Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 51

The Creep Factor

Funny what comes up in discussion when people talk to me about “Sarah’s Survival Guide.” Early in the story Sarah refers to ”an old guy” who’s ten years older than her. When I was Sarah’s age (19) I thought anybody over 30 was old. That was the age line I drew in the sand for dating. If a guy over 30 tried to ask me out, it felt creepy.

Until John. He was the lead singer and lead guitarist in a band that played at a bar I frequented after my waitress shift was over. I didn’t think about John’s age. Any guy with a guitar was auto-hot to me back then. And he didn’t seem old, not a bit. So we started dating. By the time I learned he was 30, I was already in love. I realized my line in the sand was silly. The same thing happens to Sarah.

John and I eventually moved in together. He had a house. He was a real grown up. And he had a dream to move to California, with or without me. We lived together for a year or so and in that time all of our differences, none of them age-related, came out. I wanted children; he did not. I wanted a conventional life; he still dreamed of making it big as a musician.

I liked a cocktail now and then. John didn’t drink or party at all. A bad experience with LSD made him straight, while I was still a little bit bent. He tried to talk to me about drinking, and why I shouldn’t, but it felt like lectures. Now I see the wisdom in his words. (Although I still drink wine and the very occasional vodka martini.) He wanted complete clarity in his life. He also wanted to become a vegetarian at a time when my usual dinner was either from Taco Bell or McDonald’s.

I tried to enter into the spirit of healthy living by making veggie burgers one night. Wow, what work! Way more work than forming some ground beef into a patty. But I did it for John, because I loved him. It’s ironic than I’m a vegetarian now. I like to think John would approve.

The real sticking point for us was family. I approved of his idea about moving to California, but I knew he was not “the one” because we wanted such different things. In the end, he moved to California with another girl. When you’re a singer in a rock and roll band, there is always another girl.

By then I was dating the guy who would become the father of my children. He ticked all the boxes, home, family, conventional life. Plus he was only five years older than me. Not that I think ten years is too big a gap. That was not even part of the problem with John and me. But it’s a bit of a problem for David, the “old guy” Sarah starts to like a little too much for his comfort.

 

My Stars

Astrology gets it so right so often. If we are stardust (and we are, 94% to be exact), if the moon controls ocean tides (it does, and so does the sun),  then why does it seem so silly to check out sun signs and moon signs (aka horoscopes)?

I know, it’s a big leap. But if the events of this winter prove anything, then watching the stars and their movement in the sky is kind of like doing your homework. It’s good to know when Mercury retrogrades, several times this year. We’re coming to the end of a long one now. I cannot tell you how many times I had to cancel meetings during this current Mercury retrograde (February 6-28). Yes, some of that is the weather, but other things, like communication, mess up during MercRetro.

For star-gazing beginners, ever notice how the stars in the sky appear to move as the world turns? Well, in retrograde periods, stars appear to move backward.

This retrograde, I rescheduled a workshop three times. Last time, I made sure the date was after Mercury moves forward again. Also, had a huge blow up in communication with one of the organizations I belong to…I wasn’t in the hot seat, but close enough. I shook my head in sadness and thought ‘Mercury retrograde.’

My laptop has been going haywire all month. (Expect electronics to act up during MercRetro.) Yesterday I turned it on and it made a very loud noise. I called my husband and put the phone to the laptop. “Hear that?” He did. We have our routine down now. Unplug laptop. (It has not been shutting off by itself, but freezes.) Take out batteries. Let the machine rest. Then do everything in reverse order.

Yes, it works, and I’m lucky. I don’t want to buy a new laptop, or any electronics, during MercRetro. It will be a lemon or at least a sour grape. Did I say my husband (who does not believe this stuff) got me a new phone? And it’s the top brand in the universe? And I cannot get voice mail? I have missed many voice mails and pissed many people off. “I left you an message…” they say.

I could go on and on with examples, but the point is, it pays to know your stars. What they’re doing, where they’re headed, when you should keep your head down and when you should blow full steam ahead.

Just looked out the window. It’s snowing. Hard. Looks like the luncheon I am supposed to host tomorrow might get cancelled. Already received an email from one friend asking if the ice storm that’s supposed to come tonight happens, which was nowhere in the picture when I extended the invitation, will it be okay to reschedule? Sure, after Mecury retrograde.

