Writing

Wednesday August 16, 2017WritingOne comment so far

Hi all,

Apologies for how sparse this blog has been lately. Apparently I can’t do it all.

Shocking

Shocking, I know, but there it is. In my quest to publish two books this October I have run out of hours in the day. Therefore, I need to purposefully cut things from my schedule – instead of leaving it all in, failing to get everything done, then feeling bad about it – and this blog did not make the list of things to be kept. I am hoping to get back on the blogging bandwagon in November, so I will see you then. In the mean time, I will still be posting on Patreon and please do check out my two upcoming books!

In a Time Never Known

Monsters in the Night

Thursday October 06, 2016Life, WritingView all 2 comments

I recently finished the book The Help. I definitely enjoyed it, but there’s one thing that bothered me that I can’t get out of my head. It obviously hasn’t colored my entire opinion of the book, but as it keeps coming back to me, I figured I would bring it up and see if anyone else had this issue, or can explain it to me. That being said, if you haven’t read the book and want to, I’d stop reading as the rest of this post will contain spoilers. I haven’t seen the movie, so I cannot attest as to whether this will give away a major part of the movie. I would assume so though. For all those, who have read the book or aren’t concerned about spoilers, please read on!

The big turning point in the book is the arrest of Yule Mae. If it weren’t for her arrest, chances are pretty high that Skeeter and Aibileen would not have gotten enough interviews to get their book published. So really, her arrest is what makes the rest of the book possible. It is this inciting incident that doesn’t quite sit right for me. It is in fact a legitimate arrest, as Yule Mae admits to stealing a ring from Hilly. However, her reason for stealing the ring doesn’t make sense to me. Yule Mae, has twin boys, and she and her husband have been setting aside money for years in order to send them both to college. They were $75 short. Yule Mae asked Hilly for a loan and was turned down, so Yule Mae stole the ring in the hopes that she could pawn it for the $75.

According to a 1963 Almanac, tuition for a year of college was anywhere from $100 a year at the University of Texas, up to $1520 for a year at Harvard. Tougaloo, the black college located north of Jackson, would have likely fallen at the lower end of the tuition spectrum, if not under $100 a year. For the sake of our argument, let’s say that tuition is $100. Which means that to send two boys to that college for four years each, would be a total cost of $800. In the letter that Yule Mae writes to Skeeter, she says that her legal fees of $500 ate almost all of the college money. All of this adds up to tuition being right around $100 a year. They were $75 short, which means they had $725, which would be decimated by a $500 legal fee.

Here’s my problem. I have attended two different colleges and just about everybody I know also attended college. None of us had to pay for the whole thing up front. At my first school, I paid a semester at a time. At my second school, I paid a quarter at a time. Which means, that they had at least three years to save up $75. Now I realize that in 1962 that was a lot of money, especially for a black family being paid less than minimum wage. However, to get to the full amount needed before that last year of college started, they would have to save less than fifty cents a week. That’s a quarter per parent, or less than fifteen cents each if both boys got jobs. For reference, that would be the same as saving $4 per week today. For something that you really want, that’s doable.

That means there was no logical reason for Yule Mae to steal the ring, because she didn’t need that $75 for three years. Why would an educated women take that kind of risk – especially with a woman like Hilly – when she was capable of the same reasoning that I just employed? What am I missing? It can’t be that the boys were going into their senior year of college and they were $75 short, or they wouldn’t have had the money to pay the legal fees. The only way that she would have had the money to pay her legal fees, is if the boys had yet to start school. So why steal the ring? Did you have to pay for all four years up front back then? Did I miss something in the text? Are we supposed to believe that she was really that short-sighted? Or is this just a gaping hole in the plot? Somebody help me, this is driving me nuts!

Tuesday September 20, 2016Happiness, Life, WritingLeave a comment

I feel like it’s a pretty universal truth that comparing yourself to others is the death of happiness. That being said, it’s hard not to compare and contrast your life to your neighbors, your coworkers, and your family and friends. It’s really damn hard on the bad days, when the self-doubt starts creeping in, to not look at your BFF, and think, “Damn! She’s got everything together, I suck.”

That’s damaging enough, but what I think is even worse, is comparing and judging yourself against the outliers. The novelist who hit the NY Times bestseller list at the age of 17. The entrepreneur who made a million dollars before their 25th birthday. You might as well pack up the shop and go home, because that comparison is going to wind up creating a sea of self-loathing tears.

