Dreaded Word Association Exercise

I have no idea how to start this dreaded word association exercise.  My rational mind wants to use regular, organized thoughts, not mats.  Think tails confuse me.  I try to wrap my mind around a word, try to make an association and all I come up with is biff, and that biff won’t solidify enough for me to grab a particular ankle and move around it to come up with something that makes sense.  But I’m not supposed to make sense.  I’m supposed to scruff up something quick that is longing to sit still and simmer, and then while I’m writing sense I’m supposed to screw a rim into existence and keep on writing like everything is normal.  Orderly.  My internal critic balks.  It wants control over what I write and how I lump it.  On the other hand, my muse is ecstatic at the thought that it might create something slinky or snowy that will ‘wow’ readers.

Scriptgirrl

Anger

The assignment for this week is to write an intro to a specific scene and then write the scene using image/moment.

I need a scene that describes how I hang on to a relationship that should be over.  Or maybe, it’s about the anger I get from Carl.

My husband is the angriest person I know.  Just about everything I say or do sets him off these days.  When he’s really mad, he screams and me.  Calls me horrible names.  Sometimes spit flies from his mouth.  His face turns a purple red.  Big veins pop out in his neck.  I wondered the last time he got into the worst rage he’s ever been in if he’d finally go over and hit me.  If he ever did when he is that angry, I think he’d kill me.

What was it that pissed him off so bad that time?

What does he do when he is mad?

Slams doors.  Drives fast.  Jams on brakes.  Throws things.  Breaks things.  Slams the phone down.  Talks jibberish in phone to drown out the person he’s talking to, or holds it away from his ear so he can’t hear at all.

How do I feel when he is crazy mad?

My heart pounds in my chest.

My mouth dries up.

I’m afraid.

I usually make comments, egging it on.

That was the first time in 21 years that I didn’t respond to his anger.  Didn’t make a smart ass comment to counter him.

I was to frightened to speak.

He was so mad.  Screaming at me.  Jabbing his finger at me.

Spit flew from his mouth.

I could smell the alcohol on his breath.

Slurring his words.

Face purple.

Veins in his neck bulging.

This wasn’t the same as his usual anger.  He was exploding.  Hanging on to what ever thin line he had, to keep from losing it all.  Keep from killing me.

He scared me.

A month later, I left for Hollywood California on a travel nurse job with my kids and my mom.

Running away.

A peace descended on me as I pulled out of the driveway.

I regretted leaving my 2 dogs and cats.  But he would feed them. Take care of them.

I just wanted to get away from the stress.

My daily headaches stopped.  I didn’t realize that until 2 weeks after I left and I got a little headache.  Amazing.

We head back to Chattanooga Tennessee the last weekend in March.

I’m thinking of taking a travel job in Nashville in May.  2 hours from my home.  I would prefer to stay in my own home, but I need more ‘away’ time – from him.

Not sure where I’ll go with all of this.

Chava – unedited

Tenacious

I tell you, sitting down to start writing with no end objective in mind is harder than it seemed it would be.

What I’m supposed to do is free-write, then go back and underline the Transformation lines, pick out a juicy one and massage it until I move deeper into a memory or feeling that I can write about.  Then, I have to take that story and create an image/moment or two.  I’ll come back to that concept in a bit.

OK.  Here I go…

I’m looking forward to going back home to Chattanooga on March 28th.

I’ve really enjoyed living in West Hollywood, but it’s not home.  The main reason I came to California was to try and network – meet some people who can get my screenplay into the right hands to sell it and get it produced when I finally finish it.

I’ve spent over a year working out the concept for my screenplay.  I’ve researched.  Outlined.  Worked on my characters and my plot until I’m blue in the face.  All I have to do is sit down and write the damn thing.

What keeps me from writing?  Fear of failure?  No.  I’m not sure exactly.

I think it may have something to do with my inability to complete projects I start.  I’m a great starter.  I’m organized, and when I get it in my mind to do something, I am tenacious.  I hold on to the idea like a dog with a bone.

I get hell-bent on what ever project I’m currently working on and it will be the focus of my daydreaming and money expenditure.  I’ll buy tons of books to investigate my newest craze.  If there are classes I can take, I’ll take them.

