Friday Night

Suddenly, we are going to watch a movie because suddenly my husband returned home from work this evening with the movie pictured left and “Casino Royale”, for which he is assigned to watch the beginning of for a certain vital writing project purpose, for which the Person-That-Is requested such a “Casino Royale” beginning. And “Indiana Jones” beginning. And—well. I know my husband. Stirred, not shaken. And he’s funny, too—a writer with an intense sense of humor. Except that he doesn’t believe in Big Foot…

I am not looking forward to the movie, but I am looking forward to the beginning sequence of “Casino Royale”, but only the beginning, because these days it’s simply: James. So. What, Man, so what. Come on. No woots. Come. On.

If my husband ever emerges from our toddler’s bedroom, this is the movie/research/movie evening that awaits me. Until then, I continue to freak out over why Windows 7 will not communicate with our wireless printer, thereby interrupting

E V E R Y T H I N G.

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Book Club

Tonight I will NOT WRITE so that I may attend book club. This evening’s topic is “The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society”. No one is bringing potato peel pie, but someone is stopping off at a British Shoppe and bringing British treats. Someone else is bringing champagne. Someone else is bringing champagne (I am a copycat). I thought I would detest this book, but instead was charmed by the characters, setting and stories of German occupation. I doubt I will ever be charmed by Proust in quite the same manner. No, I’m sure of it. My question for the club is: As mothers (it’s all mothers in my group), how do you feel about Elizabeth’s actions with the Nazi Gorgon, when she (Elizabeth, of course) was so, so close to getting out of the concentration camp? Could she have stopped herself—for her child? Are her actions in or out of character, an obvious plot device, or tragic in a true literary, edge-of-your-seat, I-will-defend-this-book-to-my-grave, ILOVEELIZABETH manner. Just curious.

Until tomorrow night—cheers.

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Distraction

I know all about distraction. Writers are always griping about it at conferences and on their writing blogs—about dusting behind headboards and vacuuming behind toilets and taking walks in heatwaves to buy lottery tickets and FBing, IMing, texting, checking email every 5 mintues, about gazing at People.com and clipping toenails and making popsicles and hanging out at Big Foot websites analyzing Big Foot photos and downloading bizarre Big Foot screams, instead of you-know-what. Continue reading

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Rough Evening…

I’m supposed to be right there, working.
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Big Foot cont.

WTF?

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Seduced By Big Foot

A poetry evening as I prepare my BB submission, the deadline approaching faster than—that’s it, my brain just clicked off. It’s only 9:20p.m. I believe the MWO intensive (see previous post) made me more exhausted than when I left for the trip, despite naps. The current San Fernando Valley heatwave might also be contributing to fatigue, since living in the city named after a fragrant West Indian plant is actually like:

Living downwind of Big Foot’s exhale.

Or, rather, constantly trying to escape it. 

Yikes.

Note: 10:21 p.m. Dang it. What’s that noise?

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Away Again

I returned from the Writer’s Retreat Intensive (see previous post) only to depart for another intensive involving many mothers away from their husbands and children for 2 days and 2 nights. During this intensive, I did not write. I did, however, make it through another paragraph of the Proust masterpiece, edited poems and I had a margarita and ocean gazing and game playing intensives with extremely enjoyable others. I ate filet mignon enchiladas, napped, beach walked and attended 2 free wine and cheese events. I engaged in vital information-sharing conversations that are now sitting in my soul. So—yes. I read a pinch of Proust. And now, it’s too late even for Facebook and I am f***ing exhausted from being away from my little family for the first time ever—but that’s another blog…

Will continue tomorrow as my writer’s promises, also made over the intense intensive weekend, are honored.

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Writer’s Retreat Musings…

I.

