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Showing posts from February, 2011

Can Stripping in Your Car Lead to True Love?

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It was already dark by the time I circled the parking lot at the restaurant. I was two hours late and I still had to change into my formal gown. I was afraid to go into the restaurant to put it on in case my date should see me before I was ready to see him. I hoped to find a fast-food restaurant or a gas station nearby to change, but instead I drove past office building after office building with no luck. Time was running out. With a deep sigh- what a long day it had been- I pulled into a dark parking lot and drove to the farthest corner I could find. "Any Hobos out there?" I wondered. "Enjoy the show." It went against at least 95% of my upbringing and training to strip in my car in a parking lot, but I decided to follow the 5% that told me not to stand up a date and suck it up and do it anyway. By the way, formal gowns were not meant to be gotten into easily. There wasn't much room in my tiny, two door car, but I decided to make the best of it. My elbows kept s

Would you like some cheese with that...

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Warning: The following post is extremely whiny. If you are a "pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps-and-stop-whining sort of person, this post will merely irritate and enrage you. I haven't written a poem in three months. My Alvinia short story is stalled. My Marilyn Marlin book will probably never see the light of day. This blog is supposed to be about trying to get published, and the various wacky adventures I face along the way...but I haven't submitted anything for publication in like 4 months. I've got nothing. Do you think creativity is a finite resource? I think it must be. I only have so much of it, and I spend way too much on things that don't really matter (cough...yearbook...cough) and by the end of a long day teaching kids, directing a play, and creating this frustrating yearbook...I don't have much to write about. I feel like I'm betraying myself by not putting my time and creativity towards writing, and putting it, instead, into parts of a job

Comedia Dell Arte meets Thunder Lizard?

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Comedia Del Arte' Harlequin by Jason Foster In the high school drama classes I teach, we discuss Comedia Dell Arte. Also, Dinosaurs come up pretty frequently. One of my bright little darlings created this image today; I thought it was worth sharing.

Sometimes I'm just Idiot-Woman Again.

"Sheriff's Department, how can I help you?" "I'm calling to report some vandalism. I teach at the high school and one of my tires was slashed." "We'll send someone right over." I hadn't wanted to call the Sheriff's Deparment. I had seen the slash mark on my tire, and it irritated me, but getting kids in trouble for slashing tires is like getting kids in trouble for having hormones. There is a law of teaching high school, "Anything that can be destroyed...will be destroyed...even if it's your car." So honestly, I wasn't too mad about it. In my experience, kids just break, maul, and slash for no really good reason except that they're kids and they are sometimes idiots. Sometimes they have a vendetta against you, but other times it's just random destruction. But after a kindly young custodian changed my tired and I got home and told my husband about the whole thing, he gave me that "someone-has-threatened-m

Sure I'm trailer-trash- Do you have a problem with that?

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One of the hardest questions that has plagued my writing has simply been, "What do I write about?" I have often heard the advice, "Write about what you know." Well, when I started writing and really putting my mind to it, I was only twenty-one. Basically, all I knew was high school, college, and a few European countries I'd visited during college. I didn't have very much to say for myself. I made myself write anyway with some good results, but nothing really stellar. Starting this blog last year gave me an excellent lab to bounce my ideas off of readers. By far my most popular peices have been about the wacky situations I manage to get myself into. I'm not a stupid person, but sometimes....I do some very silly things. Anyway, I'm twenty-seven now and the past six years have helped me come up with some new ideas that I think will be very successful. My husband and I have been building our own home and living in a 30 foot trailer in my in-law's fr

"Please Rip my Work to Shreds."

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A few years ago, I studied creative writing during my Semester at Oxford. I was at a turning point in my writing and really wanted to know if it was worth pursuing writing, basically, "do I have what it takes?" My creative writing tutor seemed pretty unimpressed and when I left England, it was with the impression that perhaps I did not have the "right stuff," to be a writer. Thankfully, I didn't listen to my tutor. I wanted to write and no amount of insecurity was going to stop me. I still have a long road to go before I will be a good writer, but I have learned some valuable lessons through my attempts. Over time I have discovered that there is no such thing as writing talent . There is no "it." There is only me, a blank computer screen, and my own persistence. Successful writers write. and write. and write. They improve. Succesful writers work and work and work and eventually their work turns into what someone else might see as "talent,"