To Write Or Not To Write

I’m back! I’m sure you didn’t even miss me. Ah, well. I can only hope that somebody did. I have been away, but I have not been idle. I have been immersed in the creative throes of playwriting. Remember my first post, ‘The Email that brought me (and my writing) to life again?’ That’s why I haven’t been keeping up on my posts. I have been working on this play. Actually, for the past few weeks, I have been battling the bane of every writer’s existence: writer’s block. Now don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I can’t think of anything to write. I have had many ideas, yes. As a matter of fact, I have not only been immersed in the writing of the script, I have been drowning in it. Yes, it is killing me to write this script! I have started over three times, each time with, what I thought was, a brilliant idea, only to get halfway and think ‘wait, this makes no sense.’ Then it’s back to the idea board. How many times has that happened to you? W...

Vacation; that magical word that everyone loves to dream about, but few really get to take advantage of, especially with today’s economy. Gasoline prices are still high enough that some families will settle for traveling to a spot within their own state. Others will simply not go anywhere. Well, we are going somewhere. We’re going on vacation. Not just a little two or three day jaunt to one of our state of Missouri’s landmark cities, but on a real, honest-to-goodness road trip! Oh, we’ve been on family trips before - Colorado, Minnesota, Georgia; but never the whole family. This time it’ll be all six of us! Together! All six of us…in one minivan…oh, boy, it’s gonna be a long trip. So, we leave Tuesday, and I have to go down my checklist. I have the power inverter purchased, AAA trip packet ordered (I can’t forget to pick that up Monday,) hotel reservations, house rented, a few choice dinner reservations made…what else? Oh, I CAN”T forget to mow the lawn before we leave. It’s...

It was Father's Day today. Sure, my kids treated me really nice this morning, gave me breakfast in bed - cheerios and a giant chocolate chip cookie. They also gave me a copy of Bobby Flay 's 'Cooking For Life.' Now I have no excuse. I HAVE to grill. I'm not complaining. I have been needing something to kind of force me into cooking more. This book might just do it. Anyway...Father's Day was a great lazy day. I didn't mow the lawn, but should any Father have to mow the lawn on the one day every year that is set aside for him? I say no. I also slept off and on for most of the day. When do I ever get to do that? We went to Fazoli's for dinner, too. Any place else would have been either too expensive or too busy. Unless we went to McDonald's . Anyway, we all like Fazoli's, and I am not one to do anything that not everyone likes. It was after we got home that the fun ended. Perhaps in the immature minds of my children there lurked the ...

OK, so I'm sitting at work the other day (I’m a programmer by profession), indifferently tracing through a subroutine to find an obscure error in a broken program that I didn't write but I was told to fix, and suddenly -- have you ever heard of micro-sleep? It's when you fall asleep for anywhere from a fraction of a second up to thirty seconds. According to Wikipedia, "...It often occurs as a result of sleep deprivation , or mental fatigue , sleep apnea , hypoxia , narcolepsy , or hypersomnia . Microsleeps can occur at any time, typically without significant warning." Well, I'm not sure exactly how long it lasted, but it did happen without warning, and based on the morning’s work, I’m sure it had something to do with mental fatigue! I woke up with a jerk, and looked around furtively; hoping nobody noticed my little micro-sojourn into oblivion. Good, all clear. ‘I need a break,’ I mumbled to myself. After a quick stretch, and a long gulp of my luk...

"What's with that title," you ask? Well, I love to write, but I can't all the time. I have a real life, too! So this blog will be a place where I can exercise my creative process, hash out story ideas, maybe even do a little creative venting. Enjoy!