When I got into Wicca, I immersed myself in reading.  I painted a 9 foot wide black circle on my concrete car port, and painted a white pentagram inside it.  I put an iron cauldron in the middle of the circle, and covered it with a round piece of glass – which also had a pentagram in it.  I cast spells and focused positive energy for different things. I got some very interesting results from that.

The same rabid tenacity I had for Wicca, and still have for anything that smacks of the metaphysical, holds for all of the other things I threw myself into: Socialism, Buddhism, Playing Role-Playing games, you name it.  I’ll grab hold of something and ride it like hell – then, I’ll lose interest and drop it.

Writing is a different story.  I’ve always liked to write.  My fanaticism here is changing styles of writing.  I started with short stories, then moved on to novel writing, and finally to screenwriting.  My screenwriting addiction has endured the longest and still burns a hole in me.  I love it!    I read scripts like they are going out of style, and I buy lots of movies.  Not to mention I have a Netflix account.

So, where am I going with this?

Let’s try the Slauson Cut-Off – “I am tenacious.”

I am tenacious. I hold on to things way past the point of when I should let go.  I’m holding on to my husband the same way.  Things have gone horribly wrong in the last few years of my marriage.

We’re sleeping in separate rooms, and have been doing so for the lasts 41/2 years.  Ever since my children were born.  I used the excuse that I wanted to sleep in their room to make sure I was there if they needed something.  It might have started out that way, but I never moved back into the bed with Carl.

Now, I have my own room and use other excuses not to sleep with him.  Like he snores, although he always has.  Or because he keeps the head of the bed elevated to keep his gastric reflux from burning his throat.  But in fact, I don’t want to sleep in the room with him or have sex with him.  Haven’t had sex with him for over 5 years!

What turned me away?

Lets see.

About 7 years ago I discovered that he was writing emails to two different women he works with, asking them to meet him for lunch and telling them how ‘hot’ they were.

Then, a year later, I found out that he was ‘jerking off’ online for God only knows who.  I think that was one of the final straws.  I started thinking of him as a kind of pervert.  A dirty old man, even though he’s 12 years younger than me.

He drinks and he has major anger issues.  He’s never hit me, but he yells all of the time.  And, when he gets really mad – usually after he’s had several beers, spit will fly out of his mouth when he yells.  Sometimes I just stare at his mouth when he’s yelling, watching that spit fly, and wondering what in the hell I’m still doing with him.

I try to think of him like he was 10 years ago.  He still had an angry streak, but not nearly as often.

I remember when I came out of my hysterectomy surgery.  I had trouble keeping awake, but I remember him holding my hand, tearfully telling me how much he loved me.

I remember how funny he is.  He has the best sense of humor of anyone I’ve ever met, and he’s made me laugh thousands of times.  But now that humor seems different to me.  He makes fun of people and I get irritated and end up pissing him off when I don’t laugh.

Everything I do irritates him these days, and then I get pissed off because he’s being an asshole and we go round and round with the same old responses.

Why do I hang on?

Partly because I can’t afford not to.  Not with two pre-schoolers.  I need money and help babysitting.  We alternate with the kids so we can each work when I’m home in Tennessee.

He drives me crazy with his anger, and alcoholism, and his extremely negative and dark view of life.  That’s one of the main reasons I took the travel nurse job to West Hollywood.  To get away from him.

If I had the finances, I’d make him move or take the kids and move into a different home with them.

I’m stuck.

(To be continued and explored tomorrow)…

Chava – unedited

Looking For The Slauson Cut-Off

Every time I sit down to write I worry that I won’t come up with something as interesting as my previous work.  On the other side of the coin, I am totally vain about my writing.  I am not pretentious.  I don’t use big fancy words.  In fact, I don’t like reading pretentious work.

If I have to concentrate to understand what the author is writing, I ditch the book.  I don’t care how famous the author is.  How all of the well-read writers read specific works.  If the words and context aren’t easy to digest, I have no interest in reading them.

Poetry is a bit different.  I love poetry and I love digging into a poem and gleaning subtext and hidden meanings.  To me, that is what poetry is.  Writing something that can be understood on different levels.  Symbolism rocks me.

