Why I Quit RWA

The complete answer to the RWA survey that was sent to me when I did not renew my membership.  Why should we be in such seperate h...

Monday, November 14, 2011

What Has Music Got To Do With It

For me, the act of writing is oftentimes more juggling family needs with my writing, then anything. It is a marathon of interruptions of other obligations and necessary chores, but a writer observes and records life’s little vignettes and stories and writer mind never really quits. That can be bane or boon. Necessary , but often, in the midst of the good and bad of life, there is this removed part of your mind, analyzing, sorting, observing a ‘story.’

Often I’ve wished I could silent it because it interrupts much like a neighbor calling just as your writing starts to flow. It distracts from both crises and joys, taking away a part, somehow. It seems I’m always either in the middle of writing a scene, writing wildly, afraid to lose the words, the momentum, that joy of flow when the phone rings, my mother needs something, or the toilet overflows and silently screaming, “no, no, I’ll lose this. I’ll lose the words, the scene…” Or I’m enjoying time with my husband, in the garden and the perfect word, scene or story pops into my mind…the one I’d been trying to find all morning, but now, now I’m busy with not writing and…

It is so much of the time an uncomfortable existence, being not fully…any one, anywhere. So in the midst of helping my son, during a sale at his music store http://musicvillageusa.com, dozens of vignette’s played across my writer’s mind: The little girl going out the door with her new purple and pink paisley ukulele, the young mother with her teenage son, looking at electric guitars, then guitar straps with skeletons marching across the black leather (was she praying this was not a mistake?), the teenage girl telling her mom: ‘this was my best day ever. I’ve got to update my facebook’, the jumble of music notes-my dog has fleas, or the first notes of The House of The Rising Sun all jumbled up together. That softly spoken, thank you, dad, from a young teen boy, that brought tears in my eyes, for some reason.

The little germs of stories bombarded me all day and I had not one minute to write them down. All I can hope is the cream rises to the top and and have faith that my mind would remember those that connect with something in me that could use it.

And isn’t that the blessing of changing up your normal routine once in a while. Do something different. A story is sure to follow.

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