flipped through some pages and read a paragraph or two. The desire to write is still there just a little bit dormant. But the desire for finishing at least one of my novels is as strong as ever. Look out world I'm baaaack!

Paying the Piper

...by robbing Paul, or is that paying Paul by robbing Peter. I always get that metaphor confused. Be that as it may I am broke and I just got paid. So I have been spending the last few minutes using the calculator and crunching numbers. I still can't make my salary pay all my bills. I am just talking about the barest of necessities! I am not even including food for the dog, cat or Guy. Me, I can eat at the restaurant, but I have to buy food for everyone else.

This does not make for a very good writing atmosphere. In fact I feel sick and nothing but the thought of empty bank accounts and the impending need to purchase a tent fills my mind. It's too cold to live in a tent. I refuse to live in a tent in Las Vegas. Lake Tahoe on the other hand wasn't too bad, except when it was 12 degrees. Then it wasn't too pleasant.

So what to do, what to do. Oh yeah, I could make the lump on my couch get a job, but no, he's collecting unemployment and he says no one is hiring. How does he know? He has tried. Tried and tried he says but no one is hiring. Argh!

We live in the state with the highest unemployment rate. We live in the city within the state with the highest unemployment rate. So I guess I will have to get a part time job to take up the slack caused by my lack of full time hours. Oh, I forgot to tell you, my boss has cut my hours and that is why I am having a terrible time paying the piper. Heck, I hate that song anyway.

Return From The Dead

OK, I really wasn't dead, but for all intents and purposes I felt dead. I pinched a nerve (or something like that, I'm poor, have no insurance and didn't see a doctor; just Googled my symptoms) and lost a lot (OK all!) movement in my arms! It was awful! At the same time I tore cartilage and my menecus in my right knee. It seemed to me that my body decided that just cause the knee was bum that the rest should join in so it wouldn't feel lonely! Geesh, I was a mess!

The worst thing of all this was I couldn't sit in a regular chair without someone near by to help me out of it, nor could I use a keyboard as my fingers didn't want to obey my brain. Thus I was limited to my communication online. Limited to zero. I became a TV junkie because all I could do was lay around and stare at the tube. I felt a million years old.

But now I am back and my fingers once again are tripping all over themselves on the keyboard. My pain is very minimal and I owe it all to my physical therapists! They were great. They even gave me exercises for my arms and shoulders though those parts of my body weren't covered by the Workman's Comp claim that my knee was. Marvelous people.

So I am back from the dead, just in time for Halloween!

He Loves Me He Loves Me Not

He loves me he loves me not. Since we were little girls we all have pulled petals from flowers and asked the universe the question that is closest to our hearts. He loves me he loves me not, funny but we never truly know the answer to that question. Why is this, why does the eternal question remain unanswered? Doubt. He loves me. Today you are in his arms and everything is roses, the next day you don’t hear from him and you feel that doubt creeping in and the next petal falls. He loves me not.

I believe that there should be a mandatory class for all boys and girls. This class would teach our children the art of romance. Today we see an increase in writing and reading that is unprecedented. Text messages, instant messages, emails, everybody is writing again. But they are writing quickly, without thought and they are writing poorly, LOL, ROFLMAO, BFF, and all the new abbreviations that take the place of common phrases. But where is the romance? In the last century a man would take days to pick the right stationary, the right ink and the right words to woo his lady love. Remember the flower petals? There was also a way to woo your love with flowers. Each flower meant something to the recipient. The nuances of the language are now mostly forgotten, but red roses still imply passionate, romantic love and pink roses a lesser affection; white roses suggest virtue and chastity and yellow roses still stand for friendship or devotion. Also commonly known meanings are sunflowers, which can indicate either haughtiness or respect. Gerbera (daisy) means innocence or purity. The iris, being named for the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology, still represents the sending of a message. A pansy signifies thought, a daffodil regard, and a strand of ivy; fidelity. What girl or lady would not want a bouquet of red roses sent to her on Valentines Day?

On my 24th birthday I received 25 beautiful red roses from a man I truly loved. He was not free to give me his love but he gave me the flowers all the same. He loves me he loves me not. I have been pulling petals ever since.

Angst You Say?

The emotional angst of relationships, the real thing not the cardboard cutout version, that is what I want to put into my writing, the real feel of longing for your beloved, the real pain of uncertainty. But is romantic angst just a female emotion or do men also experience the pang of separation? I believe a well rounded story is told with several voices and the hero's voice, of course, is part of the story. Is it the same as the heroines or is it colder, more removed? So I guess I have to figure out how male angst feels in his heart, how it sounds in his head and how it shows on his face.