I don’t write poetry.  Well, let me correct that statement.  I sometimes write a kind of prose that can be lined up in poetry fashion.  But as for meter and all of the other elements of poem writing, I’m not interested.

I do like Haiku though.  I like trying to condense a thought/feeling into something short.  Sometimes I’ll write a Haiku verse.

I have a different style of writing than anyone else I know.  My stuff is good.  And I know it.  I’m very vain about that.  Even if I don’t use big words, my work is powerful.  Emotionally speaking.

It’s funny sitting in class and hearing people talk about big time writers like Steinbeck and Wolfe.  Everyone is so proud that they read this or that work by those writers.  Of course I read those works when I was in college majoring in English Literature, but I don’t use them as badges of how well-read I am.

My favorite writers are contemporary.  I’m fine saying that Stephen King is at the top of my list. Why him?  His characters are very real and colorful.  The way they think and act will constantly strike cords of: “That’s exactly how it is!”  Dean Koontz and Kim Harrison are right up there too.  And the reading is easy.

Can you tell that I’m into horror?

As for my work, one of my favorite things to do is to use this word generator I developed.  I pick a word at random, do some word association, and voila – when I come up with an old memory I start writing about it.

It always amazed me – my skill.  I’d dig up a memory and free-write it, then edit it and post it on my blog.  I used to get tons of email from people who loved my entries.  Another feather in my ‘vanity cap’.

I stopped doing that for a few years.  Let the website drop, although I kept all of the writings.

Last year I created another website specifically for those writings and as soon as I get back to Tennessee and my desktop computer, I’ll start uploading them so I don’t lose the work.  Until then, I think I’ll start dredging up some more memories.  I spent tons of happy hours writing those memories.  And who knows.  Maybe when I get old and start forgetting stuff, I can read those memories and re-live some of my youth.

The website? ‘Digging Up The Bones’.

Boy do I get sidetracked!  I’m supposed to be free-writing and looking for a Transformation Line which will veer me off on to a deeper writing path.  ’The Slauson Cut-Off’ my teacher Jack Grapes calls it.  Ain’t that just the cutest little phrase?  I love it.

Hmmm.  Let me scan the stuff I just wrote and see if I can find a Slauson Cut-Off…

(Beat)

Ahh.  Here’s one – I DITCH.

Let’s take it!

Tires squeal and horns blow as Chava jerks the wheel and takes the cut-off at the last second.  The man in the black SUV  behind her jabs his middle finger in the air.

“Eat me, Dude.  I’m on a mission here!”

I DITCH

I ditch.  I let go of.  I drop.  I dropped the ice cream cone.

My first stepfather was mean. I’m not talking plain mean. I’m saying that this man won’t die regular – he’s just going to just ‘nasty away’. He was twisted in more ways than I care to remember. But, I will say one thing – He was creative!

He had more than one trick up his sadistic sleeve for punishing deserving children, so Linda, Greg and myself, tending toward the deserving side, were no strangers to his little tortures.

When I was 10, he caught me playing with matches.
He had me strike matches for hours. Boxes and boxes of them, until my fingers were numb and black and smelled like sulfur.

I ran up the stairs.
He told me to keep running up and down them until he said stop. I started out mad and stomping, but ended up with my legs giving out, crying and gasping for air.

I was 8. Linda was 5. We were sitting on a hill in front of our townhouse. We were in a giggly mood and were calling everything broccoli. “There goes a broccoli car.” “There’s a broccoli lady carrying broccoli groceries.” “Look at those broccoli kids on broccoli bikes”

We were laughing so hard, tears rolled down our cheeks. Then, here comes the broccoli stepfather to spoil our fun. He made us go into the house and handed me, the broccoli dictionary. Out loud, I had to read over and over again, the definition of broccoli. To this day I know it is ‘a hardy type of cauliflower.’

I was 12. I don’t remember his question, but I remember that I gave him an answer he didn’t believe. To show how far fetched he felt my answer was, he said, “… and my ass hole sucks collar buttons.” Although I wasn’t quite sure what a ‘collar button’ was, I certainly knew what an ass hole was and I came within a hair of busting out laughing at the picture in my head of him squatted down while his ass sucked up buttons off of the floor, like some kind of vacuum cleaner. To keep from laughing, I looked down at my feet and bit my bottom lip so hard it bled.

