Purrsistence
Are you sure you want to delete this file?
Update: In response to one of the comments left below, I began to feel guilty (maybe more like petrified) about using this picture of a print. In order to avoid the copyright police I did the best I could to find the artist – not a difficult task and it came with a bonus. Check out Art That Makes You Laugh but be forewarned – you will laugh, be inspired and want to own one of his pieces. And just so you know, Jeff Leedy responded to my confession and says the picture can stay.
What the heck happened this year? And the blog? Where did it go? I just realized the titles for my last three posts could tell a story. Three months ago I mentioned I wanted to write. Nine days later marijuana had arrived. Two months after that I looked at the news feed on Facebook and saw it was I Love to Write Day.
So here’s the story. I felt trumped. No amount of word tweaking, plot twisting, or new endings could turn my 90,000 word memoir into the Erma Bombeck kind of masterpiece I had imagined in my head. It was just not going to happen. In an angry moment I placed Trumpette (our neurotic cat) dangerously close to the delete key.
But, a miracle happened. Marijuana had arrived. Trumpette inhaled a hefty dose and the next thing I knew she was attacking fireflies at the patio door in the middle of a sunny day. Wait. I got that wrong. We don’t have fireflies in California. I guess it was night time and they were moths. It seems I was in a kind of fog, maybe a contact high? I found myself back at the keyboard. Magic happened. While Trumpette purred off the pot, I rewrote the entire book. In one night. It was done. I sent it off to the publisher. And then I quit writing until I-Love-To-Write-Day came.
Remember that Bullet Journal I had started a few months back? I began a new list:
- Blog – maybe consider fiction
- Send Trumpette to rehab
- Find out why the publisher hasn’t contacted me
- Revise – try again
I Wanted To Write
Dorothy Parker’s Mink Coat
I wanted
- to write a book that would tear your insides apart with laughter, not heartbreak.
- to write tiny bites of my life with enough humor to leave my readers with howling belly aches over exaggerated blimps and bleeps.
- to write the best selling memoir full of wit and wisdom, one that would live on the nightstand of every parent on this earth who might need a quick dose of humor following a particularly harrowing day.
- to write with a keen sense of humor to keep my readers turning the pages (or swiping their Kindles) to the very last word.
- to write the takeaways that would lead to joyful resolution for all who read my words.
Meanwhile I have
- written the necessary 90,000 words of a pitiful and shitty first draft (ala Anne Lamott), just to get over it.
- highlighted the questionabull, deleted the distractabull, rewritten the sustainabull, and added the conceivabull.
- hit the muddy middle and squirreled away at least sixty hours of mindless FaceBook gaming in the last thirty days.
The time has come
- to send away the critics and bring in the clowns.
- to let go of the past.
- to write that final chapter.
If nothing else comes of this
- I can say I wrote a book
- My inner self will be sufficiently mended.
- I can be a better person.
- I still have a sense of humor.
BUT maybe one day I’ll sit at the Algonquin table in Dorothy Parker’s mink coat signing copies of my phenomenal book.
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