Prepare not to be astounded.

The other night I asked someone if I was boring, and I was told "You astound me every day". This was the nicest compliment I'd received for some time. In fact, I can't remember being told (in earnest) that I'm beautiful or anything else for so long that this was a huge compliment. I, astounding.

Tonight I asked if he really meant what he said or if he was just joking when he said it, and he responded that he didn't even remember the conversation. My stomach fell. I felt sick.

The truth is, I am not astounding. I may be eccentric about some stuff, or maybe interesting, but nothing I do is really amazing or astounding. Maybe this is why it was such a huge compliment; it was like being told, "You are more beautiful than Cindy Crawford." It was so unbelievable that someone would think that of me that it resounded and kept bouncing around my mind, playing over and over again until I tried my hardest to cling to it as one good thing about myself.

So, from now on, the only person I am trying to astound is me. I am not easily astounded by myself or anything I do. I'm highly critical of my looks, my abilities, my potential for success. Maybe this is the impetus I needed to get off my keister and start astounding myself. If I can truly manage to fund my library degree, and to ace all my classes, and to forge a career that interests me while making a living for my family and paying enough attention to my daughter and making her life better and paying off my debts, now THAT will truly be astounding.

I'm with the band...

Back in the day, I was a singer. I was in chorus, I was in KV chorus festival, I sang in a small group audition-only chorus at school, and I sang in college. I was a singer. A SINGER. People used to like how I sang.

I've listened and sang along to Beatles songs since Gerald Ford was president. And now, with the advent of Beatles Rock Band, I can realize my dream of singing into a microphone, in front of an audience. Well, in theory, that is. My damn weiner kids won't let me sing. They roll their eyes and sigh and tell me to leave them alone while they're singing and playing Beatles songs. The killer is that I know these songs BETTER than they do! I can get five stars! I can be Paul, John, Ringo, even George, whose songs suck. But they won't let me. I have to kind of hang around behind them until they finish singing a song, then say, "Hey, guys...let me sing this one, would you?" and suffer the eye-rolling, sighing, bitching and moaning. Why? When was I pushed out for the new generation? These people weren't even alive when John was killed. I WAS! REALLY!

Maybe I need to punish them by taking away the singing rights to Beatles Rock Band. Maybe that would show them. I can get five stars. Yeah. That'd show 'em.

When Fish Attack...Moose?

Tommy and I just finished watching "When Moose Attack," and apparently they are nasty big animals who will just attack any person, dog or other animal by whom they feel threatened. Fine. I get it. I'm from Maine, and I'm familiar with moose.

The real surprise came during the show AFTER "When Moose Attack". It's a program called "When Fish Attack," and the first piece involved a teenage boy who was in Panama deep-sea fishing when he hooked a 600-pound black marlin, which, if you don't know, looks like a gigantic swordfish. This kid hooked the mega-fish and reeled it in waaaay too fast (it's supposed to take up to an hour to reel in one of this big fellas, and it took this boy only 25 minutes), and the fish got really mad. I mean FURIOUS. By the time it reached the side of the boat, it launched itself, sword-first, into the teenage boy's open mouth, and ripped his face open, the sword exiting the back of his neck and going through his cheek, sinus wall, and cutting his lip on the way out.

The kid lived, the fish lived, yadda yadda, but that's not important. What came of all this was a really great idea for a show on the Outdoor Channel that I'd kind of like to market if it didn't involve having anything to do with certain right-wing fanatics I hate. Basically, the show would feature Ted Nugent as the narrator and host. He would be on a large boat deep-sea fishing. Also on the boat would be a fully grown bull moose. Ted would fish until he hooked a black marlin -- which can grow to 15 feet and 1,000 pounds, by the way -- and gets it sufficiently pissed off enough to attack, just like the fish that attacked the kid in Panama. However -- and here's the delicious twist! -- Nuge would use his master archery abilities to AIM the sword of the fish so it pierced the bull moose right in the heart, thus killing both the fish and the moose at one time. It would be a new sport.

I'm thinking it should be called "Ted Nugent's Surf and Turf". Your thoughts?

Selling out for my art

I’d like to begin by saying I am only blogging because I was told today that I read too much and don’t write enough. I have a book that I am allegedly working on, but I haven’t even finished the introduction, and in an effort to delay the pain of writing more, I grudgingly decided to blog instead.
My boyfriend and I have differing views on writing. I believe writing is an art, he believes writing is a job. For me, the ultimate goal of writing is to inspire, to evoke some emotions in my readers. For Tom, it’s all about the money. Write a piece of crap? No problem, as long as there’s an audience for it. Write something basic and insipid? Who cares, since most readers are basic and insipid!
For my work as a proofreader, I tend to be assigned a lot of dreck. I get romances, cozy mysteries, inspirational Christian fiction, books that read as though they were written by a sixth-grader for a school project. For my pleasure, I read authors who weave words magically into stories of people who seem real, and situations that seem new and fresh. I’m caught in the middle. I KNOW I can write crap, but I want to write the good stuff. Tommy thinks writing the crap is a means to an end, the end being money. I believe writing crap (and putting my name on it) will result in all my friends hating me for being a sell-out. I don’t know if I can live with that.
Maybe none of this is why I haven’t worked on my book. Maybe it’s just that I’m scared, it’s difficult, I’m lazy, or any other number of reasons. In any case, I’m gonna do it. If the result is really good, maybe I can be the next Ann Patchett. If the result is crap, I still may get paid.

(Also, thanks to Jane, who suggested a writing group! Now I just need to find one...)

Opening a Vein

As a writer, I peaked early. Very early, in fact. When I was in sixth grade, I wrote an ongoing serial of “Dark Shadows” fan fiction, long hand. Every night I would crank out 10 or 12 pages, and present them in math class the next day to my only reader, Karen Tobey, who sat in front of me. Despite never having seen “Dark Shadows,” Karen was an enthusiastic consumer of these pages, devouring them and asking for more as soon as she finished reading them. The fact of having only one fan didn’t deter me. I produced more writing in that school year than I did in the entire rest of my life. At age 13, I wrote a complete novel, based on my fantasy of joining Depeche Mode (or any other similarly effeminate, make upped and British new wave band of that era), more than 300 pages, read solely by my friends Michelle and Inez. My audience was small, but my output was impressive.
Since then, I have had hundreds of story and book ideas, and have barely put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) to start one of them, never mind finish. In my 20s I wrote about 150 pages of a half-hearted attempt at teen romance based on my own limited experience in that area, and I recently started writing a vampire book with a unique twist. I wrote about half a page and stopped. Why? Writers write. Why can’t I? The answer, of course, is that I’m incredibly lazy unless I have a deadline looming, in which case I’m the proverbial busy bee. If anyone wants to give me a topic, I’ll be finished with it by the proposed submission time, with hours to spare. If I’m getting paid, whoooo-eee! Watch me produce.
Hopefully, this blog will give me the impetus I need to turn out some material. Any suggestions?