I’d still like to know what collar buttons are and why he chose a particular kind of button. Why not just, my ass sucks buttons. Why collar ones?

I was eating oatmeal, leaning down too close to my bowl for his liking. He grabbed the back of my head and shoved my face into it, then held me there for a few seconds. I came up gasping and sputtering. That sure taught me to have some manners. Today I eat sitting on the floor in front of the TV with my plate and elbows on the coffee table.

He went to backhand my face. I saw it coming and threw up my hands to break the brunt of it. They did. He broke my little finger.

Don’t get me wrong. I was no angel. Far from it. Sometime I did deserve to be corrected:

It was the last day that High’s Ice-cream Store would have ice cream cones for 5 cents a scoop. The next day they were raising the price to an astronomical 10 cents! I decided I’d better get a couple of those scoops before the price raise, but I was broke. So, I tip toed down the hall to his bedroom and eased the door open. I poked my head inside.

He was asleep.

I slipped into the room and tiptoed to the dresser at the foot of the bed. He always kept his loose change on top of that dresser. I had no sooner grabbed a handful of that change, when I heard him stir. I crammed the money into my mouth and slowly turned to look.

His lay there, watching me with those flat, dark eyes.

“Good morning.” He said. “You looking for something?”

I shook my head.

I was sure he could hear my heart pounding. I could feel my cheeks bulging with coins, and I knew if I opened my lips the tiniest bit, coins would come tumbling out. Right there on top of his blanket covered feet.

I prayed he wouldn’t make me talk.

He stared at me for a few seconds, then waved a dismissive hand. “Well, run along then.”

I couldn’t believe my luck.

To make up for not speaking I waved at him and hurried out of the room.

When I got outside I spit the change into my hand then dried it off with my shirt and counted. It was mostly pennies, but I had plenty to buy ice cream with and I’d even have money left over!

I ran to High’s and got three huge scoops on a regular cone and a candy bar. I put the leftover money in my pocket for spending later.
I was a sly one.

I walked out of the store and slipped the chocolate bar into my back pocket and smiled up at the afternoon sun. What a beautiful summer day. I got to work on that ice-cream before the sun had it’s chance.

The alley next to the store, was a shortcut back home. I headed down it. I was no more than a few feet inside, when he appeared at the far end and he was coming toward me. Walking slow. With purpose.

I whipped the ice-cream cone behind my back and dropped it. Then, pasting a casual look on my face, I hurried to meet him. I wanted to put as much distance as possible, between me and the evidence.

Of course, in retrospect, it didn’t matter what I did. He’d known all along. He had just waited, like a spider, for the right time to play me. And the time had arrived.

I caught up to him.

“Hi.” I said with forced cheerfulness.

“What are you doing?” He asked not wasting time on niceties. He was out for blood.

“Walking.”

“And what is that back there?” He asked pointing.

I turned and looked back. It was too far away to see well, but still close enough to recognize. My ice-cream cone.

“What?” I said feigning innocence.

He grabbed my arm, held it with that practiced iron grip, and marched me back to the evidence.

“What’s that?” He repeated, jabbing his finger at the rapidly melting mess. The ice-cream had landed first and the cone stubbornly still clung to the top of it like a party hat. Maybe funny at another time, but definitely not now.

I shrugged. “Looks like ice cream.”

“And how do you think it got there?” He asked.

I shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

“That your ice-cream?” He demanded.

I shook my head.

“You sure that’s not yours?”

I nodded.

His ass sucked some collar buttons, and then he moved in for the kill.

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? Maybe we should go into High’s and see if that ice cream was yours. Maybe the cashier can tell me if you bought any ice-cream today.”

Trapped!

“You can either tell me the truth, or you can make it worse by forcing me to ask the cashier if you paid for ice-cream. And you know how much I hate to be forced into doing something I don’t want to do. And, if I find out you’re lying, you will be in a whole shit load of trouble. You understand me?”

I had to tell.

I got a whipping, right there in the alley, for stealing and lying.

The ice-cream melted on the road, and the candy bar got flattened, beyond eating, by the whipping.

I never did get another 5 cent scoop of ice-cream and I had to give the rest of the change back.

