I refigured and do you believe I sent out eight manuscripts last month. Eight! That has to be a record. I forgot all about the 24-hour contest at Writer's Weekly and a short story submission I made as well. If something doesn't come out of this I'm going to come to the conclusion that January submissions are cursed. j/k!

Prompt for today: Describe the bedroom that you had when you were ten. Pull as many vivid sensory images as you can from your memory and make the room come alive for your reader. Remember, sight is just one of the senses.

When I turned 10 I believe I was sharing a bunk bed with one of my sisters. I did not always have a bunk to myself. There were three of us, and we took turns getting the top bunk to ourselves.

When I was 10 we moved from the suburbs of Philadelphia to the thriving mini-metropolis of Glencoe Oklahoma. The house we moved into was an old farmhouse, the original built on that mile section of land. Evidence that it was old? Two closets. What more did a person need if all they wore were work clothes and Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes? Try getting by with five people, with one on the way, two closets and one bathroom. I don't know how my mom did it!

I remember walking into the living room which had one couch in it, and a vinyl floor covering that was supposed to look like carpet and it did a good job on me. I was totally surprised when I walked out onto it and it didn't squish.

There was a propane heater in the living room. Two bedrooms off the living room. One for Mom & Dad, and one for me and my sisters. We sold just about everything to move except for the bunk beds that were installed in one corner of the middle bedroom. Top bunk went to one, the other two slept underneath and we rotated.

The room was dark. I can't remember, but I believe it had a window on the east end that was later turned into a door when we added on to the house. Mom & Dad's room was to the right and a door opened from our room to theirs. On the left, at the end of our bunk beds was another door that opened into the bathroom. We thought it was so cool that we could run around our new house in a circle. Start at the doorway between kitchen and run through the living room, left at Mom and Dad's room, left again (there was no choice--it was that way or smash into the wall, right--land on their bed), straight through our room, through the bathroom, left and voila--back to the kitchen. Don't know how my Mom stood that either. It was a novelty for longer than I think I would like for it to be if I were in her shoes now.

That didn't take in the back porch. The back porch held the washer and dryer, our deep freeze and the cellar and was painted the most hideous Pepto Bismal pink you could imagine. The floor tiles were dark grey with flecks of various colors--chipped in some places, and the heavy wood plank of the cellar door lined the wall between the porch and the kitchen. It didn't dawn on me till many years later that at one point the porch had not been there, that the cellar had been just outside the back door of the house which was the kitchen door.

At the east end of the porch was a small room partitioned off from the rest of the porch. It was tiny, unheated, but when we finally found me a bed, that's where I moved. I was thrilled beyond words. I don't really remember if I'd had my own room before then. I think I had begged for one and then didn't care for it very much and ended up sleeping in the same room as my two sisters most of the time back when we were still in Pennsylvania. But now I had my own spot at a time in life when kids start wanting a space to call their own.

I immediately started a soda can pull top curtain to fill the empty doorway, and got pretty far before they started phasing out the pull tabs. Then I wanted to try some of those gum-wrapper chains, only I hated chewing gum so project bombed pretty quickly. The partition wasn't sheetrocked, and so on my side of the "wall" there were frames and braces where I could put prized possessions. I remember writing stories about these things and posting them alongside the objects--seashells, bird feathers, and other do-dads I don't remember. I had my own radio and a calendar where I kept track of how many times I heard my favorite songs or artists. The sun came in bright in the morning and just outside the small window--I think I had a window! (The things I can't remember!!!) was a patch of white violets that bloomed superabundantly. I could see the little house that stood outside the east yard fence (obviously through a WINDOW!!) and a tomatillo vine (didn't know it was a tomatillo plant then!) wound around the gate. I did know that the tiny fruit hidden inside the paper husks was okay to eat and had a tart taste.

I loved that little room. The only time I was in a hurry to get out of there was when I woke up on winter mornings and could see my breath when I stuck my head out from under the covers. I made a few giant leaps over the porch floor into the kitchen and around the corner to where the propane heater occupied a spot right outside the bedroom I had shared with my sisters. We all huddled around the only heater in the house until we dared dash into the bathroom to change clothes. Oh, there was a little heater in there too.

Later on, when we added the addition to the house, they put a small heater out there on the back porch too. It seems later on I changed rooms with my sister, who had moved into my parent's room when they moved into their bedroom--complete with bathroom--when the two bedrooms and bath were added to the East side of the main house. My violet bed took a hit then, though I still had my window because the addition didn't extend clear to the porch. It stopped at the major wall of the house--the one that had been the outside wall before my spot was added.

