An Interesting Turn Of Events (At Least For Me)...

Anyone who has had the rather dubious honor of actually speaking with me, or perhaps communicating with me via email, has learned that my written words are not... well, normal.  'Not that I would know what 'normal' actually looked like, even if it bit me on my... ah, nose.'  When speaking, I have this really bad habit of starting sentences with... "however, comma, dot, dot, dot..." or ending them with "...period, full stop, end of story."  That is obviously NOT the way most people speak, not to mention all of those wonderful English teachers I had in Middle School, High School and College who are now rolling over in their graves at my grossly loose, use version of the English language.  See?  Even THAT sentence is not straight-laced, buttoned-down, proper use of the English language as taught by the public school systems in America (or at least I hope not).

When writing, I tend to write what I am picturing in my mind or feeling at that moment in time.  I think over the years, I have learned to share ideas ('Idears', for those of us up here in New England who add 'r's where they were not intended and drop them when we 'pawk' the 'caw') in a way that paints a sometimes way too vivid mental picture the intended victim recipient is supposed to see as clearly as I do.  Clearly, I have refined finger painting as a form of expression.

Then there is the problem with my wit with words.  Some find it humorous, while I do not find it quite so funny at the time.  I have realized I developed expressing myself this way to keep from offending or hurting others or I'm in full blown panic mode.  Rereading something I wrote later, sometimes feels like someone ELSE stole my crayon and wrote with it, freely embellishing descriptions in as odd a manner as humanly or not so humanly possible.

This probably is not making any sense at all to anyone but myself, that is.  It's sad to think I have been actively writing now for almost seven years about my very non-fiction life and have arrived at this point in time without evolving literarily at all.  (Yes.  I'm aware that the spell checker is gracing my scribbles with dire warnings of dire consequences in using words that don't really exist.  Be a rebel and ignore it.  I obviously do.)

So seeing as writing is my therapy for what ails me, you'd think that I could stay on topic.  Yakking on the keyboard (and I'll have you know that spell checker was eerily mute for the word 'yakking') and letting the words spew forth upon yon' (and spell checker is still quite silent) screen, really does not seem to be working very well for me at the moment.  My mind keeps wandering to subjects like vampires, ghosts, angels, brooding troglodytes, smart aleck (and may I say quite intelligent) women with a dash of witty reparte.  I evidently need to stop reading J. R. Ward.

I am a prolific reader, and unfortunately I read at a veracious (HEY!  That IS the correct spelling and usage of that word!  I've been gypped!  My spell checker is obviously substandard!) rate.  I'm pretty easy to please though since I will read just about anything except Stephen King-like novels in pretty much any category of the written word except Stephen King-like novels (Have I mentioned that I can not read Stephen King-like novels?).  I discovered the wonders of a library some time about Middle School.  (Yes, I know someone discovered it before me, but it was not real until "I" step through it's doors)  Suddenly there were new worlds to explore.  Elves, wizards and dragons to travel with, mysteries to solve, scary things to annihilate and history to be learned.  (I obviously did not discover the romance section until somewhere halfway through High School.)

I cut my teeth on The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.  Fell upon Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys like a starving, salivating pack of hounds on a very rare T-bone steak.  Then came Star Wars.  (I used to be able to quote by wrote the entire prologue of the first book.  Alas, my brain, over the years has been filled with so many stories that my memory occasionally does a dump to archive for some of the UBIs stored there.  That would be "Useless Bits of Information" for those that are acronym-challenged.)

And do you know what I have discovered?  My autobiography is the strongest sleep-aid known to man... even for me.  I really should patent it.  It could make me rich!  Somewhere over the last week or so I kept having to erase paragraphs of cool and interesting places and people to return to the boring life of moi... because that's what writing is all about, right?  I must be having a middle life crisis or something because I've decided I'd rather grow fangs, wear leather and ride a motorcycle, read all the non-fiction books in the Library of Congress, and discover where all the dragons hang out first.  (This is a test.  This is only a test.  If this had been a real emergency you would have been instructed where to go, how to get there and what to do once you got there.  NO!  I do not have fangs.  Or own leather pants.  Or a motorcycle for that matter.  And I do not know where dragons really hang out. (Although I have heard rumors they think people are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.)  Didn't want anyone thinking I've just jumped off the diving board of life into the empty, concrete swimming pool of reality. This is just me, making lemonade on a grey, cold, rainy, miserable day... maybe with a splash of vodka.  Za vas!  I may have to stop reading Christina Dodd, too. It's truly amazing the things you can learn from books.)

The really funny thing to me is that if I sit down to try and write really cool McGyverish kind of stuff, I come up with a completely blank screen.  If I try to sit down and write about the desert dry landscape of the real world and my personal phantasms, all I get is McGyver and dragons.  So it's official.  I have finally pulled into the train station at certifiable-ville.  Time to write myself out of a snowy dead end.

You will all be absolutely elated to know that I am not intending to ever share my fiction adventures, because I wouldn't want to give anyone reason to think I may have to be locked up I'm pretty sure authors of bizarre tales probably hide from their families... in a closet.  A secret double life.  See?  Now THAT sounds interesting... tapping on the keyboard that I had porridge for breakfast doesn't quite fire the imagination anywhere near as well as ghosties and ghoulies and wee little beasties, now does it?

If your imagination is as unmanageable and far-fetched as mine can be, then you can write your own new world all on your own.  Personally, I never thought I would get a kick out of the idea of inviting a character into a mythical place, torture it with either sappy or creepy (whichever it would hate most) and then either kill 'em off or have them ride off into the sunset.  I think I like the killing 'em off idea better, but who knows, it might be a warm and fuzzy kind of day so I wouldn't want to limit my options.  I guess I'm just mean like that.

Still, the reality is that I can't really live there, therefor I still have to make lemonade daily.  So, dot, dot, dot... Today is a Monday.  And it's supposed to be a humorous kind of day.  It's the law.  So it was amusing for ME to write about this interesting turn of events.  I might be getting just a little too much enjoyment from imagining my kids and their expressions and wondering just how much I can really weird them out?  This could take our family's dinner conversations to a whole new level! "Hey, honey?  How would you go about dismembering a werewolf?"  Or possibly, "If I wanted to make a guy REALLY squirm, I would make him [fill in the blank]!"

Hey!  It can actually be a two-fer.  I can torture the characters AND my family.  Now doesn't that sound like a win-win situation?  You can obviously see that this would not be a publishable book because I would do things to the characters just to annoy or creep out family members.  Really.  Ha!  I can describe love scenes to them... Remember these are the girls who absolutely do NOT want to know their parents even have a love life, much less their mother describing someone else's love life.  This really has the potential of being priceless.  Talk about some real Kodak Color kind of moments.

Ah, yes.  Life is definitely looking up...