I am finally done with “Hiding in Plain Sight”, my latest book. And I am done with the whole thing. I think this book needs a long hibernation in a dark drawer before I touch it again. It is not a good book, and I don’t say that lightly. It is the first draftiest version of a first draft I have written since my first copy of my first book. It tells rather than shows way too often, and I don’t know if it’s salvageable.
At the same time, I already know what I need to do with the last two chapters. I just don’t know if I have the energy to do it yet.
The story I’m writing is going so badly. I don’t think I’m ever going to finish it, even though it is mostly done. There’s not enough action in it; too much emotional drama; too much talking. There’s not enough there there.
I should probably finish it and then relegate it to a figurative drawer somewhere to age. Or rot. I’m not sure which.
I’m not feeling a strong affinity to writing lately. It could be because of this book. It could be that I don’t like this book because I’m not feeling like much of a writer. I’m not sure which, but this book is making me grouchy.
Today is supposed to be a stormy day, the kind of storm that comes with a side of three-inch hail and possibility of tornados. The worst of it is going to be north of us, I understand, but we are in an “enhanced” zone.
I hope the storm waits until we’re all home. This afternoon, I am at work for meetings, and I don’t want to deal with sitting in Colden Hall’s basement waiting for the all-clear. I’m CERT-trained, which means I can act in mass disasters to stabilize injuries and reduce the chaos. I hope to never use my training.
If I’m at home for the bad weather, my husband and I will go to the basement and wait for it to pass. The city has sirens, but we also have weather apps on our phones to alert us. The cats will follow us down. The basement is unfinished and cluttered, but there are chairs downstairs for us.
I hate tornado weather. I can handle severe thunderstorms, even though one took out our peach tree and a length of fence recently. I don’t like the destructive level of tornado weather. Towns get taken out by tornados, and I don’t want to be in the middle of one of them.
Maryville, MO is not part of Tornado Alley, but you would never guess that with the weather we’ve been having for the past couple weeks.
Last week, we were in the basement waiting out tornado warnings two days in a row. Tonight, we’ll be in an enhanced risk area with the possibility of being in the basement one more time. Makes me wish we had a fully finished basement, preferably with a wet bar. Not that I drink, but it sounds cool.
I’ve been prepping for a class called Disaster Psychology, which I will teach this fall. The first module is all about defining disasters as opposed to smaller-scale emergencies. Disasters involve large to mass-scale injuries and often deaths. They overwhelm a locality’s emergency services, and often require state and federal response. The media responds with on-the-scene missives, often lamenting about the lack of response when the emergency response is actually robust. On the individual level, people’s lives are upended and touched with tragedy.
Knowing this makes it a little harder to feel reassured going into that basement. Knowing the strength of emergency response makes it easier. As a CERT-trained individual, I may be part of that response. Most likely, I would be a Red Cross volunteer in sheltering (I have a certification) or a disaster case manager (I have a certification there as well, at least in another county that offered them).
Most of our tornado damage here, however, has been slight, and I hope for our sakes it stays that way.
I haven’t written for a couple of days, and I have little time to write today. I feel like writing, because I haven’t written on my book, either.
Things have been going well. After the author fair I attended on Sunday, I watched my flat cart roll down a hill at an alarming speed1. Luckily, it hit no cars. Sometimes “going well” is relative.
I have a very busy couple of weeks. Internship visits today and tomorrow. Wednesday I have a moulage2 session for the Northwest Missouri Docudrama (don’t drink/text and drive simulation), followed by an internship presentation. Thursday should calm down, but the following week is Missouri Hope, the major moulage event of the year.
I’m hoping to carve out some time to write between these happenings and the usual tasks to teaching and grading. A little Starbucks time would be nice. At least I got to type this out.
It’s a Monday, a quiet Monday, with no visitors and an hour till class. I’m prepared for class, as prepared as I’m going to be. I even cleaned the sticky residue of stickers from my employer-supplied laptop. No chaos, no disasters.
It’s the first full week of classes, and if I think things will stay quiescent, I have learned nothing from my 23 years (24?) here. Something will happen, whether it’s me passing out from the residue of Goo Gone fumes, a student with an out-of-commission car (Oops, already happened!), or the Internet crashing. I don’t trust the calmness.
Frighteningly, I don’t relish the calmness. Not wishing a disaster on someone, but I like at least some activity in my office hours. The student who can’t find the supplemental book at the bookstore, the visitor asking for direction to an office, or the visit from a former student —
Words Like Me 