What Was I Thinking?

Work in Progress

My beau secretly snapped this photo in a rare moment of what appears to be me taking a break. I am not on a break, I'm working. Having recently turned in the manuscript for my second novel, I've started pondering Book #3. You can't see it, but if thoughts were literal bubbles around our heads, mine would block out the ocean and the mountain behind it. (Yeah, I know. Rough setting, right?)

Writers often hear things like, "You're so lucky. You get to sit around and just make up stories instead of going to a job." I am lucky and I do get to play with words, but it's a job--one that I don't ever leave. Every single experience becomes an opportunity to explore as a possible scene. Every person I meet gets filed away in a collage of traits that make up future characters. Every sound, every smell, every touch; they're all pieces swimming around in my head trying to find their way to the page. And that's just the writing part. PR and marketing are a whole 'nother ballgame.

Several years ago I took a stab at meditation. It didn't go so well. Apparently some people the luxury of neat little organized brain compartments. My brain is more like a pinball machine, with thoughts racing and bouncing faster than I can write them down. And yet I'm grateful for this. I love my job, I really do. I manifested it! But when I look at this picture I realize I also manifested moving to California, living near the ocean, and a beloved companion who pauses to snap a pic of his partner deep in thought on a sunny day in Avila Beach.

So as I close my laptop and head out to the back deck, I'm going to try and leave my work-in-process right here in my office, along with these forming characters, plot lines, and settings. Because sometimes you have to take time to live your own story, yes? In the meantime, caption the photo above for a chance to win a "THIS I KNOW" lined notebook (pictured below). I'll choose a random name from comments here and on my Facebook Page. Go!

Daydream Believer

Every year on the first day of school I always tried to grab the desk nearest the windows. I knew it meant that I'd be in charge of opening them in the event of a tornado drill but I didn't mind. What mattered was having a direct sight-line to the parking lot where I'd witness parents bustling up the sidewalk to deliver forgotten lunches. I'd have a close-up view of the weather as it shifted (sometimes hourly) from rain to sleet to sunshine to blizzard. Toward the end of the day I'd watch buses roll under a flapping American flag to wait for their rambunctious charges. That glass was more than a view of earth and sky; it was a window into my daydreams as I watched clouds crawl across the livelong sky of seemingly endless school days. 

Don't get me wrong--I loved school. It was the place where I first fell in love with words, competing with Glen Burmeister and Keith Johnson as the only girl left standing during our weekly spelling bees. Reading and writing were my favorite subjects because I could lose myself in my imagination, which I often did, to the consternation of my teachers. "Doesn't work up to potential" or "Unfocused" or "Daydreamer" they'd write in my report cards. And it was true. I was often bored and that window was my salvation. But because I got good mostly good grades (I sucked at art and penmanship) my parents didn't balk that much. "Try harder," they'd ask, and I'd promise I would. But I didn't.

They always say you should write about what you know. Even as I tapped away at this post I stopped and started it several times, distracted by a bird on the wire, the sound of my neighbor yakking loudly in her driveway, then imagining that bird knocking the cellphone out of her hand. I suppose it comes as no surprise then that I gave my young protagonist, Grace Carter, the same penchant for losing herself in the world beyond her immediate surroundings. Because this? This I know.

What about you? Were you a daydreamer? Did you like school? Share your thoughts down yonder. ;)