Well, I'm exhausted. What a day this has been. I'm going to call it quits and maybe later on I can add more sensory information, but like I said, I'm a little surprised at how little I remember about the bedrooms!

Use as many of the following words as you can in a 10-minute freewrite. Any form of the word is acceptable.

neither, necessary, nothing, nanosecond, neanderthal, name, negotiate, nitwit, nevertheless, Nashville, knight, knuckle.


My knight in shining armor is in Nashville playing knuckleball with his Neanderthal friends. I'm sure he's not given me a nanosecond's thought. Nevertheless, I hope in the morning he can remember his name long enough to negotiate a decent contract. He's not a nitwit, but those friends of his...well they are neither necessary nor upbuilding, but they're his and he's mine, and what am I going to say--them or me? We might get there someday, but not now.

So my parent are wondering why I don't give this up now. Or why I didn't go along. Well, this is the deal. He has opened up a whole new side of me. It's amazing in a way. I knew nothing about the world he floats about with the comfort I float about on an air mattress in a pool. It has made me wonder, for the first time, how much of the world out there I have yet to discover. I never realized how tiny my circle of reference was.

Then I took a job as a temp, and voila--something new every week. First I was just a typist. Then I was a person who separated and counted seeds for a university agronomy department. Then I was part of a landscaping crew and somewhere in between stocking shelves at the Flash and Go, (They really should change the name of that convenience store! It makes me want to do really, really stupid things.) and filing papers for Barnes and Curliew, Attorneys-at-Law I was hired by an organization firm to help clean out this songwriter's office.

How can you not fall for a guy who writes songs? And what's even cooler is that he writes songs you'd never dream he'd write just looking at him. He looks like he'd rather tear apart a car engine than pluck a guitar or plink at a piano. But there underneath the piles and piles of papers (it was incredible!) was a baby grand and a hand-made Charlie Christian arch-top. I wish I could explain the way he transforms when he picks up that guitar. I'll never forget the first time I say it. It was like someone's fairy godmother coming in and sprinkling dust of some kind, and he turned from Bubba Red to Clint Black, only better.

I couldn't help myself. I found his work fascinating, and that hidden core of him just drew me like a heavy-duty magnet. It's still there and still holds me strong. I know that while his buddies are on this trip with him now--as was planned before I came on the scene--that I am going to be part of this for a long time to come. I feel it.

And so the fiction flows....... :)

Ding! Ding!

Create a dialog between a grown man and an imaginary person.

Feeling lazy tonight. I really don't want to do this. I"d rather sit and do something mindless or read or think about tomorrow. But here I am. I'm showing up at the page.

Just couldn't face a word. Not sure I can face a dialog.

"You just have to go away and let me work."

"You? Work? When are you going to give this up? You have a wife. Kids. You spend enough of your time at work. Now you want to come home and play? And at somthing you're not even good at."

"I'm plenty good at it, and for your information, I don't watch TV. I don't go to ball games. I don't grab a drink with the boys. I come home. I help the kid with their homework and Sheila with the dishes. She's putting a jigsaw puzzle together. I can do this."

"You'd be better off putting a puzzle together."

"Oh, get off my back! It would drive me up a wall and you know it."

"Well this is driving me up a wall. There's got to be something else you can do with your free time instead of torturing me."

"You can just take yourself off to bed you know. Go find someone else to bother and leave me in peace. You might be surprised at what I can do if you'd just leave me alone for awhile."

"Okay, I'll shut up. You have ten minutes. Let's see what you put on the page."

"You can't just shut up. You have to GO AWAY! It's like having someone looking over your shoulder while you work. Nothing ever goes well under pressure."

"Ha, ha. You think I'm going to go?"

"Or I'm going to have to start giving you lessons in manners. Look, let's compromise. Can you go away--go help Sheila find edge pieces--and leave me alone completely, and then I'll let you come and tear my work to shreds."

"Oh, boy!"

"If--"

"There's always a catch!"

"If you'll speak to me like a colleague and not a student. I can stand you when you're trying to help and not just being critical."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"Oh, I can do that, no problem."

"You can? Then why haven't you done it before?"

"You haven't asked before."

"You mean all I have to do is ask?"

"You would be so surprised at what you can get me to do. You just have to deal with me instead of trying to ignore me or trying to make me go away. I'm here to stay, but we can figure out a working relationship."

"You're kidding me!"

"You get a little cranky when you're tired. I can see relapses when you should be sleeping or when you're jumping into a new arena. Sometimes you bring the tension on yourself, you know. It's not always me."

"I understand. But doing the same thing over and over gets boring."

"And taking risks opens you to failure. I hate failure."