Today, it still amazes me, the things that really stick and hold in your head. I’ll forever remember that hardy cauliflower and those collar buttons.

People should think twice before they speak. They should keep in mind what effect their words will have on others. That casual word or act may make a bigger difference than you think. A difference you might not want to make.

Chava – edited a tad

The Transformation Line

Briefly.  For those of you interested in learning Method Writing, I’ll try to take you along through this class with me.  I’ll write about the very basics, but to get the full effect, I definitely recommend that you take Jack Grapes’ class if you are anywhere within driving distance of Beverly Hills/West Hollywood area.  He will give you invaluable tools for your writing of any kind; poetry, prose, screenwriting etc.

The first thing you learn is to ‘Write Like You Talk’ and what a ‘Transformation Line’ is.  To do this, you have to sit down everyday and write in a journal until you have at least two written pages or one typed page.  You don’t edit or think about what you are writing.  You just write as the words roll out of your head.  A type of word association writing.

Once you have written your pages, you go back through them and underline every sentence that starts with an ‘I’.  Then, you take the “I” and the first word or three that follow that, and you have your Transformation Line.  For instance:

I’m hiding the papers in the cupboard.

The word phrase, “I’m hiding” would be your Transformation line.  Or even, “I’m hiding the papers.  But, “I’m hiding’ would be the best line here because it doesn’t tie you down to ‘the papers’.  It allows the mind to travel to the things you are hiding.

Then, you take that line and ‘massage it’.  Basically that means to use that line as the beginning of a new journal entry in an effort to dig deep into yourself and reveal a forgotten or suppressed truth.  We are looking for self-discovery here.  For deep writing of something that is meditative, introspective, and charged with feeling.  The writing that follows that Transformation line should find a deeper voice.

What are you hiding?

That could make for some powerful, deep writing.  Don’t you think?!

Chava – unedited

The Last Straw

I need to buckle down and put my writing where my mouth is.

I love learning and I’ve kind of turned into a professional student.  An avid reader, I read tons of books on the Craft of Writing and Screenwriting.  An avid student, I’ve attended seminars and workshops galore on the same.  I just need to really sit down and put my knowledge to work on that screenplay I dream of writing.

Everyone has a ‘last straw’ before a big realization, and mine came this past Friday.

I met this totally interesting woman who just exuded energy and optimism.  I spent a half an hour chatting with her about my aspirations as a screenwriter.  I told her my amazing adoption story – of how I ended up with two infants who were born a mere 19 hours apart.  And we discussed metaphysics after she commented on the Green Man Medallion I’ve worn for the last 8 years solid.  She is totally into metaphysics.

Well, after half an hour of talking, I said, “So, what do you do for a living?”

She turned out to be a big time movie producer in Hollywood.  I about dropped my drawers!!

Here I am in Hollywood for 17 weeks with the main focus being on making contacts with anyone who might know someone, who might know someone else who could get my screenplay read when I’m done writing it.  And here she is!  A person who has total power and connection to actually produce a screenplay!!  Not to mention that we hit it off very well.

We chatted about screenwriting for another 15 minutes.  She showed me her Amazon Kindle and how she keeps prospective screenplays she is interested in on it for review.  She asked me about my screenplays general plot and said that the idea was excellent.  Then she went on to stress that no matter what, if I wanted to be a screenwriter I’d have to work hard at it.  Write everyday!  Pump out a bunch of crap before I’d get to the good writing.

That’s my straw.  I’m going to finish up my last student ventures with the last 6 weeks of Jack Grapes‘ wonderful writing class.  And, I’m going to attend the big Screenwriter’s Summit in Los Angeles next weekend – a Christmas gift from my mom.  And then no more classes or studying until I pump out at least one complete script.

As she was parting, she shook my hand for a full 5 seconds and told me that I “absolutely radiate positive energy!”  We swapped email addresses and she disappeared into the sunset.

How’s that for making a connection!

Chava – unedited

Misread Sensory Perceptions

Stream of consciousness writing is harder than I thought it would be.

My biggest problem is writing without thinking what other people will think.  And, writing without a goal in mind.  I’m not even allowed to use my word association game because I’d still be writing to obtain an end result.