I reclined on a chaise longue on a Spanish-style patio (meaning wide, faux-adobe tile and iron and wood furniture), appreciating water chiming from the mouth of a stone lion—not a spooky, Lil’ Orphan Annie-eyed stone lion, but a handsome one—sun and shade mad flickers on my skin thanks to the mini-leaves of a crepe myrtle tree, laptop in place. My son napped in the guestroom a few feet away, the room’s French doors open, so that I could easily glance at his dramatic nap-sprawl on the bed, appeasing the city-woman in me on alert for starving mountain lions or escaped boa constrictors with a knack for ferreting out snoozing babes. I worked—more contentedly than I have at my own home in a long time. Point being, really: Daylight—and I was writing.

Escape. It feeds the soul.

II.

I wander, listening to each room, examining the Peruvian artifacts placed in moodily-lit niches. It’s night. My son sleeps. I am: alone. Except for horse. And mask.

 

In another life, housesitting such an artifact  would have straightened my hair with terror—but I like this mask. I toasted it with my glass of wine. Lovely, I told it.

We’re cool.

III.

You know you’re away from everything that is glaringly familiar when you can sing your son to sleep in one room, walk past the horse niche and clown mask without worrying horror-eyes are following you, step down a couple of chatty wooden steps into a living room with a grand piano, sit at that piano and run your fingers over the keys without using the soft pedal and not wake your son.

And you don’t freak yourself out that Norma Desmond is going to float down the staircase you gaze at from your seat on the piano bench.

 Memory worked my fingers for over an hour. Oh! Listen! Nothing but pressed piano keys, lion fountain and the grandfather clock’s personal machine-stirrings.

These days, I am so not afraid to be alone. Alone and in charge. Alone at night with frozen-gait-horse and the mask. Alone with a piano—morphing from that situation to alone with my laptop. It is strange and nice. To have this time, I mean–this moodily lit time-niche. 

This is what motherhood has done to me: made me bold. 

This is the boldness I will set loose on my work.

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Retreat…

For the next few days I will be away on a writer’s retreat, an intensive, an all-writing-all-the-time sort of deal—but with my son and no husband, so what this really means is time alone with my Toshiba next to a fountain on a Spanish-style patio after 8:00p.m., lit candle, glass of wine, sweet bubbly sounds and no internet—writing intensive. Also talking intensive as I work on my Moth pieces and cutting them from two weeks of blab to 1 minute only. I shall powerwalk. I shall expose my child to mountain trails and sandcastles and parks with terminally friendly dogs. I shall edit and cut. I will write. I shall not dream.

It also means GRANDMA and therefore solo powerwalks on the beach. The beach, Hendry’s in particular, never fails to inspire, remind (me of ideas and dreams), refresh and exorcise angst. I shall take full advantage and report back. Until then, Suck it monkeys, I’m going Bohemian. So Sorry. I mean, Aloha.

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My Gift For Blab…

9:46 pm.

I don’t have it! That gift of easy-going gab. And yet—when I read what I’ve written for Moth Radio’s handy recording-a-submission feature, I carry on for two days instead of the minute they require.

Who am I?

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Errors

Not EROS, but ERRORS, yes, I need a proofreader, one non-computer-generated. I have to work fast, because of the even faster-moving toddler, so there are going to be eros when I write during the day. I mean ERRORS! Arrrrgh.

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Past Blasting

10:10p.m.

Finished typing in my Reagan piece for the Moth Radio submission and wrote the first paragraph of my Marriage piece for 2nd Moth Radio submission—not this marriage, but an earlier marriage, one so very, very early and bizarre I can hardly believe it happened. Or, yes, I can. Of course.

Hoping that tonight I will not experience (cue ghastly music): Dreams Of PB’s Past. I really don’t deserve them.

Really.

But does make for a story. Or—memoirs.

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Not Writing, but…

Then: morning–brisk and blue, damp grass, cat paw prints on the pergo, budgie whistling at finches picking the white fly from the hibiscus monster outside the kitchen window, the boy enjoying his breakfast, sun, sun, sun.

