I love you

So I’ve been thinking “I love you” toward people for two weeks now, and the results have surprised me:

  • Love is a verb, as Buckminster Fuller once said. I don’t feel all gushy toward anyone.
  • Related to this, I feel more centered and less ecstatic. I suppose this is normal for the rest of you, but remember I have occasional mania, and I equate lovingkindness with mania.
  • I don’t know that I feel any more loved than before, but it doesn’t bother me as much.
  • I am being followed by dragonflies. Everywhere. 

Think good thoughts — I’m struggling to write.

Sorry I haven’t been writing lately. I’ve been on the road for a friend’s birthday party, and today I’ve been writing — very slowly. It turns out my “revision” of Mythos/Apocalypse is actually becoming a serious rewrite of the first section of the book. As in starting from scratch, in third person, new information, and cutting back on some of the extraneous storybuilding.

I don’t know what I think about it. This is why writing is going so slowly — two hours later and I’m still on the same page, two paragraphs down. I usually write faster than that. Much faster. I’m hoping that this is just a temporary slowdown and not a serious writer’s block.

Think good thoughts for me.

To the Bot that keeps visiting —

To Unknown Region (I know you’re a bot): Why have you hit my site 4 times in the past 24 hours?

Do you expect more than one post a day?

Do you find reading the content difficult?

Wait — are you in love with me?

I would love writing that story someday, about the bot that falls in love with a writer and defects from Russia only to latch itself to the blog, change its own programming, and find new readers. Or maybe immolate itself in defeating its programming. Or become a ghost in the machine, a perpetually twenty-year-old poet type in an unrequited relationship.

Ok, weird and romantic, maybe a little steampunk, probably done before. But it appeals to me.

Back in the Swing — oops!

Yesterday, I could finally look at Whose Hearts are Mountains and shape the parts I’d abandoned while answering the developmental edits on Prodigies (which I  need to ship out to other agents at some point).

I think it’s a better story than I thought previously.
Honestly, I’m trying to figure out what to do with all the Archetype universe stuff since the first book, Mythos, is such a royal mess. (Or maybe it’s not — I have an idea …)

****
Just got done rearranging a lot of things. I’m doing serious surgery on Mythos (cutting it drastically back; merging it with Apocalypse) and my developmental editor Chelsea Harper is now editing my first book, which may be the original Lost Cause. That means putting off the end of Whose Hearts are Mountains. Whee.

I have to keep reminding myself that writing is a growing experience.

Review: Board Game Cafe, Maryville MO

We have a small business in our town called Board Game Cafe, and it turns out that they’re the best coffeehouse in town. I don’t know how well they build a cappuccino, and their menu doesn’t offer the frappufoofoocino of their local competitors, but everything I’ve tried on their menu (including the pastries supplied by Ali, our town’s excellent baker) passes the coffreehouse test. For welcoming space, they’ve won the title in Maryville, in my opinion.

Coffeehouse atmosphere is not a difficult thing for the most part. It shouldn’t be shiny, it shouldn’t be crowded, it should be a bit quirky with perhaps primitive cabinets or old school shelves or found items on the wall. It should have its own personality — when corporate coffee chains try to duplicate the look, they fail. Board Game Cafe has a spacious look, with a second-hand couch and chairs in the front window, and sets of tables (because it is a board game cafe as well) along the front. The color scheme is grey/white/black and, although it could use a little more color and quirk, perhaps from game-themed posters, it’s unique for a coffeehouse because of its board game theme (as opposed to jute coffee sacks other coffeehouses have). I wish they had a little bit more brown and less grey in their palette to provide a warm feeling, but for the most part it carries off the coffeehouse aesthetic well.

All the Cafe needs to be a real coffeehouse is clientele, because a good coffeehouse cultivates a set of regulars who provide the incentive for other people to discover after peering through the windows. The Cafe doesn’t get a lot of traffic right now, at least in part because it doesn’t yet have Wi-Fi. They’re holding out until they get enough profit to buy some muscular security for a Wi-Fi system, and I can’t blame them given liability potential. Until then, I bring my hot spot in if I want to write there.

Anyone out there: Would you like to help this coffeehouse realize this potential? Visit it. Have coffee with your friends. Play a couple board games (they have everything from Dungeons and Dragons to CandyLand.) Tell me what you think.