In my search I watched a PBS special which aired during a pledge drive. It was hosted by this man, whose name escapes me at the moment, who tried to show his audience the differences between the male and female brain. I say show because he used those silly Styrofoam wig stands, you know the ones, they're shaped like human heads and are totally featureless and stark white. Well, his description of the female brain was that of a monster super highway interchange, where everything interconnects with everything else. But the male brain on the other hand was composed of neat boxes that did not touch nor connect in anyway. He said that each box has it own unique function; there is the car box, the sports box, the work box and the mans most favorite box of all... the nothing box. Oh and did I tell you that a man's thoughts are in only one box at a time? Yeah... OK, I hear you, let's back up. The nothing box; that's right, there is nothing in it. Which explains the answer to the age old question: "Honey, what are you thinking about?" and his age old answer: "Nothing!"

So now I get back to my original question about male angst and is it the same as a woman's. How the heck do I know? Every time I ask my current he just looks at me with a blank expression on his face. Yeah, he's in his nothing box again.

No More Boring Inner Voices

We are surrounded by sound--traffic, music, TV, computer websites, and electronic hums be they refrigerator motors or light bulbs. And that causes me to wonder does it block out our inner voice? Do some of us use these noises so we don't have to listen to the everyday hum drum of our minds?

I for one can not stand extra noise. When I am alone the only noises that invade my brain are the electronic hums and the sounds of my animals breathing, or in the case of the collie, her snoring. So that means I hear ever single word that my mind makes and that means I listen to a lot of boring stuff about housework and bills and dust and the list goes on. But when I write I have to remember that my characters don't have to have boring inner voices. They can muse about interesting things like war and the state of the union and helping the homeless and any manner of earth shattering things. Why? Because I can control their minds. Inner musings is what gives our written characters their dimension, their depth, their soul. That is also why I write in first person. I want to hear the inner voice, I want to hear the gut wrenching arguments that they have with themselves. Or I should say I want you to read the gut wrenching arguments. OK, I have to hear them first before you can read them.

Reading the newest installment in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series has given me the push to really mold my characters, to give them a soul. Diana writes in the first person just like I do. She let's us see into the heart of her characters and that is exactly what I want to emulate. In fact I also believe Mary Renault wrote in the first person too. (Don't quote me yet, I am going to have to go check this out but it feels right.) Mary Renault is my hero when it comes to ancient historical fiction. She wrote about Alexander and she nailed it. She is truly one of the greats.

So I have decided to give my characters their own individual inner voice which will give them their own individual soul. Besides it just might help me learn to edit my inner voice, I'm tired of listening to myself think about laundry and vacuuming, I want to ponder world peace and grapple with the angst of love and life and death. Which brings me to my question today, do you have an interesting inner voice or do hide yours because it's dull and boring and if so how?

Sappy Movies That I Love

I just finished watching Sabrina, the new version with Harrison Ford not the original with Humphrey Bogart. Both versions are wonderful but the one with Harrison Fords hits closer to home (because I have the hots for him!). Older man falls for younger woman is an age old love story. There are other equally popular old love stories but this one is my favorite.

I don't watch many romance based movies, maybe because my romantic life has been less than perfect so watching someone else (albeit fantasy) find true love and eternal happiness is difficult to take. But, every once in a while I just have to have a good cry so I rent a DVD or find it on the TV and sit down with a box of Kleenex and sob my heart out over lost love and love never realized.

So, are you curious about the other movies I love? OK, they are Casablanca (Bogart & Bergman at her teary best!), Dirty Dancing (I like this one better than Ghost!), The Philadelphia Story (Love Hepburn and Grant!), Moonstruck (Cher and Cage!), Working Girl, Somewhere In Time (Christopher Reeve tear jerker!), Bull Durham (oh boy Costner is just dreamy in this one! Slow wet kisses that last all day, yum.), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (the ending is a real tear jerker, she dies and is united with her love! Ah.). That's the list. Of course there are a few marginal ones I like but these are the ones I would fight for the remote to watch.

That brings me to written romances, especially since I'm writing one of my own. I think just about every one will put Gone With the Wind on top of their list, not me. I am more apt to read romances like Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series or maybe something from Barbara Erskine who wrote The Lady of Hay and Joyce Verrette's Egyptian romances.

So it comes back to my writing, always does you know, will my book live up to what has come before it? I hope so, I intend for it to, OK, I know it will. Wish me luck!