Last night my husband and I reclined on my office, pillows at our backs, our work tethered securely to the fringes of the evening. We reconnected on a Thursday night—not complaining, but sharing. Reconnecting must be something we love to do as suddenly it was after 10p.m. and neither of us knew where the time had gone, only that we had heard fresh stories and peeked into respective daily goings-on. He went back to work and I turned off the light, listening to our house breathe, a poem forming in my head, not a pinch of angst in any firing synapse.

The cleansing quality of communication.

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Working

Salvaging my Reagan piece for submission to Moth Radio. Continue reading

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PB’s Wonderful World of Writing

In addition to here: www.pbrippey.com and here: http://pbrippeyblogma.com, you can now find me here, right here, right where you are, reading with your suspicions and mistrust and well-guarded interest. Recline. Sip your stiff, p.m. dirty martini. Read the following: What in the wild heck am I doing here? This: Writing about writing, late at night, after I’ve really written, i.e., behaved like a professional writer, the one wearing peacock feathers in her hair as she taps her computer keys, sea in her eyes, beach sand in her ears, beach tar on her perpetually bare feet, her toddler in bed, her husband–(paid) professional writer—in his own writing world, the cats roaming their night-yard, the budgie with beak-under-wing (where oh where can I purchase peacock feathers…).

Take another sip of your dirty martini. Better yet, switch to a gimlet, and read:

This blog is for the writer-in-me waking up to her edits, new writing schedule, marketing strategies. I will occasionally ”report back” here with writerly sorts of impressions gained from other writerly-type blogs just soooooo original or ridiculous or insanely like love. All blog-writing I will do from my bed office, deep in suburbia, where baby finches drop from the trees and hide in my potato vines until they can fly; where cats regularly gak on my printed out poems, as if providing their opinion on my work; where the toddler roars and rarely snores (although this is improving, hence this blog); where I have laid to rest my gypsy life for housewife, or SAHM, or Bemused Mother, the hardest, most interesting job I’ve ever had, requiring the sort of vigilance I’d be wise to turn loose on my writing—once and for all.

I have a middle-grade novel and an adult novel needing attention. Both are finished—one more than the other. One has received positive reviews and requests for full ms. from literary agencies, though has yet to procure me an agent. Therefore, vigilance=edits and marketing and heeding promises and guidelines made in this blog. And away we go.

In addition to here: www.pbrippey.com and here: http://pbrippeyblogma.com, you can now find me here, right here, right where you are, reading with your suspicions and mistrust and well-guarded interest. Recline. Sip your stiff, p.m. dirty martini. Read the following: What in the wild heck am I doing here? This: Writing about writing, late at night, after I’ve really written, i.e., behaved like a professional writer, the one wearing peacock feathers in her hair as she taps her computer keys, sea in her eyes, beach sand in her ears, beach tar on her perpetually bare feet, her toddler in bed, her husband–(paid) professional writer—in his own writing world, the cats roaming their night-yard, the budgie with beak-under-wing (where oh where can I purchase peacock feathers…).

Take another sip of your dirty martini. Better yet, switch to a gimlet, and read:

This blog is for the writer-in-me waking up to her edits, new writing schedule, marketing strategies. I will occasionally ”report back” here with writerly sorts of impressions gained from other writerly-type blogs just soooooo original or ridiculous or insanely like love. All blog-writing I will do from my bed office, deep in suburbia, where baby finches drop from the trees and hide in my potato vines until they can fly; where cats regularly gak on my printed out poems, as if providing their opinion on my work; where the toddler roars and rarely snores (although this is improving, hence this blog); where I have laid to rest my gypsy life for housewife, or SAHM, or Bemused Mother, the hardest, most interesting job I’ve ever had, requiring the sort of vigilance I’d be wise to turn loose on my writing—once and for all.

I have a middle-grade novel and an adult novel needing attention. Both are finished—one more than the other. One has received positive reviews and requests for full ms. from literary agencies, though has yet to procure me an agent. Therefore, vigilance=edits and marketing and heeding promises and guidelines made in this blog. And away we go.

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