The Comp I essays and portfolios are graded and passed back, the holiday shopping is done, and the cookies have been baked and frosted and packaged. AAAHHHH. It’s time for a break.
Unless you’re writing a book. THE BOOK. And I am.
Now the real work begins, as it always does when I get a few days to myself. So tonight, I write this post as a sort of pep talk for myself, and one that I desperately need. Especially after finding out this past week that a real life Prince Charming and Cinderella, Tarek and Christina from HGTV’s “Flip or Flop,” are getting divorced. WHAT?
(Blog-post break: after Jackson interrupted for a kiss and to read what I have so far, he thinks I need Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg to inspire me. Yes, I’m serious. “Nothin But a G Thang” now surrounds me, kicked back in my recliner, wine glass by my side, typing these words…)
It’s hard to know what to do next in writing this book. I want it to be artful and fun and serious and identifiable and well written and all those things that go into works that we view or listen to or watch or react to with emotion and love and words like, “Oh. Just oh.” So what do I do next? Do I edit, looking for areas to revise? Do I make sure I have followed patterns and included metaphors not too obvious but obvious enough and made allusions to everything I should have all while capturing as many emotions for readers’ reactions that I can? Or do I continue to work on the linear story and where gaps may be, filling those until I think they’re full enough to go through them for patterns and metaphors and emotions?
I know I have done enough research, that’s for sure. I couldn’t look up one more untouched-by-me internet page about fairy tales or mid-life crises or plastic surgery or Broken Heart Syndrome or Cinderella or Ricky Martin than I already have. Sheesh. Research–yes, a part of writing, and what I like to think of as the fun part.
(Blog-post second break: Today, I had a striking epiphany, but one that You, The Reader, have probably already had, so let me digress for a moment. As I looked around my afternoon English 12 class, watching students who had already completed their vocabulary tests play games or send texts or flip through Instagram, their faces lowered to triple and quadruple chin status, I heard one say to another, “Dude, what game do you want for Christmas?” And I thought to myself, “Yes, a Playstation or Xbox game to go along with their Ipads and cell phones and technologically-hyperboled indulgences…and oh my God. We are losing people. We are losing face to face communication.” And I might have freaked out a little. I don’t know what we can do to combat this.)
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming on this blog channel.
In the coming 24 hours, my plan–yes, I think I have one to attempt–is to start by cleaning up and filling in some new writing and then patterning emotions in my text to find places that are lacking or too much (something I just read about tonight in the current issue of Poets & Writers magazine). I’m excited, but the last few times I’ve tried to get started, whoosh– (the sound your phone makes when you send out an email)–I can’t.
Pep talk finale, Aimee, in the immortal words of one beautiful Ricky Martin: “Go, go, go, allez, allez, allez!”
And if for some reason, that’s not enough, then just chill…til the next episode.
Aimee Ross 
Be you. Don’t over think.
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Thank you…it’s very easy to do. I think we walk a line between wanting to create freely for an audience and fearing the rampant criticism of that audience at the same time!
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so true. but you take the leap because in the end, it’s what you have to do.
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