Wednesday, April 27, 2005

When Wireless Chicks Go Wild!

Yep. It's final. I've gone wild with giddy.

This weekend, my girlfriend and partner-in-crime dropped by my house with a present: wireless card and a router. After much trial and error because we followed directions from a company that spelled 'detecting' as 'dectecting', we got it up and running, and I haven't been the same since. I mean WOW, I can literally go, 'virtually' anywhere, steal from signals in the air, and be surfing the net. Beyond cool.

Well, the last two days, I've been trudging my big ass laptop to school, hoping to get on it or hoping to get to the library or BAM (Books-A-Million --or A-Dozen as it's affectionately known here) and use my card. No such luck.

Today...finally we have connection. I did, however, have to link up to T-Mobile, which meant I had to buy some service, but that's okay, I guess. We shall see, LOL

Anyway, so here I am, with my laptop, my wireless connection and mounds of English grammar books around me. I'm the person I detest; you know who I'm talking about. The person who goes to a cafe with a laptop and tries to look intellectual. I'm that person in spades, baby! And guess who doesn't care?

I'm planning to stay another hour and finish up this work I'm doing. I'm going to be co-author of an academic book for English Composition. How much you wanna bet it won't be on the NYT bestseller's list? But that's okay though. While I try, valiantly, to secure a spot back in the literary echelon of being published, I am stockpiling credits on my vita for possible future teaching gigs. Helping to write an academic book (and I've been offering to help in ANY WAY) can't look bad.

GEEKY MOMENT: OH yeah, I'm actually ENJOYING the work I'm doing on this book. I feel like I'm relearning everything I've been teaching as I help to explain it for this book. My students next semester are going to hate me with all this information I shall spew upon them, LOL

My goal while I'm here is to finish up some terms to write up for the Grammar Handbook section of the book and then work on my final exam prompts for my students.

If I can get home with those things out of my hair, I can grade these remaining research papers and PERHAPS, if I don't pass out, get some writing done before I take Mom to work.

I tell ya, any and everything gets in the way of writing when you are purposely trying to put things in the way of writing for fear of not being able to write well again. Chewy sentence, but I know you catch my drift.

Til later.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Fear of...

Saw my counselor today. Down to ONE more session with her before she goes off into private practice land and I'm left alone. :-( Well, I am referred to another counselor, and I'm sorry, after all the CRAP I've told this one woman over the last two-plus years, I kinda feel like it would be pointless to start all over. Sure, this new chick can read my stuff and learn of me through a counselor, but she hasn't experienced my tears, my setbacks, my successes. She wasn't the one to tell me, "You are far from crazy, Hon."

N.E.WAY-->Today, because we only had two more sessions, she wanted to know what IIII needed to discuss. I told her how I felt as though I have improved as a human being over the last almost three years. I mean, I can actually say that I have more days when I like myself than when I don't. What I needed was exercises or advice on how to do two things:

1) Continue to express myself to others
2) Continue to realize I'm a good person that deserves to express myself

and do both of these things without alienating people and winding up alone.

Tall order there. Through talking -- and I tell you, when I get in there, so much comes out I don't know how we get any 'work' done on me -- the notion of FEAR reared its ugly head. I've been told I'm controlling though I don't think of it that way; I'm the safety net so that if people I love fall, I'm there to catch them and mend them if they DO get hurt. That's not controlling. SO, in talking about this 'problem' of mine, my counselor asked, "So tell me, what do you fear?"

I scrunched up my face and replied, "Meaning?"

"Well, this need you have to be a safety net, your words--why do you have to do this? If you don't do it, what will happen? What is the fear that keeps you doing this and keeps you unable--at times--to express yourself?"

Big ass question, right? Hell yes it is. We boiled it down to TWO things; I'll share one: REJECTION. I fear rejection; thus, I protect the world and keep my views to myself in order to NOT be rejected.

Well, we talked more (boring stuff--no need to tell you all), and basically, she told me that in order to overcome my fear, I must FACE the fear. *lol@self* I have HEARD that on various TV shows and from pop psychiatrists over the years, but now I finally got it thrown back into my face. She did suggest, however, that I start small, with things that I can handle. I'm not the most confrontational person, and actually, I run away from it like a track star. So, now I'm mulling over the little areas in my life that I can test this FACE FEAR on. I'll let you know how that goes.


While on the couch, I began wondering about this word: FEAR. What do I fear? Came up with the following list in no particular order:

1) rejection
2) failure
3) bridges
4) heights
5) large bodies of water
6) loneliness
7) cracks on sidewalks
8) rocks embedded in cracks on sidewalks (story to this one)
9) what others think
10) what i think
11) success
12) losing my hair
13) anyone that says they love me -- ultimately they could do the most damage
14) unknown (lol-j/k)
15) what i'm really meant to be (what if i get to the end of my journey and i'm nothing like i
wanted to be?
16) death (dying before i finish all the things i think i'm here to do)
17) love
18) lake charles' streets on a wednesday night about 11pm--quiet and scary as hell
19) police
20) never being able to write another novel due to death of creativity

That's the list for now. I could probably go on, but I need to grade some essays before I go out for ice cream with some friends.

Monday, April 25, 2005

Check out SisterDivas and TNC Magazines

I have uploaded the latest issues of SisterDivas and The Nubian Chronicles magazines. They are chock full of great interviews, stories, serials, and much more. Check them out!

http://www.intothespotlight-inc.com/sdivas

http://www.intothespotlight-inc.com/tnc

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Me + Suicidal Writers

Here @ school. It's the "crunch" time of the semester where essays and research papers are coming in and students are getting overly anxious about their grades. Oddly enough, the first 13 weeks of the semester, no one seemed to care about their grade, now with everything in except a research paper and a final, everybody and his or her mama wants to know how to better their grades. My answer: LEARN.

N.E.WAY, there's an online women's literary journal that I'm trying to submit something to. They have a special issue on women mentoring women through text, and I'm trying to work on a prosey-non-fiction piece of sorts. I have always been a fan of women writers. Being a woman and a writer might have a lot to do with that. My main interest, it appears, seems to be with dead, white, women writers who committed suicide: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath, being the forerunners of the group.

I'm not quite sure WHY they move me so much except for the fact that their writings are universal. Real. I don't have to be a woman whose husband cheated on her. I don't have to be depressed or born in the mid- to late-19th century. I can still "feel" the works, the words, the voices. It still rings true, despite being "not" white.

So, I'm trying to work on a piece about a crazy black chick being locked up in "The White Room"...with a positive yet sobering twist to it.

We'll see how it goes.

Sunday, April 17, 2005

In Lieu of Intro

This is my first posting here, and I'm jumping right in...no intro or anything. I apologize for that. Intros later. I promise.

I'm a bit frustrated. This writing game is hard work. I'm constantly battling the demons that tell me I'll never get published again. Agent has been working with two of my novels for about two years...no one has bought them yet. *sigh*

Working on revisions of one of the books, a mystery. On the bus home from school last week, I had an idea for an addition to the book. We'll see how that plays out.

There are a lot of things I would like to write, but I'm finding it hard to 1) find the time to write and 2) find my creative juices again.

There's a novel I've started with my best friend, T. We came up with what I think will be a great novel, and it will probably get picked up before my solo works. T is doing more work than me at the moment because I'm constantly grading BAD English 101 and 102 essays, but alas.

Anyway, it's hitting on midnight, and I'm going to try to put in about an hour or two on this mystery novel before I call it a night.