Just Me

Hey!

I just wanted to check in. Yikes, right? I've posted some very troubling fiction. I cant begin to express how much fun I'm having writing it though. More and more ideas for vignettes keep cropping up and often I feel like I'm rushing to keep up.

So far everything has been centered around this one family, but I really do want the whole town and various elements to come alive. Danielle had this AMAZING and INSPIRED vision for a whole story line, well several diverging and converging storylines and I told her to WRITE THAT SHIT BITCH!! I think it would be amazing if tons of us contributed stories. I can't tell you how fun it has been-- create characters, with the one stipulation that "everyone has secrets" and just go to town.

I encourage you to try.

I hesitate to say it has been thearaputic because I don't want anyone making assumptions about my relationship with my father! Just kidding, but perhaps that was off-color?

And free yourself from traditional narrative! Write what pleases you. Jump around. Little vignettes, little scenes that titilate you or make you think or cause your imagination to go spinning!

Remember, if you read my rant on Literature you'll know that this stuff should be Popular fiction, trashy beach reading, not Literary Circle material. Soap or showtime original (or lifetime! Aaron thinks I should write lifetime movies because of all my very female perspective on things), not masterpiece theatre.

Incidentally my computer hates the way I spell theatre but I say to it daily: "Excuse me Lappy, I respect your opinion and all, but I have a DEGREE in this. I have an ADVANCED degree in it. You're a laptop and I'm a fucking MASTER!"

Anyway I thought I'd stop and relate two natural wonders that happened to me yesterday: First I saved a turtle from doom on the side of the road, and on the good advice of my friend D, released him in the best possible place, the WB park! I had wanted to keep him as a pet, which is, I think, the instinct of all girls, but decided and was affirmed by Danielle, that he would be infinitely happier living his own life, sans tank, in the gorgeous town park.

Then later, when I felt the overwhelming need to step out of rehearsal due to frustration and irritation and resentment (all negative feelings that I had been so far fairly successful at not succumbing to at rehearsal), I walked onto the front steps of the Fine arts building and found myself looking at the biggest, most glorious, full-arc rainbow. I'm a sucker for rainbows and shooting stars and signs from nature. Lifetime.

It cheered me. I vented a little to a friend who knows my frustration, and I went back in, upbeat and with the knowledge that I can't change how they do things, can't change how they undervalue me, but I can conduct myself with cheer and aplomb and good humor and skill. I LOVE THOSE KIDS and I LOVE being there for them If my job has become to exist as their cheering section, their shield from the bull-shit, their friend in their corner, then so be it. That is more valuable than having my opinion heard or my artistic vision shared.

Plus I spent the day on my sunny deck, with my lappy, working on coverletters and writing juicy fiction, and got a bit of a sunburn. My friend Julia asked me to envision my perfect day-- really envision it, without the concern of money or things like that.

So much of yesterday was perfection. The house was a mess, I wasn't making money, I had resumes and jobs and debt and student loans tugging at my mind, I dreaded working with certain folks at rehearsal, but so, so much of yesterday was glorious and good and warm and joyful and wonderous and lovely.

So yeah. Just checking in.

I'm waiting with baited breath to hear what people think of THE MORNING AFTER now that all parts have been posted. Eeek, right?

Love always,

Beth