Saved!

I had no clue what I was going to post about today. Some days are like that. Fortunately, Benjamin Solah gave me a meme of five words to “waffle” about. Thank you, Ben!


School

Yes, it was my decision to go back to school at *mumble* years old, but was it the right one?

When I have a week like this one where I have to readjust to getting up early, a quiz on Thursday and a paper due as well as an exam on Friday, I feel like I need a sanity check (which I just had this afternoon and my doctor says I’m good for another three months). But I have to admit that I enjoy getting up in the morning with a sense of purpose and the more I have to do, the more I get done. Does that make any sense?

Muse

I’m actually surprised at the number of writers who scoff at the idea of a muse. Do I really think that one of my cats turns into that hot guy at to the left of this post? Of course not! Although it’s fun to imagine he could if he wanted to. ;-)

To me, the muse represents the drive that makes me a writer. It’s that little voice inside me that tells me “enough with the spider solitaire already, get writing!”

Poetry

I wrote my first poem when I was eight years old. I do not remember the poem itself, but I remember it was about how my cat Tobey was always jumping up on my lap every time I sat down, and that my teacher was impressed with my strong sense of rhyme and rhythm.

Most of the time, poetry comes easy to me. I think this is why I used to discount it as true writing. If I don’t have to slave over, it can’t be any good, right? I think the turning point for me with my poetry was the PAD Challenge. So many people, writing so much poetry! And some of those prompts were pretty darned hard! But it made me start to feel like a real poet.

Goals

Setting goals is easy, it’s keeping them that’s the hard part. I used to set myself all kinds of goals, but I’d pretty much keep them to myself. That way, when I wouldn’t reach them, I was the only one who was disappointed in me. Now I’ve learned to set more reasonable goals and I post them where all the world can see. And if I don’t reach them? Surprise! No one’s disappointed, they just encourage me to try again.

Sci-fi

There is so much to say about sci-fi that I don’t know where to start.

When I was a child my favorite cartoons were the Jetsons, Roger Ramjet, and Space Ghost. I used to beg to be allowed to watch the Saturday afternoon monster movie, which was more often than not about monsters from space. I was the kid who loved the Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, and Star Trek.

I wish I could remember the first science fiction book I ever read. Was it the Chrysalids, by John Wyndham, in highschool? I do remember a year or so after that reading the Gor series by John Norman and my English teacher being horrified - not by the content, but by the terrible writing in those books. I read the sci-fi books he recommended and it opened up a whole new world for me.

The first short story I ever wrote was science fiction. It was a terrible space opera with lots of action, and everyone ended up in suspended animation in the end. The first novel I wrote was also science fiction, as were the next couple, all appallingly bad.

Life took several unexpected turns and I got away from science fiction, but it’s started to creep back in lately. We’ll see where it takes me.