I never thought I would have a day filled with meetings. Well, it wasn’t filled with one meeting after another. It was really just two meetings that took a large chunk of my time during the day. First I had a LMDC meeting about the grant I am writing. Informative, encouraging, and I am now slightly less confused than before. However, I found out I will not just go to one grant writing workshop, but two if I understand correctly. I am going to need all the resources I can get at this point, and having a little bit of experience before going in will help, too. The grant is coming along. I wrote a large chunk of the narrative today and will polish it and then continue tomorrow. After that meeting I went and met with my writer’s group. Well, it wasn’t much of a group. It was just Michael and I but we met and discussed things. I finally have a design for our online ‘zine (thanks to Joel) and Michael approved and gave me some good input about it. I hope to have it up and running in a month or so. I never knew how hard it was going to be. Then the conversation went to a blue haired lesbian nun from a distant planet named for an ancient Egyptian god. He even had the realm drawn out in his plot sketch. I know it sounds kind of weird, but the story is really good. I don’t tell it very well, and I shouldn’t because it isn’t my story. It’s very Frank Herbert. It would make an excellent graphic novel. He said it was getting way too big. He keeps expanding the story and thinking up new things that could happen and then his head exploded. His biggest fear is that he will die without completing it and his incompetent son/friend/family member will find all his notes and try to publish the story. That also is very Frank Herbert. I told him the only thing I have really come up with is a story about a girl that plays the xylophone and in comparison to his epic space saga it is kind of crap. Well compared to just about anything it is kind of crap, but she hangs out in my head from time to time. I suppose I will allow this until I can do something with her. Other than that I write things like this basically. Yeah, it’s writing, but I want to write another story of fiction. My corporate Shakespeare story took a lot out of me. I have notes on it that Michael gave me and I have plans to expand it, so I should probably stop my bitching and write on that for a while. He gave me some pretty cool ideas. I am tired of being in front of a screen and watching the letters crawl across the page…goodnight.
Real Americans fail geography.
So my job description has changed again. Grant writer, quite a job. A job that actually has something to do with my degree. My shitty degree cause I use words that don’t exist in the known English language and have dyslexia so I write words out of order, or misspell them, or put two trains of thought into once sentence and it doesn’t quite work out. Okay, it doesn’t work out at all. At least I have a degree. But I digress. Funny thing: the grant I am trying to get for myself and the first grant I am writing for work come from the same place. I misread the deadline, too. For what my work would be qualified for the deadline is next March, not this March. However, the grant I will be writing is due this March, so I will be working quite a bit between now and then. I am such a lightweight; one beer and I have such a nice buzz on life. I want my very own pub. Not one that I own, but one near by that I can frequent. Rumor has it there will be one, but time will tell. I also want Warren Ellis to be my friend, and people in hell want asylum. I have been reading some of his stuff as of late and I really like his style. It makes me want to write books with pictures in them, but who has time for that right now? I have a bulletin board full of notes and sketches and ideas and I can’t decipher any of it right now. I need new ideas and new inspiration and it just isn’t coming right now. I need to get out of town. I hope to soon. I am too tired. My site is due for a redesign. I am working on that, working at the schools, trying to get acquainted with writing grants and writing and putting together another website and trying to get any ideas at all about anything and being a wife and occasionally a friend when they come around and taking care of my animals and getting a portfolio back together and trying to get a hold of Diane and getting my yard back together and keeping my house in order and man am I tired. Did I say that already? All I ever wanted was to pick apart the day and put the pieces back together my way.
So I sent off a few of the things I wrote to a former professor of mine who has relocated to her second home in New York with her husband after the storm. She lived in Bay St. Louis about two blocks from the bay, so she lost everything. I wasn’t expecting to hear back from her so soon, especially a week later. I sent her a couple of short character sketches (I suppose you would call them that), some hurricane observations, and the first “finished” draft of my baby, a satirical story. She thought what I wrote was wonderful, lovely, strong, and very, very good. I thought most of it was weak and that it needed a lot of work. Shows you what I know. I value her opinion greatly. She has the proper credentials for me to value her opinion greatly. She even went on to say that she is going to do everything she can to help me get a grant so that I may pursue writing further and she is also interested in putting together a book with me and a few other people with different essays, short fiction, and observations. How awesome is that? Deadline is in less than two months though, so I should stop writing this, and write some other things that will get me free money.
Happy Thomas Crapper Day! (Actually it was yesterday that marked the day that he invented the flushing toilet, but better late than never, or was it better out than in?)