Thursday, April 11, 2013

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch....

....you must first invent the universe.
--Dr. Carl Sagan

Hoo, doggies, am I ever finding that to be true this week.

I'm writing...but in the process, I'm also having to re-teach myself all the skills I thought I had learned in school, but, it turns out, I somehow managed to either forget--or forgot that I never really learned, and simply skated by with as little actual work as possible...which pretty much describes my college years perfectly ("Oh, that I had applied myself to homework for my other classes with the zeal I spent on my musical training!" she wailed, hand dramatically draped across forehead). So, in addition to writing, I'm learning how to do research online, format my writing so that an editor won't snicker at me (OK, not as much), syntax, rhythm, grammar--all of it. The Elements of Style and The Chicago Manual of Style, my computer, and Wikipedia are constant companions.

Considering how good I was at weaseling OUT of homework all my educational life, I suspect my teachers are laughing their collective arses off somewhere at my toil, sweat, and confusion.

(Kids, here's my unsolicited advice for the week, re: grammar, syntax, sentence structure, etc.: DO THE WORK NOW, while you're still young and in school--it's a hell of a lot harder to make this information stick when one is over forty and having to come up to speed from long-time inertia. Trust me on this.)

So, in short: in order to be able to take myself seriously as a writer, I'm having to invent the universe before I can bake my apple pie.

Oddly, I am OK with this.

RM


Friday, April 5, 2013

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Hello, all.
As usual, it's been an aeon or two since last I posted. My personal journal and the little tidbits of wit that get shat upon my Facebook page (AKA the ADD child's Happy Place) have gotten the majority of my writing time for much of the past few years.

But.

Things, O my Droogies, have changed a bit 'round here, and I figured I'd best fill you in.

I'll try and sum up the last two years in as much of a Readers' Digest way as I can. I haven't given you NEARLY as much information as I could have ('cause, hey, it's personal, OK?), so it may take a bit. Here goes:

Mid--2011: Lost one of the dogs. In the same week, wound up getting BACK together with ex-bf from previous posts, that I was still in love with. Would like to say something about lightning striking twice, but it pretty much went exactly the way our first go-around did.  Zap-fizzle. 'Nuff said about THAT.

January 2012: Was not offered a full-time slot at the opera. Decided I'd had enough of being jerked around and, for the first time ever, turned down the extra chorus offer. Went through major depressive episode at the thought of not having enough gainful employment to survive. Pulled self up by bootstraps emotionally and began to tentatively explore possibility of finally putting my money (or the lack thereof) where my mouth was, moving away from singing as a career, and doing something else with my life.

March 2012: Proving yet again that "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans," a full-time contract (filling in for a colleague who had to take a last-minute leave to care for an ailing relative) got dropped into my lap....TWO WEEKS before start of rehearsals. I had to drop all my nascent plans and completely rearrange my life to accommodate this change, but it was worth it for one reason: I got to sock away money like a crack-addicted squirrel in anticipation of the next jerking-around that surely was headed my way. (I'd lived on poverty rations for so many years that having a regular paycheck, and saving a chunk of it each week, was painless.)

May 2012: Had a reckoning with the ex-bf, who had been lingering in my life despite my repeated attempts to move on, where we finally made peace with each other. In what has to be one of the biggest ironic moments in recorded history, at the end of a gut-wrenching five-hour no-holds-barred bare-knuckles soul-baring, he told me, for the first time,

                                                    "I love you."

Eight months after he'd dumped me.

(???)

He then said, "I'll always have your back."

After which he promptly disappeared from my life again. In the past six months, we've seen each other....once.

C'est la vie, c'est la guerre....

December 2012: Lost the other dog--the one my ex-husband and I had gotten as a puppy and had had for fourteen years, a once-in-a-lifetime dog whose loss will forever leave a hole in my heart.
Oh, did I mention that this happened on Christmas morning?

January 2013: Sure enough, got jerked around yet again, and was not offered a full-time job. Initial offer: one concert. Not even an opera...a concert. From a sixty thousand dollar contract last year to a six-HUNDRED-dollar offer this year. (I should like to point out here that there has been no appreciable change in my vocal production in this time.) Needless to say, in the most professional way I was capable of, I told them to go pound sand.

February 2013: They came back with another offer...the concert...plus ONE opera. (Apparently someone else had turned down the initial offer--I was not the only one sending out sand-pounding orders.) Yet again, I reminded them where a good quantity of sand could be found, and what they could do with same, forthwith.
I hadn't been holding my breath for the same situation as last year--the chances of another mezzo colleague's needing to take a last-minute leave, and THEN of that contract being offered to me, were laughable to nonexistent.

So.
Lost my partner.
Lost my dog.
Lost my job.

Now what?

Here's where it gets interesting. (Well, OK, at least to me.)

Back in January 2012, when I'd first refused my offer at the opera, I began to kick around the idea of writing again. I've mentioned in the past that one of my dreams was to be a writer, but I'd taken a 25-year detour in pursuing a music career instead. Well, OK, I had the time....and didn't want to sing anymore...and I had a couple of ideas to play with...so I did. I figured, "Well, if I'm gonna be broke, I might as well be broke and happy....right?" *shrugs*
One of the ideas started mutating (really, there's no other way to describe it) into something interesting, so I just kept jotting related ideas down until one day (about a week before the full-time offer, mais oui) I realized that I might...just might...have enough for a full-length book. A real book. Maybe even more than one book.  I had a storyline--a very rough one, but still a storyline--I liked. I had smaller ideas, little bits of dialogue or set design or exposition or character development, attaching themselves to my storyline like fleas on a barnyard cat--they were hopping around so fast I almost couldn't keep track of them all.  Even better, the little bits all fit together neatly and plausibly. I started feeling like Gene Wilder in 'Young Frankenstein'--wild-eyed, screaming "IT....COULD....WORK!!!!"

And then, the offer came in, and I had to put all that aside.

So. In January 2013....when my life went into free-fall....things were, on the surface, worse than they had been the year before. But, oddly, I felt free. There was nothing, no one, holding me back anymore...I could go anywhere, do anything, I wanted. I had my little savings socked away to keep me from panicking about money--it wasn't a huge amount, but enough to last me a few months while I sat with the question of what I wanted to do with my one wild and precious life. And, again and again, when I did sit with that question, the answer came back that, at least in the short term, I wanted to write.

And so I am.
I don't know if this is what I will end up doing with my life.
I don't know whether my writing is any good.
I don't know whether I'll ever get published.
I don't know if I'll ever make a dime from it.
It.
Doesn't.
Matter.

I'm free.

RM