Cooking the Hook

I have been idly dreaming about having a small, vintage manual typewriter, as if that would help. I don't even know if I can still type on a manual machine and if I started using one would it wind up crippling me and what about that day job? I still spend eight hours a day on the computer and get paid for it. No matter how I lust after the sleek, shiny black vintage machines for sale all over the web, I'm not going to get one until I actually put my fingers on the keyboard and whack away for a while; see how it feels.  Although I had an ancient manual typewriter as a kid, I never learned to touch type until the late eighties on a computer keyboard. The whole notion is probably a pipe dream fueled by watching a couple of episodes of Band of Brothers last weekend. There were several scenes of a soldier pecking away at a portable typewriter, so incongruous yet so ubiquitous during World War II. I spent a lot of time over the weekend looking for an archive of the music th

High as a kite with no string. Sometime during the transit of the Pink Moon I wrote the meat and bones of the finale. Hit print and passed out. I know it looks kind of like this now, but I can make it across and back and I'm not afraid of heights or alligators. I can fly and I taste bad.

A week is too long to think about something before putting it on paper. Spent the morning slipping back into all the characters skins. Even managed to kill one, but it might not have been the right one - I felt no sorrow or loss - so that will have to be revisited. Still lotsa words today.

In the writers group the other night, one of my friends pointed out that my winning contest entry worked out to be worth about three dollars a word. I reckoned that it might be the most money I ever earn as a writer. I think I'm going to remember that statement. Then, this morning, this popped up in the feed making me wonder how the serial format will work out. I remember how much I looked forward to each new issue if SK's "The Green Mile" when it was put out in the grocery stores alongside the weekly TV Guide. People were lined up to buy that one.                 "Thursday brings the launch of Julian Fellowes’s new novel. It’s called  Belgravia , and it reads,  from its description , as extremely  Downton Abbey -esque: “Set in the 1840s when the upper echelons of society began to rub shoulders with the emerging industrial nouveau riche,” the announcement goes, “ Belgravia  is peopled by a rich cast of characters.” There will be secrets and intrigue and, if

     Ace sat with his back to the room and appeared to be reading a small prayer book. Actually, he was tearing out the pages one by one and eating them, chewing slowly and looking up at the ceiling of his cage as if he was memorizing the text. Billy, the bar's owner and bartender, said he only ate one or two pages a day – it was not as if he was hungry. Billy fed Ace every time he fed himself. In fact, he fed Ace first like he was worried about being poisoned; a fair concern because he treated the cook like dirt.      It bothered Bea to see Ace locked up like that. It was obvious that he was constantly pissed-off, unlike most captive monkeys who sank into apathy after a while. If anyone but Billy approached the cage Ace screamed and flung himself around inside. If you put your hands anywhere near his reach or grasp there would be blood. He once ate a drunk's left little finger.      The day he escaped she helped him by not saying anything as she watched him slip out

...and that is entirely enough about that . Back to work.

I'm still frittering with adrenaline. Hunting for my humbles and knowing I should be outside making a sacrifice to a slew of deities. Later babes, just feeling this for the moment. "Dear Deborah, CONGRATULATIONS! You have won the Writer Unboxed UnConference Scholarship package..."

"Thank you for your interest in the Writer Unboxed UnConference scholarship. If this is an application for consideration, thank you for your submission. Please  note that we don't have the available staff to respond to every submission personally, however, each submission will be considered by a 'blind' panel, and the scholarship winner chosen based upon merit and without prejudice."