Outliers are out there for a reason. They either have some amazing gift in their field, or just happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right idea. Or quite frankly a combination of the two. I’m not saying, there isn’t a good amount of work involved as well, but that hard work and determination met with some luck somewhere along the line. How else do you explain two people who work their asses off and one does okay, while the other one is a huge success? There’s got to be some sort of luck/right-place-at-the-right time thrown in there. So what good could possibly come from making that comparison? None.

Now I’m not saying that I’m crying myself to sleep at night because I’m not a Christopher Paolini. Far from it, I have a healthy respect for myself and the work that I’ve done. However, lately I’ve noticed that I’ve been making some pretty major comparisons without even realizing it. In talking to people about my search for an agent, I have lost track of how many times I’ve said, “Stephen King was rejected over a hundred times, before he was signed.” Which seems innocuous enough, it’s a way to set the bar for my own experience. But then it hit me. What happens when I hit 100 or 150 rejections? I’m already half way there, so those are plausible numbers. If you add to the count the number of agents who have ignored my query letter, I’m already there. What happens to my comparison then? If I surpass Stephen King’s number and still don’t have an agent, does that mean that I’m a failure? Does that mean that I’m nothing special, just one of the average masses?

Honestly, I don’t think it means anything. The world in which he was sending out queries is so completely changed from the world in which I am it’s like trying to compare apples to water buffaloes. There is no relevant comparison possible! Which brings me back to my first thought. Even if I step away from the outlier league and look at friends, coworkers and acquaintances, I have to come to the same conclusion. THERE IS NO RELEVANT COMPARISON. Each person has their own set of gifts and hurdles that they bring to the table. Clearly, those with only a handful of hurdles are going to get further faster. Clearly, those who realize immediately what their gifts are and how to use them are going to get further faster. Those who have a couple hundred hurdles and have had to devote a good part of their life to clearing them before they could even look at their gifts, well it’s no frickin’ wonder they’re just now showing up. Contrary to popular belief, they are not late to the party. They are not behind or a late-bloomer. They are simply running their race, the best that they can.

I think it’s high time that we realize that we each have our own race to run, and cut ourselves some slack when we don’t arrive at the same milestones at the same time as those around us. Myself included.

Tuesday September 06, 2016WritingLeave a comment

About two years ago, I started doing a weekly post on Twitter, where I give an editing tip and sign it #TheDisgruntledEditor. Because of that, I have been asked by several people if I am an editor. Once I stop laughing, I tell them no. I am most definitely not an editor. I work with several fantastic editors, because I am well aware of the fact that I need them. My general attitude toward commas is that you just sprinkle those fuckers in wherever it looks good. Apparently that’s wrong. Very wrong.

So why the disgruntled editor posts? Those posts came about, as thoughts that I am sure my editors have whenever going over my work. Or at least the thoughts that I have while going over my work. I am the disgruntled editor, because I don’t like doing it, and I’m not very good at doing it, especially to my own work. Really, who is? That is why, I have come up with a list of things that I check on any significant piece that I write before handing it off to my editor. I came up with this list based upon recurring comments that I would get. I figure, if they had to tell me to do something more than twice it is clearly a habit that I’ve gotten into, and the least I can do is check my work for them before sending it off. I say the least I can do, because what I should really do is learn how to properly use commas … however, as I don’t see that happening anytime soon, I go over my list instead.

What is this list, you ask? It’s a compilation of common redundancies, superfluous word phrases and helping verbs that often make a sentence passive and therefore less interesting. These are things that I can easily fix myself, and therefore free my editor up to focus on the more technical aspects of my copy. Like semi-colons. Seriously, how the fuck do you properly use a semi-colon? This is a rhetorical question of course. It has been explained to me more times than I can count, and every time the explanation goes in one ear and right out the other. My brain couldn’t seem to care less about their proper use. Once in a great while I will get one right, and when I do I celebrate. I call it the semi-colon dance. Every other time, my editor fixes it for me.

