Shakin' and Skiin' and Savin' Dough

My life continues to be in a weird limbo state but things are shaking and moving. (In some ways. In other ways, they are still as a pond in a Zen garden.). I'm starting the freelance writing thing again. The rusty wheels are creaking into motion with ideas. I've even scored myself an assignment (of sorts) to go to this ski seminar and write about it.

In other writing news, I had lots of fun providing the "literary entertainment" at Centerpoint's recent fundraiser and posing as a "writing professional" ontheir career panel on writing last week. Any time I sit in front of an audience of hopeful writers, my heart goes out to them. Writing=pain! Trying to be a writer=pain! Even when you're a rich and famous writer like me=pain! So I want to do everything I can to help them.

My muse, however, has been hiding out. I've gotten sick of tracking that b*tch down, so whatever. Let her stay in her palapa in Mexico or wherever she is, drinking Negro Modelos and flirting with the help. There are plenty of things I can write without her - like blog entries and query letters. And extremely uninspired first-person essays (another recent project of mine.) Here's a sneak peek from a never-to-be-published essay about my trip to Patagonia last year:

"So I’d reluctantly let myself be dragged out of the tent into this wild day and now I was regretting it. I comforted myself with the thought that the group of Chileans we passed on our way up here would probably die before us. Several members of their party were wearing jeans and they were moving slowly. We, on the other hand, were clothed in the latest in REI outerwear, but were were still going to die. I was sure of it. And we wouldn’t even get a good view in the process. "

Meanwhile, I also edit boring technical documents for absurd amounts of money and I continue to get out into the snow every weekend, dragging my poor boyfriend along for the ride. This weekend, our adventure consisted of staying at the Mountaineers Lodge at Stevens Pass, which was an absolute laugh riot. The venerable Mountaineers club of Seattle loves nothing more than to control its memebers with a plethora of rules, regulations, and bureaucracy, not to mention making them rise at insanely early hours for any activity.

So I suppose it should have been no surprise that we were awakened at SEVEN AM by a BREAKFAST CALL that involved a loud clanging of pots and pans that even the most tranquilized of Mountaineers members (and I think I can be included in that category) could sleep through. Not only that, we had to do CHORES after breakfast, after which we were released on our own recognizance.

At least it was cheap. And there we were, right in Stevens Pass, and we took a lovely snowshoe trip up into a lakes basin, which, although it was right near the ski area was quiet and covered in freshly fallen snow. We were the only people around, and surrounded by the tracks of all sorts of little animals. There is nothing so peaceful, I think, as the mountains in snow. I would never survive the gray Seattle winters without it.

Finally, these days, I am all about saving money. I have never really been frugal in my life, not least since I became a full-time employee of Geeksoft five years ago. But the times they are a changin' and even though I pull in a good hourly rate, the fact is, my employment is now much more unpredictable and I'm not getting paid for my vacation. And I'm headed away from the full-time corporate routine.

I asked my friend Michelle, of Anti 9-5 Guide fame, how she managed the financial challenges of being a freelancer. And she said, she's been freelancing for so long now that she's just naturally frugal and doesn't "buy anything." Well, my problem is the opposite: I've been on Geeksoft's payroll for so long, I'm naturally profligate! But people can change. Proof of this fact: just last week, for the first time in I-don't-know-how-many-years, I started making my own lunch.

With that scintillating fact, I will leave you - breathlessly waiting for more.

xo
Rebecca

The Love Boat Soon Will Be Making Another Run

My life seems so unrecorded these days. No real blogging. Hardly any writing-in-my-journal. No pouring out my soul into a juicy roman-a-clef, or into GalPal #1's willing ear, since our rushed conversations now take place only when she is on the bus shuttling between work and daycare to pick up her eight-month old daughter (which means lots of ambient nose, lots of shouted "WHAT?"s, and inadvertent hang-ups.)

