I Don't Wanna!!!!!!

     I didn't feel like blogging today. But I'm also in the middle of reading Natalie Goldberg's "Thunder and Lightning". (My current "bathroom book"). Maybe that's why I thought I'd blog about why I don't feel like blogging. Can you follow that convoluted path of reason?
     Maybe it's the thought of, "hmm, if we only read blogs by people who feel like writing, then it's a bit like reading a work of fiction without conflict." Or maybe not. I think my reasoning is a bit suspect this morning. That's part of the reason I didn't feel like it.
     Yesterday we made our more or less weekly trip into Austin. We ran some errands, went to Whole Foods, finally got my late mother's cell phone account turned off (it was on my family plan), I replenished my stock from Microbial Earth and later attended a staff meeting. Cat had a planning meeting for an upcoming Pentacle of Pearl class. Stuff like that.
     Somewhere in the middle of all that we went to eat at one of our favorites, Magnolia Cafe. It's a good place to eat, open 24 hours. 
     We almost always have their Mag Queso appetizer. A really good queso dip with avocado and other good stuff and fresh tortilla chips. I usually follow with Sonora Enchiladas with more queso sauce, my personal favorite dish there. Mmmm, satisfying comfort food!
     One thing you should know, cheese often seems to give me weird dreams. We ultimately got home pretty late, I was exhausted and my back hurt from driving the car.
     I fell into bed, read for awhile to settle my head, as usual. My "main" book right now is "Wizard's First Rule", by Terry Goodkind. It's an enjoyable fantasy novel. I finally put it down and zonked out.
     I had vivid, scrambled, dreams all night long. I often have epic, story dreams that are very enjoyable, like I'm watching a movie I'm in, or reading the story. This time, though, it was like being in a room with twenty televisions going at once, each on a different cable channel. It seemed like many different stories scrambled together seamlessly.          Confusing.
     I slept very late. Punctuated by the usual bathroom trips and one to feed a nagging cat, all done in half-awake state. 
     When I began to wake it was like fighting my way out of quicksand. I had a need to get up. Lying in bed too long causes my back and hips to begin hurting, stiffening up, eventually I just have to get up and get vertical. However, every inch I rose toward waking, I sank back again.        
     That quicksand of sleep/dream had an octopus in it, or that swamp creature from "Lord of the Rings". You know the one at the door to Khazad-dum (I think it was.) that almost got Frodo and the others. A many tentacled beast that kept sending up more arms to drag them back. That's what it felt like. Even nearly awake I kept getting flashes of the dreams I was coming out of, sucking me back. It was a struggle. 
     Finally, I got out of bed with an aching head and body. My brain still feels like it's in molasses. And that's after breakfast and coffee. So, that's where I am now.
     I can't remember a single dream image from that montage of scrambled dreams. Yet, they consumed me all night long. (I know, I know, we typically only dream the last few seconds before waking. I'm talking about how it felt.)
     But, what the heck. I managed to write a considerable length blog about not feeling like blogging. It's all good! Right?
     Have a great weekend! Mine will be spent at the Bastrop 1832 Farmer's Market and Sherwood Forest Faire!
     Ciao!
 

Dreams, and re-connecting

I've essentially been away from the computer, the blog, writing and email for two weeks or so while doing the Avatar Master's course near Orlando, Florida. I did take my laptop, but time was a bit short to do other than log on now and then and see if anything more earth shattering was happening. I was doing a lot of very personal work, and that was top priority for this trip.


I did have a few pretty interesting dreams, and I wrote them down for later use. I have a nice leather-bound journal I gave myself last year for a "dream journal" as well as another one for class use. (I found a sale on them at BookStop not long before the last one closed here.) I use the journal when I wake up, or I often grab whatever other writing material is handy. I also use spiral bound steno books often, I buy packs of three and keep them around. I like the very handy size and the top spiral that makes them easy to use. I also use 3x5 index cards. It's very handy to keep a few in my pocket, jot down ideas, scenes, character notes, etc. They can be easily filed later, or, as I like to do, type them into that TiddlyWikiWrite program for filing. The same program also has a "journal" feature that makes a new page with the date as a header, for entering journal type entries. My dreams usually end up entered in that function. I like having it all available for searching and using later. (Check my earlier blog for that link.)


On this trip, one of my dreams specifically had a direct use in my mystery novel in progress, and another just begs to become a rather mystical short story. I learned the hard way not to trust my memory on dreams. If I don't write them down right away they tend to totally disappear within an hour or so. Cat has gotten used to me waking up at 3 a.m. and writing things down before going back to sleep. I also tell some of them to her, the act of telling sometimes prevents forgetting, sometimes. She usually promptly forgets what I told her, dream-wise, but it helps me remember. (She was only half-awake herself at the time, after all!)


So, back to work!

Rainy Day Writing

Stormy last night. Slept pretty good. Pretty involved dreams all night. I didn’t remember any worth writing down this time. Well, okay, there was one. I was going along as an observer on a balloon flight. Huge balloon, made up of light clear plastic, like dry cleaner bags joined somehow. Wasn’t hot air or gas, we were riding inside the bubble somehow. Anyway, I didn’t really get inside. A couple of women I’ve known were going up and inviting me along. There was a rope ladder through a hatch in their ceiling that led into the balloon, but the opening in the trap door was too small for me to get through. there was a larger opening nearby, but that led to a different balloon they had. Somehow one of them switched things so I could climb on up through the large opening and still get there. Not sure I want to cogitate too much on the connotations. That’s about all I remember of that dream, anyway. It ended about the time I crawled into the balloon. It was a large open space with a lot of braces.
I mostly intend to do some work today on my Deputy Constable Penn Sadler story. It takes place in a precinct of mostly small towns in central Texas. A fictional county and so forth that bears a great resemblance to where I grew up, and where I live now. I’m planning a series of novels for the same area. I was a bit taken aback by Bill Crider’s “Sheriff Dan Rhodes” series. He has very much tapped the same vein. I love the books, though. Encouraging to see that it can indeed be done and well.
My main character, whom I’ve named Penn Sadler, is a native of the area, which I’ve called Shin Oak. He had been a county Deputy Sheriff, spent a little time as Acting Sheriff when the previous one left office under a scandal. Penn was defeated in his run for the office by some political chicanery and left the department, which pleased both him and his new boss. Penn is a good officer, so he got a job as Deputy Constable with an old friend, Constable Sam Hart, under his local Justice of the Peace, Sara Beth Adams.
Penn keeps up with matters in the Sheriff’s Department through his old friends there, as well as friends in other state departments. Contacts he cultivated through his previous career and a few high profile cases he had helped with. These contacts serve to draw him into many of the sorts of cases a Deputy Constable wouldn’t normally handle.
I've also been consciously using my tarot system for plotting/outline both the book and the series. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out, huh? As the man said, I can hardly wait to see what I write next!