I have come to accept this about myself, and I’ve moved on. Instead of berating myself for not being able to grasp these concepts, I snarkily point them out for others via the Disgruntled Editor. And I have my list. It is how I actively edit, and feel better about my willy-nilly use of punctuation. For all of you writers out there like me, who want to give your editor’s a bit of a break, click here and I’ll send you my list. Or if you have a list, or something you always check for let me know! I’m constantly adding to my repertoire!

Thursday August 25, 2016History, Inspiration, Life, WritingLeave a comment

Three and a half years ago I started on a journey that has led me to a place I never could have imagined. After pitching my idea to a magazine and being accepted, I wrote my first Heroine of History article. It was a short biographical piece about Mary Elizabeth Bowser, who was arguably the best placed Union spy during the American Civil War. This was my first attempt at biography, and I loved it. It wasn’t easy, but I loved unearthing her story and telling it.

That is largely how I’ve felt about all of the women that I’ve written about. Those biographies are the hardest things that I write. The research alone is daunting. The Internet is amazing in that there are literally millions of resources right at your fingertips. But anybody can post things on the Internet, so who’s to say what is fact and what is fiction. That’s not to say that books are 100% reliable either. I have read many an erroneous account in a book. I would guess that close to two-thirds of all of my research time is spent corroborating or dispelling facts.

I’m researching Shirley Chisholm right now. Two sources say that she was born on November 20, 1924, three sources say that she was born on November 30, 1924, five sources say November 1924, and a handful of sources don’t mention her birthday at all. Now multiply that by almost every relevant fact about the woman. Half the time I feel like I’m taking a poll: “Was Shirley Chisholm the oldest of four children or the oldest of eight children?”

I spend hours weeding through similar yet varied information, and then picking and choosing which “facts” seem to be the most factual. Then comes the daunting task of telling their story in a way that honors their life. I obviously pick these women because I find them inspirational, so I therefore want to do them justice.

And none of this takes into account the content of the stories. Yes, these are amazing, take-charge, get-things-done, and overcome-the-odds, inspirational women. However, in order to overcome something bad must happen first. So these stories are also full of loss, poverty, abuse, racism, sexism, disappointment and the destruction of dreams. It is heavy stuff.

Yet, they are also the most fulfilling. The more I research and the more I delve into these stories, the more I come to realize that these women have something in common. Regardless of race, social status, background, era, etc., all of these women place their focus on something external. Their communities, the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, those who have trouble speaking for themselves. These women served. They lifted up those around them, and in doing so, lifted themselves up too.

One of the most magical things about helping others, is that it is almost impossible to do so without also helping yourself. I can’t think of a single time that I willing offered and gave my help that I didn’t feel better about myself afterwards. Despite the hours of work and the emotional drain that each of these biographies takes, I feel better after having written them. I feel better after telling their story, after doing my part to ensure that their deeds won’t slip into the darkest corners of history to wilt away forgotten.

I also feel better knowing that I have done my part to pass their inspiration on. Every person needs a hero to look up to, and it’s even better if you can relate to that hero. I had one growing up, and it’s her story that started me down this road in the first place, and so it is in her honor and the honor of every other heroine that has lent me their strength that I’ve decided that it is high time to expand beyond the Heroines of History. What started as a simple magazine article, has grown into so much more. The ball is rolling on two new steps – okay, being nudged down the road is a bit more accurate than rolling – but I am excited for these two new ventures: Through Her Eyes and the Heart of a Heroine Alliance. Onwards and upwards, here we go!

Tuesday July 26, 2016Change, History, Live and Learn, Right vs Wrong, WritingLeave a comment

My book is unintentionally racist. No, not my novel. That one takes place during the Civil War and is intentionally racist. It has to be to claim any sort of historical accuracy. I am talking about my children’s book, 10 Cheeky Monkeys. It’s a counting book that also teaches vocabulary words, and by happenstance because of current events portrays racism. At first I was content to sweep in under the rug and explain it away by evoking my white privilege of “You’re reading too much into it.” But quite frankly, I can’t do that anymore. I am revoking my white privilege and talking about the fact that it’s there. It isn’t something that I can do anything about at this point, I don’t have the money that it would cost to change it, but I can acknowledge that it is there instead of ignoring it.