So, I guess I’ll just start writing.

I really want to find my voice and hone it into something that will not only ring, but ring true.

The other night I was reading a Stephen King novel and for the first time I really looked at his writing.  I asked myself, what is it about King’s writing that is so drawing.  So mezmorizing?

Then I realized that all of his characters ‘think’ like real people do.  They look at situations and each other and they think about the negative as well as the positive aspects.  And, all of these aspects ae colored by their own realities.

I was driving to work this morning and watching the different drivers while we sat at the lights.  Each one had different looks and different facial expressions.  Each one was in their own personal reality and the day in front of them, and everything they saw, said, and would do would be colored by that reality.

That’s what I need to do with my characters.  I need to fix them solidly in their reality and then let them run free.  Watch what they do based on that reality.

I made an odd observation the other day.  I’m not sure what I want to do with it, if anything.  But it was interesting.

I was standing on my balcony smoking a cigarette and watching the people below walk by.  A woman and man were in an animated conversation, and by the way she was moving her arms around, I decided she was giving him directions.

When she was done, she turned and headed into the front of the apartment building.  Right before she walked into the door, she raised her arm and I heard a car’s lock system beep.  I assumed that she’d locked her door.

Five seconds later, a man walked over to a car and got inside. 

Had I assumed that the woman was locking her car door, but instead she was waving to someone or just raising her arm?  Had the beep come from the other man unlocking his car?

I didn’t give it much more thought until later in the day.

I was walking through the hospital and watch a man walk towards me pulling one of those hand-pulled carts designed to carry briefcases and such.

The cart was making a horrible clattering sound and I thought, “Who would want a cart like that?”

Then as he was passing me I realized that the sound hadn’t been coming from his cart at all.  It had been coming from the cleaning woman who was pushing a cleaning cart behind him.

That’s what got me to thinking about how even though you can see and hear something simultaneously, those two things might not go together like you preceive them to.

I could guarantee that I saw a man pulling a pull-cart.  And, I could guarantee that I heard a loud racket from something that was being rolled down the hall.  But, when I put both of those senses together my perception of the noisy pull-cart event was totally incorrect.  And so was my preception of who was locking or unlocking the car in front of my apartment.

Like I said, I’m not sure what I can do with the concept of misread sensory preceptions, but I bet I could use them to write an interesting piece or poem.

Chava – unedited

Mom’s Habits

My mother is driving me nuts!  I love her to death and she has the biggest heart and will bend over backwards to help her family out anyway she can, but living with her is a nightmare!

She has these tics and habits that grate on my nerves.  Where do I begin?

I don’t know how her day goes when she’s babysitting my kids and I’m at work, but when I’m home, all she does is alternate between playing computer games on Pogo, reading a book, napping, or smoking cigarettes on the balcony.  She’s a chain smoker, and I mean CHAIN!

If I didn’t make a rule that smoking is only allowed on the balcony, my apartment would become like her ‘mobile home’ in Georgia with smoke filled, stale air and yellow tinged walls.

Before my dad died of lung cancer last year, he smoked his share of cigarettes too.  My sister Linda lives with mom in the trailer now.  She smokes too.

The smell in that trailer is so smokey and polluted that I haven’t gone to visit her there in several years.  It’s so bad, when she comes to my home in Tennessee on Christmas morning for the festivities, I can always tell which presents she brought because they stink of old cigarette smoke.

Here in California, she smokes on the balcony but still goes through a couple of packs a day.  She’ll smoke one right before we leave on an outing.  We’ll make it as far as the garage and while I’m strapping the kids into their car seats, she’s pacing outside the van smoking again.  Every time I stop at a store or gas station she jumps out of the van to smoke.  On the trip across country, whenever I’d get in a drive-through to order at McDonalds, she’d jump out of the van and smoke while she’d walk next to the van as I worked my way up to the window.  Embarrassing to say the least and I don’t get embarrassed easily.

She has this wet, rolling cough which gets worse right after a cigarette or a meal.  Sometimes I tell her that she needs to at least ease up on the smoking because one day she’s going to crash and burn.  She gives me an irritated look and takes another drag.

