D'oh!

I had a great post all planned for tonight, but it fell out of my head.  I have a good excuse, though - I've misplaced my phone.

I went to send a text message, and my phone wasn't in the outside pocket of my purse.  Or the inside pocket.  Or the back pocket.  Or the big main part.  Or my jacket pocket.  Or my uniform pockets.

Now, I remember checking my messages just before the end of the day, because I got stuck at work late. I suspect I may have set my phone down on my desk and just forgotten it there in my rush to get the heck out of there before I got asked to do something else.

Unfortunately, my whole evening has been sort of overtaken by this whole missing-phone-thing.  I'm actually quite worried about tomorrow morning, because I use it as my alarm.  I'm hoping I don't oversleep... because even if I do, I can't call my boss to let her know!

Yeesh.  This sucks.  Stupid no-phone.

Falling apart

It's T-6 days to NaNoWriMo 2009, and I thought I was doing well. I have a plot. I have one very fleshed-out character and one reasonably-thought-out character. I have a notebook and matching pen. I have a flash drive. I have my office sorta clean, but not so clean I can't think.

But now my computer desk is falling apart. Literally. The keyboard tray is held by those little twisty things that you have to turn a quarter turn with a screwdriver to secure them onto the peg bits. Do you know what I mean? Anyways, one of them has decided not to work any more. It unscrews itself after approximately 20 keystrokes. With 50000 words to write, I can't stop to fix it every 20 keystrokes. And sometimes it falls off before that.

So I'm not sure what to do. I may spend NaNo with my keyboard in my lap... maybe I'll go out and invest in a wireless keyboard and write from my rocking chair... or something. Suggestions are welcome!

Not-so-famous last words

So I was driving today... actually, I was backing out of my parking space, and I pulled out, put the car into drive, and stepped on the gas.  Apparently, the car was not fully out of reverse, and made an awful clanking noise (shh, yes, I know, that's not a good thing).  My response was to say out loud, "Well that's not good."

I was thinking about it a few minutes later as I was driving, and I realized that, if some idiot had driven into my lane and killed me, those would have been my last words.  How sucky is that?  My last words were the sort of thing that someone would say before earning a Darwin award, and no one was around to hear them!  

Wait, maybe no one hearing those as my last words is a good thing.

In any case, it got me to thinking.  I talk to myself a lot.  Well, maybe not a lot.  I like to hear things out loud, though, and I'll often speak my thoughts when I'm alone.  Is that weird?  No, that's a rhetorical question, so please, don't answer.  What it means, though, is that there's a good chance that no one will get to hear my last words, whether I say something stupid like, "Well that's not good," or something incredibly profound and beautiful (of course, since I can't think of an example of something profound and beautiful, the chances of the world missing out on it are slim).

And what if my last words are written, rather than spoken?  Like if I have a massive coronary moments after posting a blog?  I look back on some posts, and there's no way I would have wanted any of those things to be my last words!

So I've concluded that I simply can't die unexpectedly.  I just won't risk having a crappy set of last works.

So there.

Can't get it out of my head!

As you may or may not know, I'm the stage manager for a local theatre production of "The Great American Trailer Park Musical."  For the last two shows I've stage managed, the director didn't need me to come in until just before the tech rehearsals started.  With this show, I've been to almost all of the rehearsals, with the exceptions of the ones where he's just teaching the music.  It's been... different.  But not bad.

This means that I've heard the songs almost as much as the cast.  Unfortunately, this means that they're stuck in my head.  However, my brain is apparently bored with the actual arrangement of songs, and has decided to mix up the lyrics from several numbers and play them over and over and over.  I've had to blast Britney Spears in the car, just to get the music out of my head for a few minutes at a time.

Tonight, I'll leave you with a few clips from my brain (and "The Great American Trailer Park Musical").

Just feel that late summer fire/burning up the sky

It makes time stand still/and your brain start to fry

'Cause it's the Great American TV Show

We're in your living room

Pour some java/stir in some sweet 'n' low

You shouldn'ta couldn'ta wouldn'ta oughta done it

You shouldn'ta couldn'ta wouldn'ta oughta seen that tramp no

You shouldn'ta couldn'ta wouldn'ta oughta done it

In this period of your life she's a major cramp!