You see, I’ve come to believe that one of the biggest problems facing us today in regards to race is everyday good people ignoring or not acknowledging racism when they see it. Or not even realizing that it is there, while meanwhile it is a constant thorn in the sides of people of color. Before the Civil War abolitionists had something to fight for: the abolishment of slavery. It was a tangible, worthy goal with easily recorded wins. Lincoln introduced the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War secured the last nail in the coffin lid of slavery. However, something that ingrained isn’t given up that easily. The slave codes were reworded and reworked and largely became the Jim Crow laws. I realize that this is an over simplification and what follows is also a simplification, but I don’t want to bore you with too much of a history lesson, so I beg you to stick with me.

Then came the Civil Rights Movement. Again, there was something tangible to fight against, something to direct the attack. Desegregate, overturn the Jim Crow laws, and end the violence and abject fear that was running rampant in the South. These goals were easily articulated and the wins were easily recorded. However, again, something that ingrained does not go away easily. And I don’t want to harp solely on the South here. There were race riots in New York during the Civil War. In fact, before the war broke out, one of the top proposals of the anti-slavery movement was to stick all of the freed blacks on a boat and send them back to Africa. They weren’t looking for equality, they just didn’t want slavery anymore. Same for the Civil Rights movement. There were plenty of people who were all for blacks having “equal rights,” as long as they didn’t move up north into their neighborhoods. Our country is entrenched in a history of racism, and while the Jim Crow laws were overturned, the sentiments remained.

Our problem today, is that with the advent of cell phone videos and live streaming it is much easier to broadcast the stories of a select group out to a wide audience. And to quote Fannie Lou Hamer, a large majority of the black population is “Sick and tired or being sick and tired.” They are sick of the constant, insidious racism that they encounter every day and tired of it being brushed aside like it’s no big deal. It is a big deal, and unlike the activists of the past, the activists of today don’t have anything they can point to, anything that they can definitively fight against.

Sadly, for some that focus has fallen on the police as it is their onerous job to mete out a lot of this injustice. There are cities in this country that make hundreds of thousands of dollars off their poorest communities from fines and tickets. Guess who has to dole those out? The cops. If they don’t, they lose their jobs. If they do they become the enemy of the very people they have sworn to protect. EVERY ONE is set up for failure in this system. Yes, there are a select few in blue who use their power and position to unduly harass and prosecute the black communities that they are supposed to serve. They are a problem and they need to go. Racism and bigotry have no business in uniform. But even with all of them gone, it is the system as a whole that needs an overhaul.

Even if a fairy godmother could come down and snap her fingers to fix the entire system overnight, we would still have a race problem in this country and the activists of today would still be lacking a handhold for their fight. It is the hearts and minds of the general populace that need to change. But it is a general awareness that is lacking amongst a large portion of the white population that a problem even exists. That is itself one of the biggest problems, and it is perpetuated every time we see or do something racist and let it slide, because, “What’s the big deal?”

The big deal is that this country abolished slavery 151 years ago, yet has still failed to systematically treat and address the black population as equal. Don’t believe me, go to Google and type in “Obama monkey.” That is the respect shown to our commander-in-chief. Yes, all presidents get made fun of, but that is not all-in-fun ribbing. Those images are racist. If you’re still skeptical that a problem exists, type in “Leslie Jones Twitter.” That’s just the blatant racism hurled at black people, the subtle, latent racism often sneaks by under the radar of whites. It makes me shudder that we have progressed so little.

So with that said, I am calling myself out. There is a portion of my book 10 Cheeky Monkeys that can be interpreted as racist. Here are the pages next to their inspiration.

I specifically asked my illustrator to add in the police car as a throwback to a piece I did in my portfolio when I graduated from college. I of course can’t find that to add a picture, but it would be of a white guy eating his pizza as fast as he can before the police can come and arrest him. Now here are the pages next to images that are more likely to come to mind with our recent news cycles.

Is it intentional? No. Does it eerily mirror events that are popping up in the news far too frequently? Yes. Do I personally feel that it perpetuates racist stereotypes? Yes. Do I accept that as the publisher of this book and the one who requested the illustration change, that this is my doing? Yes. Does that make me a racist? No. Does that make my illustrator a racist? Absolutely not. Good, well-intentioned people do racist things every day without realizing that they are doing so. That doesn’t make them racists. However, it is time we started noticing how our words and decisions impact those of color. It is time we unlearn our years of privilege and learn to do better. Myself included.