 

Sarah’s Story

Some readers may remember my long ago posts about having to take most of Sarah’s story out of The Paris Notebook to meet editorial requirements. I’ve always wondered if that made the book better, or worse. I never wondered whether Sarah’s story was worth telling in full, I wanted to tell it, so I took all those deleted scenes and wove them into a longish short story of about 40 pages.

I hired someone to make a cover for me and I slapped the story up on my website as a free PDF read. I recently featured it as a free read for Valentine’s day. I’m not sure how many people read it. I never got any feedback. It was just one of those things I kind of let float along. Then all my widgets disappeared. If you write a blog, you know what widgets are. They’re the stuff on the sidebar. That’s where I keep my clickable book covers that will swoop you right over to Amazon. Sarah was stuck in the middle of that and had vanished right along with all the rest.

When I wanted to put her back, she resisted. So I thought, well okay, I can put Sarah on Kindle, explain all about her, charge the lowest price, and then I can use an Amazon link. I did that, but Mercury is in retrograde until February 28, so of course there were all kinds of problems. Today I solved them all! Sarah is back and she is getting the respect she’s always deserved.

Now I am wondering, since according to my publishing contract, I can ask for my rights to the story back now, if I should do that with The Paris Notebook and fold Sarah’s scenes back in. I’m really not sure. But down the line, after I gather learned opinions, I just might reunite my Sarah with the rest of The Paris Notebook.

Valentine

If you read The Paris Notebook and wanted more of Sarah’s story, or even if you just want a romantic read, here it is.

Sarah’s Survival Guide

Happy Valentine’s Day

Popular!

When I was in 8th grade, the most popular girl in school approached me on the first day of classes and invited me to an event. My excitement must have showed because she kind of chuckled. It didn’t take long before we were BFFs and just like that, I was popular. In with the clique. On the fringes, for sure, but suddenly everybody in the school knew my name. One day, we were in my room, just hanging out, and she picked up my diary. “Where’s the key?”

I had written extensively about this girl and my thrill at being popular in this diary and would not allow her read about how much her friendship meant to me. Also, I might have said a few things I didn’t want anyone to know about my ever-changing love life. For whatever reason, I would not give her the key. She persisted. She got a little angry, even.

“Why can’t I see it?”

She was thinking the opposite of the truth. That I had written bad things about her. Nope. I had gushed out my gratitude for finally being accepted with the In crowd and my utter adoration of her. I thought she’d laugh at me and tell everyone all the details of my diary. That should have been my first clue that trouble was brewing.

I stayed semi-popular until I dropped out of that bitchy crowd to bond with a new group of friends who liked listening to music, smoking pot, and disdained the whole idea of “popular.” I stopped writing journalism and started writing poetry. In my head, I was beyond cool.

Something similar happened within the last few weeks. For ten years, every time I typed my name into Google’s search engine, there would be “A Writer’s Diary” right on top. Ahead of Virginia Woolf, from whom I’d borrowed my blog title. Ahead of a lot of people way more important than me. Just like with that popular girl suddenly deciding to befriend me, I couldn’t figure out “why me?”

But, again, like those feelings of old, it felt good. After awhile, I took it for granted, to be honest. I don’t know who follows my blog or how many or any of that stuff. I never wanted to know. But I got a little thrill when I periodically checked my name on Google.

Then a few weeks ago, I typed in my name and I was #5. After a film producer with my  name, assorted other Cynthia Harrisons had inexplicably leapt ahead of me. I thought about it for awhile and then shrugged. At least I was still on the first page. Then yesterday I checked again, typing in my name  as usual and ”A Writer’s Diary” was nowhere to be found.

My Twitter handle was there, a few reviews of my novels, my Amazon author page. But no blog. I thought about why this had happened. I have no clue, just like I had no clue why I was #1 when there were no such things as tags, I knew a little code, and swiped photos and ran hot links with abandon.

Finally, I had reached the goal I set for myself when I started my blog. I was a published author with five books. But I was less, not more, popular with Google. Seems like an ironic contradiction. When I was in junior high, it took me at least a year to figure out I didn’t need the In crowd. This time it took less than 24 hours to realize that, for me, Google ranking is not a big deal. And now I am going to check Bing:)

My Interest In Pinterest

Started my Pinterest account and began pinning today. Am very sorry if I have somehow flooded all social media contacts with my bumbling attempts to get a few boards together. I have done a magazine and scissors version of this for years (also called vision boards or story collages) and hope I don’t lose the magic by going virtual. Because there is magic and I have proof. I won’t get into collating book ideas, but in my life, especially my home life, I have successfully pulled off many miracles.

