An oldie but goodie from my tortured twenties

1. In honor of Mimi Smartypants, who, I am happy to see is still blogging after all these years, I am doing today's entry as a numbered list.

2. Pity the poor Hugo House conference attendees who will be attending my classes at Saturday's conference because I have just taught myself how to use animations and sound in Power Point! (Loud sound clip of extended applause here).

3. I forget.

4. This morning, awash in nostalgia, I hunted down the lyrics for a song I wrote in my twenties with galpal Karen S during our brief tenure as a "band" called The Underwear Stains (We never actually performed. Or wrote any other songs. Or played instruments). Herewith I present it to you, published for the FIRST TIME!

Boys in Torn Leather Jackets
[chorus]Boys in torn leather jackets
Want you to think they’ve been around
Turn your life into a cliché
Don’t want you to tie them down

Always drunk or stoned at night
Watching Star Trek when you come over
You’re too real, he just can’t deal
He’s his own one true lover

Ohhhh...

[chorus]Boys in torn leather jackets
Just wanna play guitar, wanna get stoned
Boys in torn leather jackets
Wanna get laid and left alone

No skin broken, just his jacket
But he says he’s been hurt before
Just an excuse to make excuses
So why does it make you want him more…

[chorus] Boys in torn leather jackets
Want you to think they’ve been around
Turn your life into a cliché
Don’t want you to tie them down

[Insert another loud sound clip of extended applause here plus flashing animation of stadium crowd going wild].

5. The end.

Breakup Babe in illustrious company

The Victory Review - an online magazine about the Seattle acoustic music scene - featured an article a a few months ago that mentioned my Breakup Babe blog.

The article is called "I Can't Stand the Rain, " and it's all about artists and musicians who've been inspired by the rain. Here Breakup Babe and I are mentioned in such illustrious company as Janis Joplin, Gary Snyder, and Glenn Gould.

We were very flattered!

This article was written by my old coworker Hank Davis, with whom I shared one of those windowless cells at ye olde Empire Corporation. See what Hank had to say below and definitely and check out his article too! It's fun to see how he weaves all his thoughts about music and the rain together. His mention of BB a tiny part of a much longer piece.

A pair of contrasting rainy days from 2005 and 2006 turn up on the "Breakup Babe" blog. For a brief while, I shared a cramped writer's room at a software company with blogger and author Rebecca Agiewich, who converted her blog into the popular book Breakup Babe. (No one quite so earnest as a hungry writer with literary aspirations and a Web site.) She likes the rain:

Wednesday, March 16, 2005 (5:33 PM)

[Rebecca] It rained. Finally! ...Do you remember the days that playing in the rain was just something you did? Running around with your friends, splashing through the gutters, getting as wet as can be? Without a care for what it might do to your hair, your clothes...

On the other hand, the rain doesn't always like her. When she heard Australian country singer Kasey Chambers sing that the rain was useful for washing away tears, this happened:

Wednesday, October 25, 2006 (8:58 AM)

[Rebecca] All through this overly sunny week, the Kasey Chambers song "On a Bad Day" has been running through my head:

Every time my tears

have ever fallen

I've kept 'em in my pocket

for a rainy day.

So when it's pouring

I take them outside

I let the rain start washing

my tears away.

[Rebecca] Then it poured down rain yesterday and instead of

washing all my tears away, it just got me really, really wet

Self-Pitying Rant du Jour

Grr. Only with the help of a very strong latte on (top of two cups of strong drip coffee) have I been able to dig up my usual optimism today.

Let's just say there has been more than the usual amount of rejection lately, what with getting FIRED from my last band and getting SHUT DOWN by ye olde Geeksoft for a job for which I was way overqualified and only sort of wanted anyway, and by the way paid utter CRAP.

(P.S. Yes, that's my pug Snuffy. When you work at home, you take a lot of pictures of your pug wearing glasses.)

Oh, and the band? Let's call them "The Old White Guys" cause that's what they are - especially now without the younger, perkier additions of me, Dave, and the drummer, who also got fired because we "couldn't put music first in our lives." Seriously, everyone in that band is like 60+ and playing tired old classic rock covers. I AM MEANT FOR BETTER THINGS!!

So it's true, I was stretched way too thin and not putting any time into the music, even though I wanted to. Thus my rock star career is currently on hiatus as I do a little soul searching but never mind. I SHALL RISE AGAIN. SO EFF YOU OLD WHITE GUYS AND GEEKSOFT. JUST YOU WAIT.