Tuesday June 21, 2016Live and Learn, Theater, WritingLeave a comment

I have spent the past three weekends covering the Hollywood Fringe Festival for See It or Skip LA. Which involves seeing large amounts of shows, writing reviews and getting together with my other correspondents to record podcasts about what we’ve seen. After our last recording session it occurred to me that all of the shows that I have raved about, have one thing in common: they all used comedy to make a serious story more accessible.

“Night Witches” – a play about the female Russian bomber regiment in WWII who terrorized the Germans night after night despite encountering heavy losses. Was it inspiring? Definitely! Was it depressing because a majority of the main characters died? Yep! Did I leave the theater depressed? No, because amidst the dire situations of the women were interwoven comedic scenes of the Nazi soldiers. These scenes could have easily been written just as serious as the Russian scenes – which did have some elements of comedy but were for the most part dramatic – but that would have resulted in a very different play. It would have been heavy on top of heavy, leaving the audience feeling, you guessed it, heavy. Instead, this show juxtaposes dark with light and as a result is selling out as people clamber to see an historical play.

Check out our podcasts here.

On the other hand, I saw a different historically based play that left me feeling ambivalent at best and negative at worst. It was 90 minutes of downtrodden woe-is-me-nothing-is-going-right, with no break or release of the tension. Even at the end when the character gets what he had been striving for the whole time, the victory is tinged with heartache. The one victory in the entire piece was spoiled. The piece was acted well, and quite frankly staged better than “Night Witches,” however without that light to balance the dark I had to recommend that audiences skip it for something else.

For the dark to be accessible, palatable, effective it needs to be balanced with light. Then it struck me, out of all of the critiques of my novel there was one outlying comment early on that I looked at briefly before shoving it aside and disregarding it since no one else seemed to have the problem. What was that comment?

“Be cognizant of providing breaks for your reader. Your first 50 pages are intense and nonstop. It can be overwhelming.”

In other words, at the beginning of my novel about the Civil War, an already super-upbeat topic, I inundate my reader with DARK, DARK, DARK! Hmmmm. I have spent the past three weeks espousing the virtues of how comedy strengthens drama, yet when somebody gave me a similar note, I completely ignored it.

Well. Done. Me. Despite the fact that I have rewritten the beginning of my novel more times than I can count since I received that comment, I will be going back to examine it one more time. Here’s to the light, strengthening the dark.

Thursday April 14, 2016Change, Happiness, Live and Learn, WritingLeave a comment

While at a dinner party this past weekend, a friend and I got talking about the basic principle that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. In essence you can get more by being nice instead of an asshole. Then this turned to our observations that here in LA that when you treat some people with respect – namely those in the customer service industry – they are taken aback because the gesture is so completely unfamiliar to them. Both of us found this mind-boggling. I mean we’ve both seen it enough that we weren’t blown away by its existence, but just by the sheer fact that there are so many people out there who operate on a daily basis with such vitriol. Neither of us could understand that. I still don’t. Life is so much better when you surround yourself and work with kind people.

Then as if the universe were sending me a test, I woke up the next morning and checked my email to find a rather disquieting message. Before heading out to the dinner party the day before I had sent several messages to publicists to try to get a better idea of what a publicity campaign for a book launch would not only look like, but cost. At first I was thrilled to see that I already had a response from the publicist that had looked the most promising to me. However, when I opened the email, I found this first paragraph:

“You’ve told me absolutely nothing about your novel other than its historical fiction due out in October. So I visited your website and there’s nothing there either. There’s really nothing to chat about at this point. It’s like sending a resume with no information about your job history and wanting to talk to an employer about hiring you. Maybe I missed something on your website but I looked around and could not find a link about your book. If your book is due out in October, now is the time to be contacting reviewers and bloggers. So not only should you be hiring a publicist now, your blog/website should have a lot of information about your book.”

Right off the bat, I had several concerns.

I have no idea how she meant it, but it came across to me as confrontational, which I did not appreciate.
The resume bit – last I checked I was looking to HIRE someone to fulfill a service for ME. I wasn’t aware that I needed to sharpen up my interview skills and prove myself worthy.
If I’m looking to hire a publicist, then one might assume that I don’t know enough about publicity to run my own campaign. Therefore, how would I know that I already need info about the book on my website and that I need to be connecting with reviewers right now?
“So not only should you be hiring a publicist now,” – that’s what I’m trying to do lady. Maybe give me some props for knowing that much?