Hmmm... that seems to have quieted the songs, at least for the moment... yay!

Looking for inspiration

With November just around the corner, writing has been on my mind a lot lately.  I'm still writing every day, but there are days that I just don't feel inspired.  Rather, the ideas aren't there.  I want to write, but I just can't figure out what to write.

Today, I participated in a critique group for the first time, and I think, overall, it was a good experience.  The novel being critiqued was a Christian fiction piece, covering the three-day period after the Crucifixion.  This was not my usual genre.  Honestly, I probably wouldn't have picked it up if I saw it in a bookstore.  However, that's one of the good/bad things about the group - everyone in the group has a different preferred genre, so I'll get to read a lot of things that I don't normally read.  

I read the book once, because I wanted to give honest opinions as a reader - when I read a book, I rarely go back and read passages again, unless the writer lost me somewhere along the way.  I think this approach was probably right for the first run-through, but, after hearing the way the other members of the group gave their comments, I plan to do things differently next time.  I will definitely do a first read over a 1-2 day period, the way I normally read a book, and make notes about my initial impressions and things that lost me along the way.  However, I'll then go back and try to pinpoint what got me lost and why; which characters I liked or disliked, and whether that seemed to be the way the writer wanted those characters to be perceived; any subplots that didn't get resolved; basically, I'll treat it like a high school reading assignment during the second read-through.  Hopefully, that will be more valuable for the writer.

This time around, the writer told us not to worry about line-editing because he knew that the grammar and punctuation could use some work.  I tried to leave it alone, I really did!  My father trained me well, though, and I just couldn't leave the dangling fragments alone.  My critique was probably more technical than the others because of that, so hopefully my input was valuable to the author.

I'm actually looking forward to having one of my pieces critiqued by this particular group.  At least two of the writers have completed projects that they're sending out queries for, which is also valuable - they're more than happy to help the rest of us with submissions when the time comes.  I think that's the part of the process that I'm looking forward to the least.  I don't like rejection.  I hate it, actually.  I applied for grad school and got rejected because the program I applied to didn't get enough grants to take on another student, and I was devastated.  I've been 'rejected' at my last two auditions, and I'm not sure I'm up for auditioning for anything else (at least in the near future) because I don't want another failed attempt.

Intellectually, I know that just because I didn't get a part at the last audition, it doesn't mean I won't get something at the next one (there were a LOT of politics at play there, and I knew that going in).  It still hurts, though, and it's very discouraging.  I know, based on what I've heard from all of the other writers I know, that I will get lots of rejections before I find an agent who will accept my manuscript.  I know that just getting an agent doesn't guarantee that anything will actually get published, although that's a good first step.  I just get disappointed and discouraged easily.  It's something I need to work on.  If anyone has any suggestions about how to get past it, input is welcome!

Yikes!

So after last night's panic about wonky internet, I was very relieved to finally get my blog up. Then tonight, after I got home from shopping, I returned to my computer to find that, once again, my internet connection was missing!! This is VERY distressing! Luckily, my network admin managed to get it working again (yay, Shane!), so I still have my posting streak. Whew.

This brings up the question, though, what should I do when I truly don't have a connection? Back in May, when the tornado hit town, I had no internet access (and no power) for quite a while, so I used my camera to make a vlog, which I posted as soon as the internet was up again, with a back-dated time. I didn't feel that this was cheating, as I had blogged, but I simply couldn't get it up.

But what about other times, times when an Act of God is not involved? Part of me wants to make a backup post, something that I change the post date on each day, to serve as filler in case I don't get online. I really don't like that idea, though, because the point of this blog was for me to write every day, in some fashion. Honestly, I'm not crazy about putting up videos for this reason, but it's a rare occurence, so I'm okay with it once in a while. And I do compose (kind of) what I plan to say.

So what do you think out there, Loyal Reader(s?)?

On a vaguely related note, what's with the screencap that they used for my video?? I look ridiculous!!