There. I feel so much better. With another five lattes, I might feel even better.

SAY. You'll indulge me for a minute if I point you to an article about me and my book from 2006, when I was briefly FAMOUS. I just discovered in my so-called "files" the hard copy of an article from King County Journal that is no longer available online, and was thrilled to see myself not only a giant photo of myself on the cover of a pullout section of the but also to see a giant photo of myself on top of Mt. Rainier on the inside. Yay, me! Those were the days.

And, to top it all off (no pun intended), it was much bigger than the photo of Hannah Montana, who was the subject of the next article. Ha ha ha hahhahah. EFF YOU HANNAH MONTANA.

I just scanned this sucker and put it on my web site so that we can relive 2006 in all its glory! Enjoy! (But be warned. It's a PDF. You'll read it anyway. WON'T you?)

Fun Facts from the San Francisco Writer's Conference and More...

Greetings all from me and Snuffy! Hope your February is looking springlike like it is here in Seattle, WA, where the bitter cold and snows have momentarily receded.

I was just down in the Bay Area volunteering for the San Francisco Writer’s Conference, and wouldn’t you know, the weather was worse there than it is here. Which was fine because mostly I was indoors for the conference and then suffering from a horrible cold so had little use for the outdoors anyway.

I learned a lot of interesting things and met some great people at this conference, as well as getting a few of my burning questions answered. Here are some fun and not-so-fun facts I picked up:

• Only about 50% of books are actually sold in bookstores today; the rest are sold through alternative channels
  
  
• Most fiction manuscripts submitted to agents are boring and predictable because they don’t have enough FAILURE in them
  
  
• Your “numbers” (that is, how many copies you’ve sold) stick to you like “toilet paper on your shoe”

My favorite speaker was agent Donald Maas; his wife Lisa Rector kindly gave me some advice as did agent Kimberly Cameron. I also met the author of the book Surviving Five Daughters, who was charming and fun, and refers to his daughters in conversation as D1, D2, D3, etc.

I did think there was an overemphasis on the business side of writing and publishing, and would have liked to see more talks devoted to good old-fashioned craft. That’s why I liked Maas’s talk – even though he was talking through one of the chapters in his excellent book Writing the Breakout Novel - and the material was familiar to me already. I liked his talk because it actually made me focus on my story instead of stressing about my "web presence" or how I can get my "numbers" up before I'm entirely wrapped in toilet paper.

His theory about breaking out as an author is that it’s not about how big your publicity budget is that makes your book a bestseller, but word-of-mouth generated by readers--and that you get that word-of-mouth by writing a book with larger-than-life characters going through conflict where the stakes are very high and where unexpected twists ensue.

Sounds easy, right? Especially when you read his book and he lays it all out for you. Then you try to actually start constructing a high-stakes plot with larger-than-life characters. And it's so effing hard! It’s like my piano lessons when I listen to my teacher play all kinds of cool honky-tonk riffs than even shows me exactly how to do them and I go home inspired and excited. But when I try to do them myself they don’t come out right at all and I feel even clumsier and more unskilled than before, especially when the more I practice, the worse I seem to do them.

But if I have faith (or even if I don’t) and I persist even just 15 minutes a day I eventually get better. And that’s how it is with writing too. If you’re feeling discouraged, just trick yourself into writing 15 minutes a day. Because the hardest part is sitting down at your computer. Once you actually start, you’ll want to write much longer than 15 minutes. And once you get in the habit of sitting down every day to do it, it gets harder not to do it than to do it.

Anyway. I digress.

In BreakupBabe news, for those of you Seattleites who would like to support your local businesses, you can find a copy of my novel at Balderdash Books in Greenwood! And soon at Lemon Meringue Boutique, also in Greenwood.

You’ll also be able to see me read at Cheap Wine and Poetry at Richard Hugo House on March 26. And no I’m not actually reading poetry! I *hope* to read something from the new novel! You know the one that’s full of colorful characters that you can’t stop reading and won’t be able to stop talking about – once it, er, finally gets written.

Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for. You can read my Alaska Airlines article about paddling in Glacier Bay here (warning: this is a PDF file). Remind me to tell you the real story behind this trip sometime -- you know, about how we got stranded, almost drowned, feared for our lives 80% of the time, etc etc. Plus, don't miss an update about my upcoming blogging class!

(Wait - I forgot one little thing. Recently I met someone who had downloaded my book onto a Kindle. It was a very cool thing to see; the Kindle was super-sleek, felt good in my hands, and the text was easy to read. And that's all I have to say about that. Except that I would love to have a Kindle and maybe one day I will actually be able to afford one.)

