Saturdays

Quiet Saturday morning? Check. Good indie music on the stereo? Check. List of things to accomplish today? Check. However . . .
Unfortunately, my laptop has acquired some sort of virus/worm thing. I'm running a scan right now to find the infected files and remove them, but I've done it twice already and it doesn't seem to be working. I may have to suck it up and go BUY some protection for my computer. Sigh. That's some busyness I didn't need. There's plenty on my list for today and tomorrow already! Writing, cleaning, making music, reading, a birthday party at the beer garden, a letter to write to my friend Sarah, a book club meeting, AND 100 pages of freelance. I couldn't say no, I'm getting paid a really nice rush rate . . .
So what am I doing poking around on my blog when I should be doing something? I'm not sure. I guess I just felt like talking to somebody without really talking to somebody.
I'm reading Madame Bovary for my book club. (The book club is all about reading classic literature that we somehow missed in college). I'm enjoying it some, although it'll never be in my top five. But Flaubert's emotional descriptiveness is impressive. It's very easy to get inside the words and really understand how the characters feel, I think. I can really empathize with Emma Bovary. Haven't we all, at some point or another, looked around and thought, "Is this really my life? How did I end up here? This isn't what I wanted, what I thought I would be, at all!" How many of us have felt trapped by the circumstances of our lives? I'm only 120 pages or so in, so I can't say what I think of the book as a whole, but so far it's definitely worth a read. I'll let you know what I think after I do finish it.
There's this blog that I love. Okay, there are several blogs that I love, but today I mean Inside a Black Apple. It's at www.theblackapple.typepad.com. (Forgive me, I don't know how to make it link yet.) Go look. Her artwork is quirky and lovely and a little surreal all at once. On Tuesday, she'll be updating her Etsy shop, and I so want to buy an original! Wish me luck on that. Her pieces sell like hotcakes!
And now, I will quit procrastinating and go accomplish things . . .

Hmm

Titling a blog entry is not as easy as it seems. Especially when you're not sure what you want to talk about. I had a couple of things I wanted to discuss, but now that I'm here I'm just . . . distracted. Listening to Fiona Apple and musing over how good her first album still is. Wondering when my partner-in-crime will get home and how grumpy he will be due to losing his subway pass at some point today (that he just bought three days ago!). Thinking about all the things I'm trying to get done before my vacation, which starts in less than two weeks.
Today passed in an uncomfortable haze. I have a huge amount of work I'd like to accomplish before my vacation, so the people left behind aren't slammed while I'm away. And this work just doesn't seem to be happening quite fast enough. I'm sure it'll happen, but still . . . My work crush was grumpy today. He's trying unsuccessfully to quit smoking. Granted, he's cute when he's cranky, but he also tends to be less social. Lately my apartment has seemed cramped and, well, not how I want it. But I'm severely limited in what I can do with my space because it's not only my space, although I have many ideas on what I'd like to do . . . I want to get my novel submitted to at least one publishing house before I go on vacation, as well. This means some work in the evenings. It also means that I wish the TWENTY-EIGHT people or so who have looked at my myspace blog containing my synopsis would actually comment on the thing!
But the crux of my haziness today, I think, is the dream I had last night. It was about a boy. My what-if boy. In my dream, we were at some sort of vacation house on a river. It was nighttime, and we were sitting in the boat docked by the house. A little boat, some sort of speedy open-topped thing. And we were talking, and every so often he would move to hold me or kiss my neck, and then he would stop. "I can't, I just can't." The air was imbued with his tension, his distress. It happened several times and then he left. He ran. Because he couldn't deal with the emotions that being near me brought up. Because he was with someone else. Then there's a fuzzy dream section, something about the house being full of water and other people being there and I was hurt because he was gone. So I went looking for him. Took my boat up the river, which quickly turned into this marsh area, huge trees growing out of the water, other boats tied up to the trees and to long docks. I went to this huge building where there was some sort of interactive art display and I knew, I just knew that if I could get through it fast enough and well enough that I would find my what-if boy and things would be right. So I tried, but these two hippies (for lack of a better term) stopped me and said, "He's with her. You have to let him be right now." They took me back to their camp where there was a fire, or maybe just a multitude of candles, as their camp was a sort of shack built of wood scraps and tent material, and consoled me, kept me company for a while.
I know it's just a dream, but I woke up distraught. And his distress, his frustration in the boat has stayed with me all day. Hence the haze, hence the distractedness. It's amazing how hard it is to let go of people sometimes, isn't it? I don't really know what else to say. I wonder, and wonder, and he haunts my dreams.

