I Wish I Could Talk to You

Daily writing prompt

Who would you like to talk to soon?

I’m a pretty self-contained person. I really don’t feel the need to talk to anyone, except my friend and mentor Les, who died some years ago at age 95.

I talked to him the other day in a dream. I ran into him on a stair landing and gave him a hug. He told me he was in a hurry because he needed to meet his other family, and we parted ways. That was the most real dream I’ve ever had; maybe I really did talk to him.

If I were to talk to him again, I would tell him how my life has changed since my bipolar diagnosis, how I didn’t feel like crying for hours anymore, how my crushes didn’t control me. I would tell him I had more trouble feeling in touch with the spiritual world and how that worried me. I would tell him how my ordinary day reflected quiet joy, and how a lot of that had to do with my husband. He would know I was in a good place.

I would thank him again for all the times he listened to me, above and beyond the line of duty. How I don’t think I would have gotten through life without that. And I would apologize for all those times, because if I had been in my right mind I wouldn’t have needed so much support.

We talked about all this before, a few years before he died, so it’s not unfinished business between us. But I would talk to him again about it, because I am so bewildered about what it means to be become sane after fifty years of crying jags. Who was I and who am I now? He might have known better than I did.

Writers’ Block

I’ve been suffering from writers’ block lately

I’m trying to finish Kel and Brother Coyote Save the Planet, but I’m dealing with serious writers’ block lately. I’ve been doing marketing stuff in the morning (even if the things I have down the pipeline are stalled) and sleeping in the afternoon. This may mean I’m depressed; I don’t know. But I do know I’ve been staring at that manuscript and coming up with nothing.

This is a job for Camp NaNo

NaNoWriMo, as I’ve mentioned in these pages, is a world-wide event where people attempt to write 50k words toward a novel in the month of November. Camp NaNo occurs in May and August, and it’s a smaller, less onerous event that I like to think of as training wheels for NaNo. You can pick your word count (as long as it’s over 10k) and feel free to work on something other than word count, such as editing. (Note: you can do that for NaNo as well, keeping in mind that 1 hour editing = 1000 words).

I’m going to put Kel and Brother Coyote as my Camp project (plus editing/plotting for another project) to see if it motivates me. Given that Camp (and NaNo) are a combination of gamification and camaraderie, I think I have a fighting chance.

I need a new project

Finishing up these old projects isn’t very motivating. In fact, I would really like to start something new. I just haven’t been inspired lately. I get motivated by relationship between people, and the short story list I have doesn’t seem to do that. (It’s very clever and science fiction-y, because my husband helped me with it.)

I want to write another novel. Real absorption into a world. But I need ideas for that as well.

Give me ideas

If you have any ideas for a romantic fantasy, let me know!

A Short Poem

This, as always, may get revised. I like how it started being about one thing and ended up about something else:

Ephemera

I do not see pictures in my head,

Or not as you do – this old slide

Of yellowed Kodachrome slides past my mind

I see hair or expression, never both.

I stare at you when you are here with me,

I memorize your patterns: swinging hair,

Glasses, a squint, a laugh, a lumbering walk,

All of those together equal you.

I fear to lose you in a crowd;

Too many people almost look like you

I live on faith that you’ll come back to me