How to become a writer when you grow up

Greetings Earthlings! I hope you have finally recovered from holiday bloat and that 2009 is speeding along smoothly. Soon we will all be another year older and deeper in debt but for now, enjoy!

My busy January is in full swing. Coming up next week the second class of my six-week Hugo House class and a panel discusion at Hugo House on Friday January 29 (see the details here!).

I'll also be appearing at a career fair in Seattle's lovely south end. Wherein I'll be standing in a booth dispensing advice to children who come by and ask what it's like to be a writer.

Child: How can I become a writer when I grow up?

Me: First you must undergo years of post-college angst as support yourself in a variety of humiliating jobs. Then you waste a lot of money on graduate school. Next you finally start to write but face much rejection. Then you get horribly dumped by a cheating weenie, which propels you 1)to go on antidepressants, and 2) to start a blog and then write that novel you've always dreamed of. Get an expensive author photo taken; go on an expensive book tour; sleep with a a lot of inappropriate men. Revel in the oh-so-brief spotlight, then and lapse back into obscurity while you struggle to do it all over again. More questions?

It appears too, that the boyfriend and I might have found a new band to play with. It's too soon to say for sure whether this could be a long-term relationship but we "jammed" yesterday in a garage in Woodinville and were enthusiastically invited to join the band and pursue the rock star life on the Puget Sound festival circuit -- i.e. Taste of Tacoma, Bite of Seattle, Flavor of Federal Way, Tang of Tukwila, etc.

In other news...I have officially launched the blog consulting arm of Rebecca Agiewich Incorporated-o-Rama this week. (Well all except for putting the "offical" information about it on my "official" web site which shall officially happen soon.). If you have friends in the non-profit or small business world who need to get on the ball and leverage the power of blogging -- send them my way!

And if you missed my appearance on BlogTalk Radio a couple weeks ago, DON'T DESPAIR. You can still check out the archives and hear my awesome advice on how to get over a breakup (hint: it involves lots of sex) and what my top five breakup songs are.

xo
Rebecca

Many opportunities to hear me blab in January

Happy 2009! There I am at left toasting you with the glass of water I had on New Year's Eve. Yes it's water and no I'm not drunk even though I sort of look like it. It's a long story. Anyway.

January is a big month, peeps! I have no less than *five* public appearances coming up. That's a lot of dough going into the coffers for moi!

Oh wait. No it's not. Because I'm not getting paid for any of them except the class I'm teaching (which you should definitely take and which I'll tell you more about later).

Right, right. I forgot. I don't like to do things for money. I much prefer spiritual enrichment than cold, hard cash which is why my wardrobe has gotten so f*cking crappy lately and I can't afford that trip to Mexico this winter. But never mind about that. Who needs Mexico when you glow with Inner Light?

Public appearances are fun! You'll want to note all of these in your calendar. Well, except the *book club* I'll be talking to and the *career fair* at which I'll be convincing impressionable children how glamorous (not) it is to be a writer. So that makes three for your keep track of:

Sat., Jan 10, 6 pm PST
No matter where you live, be sure to log on and tune in for this BlogTalk Radio interview! Witty host Greg (who gets extra points for referring to me as a "renowned" author) hosts "Breaking Glass," a weekly music show. Writes Greg: "The theme of this week's show is "break-ups" and the music and discussion matter will center around breaking up (and maybe even getting back together). To this end, we have renowned author Rebecca Agiewich (The Breakup Babe) joining us in studio so check it out and call in with questions about breaking up!" *Bonus* You'll also get to hear my (recently disbanded) band Hank and the Milkmashers play!

Wednesdays, Jan 22 thru Feb 25, 5-6 p.m.
My class "Turn down the volume, pump up the word count" starts at Seattle's Richard Hugo House (read more about it here). The great breaking news about this class is that bestselling Seattle writer Garth Stein has just agreed to talk to the class February 4! And if you haven't read his latest novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain,you are in for the best, most heartrending, and beautiful read of your life.

Thursday, Jan 29, 7 pm
Online Publishing, Blogging and Marketing for Writers
"Hugo House's InPrint Series presents a panel discussion with writers, bloggers and editors, including Rebecca Agiewich and Eileen Gunn, who have made the Internet work for them. $7/$5 for Hugo House members. Cabaret. Thursday, January 29th, 2009, 7:00 PM

All right, that's enough publicizing for now. Oh wait -- if you're flying Alaska Airlines in February, be sure to look for my article about kayaking in Glacier Bay!