It seems impossible but it’s true. Take stack of magazines (I am addicted to magazines) and tear out pages that call my name. Go through pages, deleting, trimming, matting on paper. Insert into portfolio. Look at every day and dream. Every page has a theme: the one that continues to amaze me now is the page I made for a new writing room.

It was everything my old writing room was not. On the main floor, full of sun light, no cat box smell, pretty bookshelves, organized desk, comfy seating. Well…that just about describes my writing room now. When I did that page I had NO inkling I’d ever get so close to the real thing. I still marvel. It happened with little to no effort on my part.

Same thing happened with a sumptuous living room page I did many years ago. This was when Al was still in his saving fury. Little by little I was able to put that room together. I had patience because I really never thought I’d have a room like that. But at least I could look at the pictures and imagine it.

Bit by bit, the magic began. I painted the walls myself. Talked Al into new carpet. Brought a sofa down from where it had been biding it’s time as a guest sofa bed, talked Al into a new chair, had my chair re-upholstered. All this took a few years, piece by piece.

I’d really forgotten the photo collage until I came across it one day and thought “Wow I just need a few things and it’s my dream room.” So I went back to work (I’d been off for five years writing, so it was time.) bought mocha colored silky embroidered sheers with awesome rods, a big square coffee table made from exotic burled wood, and a beautiful turquoise bowl. There was my room. Five years or so after I’d assembled it as a vision board page.

I’ve been wanting to try Pinterest forever. I just hope I’m not sorry. Just lost an hour trying to reset my password and finding and pinning images and then trying to unpin. How do you unpin? I have like three book covers of each of my books. It’s maddening. But in a fun way. So far.

New Page “For Writers”

As you can see above, I’ve added a new page to the site. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and today I’m finally opening that page. Since I’ve started writing less about writing, I wanted to make sure writers seeking advice had somewhere to click.

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♥ Writers, this is for you ♥

Having said that, I promise readers that I will post more fun extras on a regular basis for you. If you don’t write, and you don’t read my books, you’re probably a pal checking up on me to make sure I haven’t been buried under an avalanche of books. Not to worry! I’m alive and writing.

♥Readers, this is for you♥

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A Gypsy tidbit I have not mentioned yet is why I chose that title. Talking with my BFF yesterday, I started telling her about a dream I had about Stevie Nicks. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell her the entire dream, as I know that dreams are only interesting to the person who has them. I get ticked off in novels if the author includes more than one dream. Okay, we know you want us to know something, but your character doesn’t know it yet, so she has a symbolic dream. Yawn. Anyway, I always loved Stevie, and even though the characters are Romany, I named the book Gypsy after her song.

#2240

When you need to make an important decision but your head is chaos-ridden with yes, no, maybe, but, and if as well as and then that it’s difficult to see which direction to go. I had just such a quandary this morning. I needed to post an entry here because I need to write, and right now, today, a blog post is the quantity of words spilled and time spent will see me through until I can get more writing time. Because blogs are shortish and take less than an hour. Mostly.

So what to write about? There’s been this thorn in my side concerning “rules” ~ you know what I mean: Ten Things to Never Blog About, Ten Terms Bloggers Need to Know, Ignore These Blogging Musts at Your Peril. Articles, entries, posts, tweets, links, and rants with this type of instructional title used to grab my attention and then invariably cause misery as I realized that “Gee, I hardly ever post photos with my entries and it says here that photos are a must.”  And I could kill this darling “Don’t write about writing. Too many people are already doing it.” Yes, and I’m one of them. Sometimes I comfort myself with the ego boosting thought that I’ve been doing this for a long time. (See title. That’s my number of posts). Oh yes, and there’s the rule that titles need to mean something. Well, mine does, but you have to read a while to get it.

Tell it to Shakespeare. His editor (if he’d had one) would still tell him that “you can’t make an idiot say wise things, so strike out To Thine Own Self Be True  Polonius’s advice to his son.” But Bill is set on the phrase, argues for it, and Bill’s boss thinks, hmm, his last play didn’t do so bad, so says ”Go ahead, keep it. But give the speech to Hamlet.” Shakespeare is much older than I am and wrote more words. Also better words. Than anyone ever. I’m just saying. Someone somewhere would try to tell him how to do things better.

