Pam Logan's Blog, page 5

I have a cold!

My eyes are watering, my nose is running, my ear is clogged, my entire body aches and I am heavily medicated. Laying down doesn't help. I am so restless, I can't get comfortable. It is cold and rainy outside - a real blah day.
I decided it would be a good day to wrap up in a blanket with a cup of tea and sit at the computer to write more of my next novel. That worked good for a while, but after every sentence, I have to stop and blow my nose. I am almost out of tissues. Ug! I dropped one on the floor and leaned over to pick it up. As I got up, I hit my head on the side of the desk.
Feeling this awful really takes its toll on the character in my story. He is depressed and going through a real tough time. His whole world seems to be falling apart. The love of his life is missing, his ribs are broken, he is facing evil at every turn.
Oh! I sneezed and must have pulled a muscle in my back. It is hard to sit here and, it is hard to breathe. This is having a horrible effect on my writing. My character just got shot at point blank range. I sure hope I feel better soon or he may not make it through the next chapter.

Playing God...

Being a writer is in a way like playing God. You have the power to let bad things happen to good people. With a simple stroke of a pen or by typing a few different words on the keyboard, you can change every aspect of a person's life in a heartbeat. You can make their world all sunshine and roses or drag them through the deepest, darkest aspects of a fiery hell. You can give them characteristics of being smart and witty or meek and shy. You can let them live happily ever after or die a slow, torturous death.
You also control the characters' environment. You can have them live in the early eighteen hundreds, riding horses, sending their kids off to one room school houses or soaring around in outer space, while being chased by vampires. You can have them live in both worlds with the help of a time machine they accidently found in a closet.
Your own every day life can change your story from what you wanted it to be. A sad song can make your character cry herself to sleep from heartbreak. A phone call from a family member that just found out she has cancer can make your character be cured of a debilitating disease. A character that was spinning out of control can be put on the right track because your own child came home with a good report card.
You have the ability to control someone else's world, even when you think you have no control over your own. You can take your anger out on those you have created. You can give them the life and love you are not able to achieve.
The only thing you can't control is the actual feelings you put into or take from your characters. They have a way if getting into your head and into your heart and it is hard to shut them out. Even when your story is finished, a part of the characters remain behind.
I wonder if God feels that way about us.

Ideas for my book

When I started to write "How Do You Say Goodbye?", I started out trying to write a song. After a few days of jotting down incoherent thoughts, I gave it up. My thoughts kept going back to some members in my family that had passed away, namely my mother and a couple cousins. Even though they knew the end was coming, I never talked with them as to how they felt about it. Now, I wish I would have. Although I am relatively healthy, just normal aches and pains of growing older, I started to think about how I would feel and what I would do if I only had a certain amount of time left.
And that is when Sam came to life. As I put pen to paper, actually, it was fingers to keyboard, Samantha became my friend. I laughed with her and cried with her as she faced her past and lived through the every day agony of being sick and her struggle with how God could let this happen to her.
Not much of the book was planned. I never knew ahead of time what was around the corner for her in her trials and tribulations of life. Her antics surprised me. As I typed, new ideas just flowed through me and onto the screen. As much as she is a part of me, she is her own person and her friends became my friends. When I stop writing for a few days, I miss them as much as I miss my mom and my cousins, because if another word is never written about them, they will die.

It's snowing...

I sit here today, thinking about a nice warm summer day, sitting at the beach, watching the sunset. Then I look out the window and a cold chill goes through me, seeing the infinite number of snowflakes tumble out of the gray sky. Through that window, everything looks gray. The white house next door looks gray, the snow looks gray, the almost bare bushes look gray; even the single leaf clinging to a gray branch looks gray.
The driveway is slowly filling up and needs to be shoveled. Even if is was cleared of snow, it would be gray. Come to think of it, even the shovel is gray. I can't seem to muster up the energy to dress up in all those heavy clothes to go outside in the cold.
I sit back in my chair and stretch out my legs under the desk and close my eyes. The furnace kicks on and the warm air blows out of the vent over my feet. I imagine it is a nice warm summer day, I am sitting at the beach, watching the sunset. It's a beautiful day.

There really is a Santa Claus

I just could not get into the Christmas spirit this year, no matter how many Christmas carols I listened to. I put up the decorations but this year we couldn't afford a real tree like we usually get so I dug out the old sparkly green/blue aluminum one from the basement and put it up. I kept telling myself that my kids - two teenagers still living at home - would understand that gifts this year would be minimal at best.

A few days before Christmas we got a delivery from the high school they go to with gifts for both kids consisting of clothes and gift cards and a box of food containing canned goods, a gallon of milk and a frozen turkey. I hope those people know how much they have done. It's not just the gifts themselves, it is the whole spirit.

To be honest, this was the best Christmas I have had in a long time.

To any of you who have donated to food banks, toys for tots, churches or schools to help others, I personally thank you. You are very special people and really do make a difference.

All the best in 2011.

My kids are growing up

It is interesting to find out that my kids, ages 16-25, who probably never thought of me as cool or interesting, are more like me than they will ever admit.

There are four of them and they all like Rocky Horror Picture Show. Three of them went to see it with toast and rice in hand, the night before Halloween. The other one wanted to but lives out of town.

On another note, I saw on facebook that my oldest daughter invited her friends to come and hang out with her and her husband at the bar I used to hang out at when I was her age.

I guess it's true - what goes around comes around.