OK that's really enough. Here's to your holiday recovery!

Just Call Me "Martin Scorcese Junior"

Is it really already Thanksgiving? Seems like just yesterday I was pondering writing a "Highlights of 2007" post and now it's already 2009. Sheesh. (Left: one last glimpse of fall's glory in the North Cascades).

Things are pretty quiet here in the neighborhood of Greenlake, town of Seattle, state of Washington. Mostly I'm working, writing, and scheming for what my next big adventure is going to be. (Aspiring to live a life on the road a la my friend Amanda, while still holding down a relationship, a well-paying job, writing a novel, and taking care of a spirited senior pug).

My band broke up, which is a big bummer. We were livin' the dream, man! Then our singer/songwriter/star decided to move to effing Florida. When I expressed my disbelief about this (I mean, come on, Florida?) to my long-lost friend The Captain , he said "Tom Petty is from Florida, I can understand the draw for your lead singer."

So whatever. For some reason, I get/got more satisfaction out of listening to our roughish but tuneful recordings than reading my book (And yeah, that's my b-friend wailing on lead guitar!). Hell, I can't actually read my book. I can hardly look at the damn thing because I spent so much damn time writing it.

But you know, it would be nice if I could actually feel good about my novel instead of worrying about when/if the next one will done and when/if the current one will go out of print. That's akin to saying that it would be nice if I could become a Zen Buddhist, which ain't never gonna happen (despite my occasional attempts at Yoga), so let's just forget it and move on.

To what I'm not sure, exactly. Why not end it there while I'm ahead?

Despite my complaints I am grateful to be alive in Seattle's sunny shivery fall (even though the leaves have fallen off the trees) and especially grateful for Top Pot doughuts and full use of all my bodily parts. Oh yeah and my boyfriend and family and dog and job. And warm place to live and Peets coffee and..

The list goes on.

(Oh -- and if you're bored during this long holiday weekend, enjoy this video montage put together by yours truly from "Pug-o-Ween 2008.")


xo
Rebecca

Public Libraries and Podcasts -- Who Knew??

I wanted to clue you in to two really cool things that I've discovered lately. This is very cutting-edge stuff for helping you build your music collection. I hesitate to even mention them to you for fear of the whole world finding out and cashing in, but...oh, what the heck.

Public Libraries

Did you know you can check CDs out of the public library?? Well guess what peeps -- you can! In the last month, I have checked out CDs by Tracy Chapman, the Hold Steady, Jay Farrar, Ryan Adams, Van Morrison. The list goes on! And then you can rip them onto your computer. I mean, then you can BURN them into your memory forever and replay them whenever you wish! When did these public library things start up anyway?

(Wait, didn't I once meet one of my INCREDIBLY UNSTABLE boyfriends at a library eons ago? My memory must be going. [See Breakup Babe entry for August 2, 2004].)

(Photo of the Seattle Public Library cribbed from the New York Times)

Podcasts

So there's this...thing. It's called "podcasting." I know, I know, sounds kinda weird. I think only one or two people know about it, including me. But - get this - when you sign up for podcasts, you can get things (like music!) for free! Just the other day I signed up for the KEXP podcast (you have to be really super hip to listen to KEXP so, if you're like, not hip, don't even bother) and I've already gotten like 15 new songs! Of course, most of them are too hip for me! Still. At least I am no longer listening to the same two songs over and over on my (c'mon Apple, pay me a lot of money to mention the name of your ubiquitous portable music player here!)

Honky Tonk Memories

Chaos-as judged by how much crap is being stored on my bed-- descended briefly on my condo this week. For a couple days there, every inch of my bed was covered: with books, skiing gear, clean laundry, dirty laundry,and-to top it all off - a generous sprinkling of cracker crumbs that fell out of my backpack.

Now most of it is gone except a couple books, a few cracker crumbs and, the bag that I'm packing for this weekend. I'm off to do the Hog Loppet again - that fun silly ski event in Leavenworth wherein you ski 30 kilmoters just for the fun of it, thereby rendering yourself unable to walk for several days.

Not that I have time for such frippery. Numerous deadlines are encroaching on me next week: classes to teach, articles to write, all of which I am seriously underprepared for. Who knew that being unemployed would be so much work?

