Category: Musings & Ramblings

“Margaritaville”

On By BekkiIn Musings & Ramblings1 Comment

Things accomplished during my vacation (in no particular order):

  • finished the latest rewrite of my novel, drafted a query letter, and began searching for potential agents
  • drafted 2/3 of the plot for my next novel
  • Green nail polishpainted my toenails light green, in honor of springtime
  • cleaned the bathroom
  • managed to feed myself for an entire week without resorting to take-out
  • gave a lecture at NYU to a group of law students working with Iraqi refugees
  • resumed working on a short story that I began over the summer but never finished
  • began the process of finding a writer’s group
  • did yoga, several times in class and once on my own
  • stayed up late to finish a book
  • embarrassed my husband by sending him flowers at work, which were delivered live on CNN

Which is to say, it was a pretty kick-ass vacation.

 

“if you believe in fairies”

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

Found this while I as I was procrastinating by going through my writing folder instead of editing the novel like I should be, and thought it worth putting up.

Peter at 32

2 am – the after
after party – and he’s down
in the Village
with a smile
and a corporate expense account, still dressed
in standard office-wear:
trousers and a Eurotrash
button-down;

“Darling!”
he says
to a girl in a
mini-skirt, air kisses
above
her cheeks, putting
a hand on her ass
and guiding her out to
a cab.  He blanks on the directions to his loft
a moment – third
street to the left? – but the cabbie
has a GPS on the dash.

She will leave before
he wakes up,
and he, head pounding, will lie
back against the pillows
and clap.

“Do I need a reservation?”

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

For the third time in almost five years, I’m cooking dinner for A tonight.  Valentine’s dinner, no less.  Usually, I’m a firm believer in sticking to what I know.  In my case, that’s baking.  Cookies, cupcakes, wedding cakes – if it involves a mixer and an oven, I can do it.  Cooking, on the other hand, is not my forte.  And really, why bother when I live with a professional.

Valentine’s Day, that’s why.  See, there are certain holidays which, in the restaurant world, are referred to as “amateurs’ nights”.  New Years is a big one, and Mother’s Day as well (brunch in that case).  Likewise Valentine’s.  In the normal course of things, A and I would have made reservations at a cute little restaurant yesterday or tonight, then happily celebrated the actual holiday from the comfort of our couch.

Superbowl sliders and champagne
The past few days having been decidedly not normal (due mostly to a family member being ill) and A having to work later tonight than we thought, we missed our chance to do the nice Valentine’s dinner a few days early.

I put the odds at us taking a few bites of dinner and then ordering takeout at 50/50.

“It’s cool that you let lovely lily read the letter”

On By BekkiIn Musings & Ramblings4 Comments

The summer I was sixteen, my best friend and I wrote letters to each other.  We used pink pens and glittering ink, decorating the outside of the envelopes with song lyrics.  We made up names for ourselves and everyone around us, a secret, sacred world we could slip into at will.  Lost boys wandered through our pages, disappearing for days on end, sometimes forgotten, sometimes rediscovered, always beautiful.  It was a magical correspondence.  When I read the letters now I am still imbued with a sense of the infinite, even though it is clear from a distance how quickly we were beginning to unravel.

I am not, it seems, the only one who misses writing letters.  Mary Robinette Kowal has issued a challenge:  during the month of February, write one letter every day the post office is open.

I have decided to do this thing.  I will write to the people I have left scattered across the places I have been.  I will write to the people who post addresses and invite mail from perfect strangers.

And, if you wish it, I will write to you.  Send me your address (at my email or via direct message to @thegirlhaswings).  I’ll cast my mind back to the where and the when of how we knew each other, and I’ll put down on paper those things I always thought I should have said to you but never did.  You don’t have to write back, but I do ask, in the spirit of hand-written correspondence, that my letters stay offline.

I don’t want to post my address online, for all the obvious sorts of reasons, but if you’d like to write me a letter, send an email or a tweet.

Questions and such welcomed.

“The New Year”

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

imageBack in New York, and a strange sort of not-quite jet-lagged.  We started in the Keys at 8:00 yesterday morning, spent the night somewhere in the Carolinas, and crossed the river onto the island at 4:30 this afternoon.  In some ways, I think it’s easier to get onto a plane and travel across a continent than it is to drive that same distance.  At least with the first, you can fool the body into thinking it’s only gone a short distance.
Florida was wonderful.  The last time I was there was in Jan 2007, in St. Pete at Writers in Paradise. It helps that all of Florida (at least, the part that’s not the panhandle) looks like all the rest of Florida.  Wide roads, low mission-style buildings, palm trees.  In fact, we even stayed in a bright pink hotel.  And even though we were on the other side of the state, and it was a good 30 degrees warmer, it felt like coming back home. Had drinks at South Beach and watched the tourists, went swimming at night after all the tourists left, came home covered in sand and sunscreen.

image

Thinking about New Year’s, and resolutions, and slowly coming to the realization that I am exactly where I am supposed to be.  It’s frustrating in a way, because I’m almost thirty and I’m not nearly anywhere I wanted to be.  Instead, I’m slowly learning how to get to where I’d like to go.

My resolution this year is to get serious about my writing.  First, to finish Persephone and send her off into the world.  I’ve held onto her entirely too long.  Second, to start a new novel, and to do it right this time, plotting first and writing second.  Third, to try to write a short story a month, even if the first draft is no good, even if I have to sit down and pound out twenty pages of dross.  I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the short story for a long time, always hating how little space there was in which to create a world and admiring those writers who could do so successfully.  I’m realizing, though, how much room there is to play in a short story, how essential it is to learning the architecture of building worlds.

I’m giving myself (by which I mean that I am forcing myself to sit down and write for) an hour each day.  Not as much time as I would like, but I suspect there are going to be days where taking an hour seems all but impossible.  I’m going to try to do it, anyway.