Not that I am complaining, mind you. My best galpals - married with children all of them - are as emotionally availalble as they can be given their wailing bundles of joy. Although I wouldn't mind having a nice galpal without kids so that that they have LOTS of uninterrupted time to listen to me prattle on about my single and fancy-free life or to go out on the town for girly drinks. I will complain about the fact that it does seem awfully hard to make new galpals at this stage in life, and believe me I have been trying. That is because GalPal #2 is moving AND I DESPERATELY NEED SOMEONE TO REPLACE HER. Apply within! Low pay but great benefits!

Meanwhile, unrecorded as it may be, life steams forward anyway. The "L" word has been making a few guest appearances in my life lately. This is rather frightening. The "L" word has been nothing but trouble in the past. Yet there it is, gunning for a recurring role. "I swear, this time I won't eff everything up! This time, it's all gonna end up being sunsets and roses and a lovely wedding on Orcas Island, two beautiful children, and a long life together full of sex that never gets boring! None of that pesky drama that launched your literary career!"

So we're steamrolling along in that department, either to bliss or oblivion, it's yet to be seen. Meanwhile, my career and writing life are in a strange sort of liquid susension. Things are moving, slowly. And I am trying to be OK with that slow thing.

What I've realized is that for the last ten years, I was driving towards the publication of my first book. I had no idea what would happen after that. Frankly, I never even really believed I would publish a book. I hoped that if I did, of course, this book would make a meteoric rise to the top of the charts and that all I would have to do was be a Writer for the rest of my life.

Ha.

I knew intellectually that that wasn't true of course. But it's different to know something in theory and experience it in real life. So, armed with a new understanding of what it means to be a published novelist, my life, like a big ocean liner, is making a slow turn on the high seas. It's heading away from the life of a corporate wage slave who writes on the side, striving to publish her first book and wait for the royalties to roll in. Been there, done that (except for the royalties part). Now we're pointing towards a more creative working life and new types of writing projects, but they are still hazy and obscured in distant clouds.

Good god, enough of that metaphor.

On a final note, I'd like to say that I do plan soon to add a blogroll soon and to link to all you kind people who are linking to me (if there are any of you still out there). I know I've never been the most community-minded blogger but I do appreciate your support, even if I've disappeared into the ether lately.

Ciao,
Rebecca

A Glorious Day for BreakupBabe: A Novel

*Newsflash* *Newflash*

BreakupBabe: A Novel is a finalist for the 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize!

Check out the shortlist here.

If I win that 10K, I could finally buy myself that mail-order husband I've been dreaming about!

But I must not get greedy here. Even if I just won in the fiction category, why I could at least buy myself a new pair of shoes. But no, no. It's not about winning, it's all about gloating! being grateful for the impeccable taste of the Blooker judges who had so many other fine blooks to choose from.

I am so hot humbled.

Thank you, dear judges.

xo
Rebecca

I'm Still Alive, Barely

Darlings,
I just posted over on my author blog.

Ski Lifts Don't Like Me

Good gray morning to everyone, to all my (five) fans, to the academy...

Thanks to Shel for her suggestion of a good book about blogging to use for my blogging class! I bought it from InsertNameofGiantEtailer here right away.

If anyone else has suggestions they'd like to share, share away. Here are some things I'm looking for:

As an aspiring writer, if you were to take a blogging class, what would you want to know?

If you are a blogger who has lots of readers, what did you do to promote your blog?

What makes a good or a bad blog?

Do you get paid to blog? If so, who do you blog for and how did you land that gig?

In other news...I'm off to try to ski 30 kilometers this weekend in that world-famous death-defying ski race known as the Hog Loppet. Actually it is not a race and it is not death defying in any way unless of course you fall off the ski lift on the way to the top of Mission Ridge, which is where the non-race starts. I don't get along well with ski lifts so this is always a possiblity.

In fact, a couple weeks ago when I went skiing up at Olympic National Park's beautiful Hurricane Ridge, I managed to fall off both the so-called ski lifts there, one a rope tow and one a Poma lift (a metal bar with a tiny seat that you "sit" on while you leave your skis on the ground.) At least I had the sense to let go of the Poma lift before it dragged me all the way up the stupid mountain. Yeah, cause I'm cool like that.