One of the wisest writing rules I’ve ever come across is “break every rule.” Both theme and title of Carole Maso‘s refreshing book on writing. As a writing teacher, and a person who has written a book about writing, this is something it doesn’t pay the bills to trumpet over the vastness that is the internet. But merely adding a few words: “Learn the rules, then feel free to break them” goes down much easier on teenagers who do not know why we still insist nevermind is two words. KC knew there were two words there. He didn’t care.

Without even realizing it, I’ve got a blog-sized post. (I read a rule they should be 250 words, but I think four or five paragraphs is respectable.) It was not what I intended to write about. I wanted to say that I know I made the correct decision not to leave my writing desk in the middle of March for a sunny vacation. I know this because when I woke up this morning, and sat at my desk, I was filled with joy.

More Lives

YOLO. I see it all the time and it is just not true. More religions and people in the world believe in reincarnation than not. We are here in our tight little world of Judo-Christianity or our dark sky of atheism and it’s all we see, but there is more. To a lot of people there is more. I can’t say I’ve reincarnated from another time or place, since I have not done a past life regression, but it’s possible. And that’s not the ‘much more than one life’ I’m talking about.

According to recent science, there’s the life you wake up to every day and the life you wake up FROM every day. And there are the lives you live if you are a writer. Ray Bradbury said our brains don’t know the difference between writing a novel or living those words.

Actors inhabit their characters to the point where they are that guy they’re playing. Then there are people who pass into other lives in other worlds. Like Gypsy. If you don’t believe in science: superstring theory and cosmologist’s recent findings of multiverses, they sound like magic. I never knew until I read about the science and became a character in a magical novel who experienced it.

The brain can’t tell between dreams and day life, and it can’t tell between a deeply imagined fictional life and one that looks like a person sitting at a desk or standing on a stage. So, how many books can you write? That’s how many lives you can lead.

Or maybe you don’t write or act but you have a rich fantasy life, maybe you enter into the you who you want to be and you meet the one you want to be with, who is not the guy snoring next to you. You’re lying on your bed, but you’re not.

Or you enter into the novel you’re reading so completely that you wake from it like a dream when your 21st century oven timer goes off in your dystopian adventure.

I’ve been playing make believe all my life. Most kids do. Adults do it too but we call it reading, or writing, role-playing. It’s real, baby. It’s all real. At least to your brain, and, you know, if the brain is dead, the person whose head it’s in is dead, too. Or maybe they’re just on to their next reincarnation.

Need You Now

“It’s a quarter after one, I’m a little drunk, and I need you now.” Music knows. Now that I’m coming off some incredibly disruptive medication, I have been remembering my dreams again. The ones we have at night when we go to sleep. Those dreams.

I had it again last night, the dream I’ve have for forty years. A man from my past, he was a boy then, and I was a girl. His girl. If I thought I got over him during daylight, at night I knew I never really would. We connected in our dreams.

Dreams are funny things. We pretend they are beyond our understanding or control but  they aren’t. I used to have bad dreams, scary dreams, dreams where I was defeated by unspeakable evil. I learned how to wake up inside those dreams and change them. I became the warrior I needed to be. I changed the endings.

Lucid Dreaming is real. Anyone can train themselves to do it.

I didn’t know that when I was 16, 26, 36 even. Back then I thought dreams were just symbols, or messages. So when I’d dream about him, I’d call. It didn’t matter who I was married to, I knew he needed me, so I made contact. All those years, we never made love. I never cheated on my partner with him. But we knew each other so well and no man has ever spoken to me with as much light-filled truth. But he can be cruel, too.

In the dream last night, I didn’t wake, but I behaved my dreamself. I finally saw him in all his beautiful deception. And I knew who I was and to whom I owed my loyalty. I turned away. I woke thinking I needed to call, but this time it was not him I wanted to call. It was the right man. I finally made amends.

Science doesn’t know much about dreams. It isn’t even clear why we dream. Lots of theories out there but not a heck of a lot of fact. One thing science does know, a recent finding, is that our minds don’t recognize the difference between dreaming and daytime thought. Half our lives, completely beyond our control. If you think that’s true, it will be.

We all have longings and we all have our quarter after one moments, but it’s what we do with them that counts.