Honey, Im home!

Hi, I'm back, I missed you. I have wrapped up school and now I have to make the next contract. It's always a dog of one sort or another chasing my rear! I am relieved to have finished that school term and am reveling in my tertiary credit. I noticed that I was just exhausted after finishing up various writing projects, sewing together things and always trying to get to the pool. I love the new habits, though. I'm going to hunt something down to put on here. It;s someplace in my emails let me find it. It's a confession of how many things Ive started (writing) It was meant to be an evaluation for school but it soon wandered on a walkabout and although I didn't dare use it for something as formal as a school evaluation, I thought it had value. It reveals my A-1 good intentions to write. I know some people say "better not talk about projects in the making, thus let the energy out" where (I guess) it will run away and find a new owner and they (not I) will make the kazillion dollars and the Caldecott/ Nobel prizes while I'm still pondering or (worse yet) talking about how I'm going to write it.
Well I say "phooey!" My good ideas aren't going to run off to a new thinker/doer- they are going to be promiscuous and actually multiply! I'm letting them out! Even if someone took my story line, it would be different than what I would write. If the flow of what I'm thinking is getting out there, then that's progress. Darn it, I'm trying to be a writer and assert that I have something to say, aint I! Let's go! Keep it coming, churn out the pieces 123.
Well It doesn't work that way, really. At this stage, at least there is a lot of crumpled paper and rewrites that make me wonder: which was better, the raw or the refined? Here is the excerpt so You can have a look see into my little brain.

We (my illustrator friend and I) are working on a children's book about an Alligator which comes up the sewer and his host's creative solution to get him back home. The story is written in alliteration. Further children's stories are in various half composed shambles on the floor of my little life. What's Your Treat? is a comparative journey of what various people and animal's favorite treats are. The Old original "Down at Katrina's Cafe" mother/daughter seaside restaurant book got a visit from a storm ridden mermaid. She's working a few shifts before she goes back to her watery ways.

I have barely started work on a novel, as well, which is about a woman who gives up a child earlier in life with legal clause to be notified if the adoptive parents die. They do, She gets contacted, she oozes with guilty motherhood and shuts up her unconventional remote life to return and 'become' a parent. Everything takes a strange turn when it is revealed that the child is responsible for the deaths. I have the vague plot outlined (obviously) and I have written a couple of scenes out, specifically the aborted abortion and the labor. They are just scraps, but they weren't there before. I think I'll either get a book on the process of writing a novel or take the Massey course. I have friends on San Juan Island working on novels, they support each other in a writer's group, also.

Did you see the gardening poems that I sent? To me,they don't shine so much, after getting a scope of what a poem is supposed to be like from my writing class, Deception, nuance without a prescribed agenda....a lie that tells the truth.

This is just a reject communication to my adviser, but it gives you an idea of my octopus approach to creative writing. We'll see which ones will make it to the finish line, now, wont we.

Speaking of finish lines, I have my most challenging swim coming up on Sunday the 30th of March. The Rangitoto to St. Helliers swim. Its 4.6 kilometers and I'm getting scared! I went to the swimming clinic a couple of days ago and had a run in with some organism that 'stings' you , although it is painless when it happens, the result is almost exactly like a mosquito bite. My torso looks like it was in a cage with 250 mosquitoes and my hands were restrained! I haven't counted them, but even Lillian was impressed( and she holds the record for the most bug bites in our family) Is this legitimate excuse to back out? I suppose I could get a darned wet suit like everyone else and it wouldn't be an issue. I'm such a purist/snob when it comes to wearing my own skin to swim in. I think Ill take the kids on the Rangitoto ferry tomorrow to check out the scene and see how many big red (read painful) jellyfish there are between here and there. I have looked forward to this swim with ambition and trepidation for months. I want to hear corks popping when I drag my soggy self outta that water! I have the adoring children and proud husband at the shore in the scrapbook of my future that I leaf through all the time.