Writing is a force that gives me purpose and direction. Otherwise, life is a depressing repetition of events and words.
Google Search Image Today’s Theme Music
Keeping it simple and staying with classic rock from the nineteen seventies. Here is Bad Company with ‘Can’t Get Enough’. While I listened to it in the barracks during technical training, hurrying around the Triangle at Keesler AFB, or driving around my first assignment at Wright-Pat, it remains a great song for streaming through your head and walking around.
Google Search Image The Hair
He’d had enough.
Although he’d been born on this head, the neighborhood was changing. White, silver and gray hairs were moving in. The whole area was becoming less populated. It used to be that he was shoulder to shoulder with other brown hair shafts; no more. Hairs he’d known since roothood, hairs like Curt, Lee, Manny, Seb, and Montel, were gone. All that remained were the pretty girls on the sides, a few of the unruly boys who lived on the back, and the cowlick kids. But, while he knew of them, he rarely came into contact with them. They were hairs, and like him, but they weren’t really friends.
Migrating to somewhere else was naturally his first thought. He considered the ears but it wasn’t nearly as tidy around the ears. He’d heard that the pubic area was often hot and humid, and hair still thrived there, but was also usually dark. The pubs rarely saw the sun. So, after deep meditation and contemplation about his life, he said good-bye to his follicle and made the leap into the basin.
Writing Past a Problem
Lev’s post mirrors my own. My subconscious mind is often working to further develop characters and ideas. I’ve learned this about myself, and will, as Lev did, let it go from my conscious thinking. The biggest take from this is that I need to avoid trying to overanalyze or think through the problem, because that will often build dams that will stymie me.
by Lev Raphael
Working on my most recently published book, I ran into a significant problem. To move the novel forward, I needed my protagonist to have a confrontation with a minor character. I knew what this woman’s role was in the book and how she drove the plot forward.
But the woman herself was a blank. I had no idea what she looked like, what she sounded like, what kind of house she had. None of that was real. And so I did when I’ve learned to do after many years as an author: I let go. Consciously, that is.
View original post 356 more words
For the Airlines
We have fifty books, but we’re going to sell sixty. Don’t worry if we run out, because we have other books to substitute.
Sixty steaks are available for sale, but we’ve sold seventy. We’ll see what’s left once the sixty are gone. We’ll give you something, perhaps a hot dog, carrot or chicken nugget.
You chose the lemonade but we only have forty bottles, and we’ve sold forty-five, so we’ll offer you this bottle of water instead. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have more lemonade tomorrow.
Apologies, Universe
Well, universe,
Here I am again. I was a little hard on you in Spiteful Stuff yesterday. I guess I was disappointed because I thought I was your favorite. I was hurt, and I ranted.
Since, I’ve had time to consider the entire situation. Sure, I still believe you were a little spiteful. Perhaps I was being ungrateful and taking you for granted, and you were mad about that. If so, forgive me. After all, as I think about it, the visit with family was enjoyable. The house didn’t burn down in my absence, and no catastrophes were reported among the feline population. The United flights, while wrecked by creeping delays, were not disastrous. We’re alive and well. You did take care of me.
So, my apologies. I hope this episode is in our rear view mirrors. Maybe we can get together and have a beer or cup of coffee or tea, or a glass of wine.
Please let me know. Cheers
Cold Therapy Update – April
A University of Pennsylvania study of brain scans showed some striking differences between how men and women’s brains work. “In the study, women scored well on attention, word and face memory, and social cognition, while men performed better on spatial processing and sensori-motor speed.” Female brains worked back and forth across the hemispheres while male brains tended to work front to back.
Everyone cautions, brains are not hard-wired, a major tenet of philosophy, along with the premise that generalities are generalities.
I also think that discipline in one realm spills out in another spill. I think that, though, because this is how it works for me. It seems to be how I’m wired. I don’t know if that’s forward to back.
My last hot water shower was on March nineteenth. It’s been cold showers since, a challenge on my last two weeks as I traveled and visited families. One of the ways I’m wired is to take a hot shower to relax and prepare, especially when traveling. I love checking in, making plans and kicking it all off with a hot, relaxing shower to clean off travel grime.
Boy, rejecting hot showers were a tempting challenge in the hotels and homes I stayed in during the last two weeks. Be strong, I told myself, shivering until the cold blast. And I was.
I don’t know if it helps me rewire myself, if there is re-wiring involved in discipline and choices, or if I’m just smoking myself. But afterwards, I feel good. I feel strong and ready to go on.
Much as I do after a hot shower.
The Shoes
The shoes bothered him. Being a self-effacing sort, he disliked calling attention to himself. He liked sitting in the back, entering and departing without being noticed.
These shoes drew attention. More expensive than he would pay for shoes, they were made by an Italian designer, and were long and very pointed. He preferred more subtle, workman style of shoes that tended to look clunky. Sometimes, she claims, they look like bowling shoes, an indictment uttered with disdain and horror.
So these shoes were bought because of her. Yet, he was wearing them and enduring. Then people complimented him on them. They claimed to really like the shoes.
Was a lesson learned? Not really. She was right about the shoes, as he thought she would be, but he was still a person who preferred to avoid attention.
Book Sales Update
I hadn’t paid much attention to my book sales. I keep telling myself that I need to work on advertising. I set aside time to do that, along with taking the books into other formats and venues, but *cough*, somehow, I keep getting sabotaged *ahem* or sidetracked from those efforts.
Nonetheless, sales picked up, along with views, likes, etc, at the various places. It’s always a surprise to see, hey, look, sales – a lot of sales.
So, thanks to you anonymous buyers out there. Hope you enjoy them a third as much as I enjoyed writing them. If you do, please tell your friends.
Michael Seidel, writer 