Meanwhile, my band played to a small but PBR-primed crowd at the Mars Bar last night (see poster above). I played a new piano intro to one of our songs that I worked and WORKED on to the point where I knew I was working on it too much and then of course I effed it up - leaving out the cool fill that would have made me sound like a real honky tonk piano player instead of some chick from Palo Alto who who grew up playing Mozart. But at least I didn't play any wrong notes; I just left out the coolest part and messed up the rhythm the tiniest bit.

I couldn't hear myself when I sang harmony either so for all I know I could have been singing something that was totally NOT harmonic at all. But people were dancing to our songs and that makes it all a success. Plus we made five bucks apiece. With that and my unemployment checks, I am rolling in it.

Me No Like Driving in Snow

Sigh. Not to complain or anything but the freelance lifestyle is giving me a headache. (That is the front of my new vest. More about that later.)

Working by myself has lost some of its allure. Oh sure I get to hang out in cafe after cafe but sometimes you just get a little jaded by that. And how many grande extra hot soy lattes can I drink in a day anyway before I start moving on to more fattening things or alcoholic beverages?

I like my new gig at Mt. Rainier. But that has its challenges too. It's like going on vacation and coming back once a week, with all the attendant excitement and anticlimax and packing and unpacking and garbage starting to smell while you're gone and ignoring more practical tasks that you should be doing (ie practicing piano or earning a living). Let's not even discuss snow driving.

I don't do snow. I grew up in California and never drove in the damn snow. There are no passes that you have to cross to get to Mt. Rainier, which fooled me into thinking that I wouldn't have to deal much with snow, but I forgot. It is - literally - one of the SNOWIEST PLACES ON EARTH. In 1972, it held the world record for snowfall!

Last week not only did I have knock two feet of snow off my car(with a tiny, ineffectual ice scraper suitable for tiny amounts of ice), which resulted in snow all over me and inside my car, I then had to drive for at least thirty miles on icy, snowy roads on a two lane highway in the dark with snow doing that horizontal thing it does that makes you all disoriented. Yes, those of you from snowier parts of this country can MOCK ME NOW.

I've never been so happy to see the strip-mauled suburb of South Hill (known as as "South Hell" as those who drive through it all the time), with its lights and many lanes and rain instead of snow.

In other news, I bought a new vest. Last week I wore this vest to a party at which I encountered the Seattle rock star Rachel Flotard of Visqueen. I saw Rachel perform last spring at the Sasquatch Festival and wished that I could be just like her. So when she showed up at this party, I was too shy to speak to her for most of the night.But when I did, she was quite charming and friendly. AND she raved about my brand-new used vest I had bought that very day at Buffalo Exchange. I glowed with her compliments for the next two days. (That is the back of my vest.)

Then, just yesterday, I saw her again in Victrola (whose help has gotten kind of surly, I must say) and I was wearing the same vest! (Wouldn't you wear this vest every day if it was yours?) Anyway, I deliberately avoided her and luckily she did not see me.

OK, this story needs a better ending. But I don't have one.This is the kind of situation Teahouse Blossom--the queen of slice-of-life vignettes -- would write about. Only she would give it a punchy ending and write about it better than me.

Money. Ha. Who Needs It?

Greetings from unemploymentland! Since my paychecks are still coming in from my last job, I'm in denial -- doing all sorts of things that are fun and enriching and which earn me no money whatsoever! For example:

Working on my Nanowrimo novel. Oh maybe someday in a perfect world this will earn me some money. But for now, it's a great way to avoid doing... -

Freelance work. Oh yes, this is the one thing I'm doing that is paying me. So of course I avoid it like the plague. The job involves writing marketing copy for GUESS-WHICH-GIANT-SOFTWARE-COMPANY? Yes, that's right, Hotel Californiasoft!

Tutoring at 826Seattle. Get this. Last week I actually tutored in math. Ha ha ha! Like the charming, rambunctious child I tutored I was also counting on my fingers. Luckily it was only addition.

More volunteering. I'm about to start working for a literacy organization called Page Ahead wherein I will read stories to small children, sing songs, and do crafts. Now if I could only get paid $80 bucks and hour for that gig, I could check out of Hotel California AND leave.

Playing with my band. We earned a six whole bucks apiece the other night at our first gig at *Jimmy Z's* in *Everett*, during which I only horribly messed up two songs and wore a very cute sexy new dress that made up for my lack of ability to actually play keyboards.

Going to the gym. I've developed a taste for exercise classes lately wherein loud music is cranked, we dance around with barbells, and buff teachers wearing headsets yell out "work your butt, warm it up!"