"It's just a bump in the road. It's never killed you."

"Good point."

"So go do a puzzle, Dude. My time is getting short."

"Oh Sheila. Don't be stupid! It can't be that piece. Are you sure you can do puzzles? What about knitting?"

banausic (buh-NAW-sik, -zik) adjective

Mechanical, utilitarian or routine, as opposed to inspiring or imaginative.

Heh, heh. I wonder why I could relate to this word. I bet every writer can. I bet every creator can.

There's this call among us creative types to write something that is absolutely magnificent. Something that will make the world nod with us in agreement. Something that will make them understand us. So we put a pen to paper. We ruminate and compost, turn and toss and chew on ideas at lengths that would bore a cow, and in the end the most frustrating thing is to turn out a banausic piece that we don't have the courage to let anyone else read.

But save it.

The thing is, you may just not have at the moment the dressing you need to bring that piece out of the banausic realm and into the ah-ha realm. And you know, I'm learning the more I write that sometimes it's the simple things that sound utilitarian or routine that do the most good. Because sometimes when we're trapped in the mechanical sort of things that fill our days over and over and over again, we'll read something that reaffirms that we are not alone. That others have the same struggles, the same fears, the same bore-you-to-tears routine, and somehow they survive. Or they learn how to overcome it for a minute, or an hour, or a month, or a lifetime. They shine a light down our trail so that we can see the stumbling blocks or the paradise that lurks in the shadows.

In turn we can shine that light for others. The words may seem banausic, but that doesn't mean they can't be arranged creatively. That sparks of personality can't shine through and brighten someone else's path. You know that saying about one man's trash being another's treasure. I think that sometimes our "stuff" becomes junk in that it's just too familiar. Set it out on the curb and it will be exactly what someone else is looking for. Your words can be that way too.

So it doesn't matter how banausic the piece seems. How mechanical, routine or unimaginative the words spill, let them spill. Maybe you'll get creative as you wipe them up, dust them off, rearrange them. But it's better to have them to manipulate than be faced with the blank page.

Write, write, write, write, write. (Very banausic phrasing, wouldn't you say?)

:)

swivet (SWIV-it) noun

A state of anxiety, discomposure or agitation. (Usually used in the phrase "in a swivet".)

I spent all day in a swivet. I so need a routine.

Yes this is me. The one who hated them. The one who thought routines tied you down, made you dull.

I'd rather be dull than in a swivet.

I got up way too late. Again. Mind you, I did very well last week, mostly because my dh was getting up early and leaving. I have this cold, too. Makes me want to sleep. It's been cloudy and cold and generally wintery which I can't complain about really as the winter has been so mild in comparison to other parts of the country. But being solar powered, cloudy days just don't give me energy. However, the sun did decide to shine this morning.

But this morning I just couldn't make myself be in a hurry to get out of bed. I woke up achy--head, sinuses and other stuff that I wouldn't let myself dwell on. I just can't stand letting myself lay there (or is it lie!?! In a swivet here!!!) and count my aches and pains as the first chore of the day. Rick was kind enough to bring me some ibuprofen and a piece of toast with peanut butter, and I was going to see if I could let the headache die out, but then I just couldn't stand being in bed anymore and so I figured it would just as likely go away if I moved slowly than if I was motionless. You know--get the blood pumping a litte.

I don't really remember what I did after that, but I do remember that the headache didn't go away. I needed to go get groceries and run other errands, but I could barely make myself think about leaving the house. Until the weather report came in. Nasty stuff tomorrow--maybe. Maybe rain. Maybe freezing rain. Maybe snow. You know, had I stayed in this afternoon we'd have gotten massive amounts of road-closing something just because there wasn't an egg in the house. But I got my achy head out the door. Was actually glad to let my son drive me around town. We have eggs in the house now. We won't get a drop of precip.

I forgot that today was the 3rd and that everyone else who had thought about going grocery shopping tomorrow probably watched the weather too and did the same thing as me. The stores were horrendous. I'm going to have to watch the calendar and go early, early, early at the top of the month. Anyway the trip to the store was a nightmare. Then I still had to face coming home and finding something to cook that everyone would eat.

My darling was wearing his superhero cape today. He came home from work and grilled chicken for me. When he is sweet he is the sweetest. I made a good choice. There are times when I'd tell you that I was an idiot. THOSE are the times when I'm an idiot. He told me last night, "Don't look now, but I think we're getting old together." :) That's okay. I'm in great company.

At any rate, the swivet is over for the most part. Kitchen is clean and all I have to do is....

OH MY--tomorrow's workshop.

Swivet returns! I'm outta here!