Spring, and ah, the parentheses are nesting

Happy Friday the 13th.

I am a triskaidekaphilic, rather than a triskaidekaphobic, so 13 is one of my lucky numbers. I celebrate any month that includes a Friday the 13th. So, happy lucky day to you all.

Today I am--get ready for a big surprise--starting things off at a coffee shop. (Dunn Brothers South in Rochester) Got up late. (After 10 a.m. yeek. (Have to nest some parentheses here. (After all, it's spring; time for the nesting of the parentheses.) The spell checker does not recognize "yeek" (which surprises me not at all) or "triskaidekaphilic" and "-phobic" (which is crazy!))) I must have needed the sleep.

New plan on the art. The guy I talked to at the gallery in Asheville strongly suggested I bring framed pieces, rather than just stretched. I looked into quick-framing options, which don't exist in Rochester, so my exhusband's girlfriend is going to be disappointed in the paintings I am taking for the jury. They're still good--in my opinion, anyway--but they are not the ones she thinks will show me off the best.

Baristas are some of the most interesting people on the planet, I am convinced. One I talked to today is a really great young photographer. Another is saving up because she and her fiance are building a pontoon after they get married and taking a trip down the Mississippi. How cool is that?

On the writing front: I have re-instituted the 2-sentences-a-day Rule, which served me so well on my last 2&1/2 novels. When I started The Secret Life of Suzuki England, I told myself I needed a tiny little goal that would keep me in it. Two sentences a day. Every day. Christmas, New Year's, hangover, headcold. They didn't have to be good and they didn't have to be long ("What?" she said. "I don't know." counts, for example.) and you don't even have to keep them, but it keeps you in the project. And 2 sentences--if your goal was 250 words or half an hour, you might think, "It's 2 a.m. and I've been out dancing with Coralee, maybe I'll wait 'til tomorrow." But instead you think, "It's only 2 sentences--I can do that in my sleep." You almost always do more, but you DON'T HAVE TO. (Plus, if you do more, it doesn't count toward the next day's goal.) It works really well.

So, after having been on semi-sabbatical in Asheville, I'm back to the work/play. Screenplay & stage play. Just a measly 2 sentences. I can do that...

Let the fingers (and palms) do the talking

Maybe I did get sucked into cyberspace. Last night I spent a fair amount of time lying awake and thinking about all the things I could blog about. My notebook was close but not that close, so I didn't write anything down, until this morning, after I had this dream that contained the seeds (already sprouting) of a stage play. Maybe even a musical. Good grief, as Charlie Brown would say.

I specify stage play because I'm already working on a screenplay. Top secret, hush hush, because if I talk about my ideas the muse dusts her hands off and says, Okay, done with that one. They have to come out through fingers on keyboard.

And that reminds me that my friend Katie Clapham (fabulous photographer) did a palm reading for me at Minicon. Very interesting and insightful. She said my creative self had a very powerful flow that wasn't quite connected up because there was some sort of chasm for it to cross regarding my family and home. Home now, rather than family of origin or the nuclear family which has evolved to the discrete particles phase, being ex-spouses and grown children. She asked who was there when I came home and I said Me, that I have a lover but do not live with him. So then she asked a really interesting question: What ghosts live with you?

I told her I'd get back to her on that. Maybe the moving boxes that arrived from Rochester 11 days before this trip are filled with ghosts. I'll have to check. She said she'd see me at Wiscon, in Madison, Memorial Day weekend. And bring your hands, she told me.