Claiming unemployment. This is marginally profitable but lemme tell you, it ain't gonna pay the mortgage.

xo,

Rebecca

Winter Wardrobe Blues

You know, it's a good thing the paparazzi aren't stalking me anymore because I'd probably end up on some worst-dressed lists, or on Go Fug Yourself or something.

I did OK during the summer with the addition of an all-purpose denim skirt and black capri pants to my wardrobe. Those, along with the many halter tops I seem to own, did just fine.

Winter, however, is another matter. I did buy one nice sweater - a soft, gray, long thing. But it poufs out in the middle and makes me look pregnant (not that there is anything wrong with looking pregnant, mind you, if one IS pregnant). If one can't look thin AND stylish, is it better to look thin? Or stylish?

In any case, I have to wear the thing, because the rest of my sweaters have 1)shrunk in the wash so that they reveal my torso in a very unflattering and out-of-date way 2)are from Value Village and look like it. The winter pants in my wardrobe, moreover, are 1)stained 2)have malfunctioning zippers or 3)give me diaper-butt.

Sigh. How did it get this way? I love the winter but not when I have to go out looking like such a fashion reject. Used to be I had many sweaters, in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I wore miniskirts and tights and boots to work all the time! Have I gotten old? Is that why I don't feel like wearing miniskirts anymore? Or is it just that the pair of Target black boots I have are much too uncomfortable to wear for more than five minutes?

Luckily I'll be heading off to Mexico in a month and I can bring back those tank tops and the denim skirt for a few days. Not to mention my pink bikini, for whose sake I am now working out every day.

But coming up soon I will be taking the stage again so it is more important than ever that I find some cute outfits to wear. That's right, my rock and roll career has awoken from it's comatose slumber! I'm playing keyboards with a country outfit fronted by a very talented songwriter who tackles those good ole country themes like war, drunkenness, betrayal, absent fathers, hardscrabble small towns, and hardworking horses.

And I'm especially excited because I get to sing a song about a woman who 1)takes off her wedding ring than goes to cheat on her husband, but 2)then there's a tornado, and she 3)rushes back to find her house destroyed and is worried 4)that her husband has died in the tornado and 5)that her wedding ring is lost forever but then 6)her husband turns up and 7)so does the wedding ring, and 8)she realizes what a fool she'd been and all she needs is her husband and family to be happy, so screw the damn tornado.

I mean, I was BORN to sing this song even if I've never been in a tornado, or had a wedding ring, or a husband, for that matter. The only question is, what does one wear to sing such a song? Should I follow Dolly's leopard-printed lead?

--Love, Rebecca
Today's blog entry brought to you by numbered lists.

Am I Really Asking So Much?

Really, all I aspire to do is write a novel that is as catchy as a Tegan and Sara song.

No instrumental breaks to show off my virtuousity. No deep lyrics. Hell no. Just short, sweet, poppy, infectious, a delectable confection about my bad moods and relationships gone awry. Kind of like BreakupBabe: A Novel (get your signed copy for the new low price of $111!)- only better!

Meanwhile, work is once again interfering with my creative genius. When will the world realize if they could just put me on a sparkly pink tour bus stocked with champagne where I could daydream constantly rather than having to ply my trade from a windowless office in a strip-mall scarred suburb that perhaps I would actually PRODUCE and at last satisfy all those fans screaming for a sequel.

There is nothing worse than a writer who is not writing and I'm not sure who said it but it's true.

I actually AM writing. Why in fact I'm currently writing an article about backcountry skiing for Seattle Metropolitan Magazine, a dream come true, since maybe one day I'll be sent to far flung lands to write about such things (heck, I already got sent to Utah!) but alas, the article, such as it is, is horribly devoid of any inspiration, imagery, imagination, anything that starts with an "i" and that includes interest.

Not to put down my own accomplishments. Through blood, sweat and tears, I finally broke my way back into freelance writing after disappearing for years to write a novel - no mean feat! But is it so much to want it ALL?! I THINK NOT. I am just hideouly uninspired right now is all I'm trying to say, although I can see exactly what I want, dangling like a nice, ripe, piece of fruit just out of my reach.

I want to write articles AND novels- poppy, bittersweet, bestselling ones - travel the world on a pink tour bus stocked with champagne, visit lots of countries, write about them, have a kid or two who doesn't cramp my style, and never have to edit another word of technical documentation again. A side career in rock and roll would be nice too but I have to draw the line somewhere.

xo
Rebecca