I did manage to find a bit of corn snow on the south side of Hurricane Ridge where there were no barbaric ski lifts and no people, except for the jealous snowshoers at the top who watched us swoop [ski slowly] down the sixty-degree [20-degree] slope. Ah, yes. Beautiful views, sun, snow, and solitude. You can see my "ski instructor" (aka a famous rock star going incognito), making his way back up the slope here.

Anyway, so back to this weekend. I'll be out there at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning, attempting not to fall off a ski lift and to ski farther than I ever have in my life.

xo
Rebecca

Careers Suck

Hmm, yeah, hey.

Funny that since I can hardly call myself a blogger these days that Richard Hugo House has asked me to teach a blogging class this summer.

This is very cool because I've been wanting to dip my toes (back into) teaching for a while now and it's nice that that I didn't have to do a damn thing to get the job. Although now I actually gotta come up with something to *teach* but I can put that off for a while.

The thing is, though I desperately need a career change, I am rather lacking in energy to make it all happen. I am, in fact, seeing a career counselor, who is quite helpful but she actually wants me to do *work*. Like you know, go out and research stuff. Talk to people. Figure out how to make my dreams a reality, yadda yadda.

Hello! All I feel like doing is sleeping, eating, reading, and skiing. Oh yeah, and taking piano lessons and a writing class and making out with that cute new boy and trying to stay on top of the mess in my house, and you know, all that stuff.

But here's what's got to happen. Eventually. Me less in corporate world more in arts world. Me no 9-5 job anymore. Me write teach travel for living. Me no more technical editor. Me hope write other novel but me can do depend on that.

Speaking of the no 9-5 thing, my fabulous writer friend Michelle has just published a book about how to get out of the 9-5 grind. She also has a really helpful, career-oriented blog.I haven't read her book yet but I plan to very soon and I'm sure it's good!

Now I'm going to eat chocolate cake and put off doing stuff about my career. So there.

P.S. I blogged at my author site last week.

Ready to Rock

Hello darlings, long time, no see.

Life has been eventful as usual. I am getting nowhere on the book but other areas of my life are scooting along.

I have a new piano teacher who is helping me in my quest to rock, and this one, unlike my teachers of the recent past, is 1)not insane 2)has social skills and 3)doesn't light up a spliff as soon as I arrive.

There is also a rather cute and adoring boy in the picture. Someone I have known for a while and whom, up until recently, did not consider boyfriend material. When we first met, I had a big crush on him which then faded into the background as I dated someone else, and calculated the weight of his emotional baggage. But we became friends, and we got closer, and...after he confessed having all sorts of feelings for me, I opened my heart up to him.

After all, a girl is susceptible to being told she is the most amazing, beautiful person in the world.

That in itself is a lovely but frightening thing. Why it was Loser himself who used to tell me repeatedly I was the most beautiful woman he'd ever met; who put me on a pedestal and kowtowed to me because he had no backbone, and then ended up resenting me and treating me like dirt. I've experienced men who are infatuated with me, their eyes all a-sparkle, whose infatuation disappears as soon as the feelings are reciprocated and an actual relationship threatens to develop.

I have plenty of baggage myself.

But my heart is open and my head too -- I am open-minded to a fault. I look past the external and practical -- which, at my age, I should probably be focused on -- to the way a person makes me feel. To the way they look inside. I've gotten myself involved with a very loving, kind, open, super-sensitive sweetheart who is imbued with much (too much?) soul. If we truly hit it off, I can look past all the stuff that might scare other women away. If we don't, well, it's all gonna be a big, huge mess in many ways.

In other words, it's either going to be great or a total f*cking disaster. My seatbelt is firmly fastened, my seat is in its upright position, and all my electronic devices are put away.

Flight attendants, please be seated for takeoff.