06/18/00 -- That evil bastard!

I'm just talkin' 'bout Shaft

Well, not really.  I'm talking about Sean Stewart.  And I mean it in the nicest way possible.  But I'll get to that in a minute.

I got sleep last night.  Eight whole hours of it (or maybe it was seven and a half, doesn't matter, 's more than I've been managing!).  I set the alarm for 10:30, that way if I hadn't hauled my butt out of bed, I wouldn't sleep all day.  I didn't want to sleep all day... I had a story to finish... and three to critique.

So I woke up at 10.  I decided, I'm in my tank top, I'm in my shorts, I'm comfortable, I'm just going to write like this.  I'm going to have a nice relaxed morning, a nice mellow day.  I wandered over to open my door and let the breeze come through and saw a note from Kelly on my whiteboard.  11am meeting in Van Hoosen.

So much for the relaxed morning!  Went through the morning routine I'd planned to skip, got ready, and toddled over to Van Hoosen where I was identified by Sean Stewart as "Aynjel.  Who is also Stacey."  Yep, that's me.  Only I don't remember introducing myself to him at the bbq.  So he and Suzy and Lister must've talked about me when they had the ba-ton passing after they all ate.  Why this makes me paranoid, I'm not certain.  But it does.  Really paranoid.

Sean gathered us together to give us gloom and doom on this bright (yet pleasantly cool and not overly humid) Sunday morning.  I think I'm going to dub Sunday Gloomday.  Or maybe just the first day where we spend quality time with the instructor of the week.  Maybe that'll be Gloomday.  We got gloom and doom from Suzy.  We got gloom and doom from Sean (though a good part of his gloom and doom was from personal experience...how he can make such tragedy amusing I'll never know ... it amazes me).

At the start, he talked about theme and plot mimicking each other because one of us had sent him email asking him about it.  He said that things work best when you don't write things in sections: a chunk for setting, a chunk for plot, a chunk for characters, etc.  Everything should meld together.  Yes, he's passing wisdom on to us already.

He also robbed us.

As an introductory exercise, he had us write our names and what we felt was our strongest part in writing down on paper.  It's just between him and us and God.  We gave him the paper.

He told us we're not allowed to use whatever we'd written on that paper in the story we write for him that week.

I'm fucked.

At least it fits in with my plan of action that I discussed with Suzy yesterday... write something different.  I've got to come up with light and fun, now.  I have no choice.  I can't do what I normally do until I get that piece of paper back.  And I do plan to get that piece of paper back before the end of the week.  I'll probably set it on fire when I do.

Sean is absolutely delightful (except for that moment of trickery and thievery).  He's got great stories to tell about his own career and about a lot of the writers he knows.  He started, and then sent us about our merry ways to finish whatever stories we may have already started or had in process.  He's not cruel enough to make us stop what we've started and give in to the lack of what we wrote down on those pieces of paper (mine was scribbled in Pepto-pink gel pen -- maybe he won't be able to read it).

Jen and I wound up going to IHOP for lunch.  That was fun.  I was starting to go through IHOP withdrawals.  It was a bacon morning.  After we ate, we did s'more free-writing.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with either piece... I can't use them this week, they're not light or lighthearted.  They're dark.

Do you know why you write dark? Suzy asked me yesterday.  I couldn't come up with a reason.  I didn't know.  I still don't.  I've thought about it.  No answer.

After lunch, we went over to Best Buy.  Jennifer bought a printer because the dot-matrix one she rented from MSU was driving her batty (and making our eyes hurt!).  Then we went to Office Max for pens and paper.  I gave in and bought metallic gel pens.  And a black-paper spiral notebook.  I think I'm going to use that for free-writes, too.  And go back to the lil quarter-page spiral book when the black one fills up.

Back to the room.  I wanted to finish "Mockingbird Girl" before our dinner jaunt to an unspecified place.  I really wanted to finish "Mockingbird Girl".  And I did.

We went to Chinese food for dinner... We being a handful of us and Sean.  Over dinner we talked about writing, about reading, about Valley Goths(tm) (and Sean really liked the valley goth impersonation), about being born in Normal and living in Erie.  We talked about dental hygienists, but I won't go there... I really won't go there.  Suffice it to say that I hurt from laughing so much.  There was one point where I nearly snarfed rice noodles, too, but it wasn't then.  I can't remember when it was.  I wanted a tape recorder.  Everything over dinner was so wonderful and so funny and I wanted to scribble things down so I wouldn't forget them, but I didn't and I have and it's only 6 hours later.

Suffice it to say that many funny and interesting things were said over the course of the walk to the Chinese food place, dinner, and the walk back.  Lots of funny and interesting things.

I love these people.

I strategically distracted Karen when we got back, stopping off in her room to chit-chat, then going to look up the Roman equivalent of Athena, then chit-chatting s'more.  We talked about writing, about cons... it was great.

A wicked looking Scrabble game was in progress in the study lounge and I peeked in on my way back to my room.  Derek was kicking ass and taking names.  And I think Susannah said Sean came in second.  I suck at Scrabble, but I love it.  I resisted the temptation to jump in on the next game, though.  I still had to read and critique three stories for tomorrow.

I'm just going to say that Karen is absolutely delightful.  Y'all should be on the lookout for her fiction when this is all over.  She's brilliant and has a fantastic sense of humor and it really shows in her fiction.

So critiques are finished.  "Mockingbird Girl" is finished.  It's printed out so I can take a look at it first thing in the morning.  Maybe I'll get some sleep.  Apparently, it's not as overrated as I've been led to believe. ;)

Oh!  Before I crash, I wanna say thanks to Chrysalis for spending some time with me online yesterday and helping me regain a little bit of sanity.  Now if she wouldn't've suggested a fairy romance for my lighthearted story, I think I wouldn't need another dose of sanity.  *grin*

Maybe I'll sleep on this light(hearted) story problem.  Hey, dreams!  Give me an answer to this!  You listening in there?