WAKE UP!

I’m trying to write something meaningful, and I’m failing. Mostly because I’m falling asleep at my desk.

I could write down the stream of consciousness I face when I sleep, but there is a green field far away/I hope to find it some fine day* (repeat and fade) and I’d rather sing along (repeat and fade) than be inspired at the moment … zzz …

My drowsiness does not seem to understand Robert Frost’s words: ” … and miles to go before I sleep …” I know he was talking about death, morbid spirit that he was, but I’ve got a full day today and naptime doesn’t seem to understand that. I’m dressed up, I’m ready to teach, and — zzzzz …

I am falling asleep sitting up. Sitting up. It’s a good thing I can’t sleep standing up, otherwise class today could be very … different.  Zzzzz …

I’ve had two cups of coffee. By cups, I mean 12 ounces, or about 2x the amount in those styrofoam shot glasses they call a coffee cup. This means that I’ve had a total of a pint and a half of — zzzzz …

Can I sleepwalk through work? Not an option — especially since teaching has a touch of acting in it, and I must show my true enthusiasm for this topic externally, which can’t happen if I — Zzzzzz …

It’s okay, I’ll wake up as soon as I have to drive to work. It’s not good sleeping while driving — Zzzzz …

*Waterboys, “The Return of Pan”. Great song.

Settling in

Second day of the semester, and I’m struggling to write.

It may be that I need to put away Whose Hearts are Mountains for another work, perhaps a new work, but I’m not inspired yet.

I’m not panicking yet, because I blame my lack of inspiration on the energy it takes to start a new school year. Once I get settled into the year, I’ll be inspired to do something — hopefully a totally new thing — when I have space in my head.

In the meantime, I’ll give myself time to do the  blog almost every day, and sit for an hour with my computer screen,waiting for the ideas to come.

I’ll let you know when something happens.

I love you.

I love you.

I’ve gotten off track in my life. There was a time I held those three words in my mind when encountering everyone.

I learned that trick during a massage class years ago with Patch Adams (yes, that Patch Adams for those in the know). He saw massage as a way of giving to others and not a way to get into someone’s pants. (“If you want to get into someone’s pants, tell them, ‘Hey, I’d like to get into your pants.’ If you want to give them a massage, ask to give them a massage.”) He also told the class that if they held the thought “I love you” in their minds, it would make the massage better. And I did, because at that age it was easy for me to love.

As I got older, people seemed less approachable than they were when I was in college. I forgot how to give massages. I forgot how to hug. I forgot to hold “I love you” in my mind when interacting with people. I found myself burdened by grudges, jealousy, all those adult feelings that get in the way.

Last night, during my meditation, my wiser self reminded me of those words, and included others that would help people’s souls:

I love you.
I thank you for being here.
You are beautiful.

I will not say them out loud, because there’s so much baggage with these words, as if we were trying to get into someone’s pants rather than give a massage with no strings attached.

I love you.
I thank you for being here.
You are beautiful.

The Rituals of a New Year

Tomorrow is the first day of my 25th fall semester as a professor.

I could say it doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, but I’ve been doing this long enough that I don’t remember not going through the rituals of the beginning of the semester — writing syllabi, preparing course sites, figuring out what I need to say on the first day of the semester to keep from sounding like an idiot.
I don’t remember a fall semester where I haven’t had the nightmares born of the fear that things will not go well on the first day — the A/V equipment fails, the classroom is made up of walls and nooks such that some of the students can’t see or hear the lecture, I’m late for class, the students get frustrated and leave, I’m standing in front of the class in my underwear … dealing with the fear spawns its own ritual, that of re-preparing in the last minute so that nothing goes wrong.
What I wear to my first day of classes each year is its own ritual. It’s one of the few days I wear a suit, to remind myself that I’m not going into class naked like in my dreams. 
Twenty-five years teaching, and in some ways it’s like my first day, when I stood in front of my class in a navy blue suit. One of my students, in a thick Long Island accent, asked “Are you lost?” (It sounded to my midwestern ears as “Awwe yew Lawst?”)
“No, I’m the professor for this class,” I said.
“Ohh, I thought you were a student,” she proclaimed.