Writing 101: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Actually, the title of the days exercise was "Unlocking the Mind".  20 minutes of free writing, no censorship, no edits.  So if I misspell something or my grammar is atrocious, so be it.  So of course, I misspell grammar, notice it in the middle of typing atrocious, and go back and fix it.  Now, I could get down on myself for already breaking the rules, but I really don't care.  There again, I almost didn't type "don't care" and wanted to change it to something else that sounded less exasperating, but I decided not to.

I just finished baking ham and pork for supper.  I added a Thai basil sauce, and Szechuan (ok, so I used spell check on that one) spicy sauce and some other kind of sauce that I really can't remember right now.  I swear I washed my hands afterwards but they still feel kind of sticky, but just between the fingers.  It's not like I'm getting gross junk all over the keyboard.

My son came in and asked if the cat could have the ground beef that was sitting on the drain board.  I stopped writing momentarily and answered him.  Of course, with him, a one word answer will never do and he goes off talking on another tangent.  That boy (ok, young man, he's 17) goes off, no I already said that, and now I can't remember what I was going to put before.

Ah, the beauty of free-writing and no edits.  I'm also watching Fifth Element on DVR while I'm typing.  I'm guessing that's a big no-no.  A part of my trunk is also itchy.  And my left hand and my right forearm.  Of course, that's probably because I'm out in the garden so much these days.  Mostly in the morning, before the sun is up and it gets beastly hot and humid.

I was not made for very warm or very humid climates.  Um, Um, Um.  More itching.  Seeing shadows of explosions and wrecks from the floating taxi chase scene in my peripheral vision.

Did you know that I already have a couple of posts up today?  One is the Teaser Tuesday/First Chapter First paragraph Tuesday link-ups.  But I'm not going to stop to link them up in this post, because that's a little like editing, isn't it.  Those posts are a lot more interesting than this one, because really I'm just blathering on.  I'm good at blathering on.  Now I know where my son gets it from.  Only it's concentrated in his generation.  In both boys actually.  Our daughter does not speak nearly as much and speaks so quietly, we have to ask her to say things over numerous times.  Of course, maybe it's just because we are old and/or going deaf.

Now my finger itches.  But I think it is just my mind trying to distract me from writing, or trying to make me think about the writing, in which case it would have a chance for me to stop and then the whole exercise would fall apart.  I had someone tell me once that I tend to catastrophize this.  Assume the worst.

Now she puts a gun to his head (on the Fifth Element).  A guy in a Cadillac drove into the yard today.  He had seen the boat from the road and wanted to know if we wanted to sell it.  My husband had actually just listed it on the local radio station "Stop and Swap" or "Shop and Swap" (whatever it's called).  We've actually never used it, but it was given to us by a former landlord who also didn't use it and whose wife just wanted it out of their yard.  Then they sue us after we move out.

Sheesh.  It's not like he was great shakes at maintenance.  We had to call many, many times and wait weeks to get things fixed sometimes.  And come to find out that everyone else was paying comparatively a LOT LESS for rent than we were.

But the more I think about that, the more I get pissed off.  And I worry about typing pissed off because it might offend people, but short of words that might get censored on national tv, I've sent the inner censor out for coffee ... for about twenty minutes or so.  Boy is she gonna be upset when she gets back.  Too bad!  I remember a friend's mother saying once that it was perfectly ok if you talked to yourself as long as you didn't answer back.  It's when you started having conversations with yourself that the problems arose and people tended to think you were crazy.

Five more minutes.  I know.  I stopped typing and looked at the clock on my monitor.  Sue me.  No wait, you'll have to stand in line.  La-la-la.  I'm feeling a little 'off' today, can you tell?  I was worried yesterday that I might need to go to the doctor, because I've had a dull pain in my left side just under the rib cage for a couple of days.  My husband had pancreatitis a few years back and I wanted to make sure it wasn't that.  I really don't think so, it's more likely it's just because I'm getting old and the work in the garden is the most physical exercise I've had in a long time.

Ok.  Four more minutes.  Now my left shoulder (back) itches.  It's been drizzling off and on today and the air feels very moist.  This whole exercise reminds me of "morning pages" from "The Artist's Way" (I think that's what it is called.  If anyone has made it this far in the reading and knows and doesn't think I'm to crazy to comment, I'd be very grateful.

That one alien race on The Fifth Element is really ugly.  That's probably an unkind thing to say.  Maybe they look hot to each other.  To each their own, and all those similar platitudes.  I know they are all in my head in their respective little memory boxes, but someone tied those boxes with knots and I can't get them open right now, so you'll just have to be satisfied with the one.

One ... one minute!  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.   (Did anyone just have flashbacks to "The Count" on "Sesame Street"?  Because I sure did.)

~~~oOo~~~

What I like about free writing is like it power-washing the mind and cleans out a lot of junk so you can sit down and get to work. :O)  Anyway, there's day one.  I'll probably have to double up on a couple of days' posts to catch up, but that's life.