Slippers

The cold lingers in Houston, waiting just one more day to remember it is really "springtime" here, and that flowers are blooming.  I was delighted to see the poppies jump out of the pansy beds, waving their cheery heads a foot above the other flowers. 

Today the temperatures go up though, and my self imposed exile to the house will end.  I will miss my dog slippers though...

Instead, they will pull me along the sidewalk as though they are magnificent white horses and I am a recalcitrant carriage. When my joints warm up, I try to walk with rhythm, silently counting out sets of eight like we used to do in aerobics classes, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8; 2,2,3,4,5,6,7,8; 1,2,3,4; 2,2,3,4; 1,2; 2,2; 1,2,3,4 and then start over. Funny how rhythms like that get stuck in my head. Or a song I've spent time sweating to...even twenty years ago, comes on the radio and suddenly my muscles want to step into a grapevine or Charleston or Step up and down and Cross... a history of life based on the exercise dances in the gym.  

Those classes were great places to meet and bond with other women.  The high intensity gave way to low intensity, then to things like Pilates and yoga.  Now I'm much more likely to spend an hour on an elliptical reading Kindle than I am dropping into a Zumba class, but there are times when I choose a machine close enough to the gym door to hear the music.   More often though, I am the Carriage of the Dogs.  But only if it is at least fifty degrees.

I'm editing chapter one of Invisible yet again, pursuant to some great advice I got from two of my adult children.  I knew it was missing something, and they were able to spot the deficiency.  Now if I can just struggle through today, I might be ready to send this one out.  There is a manuscript contest in Texas I'm thinking of entering.  

That reminds me of the contest I won when the Houston Writer's League hosted conferences.  It was a short story, and I edited it to death after it won.  I never sent it anywhere to be published because I wasn't confident that the edits improved it.  I am thinking of posting it here, but it would break my heart to post it online and have no one read it.  The insecurities, the insecurities!

Resolved...

January is resolution time.  For writers, that means time to renew our commitment to our characters, our word count, or at least our butt in the chair time.  I'm  no different.  In fact, I made several resolutions, for the year, about writing.  One of them had to do with editing. One had to do with publishing. One even had to do with actually writing.  Here we are two thirds through January though, and the only one I am faithful to is the writing.  Sad to say, I write because I love to write. Not edit, not publish.  Unfortunately, I already have hard drives and baskets and folders full of "writing."  It's time to do something with it.

Challenges are helpful.  I am competitive, and I like winning, so I have accepted the challange from a writer friend to enter a non prize winning contest.  Why? The winner gets their work read on stage. Hmm.  Maybe being read is enough of an incentive to get me to polish up a few things.

Fear is also helpful.  I signed up for another workshop, and have to have stories or chapters reader ready at least two times in the next ten weeks.  That doesn't sound like much, but I've challenged myself to make it "new writing." That's right. no pulling a tried and true and already work-shopped story from the baskets. That's too easy. Those stories are old and the emotion that created them is long gone. I'm no longer attached to them, so when I read them cold, they don't elicit a need from me to fix them, while preserving the passion from which they were created.  Great for editing. Not so great for creating.  And I want the encouragement that comes from having someone read what I'm working on now, and want more.

What gets you to keep your resolutions?