She has this constant irritating throat clearing thing she does.  And, she makes these almost continuous little wet noises with her mouth.  She told me a month ago that her dentures need to be ‘shaved down’ a bit because they’re cutting into her gums.  I’m not sure if thats part of the problem or if it’s just a nervous habit but those wet noises irritate the hell out of me.  Especially when I’m so aware that I listen for them.

She’s not a big woman by any means, but she eats all the time.  And weird stuff too.  Like a bowl of cereal with milk, sugar, and whipped cream all stirred around into a mooshy mess.  She pulverizes her bowl of icecream before she eats it.  Stirring and mashing until it’s liquid.  Now I know that’s not because of her dentures.  I just want to scream, “Stop with the mashing and eat the fuckin’ icecream already!”

I got irritated last night when I went to get a bowl of the chocolate ice cream I bought 3 nights earlier and found that the whole half gallon was already gone and I hadn’t gotten a single spoonful of it.

She hordes stuff too.  Like she’ll hide her favorite package of cookies or box of cereal on the top shelf of the cabinet so the kids won’t see it and ask for it.  And, she’ll get irritated if they do.  For instance, Lucy wanted some cocoa krispies yesterday and mom went off about how the kids already had their chosen boxes of cereal.  When I insisted that we could buy more and that Lucy could have what ever she wanted to eat, mom grabbed the box of cereal and slammed it down on the counter.  ”Fine.  They can eat it all!”

What the hell is that all about?  It’s food for God’s sake!  I didn’t rant and rave because the icecream was gone last night.  Although, I have to admit that I did make a couple of cutting comments which made mom feel guilty enough about eating all of the icecream that she offered to buy me more today.

Maybe I’m more like her than I care to believe.  Now there’s a horrible thought!

She walks very heavy and we live above other tenants.  She shuts doors hard when she’s angry.  I have to keep telling her that she’s going to break the sliding glass door one of these days when she’s charging in from the balcony smoke to yell at the kids for bouncing on the furniture or for sneaking over to the dining room table and messing with whatever computer game she has on hold on her laptop.

She has our bedroom off-limits to the kids.  She says she needs her private space.  I, on the other hand, don’t mind if the kids come in and climb into my bed in the middle of the night for whatever reason.  I fight my mom tooth and nail over that rule.  She’s eased up a bit on that now to where she’ll just grumble and frown, but she doesn’t try to wrench a sleeping Lucy from me to carry her back to her own bed.

That was creepy.  Waking up in the middle of the night and seeing mom’s dark form walking angrily toward my bed with her arms out like Frankenstein.  Coming to throw the covers back and take Lucy back to bed.  No way!  You don’t mess with my kid.  That’s where I draw the line.

Like I said.  I love my mother and she has the biggest heart and will bend over backwards to do just about anything for her family but her little habits are driving me crazy.

I just have to remember that after the end of March, we will be back in our own homes.

On the other hand, if anything ever happens to her I am going to feel horrible about letting her little quirks and habits irritate me.  And even more horrible about writing all this stuff down.  I’ll be wishing she was making those wet noises and closing doors hard.  I’ll feel guilty about making her feel guilty over eating all the icecream or string cheese.

Life’s a bitch.

Chava – unedited

Ghostly Thoughts

My biggest problem with writing is discipline.  I always seem to find something else to do besides sitting down and writing.  Everything distracts me.  The kids.  The animals.  A movie to watch.  I’m great at sitting down to study the craft of writing.  I’ve read tons of books on it and I’ve taken tons of workshops and classes.  I’ve even outlined a detailed screenplay, but every time I sit down to work on the actual screenplay writing, I stare at the blank page wondering how to put everything into words that will hold a reader’s attention.

I know my screenplay idea is wonderful.  My instructor at UCLA online told me so.  He also said he loved my energy and creativity.  So, what’s holding me back.

Fear of failure maybe.

I’m hoping that this class on Method Writing will teach me how to discipline myself.  If I could really sit down each day and write something.  Anything.  Maybe my body will get used to writing on a regular basis.  Maybe I’ll lose my fear of the blank page.

I have no trouble at all with creativity or with writer’s block.  Ideas, and plots, and characters, and twists swim around in my head all the time.  My friends tell me I’m weird and off-the-wall.  I blame that on creativity.  Although, sometimes I wonder if I don’t have a bit of a twisted mind.