Sneaking Time

That's right. I'm sneaking time. I should be writing right now, or typing the already-written pages of my spiral notebook, or something. But I'm worried. I don't know where my story is going.
I've always been a bit haphazard of a writer. I'm very motivated and driven about writing every day (well, nearly every day). But. I don't really plan out my stories. I don't outline, don't brainstorm possible plot variations, nothing like that. Usually I have a character or a moment show up in my head that I just can't ignore, so I put it down on paper, and then it just keeps swelling and growing and moving and all of a sudden it's a story. Like I said, haphazard.
I know it might be a good idea for me to experiment a little with outlining. It just seems to defeat the purpose. I mean, you don't plan an act of creation, right? It's an organic thing that just grows out of the dark side of your subconscious. So a part of me thinks that to plan it takes away from the magic of the moment. Another part of me thinks that's silly, but currently the side that holds fast to delusions of writerly romanticism is still in charge. You know, typewriter, glass of wine, empty apartment, only the muse for company . . .
Which leads me to my current worry. I don't know how the novel I'm writing is going to end. The first one I wrote, I knew the beginning and I figured out the ending pretty early on. I just didn't know how to get from point A to point B. I'm sure that every novel I write will be a different experience from all the others. Nonetheless, I'm worried. Where is my book going? What happens if I get to the end of the ideas I've got and then I get stuck? (This fear is pretty groundless, since I'm fairly good at keeping the pen moving no matter what. But still.) I think I've got a good start on this one. Interesting characters from a couple different backgrounds, and (I hope) it says some interesting things on the concepts of home and family and freedom. But where does it GO? Agh.
I've got a short story or two that I wrote last spring that I've been meaning to type up. Maybe I'll post one of them here after I get around to that typing. Might be interesting to see what people think, to see if they work or not.
And now, I should get that pen moving before my domestic partner turns up underfoot . . .

The Beginning

Today I am reveling in the West Coast-ness of the weather. It's blessedly cool for an August day in NYC, blustery winds, a light but constant rain that just feathers down onto the city. How very Oregon. And the breeze sneaking in through the storm door and the open window is lovely. A breath of fresh air in my studio apartment, which has been gasping for breath in the humidity of the last week.
I feel like I should say something introductory about myself since this is my first post. What to say, though? How about a little summary. I'm an Oregon girl living in the wilds of New York City. I've been trying to bust into the publishing industry on multiple levels for a while now, and last fall I got my first "real" job. I work in the production editorial department of a major publishing house in the city, and I love it. I'm also trying to get published, which is a whole different game. It helps to work in publishing in the sense that I understand much more of what goes into a book now, but working where I work is not going to get me published. My writing has to stand on its own two feet. There's still a ways to go before I get published but I feel like I'm getting there. Let's see, what else? I'm also a musician. I currently spend quality time with my instruments alone in my apartment. I keep meaning to find a community orchestra or a rock band, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet...
Well, that's enough of that.
Last night I went to the beer garden with my boyfriend and several work friends. We had a great time, as we always do at the beer garden. Then we came home and promptly got into a fight. I'm not even sure what it was about, really. It started out as an innocent conversation and morphed into something much more sinister. In the middle of it I got a text message from a friend who we'll call K. K and her boyfriend were among the revelers at the beer garden an hour earlier. Her text said this: "He just dumped me." WHOA. So I put my argument on hold and called my friend. She was crying in a bar. I couldn't just leave her like that, so I made up with my boyfriend and jumped in a cab. Twenty minutes later, I was at the bar with K, drinking more beer and getting wept on. We talked for a while about the stupidity of her now ex, and cursed him up, down, and sideways. Then something peculiar happened. K asked if she could kiss me. I was NOT expecting that! But I let her. (Please don't jump to any crazy conclusions here. My b/f and I actually have a kissing rule, because we have friends we kiss hello and goodbye. So, it may be by technicality only, but there was nothing wrong with letting K kiss me.) Then she told me that she's attracted to me and she's wanted me since one night when we hung out a couple weeks ago. This was quickly moving into dangerous territory... I managed to shift the conversation back to cursing her ex and whatnot, thankfully. And we went back to her apartment shortly after that, where there was a lot more crying and a little more beer drinking. Then, since I had already told her I would stay, I did the safe thing. I waited for her to fall asleep before laying down on her bed.
This morning there was a fifteen-minute rush to get out the door, and she thanked me at least thirty times for coming over and making sure she was all right. No weirdness, no further mention of attraction, nothing. Thankfully. That could've been awkward and/or complicated.
So here I am at home, short on sleep, loving the weather, wishing I had the energy to go on a walk in the rain. Maybe later. What a night!