Flooftapose (cafinition) – cats sitting or laying in close order or proximity to one another.
In use: “Flooftaposed side by side by side, the cats sat on the sofa, watching out the windows at things I could not see.”
Sunday’s Theme Music
I wasn’t enthralled with Duran Duran and their music. Some of their music hit the charts in a big way, and friends like them, so I was exposed to them. Despite that, every once a song strikes a sweet spot in the day and hangs with you.
So it happened this morning as I looked out the window. It looked deceptively warm and beautiful, deceptively because my weather station warned me that it was thirty-one F outside. But it was beautiful, yet ordinary with its vistas of far, snowy tree covered mountains juxtaposed against the local greenery and blooming plum trees and daffodils. This is our every day view, so ordinary and special. Yet, changes, from seasonal movement to economic shifts and the ways of life and death, were visible from where I was.
So I streamed, “But I won’t cry for yesterday, there’s an ordinary world, somehow I have to find. And, as I try to find my way in an ordinary world, I will learn to survive.”
In Green
I’m wearing green today, homage to St. Patrick’s Day in America.
I don’t celebrate holidays much, and celebrate them less as I age. I don’t look forward to them much. Putting out decorations rarely occurs to me.
After thinking about it, I’ve realized that I little associate with the external world. Events are remote. I live by and enjoy the internal worlds created as I imagine and write. It’s a problem, and it’s a benefit. The problem is that my wife is exasperated because I’m not all up about holidays like other people. The benefit is that I feel like I’m successfully writing, and that makes me happy. Like most things in life, the value is on a sliding spectrum, and changes often.
I suppose I could change it, or try, since I’m now aware, but I’m not inclined to do that – for now.
E.L. Said
This was difficult to understand when I first started writing. I thought I needed to know all of the story before I began writing it. I didn’t appreciate that I was learning the story as much as I was writing it.
My Five Writing Rules
I have simple writing rules. It’s a complicated world, so why burden myself with greater complications?
- Write every day. Writing every day helps me maintain story continuity, and making progress is tangibly reassuring. I also like the practice and discipline, but as an amendment to this rule, I stay flexible and adapt. I don’t sweat it if I can’t write every day. Okay, I confess, I sweat it, but I endure with the promise to myself, “I will write again.”
- Write like crazy. Yep, put it down, one word after another, and let it flow like lava escaping an erupting volcano. Then, edit, polish, edit, polish, revise, re-write, and edit and polish. It’s a rare sentence that is not changed in some manner between first thought and final edit. After grudgingly accepting that re-writing, polishing, and editing are necessary, I now enjoy this process. Writing like crazy is a fast and intense process, but the polishing, etc., is loving, and let me feel the novel and see how it breathes.
- Don’t overthink it and don’t write for anyone else. Man, I get angst about what I’m writing. I worry that it’s crap, and I suffer the imposter syndrome. Even as I write and enjoy what I write, I worry that others won’t like it, that it won’t measure up as professional, meaningful, entertaining, or original. I fear the moment when someone stands up, points a finger at me, and shouts, “J’accuse! You are not a writer.” However, I’m also ready to respond, “Fuck you, jack.” Of course, that won’t prevent me from brooding about it.
- Create and maintain a support structure. Like anything that you consider imperative, such as eating properly, exercising, or family time, it was critical for me to let others know that it’s writing time is important. In return, I set a schedule for it, and adhere to it, so that they know when I’ll be writing. Telling others – coming out of the writing closet, if you will – was a huge step. People respect the effort. Telling my wife, and her support of my writing efforts, were tremendous boosts to my ability to go off and write every day. Writing is already a solitary and lonely business, but her support reduces the struggle by an immeasurable chunk.
- Don’t talk to others about the novel(s) in progress. People will ask, and I do want to share. But it’s so easy to let that writing excitement overpower the moment. I end up going on and on, regaling them about the characters, concept, plot and complications, even as I understand that it’s in beta, or first draft, or whatever, and subject to change. Just answer politely in vaguely sensible terms, change the subject, and let them escape for being a good friend and inquiring.
Any rules that work for you that you want to suggest? No pressure.
Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Floofcoholic
Floofcoholic (catfinition) – excessive or compulsive love of cats and anything feline.
In use: “He was a floofcoholic, visiting with cats that he met on the streets, sleeping with cats, and asserting their welfare over that of his family and self.”
Saturday’s Theme Music
My cats were singing this to me last night and this morning. Okay, it may have only seemed like they were singing (or humming, or purring) it because everywhere I went, and everything I did, they were watching me.
Here are The Police with Sting’s composition, “Every Breath You Take.”
Up
Rise up, I hear.
Can you rise down?
It is possible to sit up but if you’re standing, does sit down need to be specified?
(But if you omit down, and say, “Sit,” will people become offended that it sounds like you’re ordering a dog?)
And why do we give up?
Count
Word count
Step count
Money count
Vote count
I thought it was the thought that counts.
Expectations
You ever read another’s book, and begin editing it to improve grammar, pacing or story-telling, or think that the character should have been changed, or think about how you’d change the words because a sentence is awkward or sloppy?
I encounter this all the time. But I can’t edit or change it; that book is done. That’s why I’m reading it.
One of the best aspects of reading and editing my own work is that I can enjoy the story and make those changes. Massaging and polishing the elements mentioned in the first paragraph, and more beyond that short list, becomes satisfying, exciting, and rewarding.
Conversely, though, I don’t know how much of my entertainment comes from reading these written words versus enjoying the expansion of my interior worlds being made real. Deep in this forest of words, I’m having a damn fine time, but could anyone else read this and have the same experience?
Well, no, probably not. Writers know what we write, and what others find and take from our words rarely match. Readers develop their own set of expectations as they read our work. As we write from our experiences, so they read from their experiences.
That completes the lap of thought, and I’m back at the start, and the rhetoric about wanting to change another’s book.
Surely, of all that’s possible, that’s not what that writer expected. And that’s why we edit and revise, and have editors, so that we don’t put out that book that someone reads and wants to change.