Mental illness runs in my family.  My grandmother was a paranoid schizophrenic, and my father was way out in left field.  I don’t have a diagnosis for him, but he ended up as a street person and died of pneumonia in Washington State.  Alone.

We didn’t know he had died for 4 years after the fact.

My brother in Rochester NY used to keep a change of clothes for my dad, in the trunk of his car.  Every week he’d meet up with dad downtown and give him fresh clothes and his monthly disability pay.  Mark – that’s my brother’s name, said dad was too strange to keep at his house.  No problem there, though because Dad preferred to wander the streets.

He left my mother and my sister and brother when we were very young, to marry another woman.  He had five more children by her.  They lived in Auburn Washington.  One of those kids – Sean, became very ill with a virus when he was 14.  The story I got from my brother Mark is that Sean was so sick he asked my Dad to take him to the hospital.  My dad and his wife, Barbara told him he would take him the next day if he was still sick.

He was.

They took him.

He died in the hospital from complications due to a heart murmur he already had.

My dad lost it.  He’d spend hours rocking in the rocking chair.  Staring out the window.  And he’d spend hours at Sean’s gravesite.

Then he started hitchhiking back and forth between Auburn Washington and Rochester NY.  His parents and my brother lived in NY.  His newer family in Auburn.

Anyway.  I found his social security number online and discovered he’d died.  Mark was surprised.  He’d always said that he thought he’d know inside if his dad was dead.  But he didn’t.

He died a vagrant.  His wife was already dead and his children were scattered all over the U.S.

He was cremated.  His ashes put in an urn.  When they had enough urns full of vagrant’s ashes, they packed them into one casket and buried the casket in a paupers graveyard.

Being a person who loves supernatural stuff, I kind of have this idea that every night, after the sun sets, all of the spirits of those vagrants in that casket kind of hang out together at the gravesite.  I figure they have a ghostly campfire that they sit around while they pass around a ghostly bottle of alcohol and tell tales of their lives.

Did I mention my dad was a wicked alcoholic?

Anyway.  The guy who runs the cematery told me I could have the casket exhumed and take my dad’s urn for the bargain price of 3,000 dollars.  I declined.

I wouldn’t want to take my dad from his ghostly companions.  He’d be bored to death at my house.  Not in his element at all.

Chava – unedited

This Journal’s Purpose

Last night I started the first of an 8 week class on ‘Method Writing’ taught by a man named, Jack Grapes.  Acclaimed as one of the top teachers in the field of Method Writing, and considering the fact that I’ll only be in Los Angeles for 10 more weeks and I need all of the help I can get to turn out a killer screenplay, I jumped at the chance to take his class.

Our first assignment is to write a minimum of two pages a day on anything that comes to mind.  We are not supposed to write toward a particular goal or idea.  We are supposed to write ‘like we talk’ and get into the process of writing.  No outlining.  No editing.  No objective or storyline to use as a guide.

The idea is that we will find our voice if we free-write.  And, we should be able to unearth treasures and unlock forgotten memories which could later be weaved into something very special whether it be a poem, story, or screenplay etc.

A handful of years ago I used to play a writing game.  I developed an online random word generator which would give me a random word with a click of a button.  From there, I’d play a word association game until I came up with a word that evoked a strong memory.  Then, I’d write the memory down, edit it, and post it on my website.

Since then, I’ve changed websites but I saved all of the pieces I’ve written.  A while back, I created a website just for those pieces and I called the site – ‘Digging Up The Bones’ - a name I found in Stephen King’s book, ‘On Writing’.  I’ve only uploaded a couple of my old pieces so far but I plan to put the other ones up there when I return to Tennessee.

Truthfully, I had a lot of fun digging up those forgotten memories and writing about them.  I think I’ll dig up a few more with these free-writing assignments I’ll be doing daily for Jack Grapes’ class.  I feel like they definately reflect my voice.

Back to my first week’s assignment for my Method Writing Class…

Like I said, I am supposed to write a minimum of 2 pages a day for this class.  Since I type much faster than I write I decided to create a WordPress blog just for that writing.  That way I can write while I’m at work or home!

Here goes…