Those of you familiar with blogging know this. I didn’t. Tons of spam. So, in an effort to get real about the actual numbers of authentic people visiting, I stayed away for a month. My idea here is it will give me a vague notion of how many honest-to-god people in the world are reading what I’ve written.
When I was a student at the University of Montana, there was a visiting choreographer in the dance department. His work was inspiring, and devoted to including spoken text in his pieces. One I remember was an evocative, slow moving piece with dancers moving through space simply saying “I’m sorry.” Sounds stupid, I know … but it was incredible. The choreographer in residence worked on a similar piece. It wasn’t as grounded, or as artistically sound. (Why would it be, it wasn’t her idea?) At any rate, her dancers kept kneading the air repeating “Dough is a living thing. Dough is a living thing.” But there was a refrain in her piece that has resonated with me for almost thirty years. Out of this repetition, one of the dancers would explode with movement and shout “When I can’t dance I’m a nasty old bitch!” It was both funny “ha ha” and funny “peculiar.”
If I were to sum up my behavior this past month, I’d have to conclude that “When I can’t write, I’m a nasty old bitch!”
There are some learnings to be had here. The good news is, there seems to be quite a few of you real, honest, readers! The bad news is, I haven’t been able to write.
And it’s made me a nasty old bitch. So, here’s a list of stuff I jotted down while I was away.
- There’s nothing like a little bit of sunshine. Really. There’s nothing like it.
- Taxes, in the overall scheme of things, are still a good idea.
- Speeding is bad for the world, I’m not going to do it anymore.
- There’s no sense in eating cheap cheese. (Or to put it another way, expensive cheese is worth it.)
- Most people have two muscles in their calves that look almost exactly like tiny ass cheeks.
- Having a nagging, whooping-like cough as a child doesn’t mean you are immune to it as an adult.
- People can be challenging, but mostly they are just trying to be good.
- A clean car runs better than a dirty car.
- There’s really only a few things I’d like to do over, and most of them happened in Missoula.
- When given the opportunity, I’d rather teach than perform.
So, as you can see, there’s quite a bit happening for me. As far as the book goes, my plan is to dive into the edits like a madman when I go on vacation in a couple of weeks. I did, however, send my first page to an agent. She gave me a nine out of ten. (I think that’s good, but I wanted a ten.)
But I’ll take the nine and keep working. At least I’ve got that going for me.