February Sweeps - Day 7

So, it's been a week since I started this.  I don't know if I'm particularly proud of myself or not.  Last week, before I had committed to writing every day, I feel like I wrote more (there's no way to know because I texted my word count to Big, and all those texts are gone), and probably better.  But I can't get that week back, so I can look at this one, and move on to the next.

Lots of wandering around feeling floopzy,* singing and listening to music, writing and editing audio, and trying to force a positive attitude on myself.  I think I finished a story ("Fisher & Florence"), worked on two others ("Never Let Him Go" and "The Last Friday In December"), worked on polishing the Lara & the Witch story so I could record it, and started a new one today ("Troubled Child").

"Troubled Child" is a title Marshal Latham assigned me for the contest he's doing over on the Journey Into... podcast.  It was actually a clever idea: he'd give everybody the title of a song by the band Journey, and they had to write a story about it.  It had to be between 2000 and 7000 words long, and couldn't include the words *$#!*, %*@(#!, nubbin, or !$%^)#! in it.  I'm sure there were other rules (I think you have to take a line or two from the song and incorporate it somewhere), but it was really the challenge of it I was excited by.

Well, this week Marshal assigned me the song, one I didn't know, off the album Frontiers.

I've listened through a few times, and it hasn't really helped me.  I've sat down on three different occasions, trying to determine why the child is troubled, and if the story should be about him, or about a parent or teacher.

Today, I decided it would be about the mother, and that it would be a daughter.  I sat down and just started writing, not really sure where it was going to go.  It may be the first story in three months not about (or featuring) that particular girl that is responsible for me doing all this mid-life stuff.

Even so, I wrote most of it, and I'm not sure it was bad.  We'll see when I finish it and/or lose the contest.  Cool beans, as my cousin would say.

At one point during my writing, I glanced out the window, and someone had painted the sky with orange and red.  I thought, "If I were in a better mood, I'd go outside and look at the sunset."

But I am trying, as you know, to have a positive attitude this month, so I went ahead and went down the stairs and out the door of the library.**  It was kind of awesome, the way the sky looked, and there were a couple of other people out there also looking.  I took this fine picture:

And my guess is, only two days ago, when I still had my phone (and all the data that was stored in it), it wouldn't have taken such a great photo.

I went back up and wrote for a little more (making today the day with the most words).

A week from now is Valentine's Day, and I pray I don't feel miserable then.  But even if I do, I can't give in to that despair . . . or they win.

Words Today: 2,063
Words Total: 9,242

*Oh, I'm sorry, do you not have the word floopzy in your language?  How sad for you.

**I had to go past a big group of dressed-up teens that were getting their pictures taken for prom.  It seems like just yesterday, when people were going to prom all around me--people my own age, I mean.  I always envy young people today, the way they can connect with social media, and take a million pictures of themselves and their friends, and make vine videos, and make out with their cousins (only the girls, mind you, I didn't mean male cousins make out with each other . . . that would not be cool beans at all, I imagine).