Needless to say, I did not respond right away. To be completely honest, the email made me upset and I needed to cool down. Then an odd thing happened. I started to explain away and excuse her behavior. Maybe I should have included more information about my book in my initial email? Maybe finding a good publicist is competitive and I do need to compete for their business? Maybe I should have done more research on publicity before reaching out? Maybe I’m the one that screwed up in the exchange and her reaction was totally justified, after all according to her website she’s really good? Wait, what? I was actually thinking this shit! This person first made me upset, and then I made myself feel like I deserved it.

How the hell did that happen? Wasn’t I just talking about how I didn’t understand behavior like this? Wasn’t I just talking about how I didn’t have room in my life for people that treated me this way? Aha! That’s when I had an epiphany. There are other publicists in the world, I don’t have to work with this woman if I don’t want to. I especially don’t have to pay her money to work with her. I don’t care how good she is, I don’t want to work with someone, or have them representing me, if they feel treating people in that way is acceptable. Not just acceptable, but a legitimate way to conduct business. No thank you. I can still learn from her – build out a page on my website for my book is now firmly on my to-do list – but I do not have to work with her.

It took me about a day and a half to figure this out, and shortly thereafter I received another email from her that was much less confrontational and asked question about my book and actually told me a little bit about what she does. In other words, this should have been the first email she had sent, and had I not had the epiphany, I probably would have written her back and had we wound up working together, the entire experience probably would have been like those first two emails, over and over again. Instead, I responded back to her that I had decided to go a different way with my publicity needs, and I thanked her for her time. Done and done and holy crap did I feel better afterwards. jerk whisperer

Not two hours later, I received an email from one of the other publicists I had contacted. Mind you, with the exact same minimal information as I had provided to this first lady. This new publicist’s email was warm and inviting, thanking me for my interest in their firm. She provided an attachment that detailed different book publicity packages that they offer and said that she looked forward to speaking with me and possibly reading my material in the future. Huh? The exact same information with two polar-opposite responses. Yep, I definitely made the right choice. Thank you universe for that affirmation. Needless to say, I’m talking with this second firm.

Surround yourself with honey, people. Life is too short for vinegar. Not to mention, vinegar has sulfites and I’m allergic to that shit.

Tuesday April 05, 2016Life, WritingLeave a comment

Sometimes I really think my brain is working against me. I will look at the projects laid out in front of me along with all of the other responsibilities I have and decide that I can’t take on anything more. There’s no way. Short of giving up sleep completely and starting to boil down coffee to inject directly into my veins like crack, it’s not an option. Then someone will mention something, like a show they’re producing of individual pieces that they think I would be great for and would I have any interest in getting involved.

Of course, my immediate reaction is, NO! Can’t do it, no way, no how, there are not enough hours in the day! I’d like to think that I’m a bit more politic when I respond out loud, but knowing me . . . probably not. Regardless, I say that I am flattered, but can’t participate at this time. All is well and good and I pay myself on the back for having the fortitude to say no when my plate is already full. Go me!

Or so I think. I can go a day or two, sometimes even a week without giving this opportunity another thought. But little do I know, that my subconscious is chugging away chewing over this offer and coming up with my own piece. This chugging goes along completely unnoticed until one night it pops up to the surface and the next thing I know it’s two in the morning and I have over five pages of material. Clearly my mouth said no, but my brain said yes.

I now have a close to finished piece that would be perfect for my friend Michelle’s show Breaker/Broken, and I have to decide if I go with my initial gut response that I don’t have time for this, shelf the piece and move on with my other projects. Orrrrr, because it’s already mostly done, do I simply put in a few hours work to polish it off and do the show? Obviously I’m going to wind up choosing the latter, because it drives me nuts having something that is almost done lying around. And if I finish it, it would be silly not to do the show, so I might as well throw that onto my plate as well.

Thanks brain! You have officially lost your right to complain about being tired.

Thursday March 10, 2016WritingLeave a comment

According to the experts – which officially begs the question “How does one become an expert on blogging?” – to have a successful blog I should be blogging on a regular basis and have a consistent theme and message that is conveyed throughout all of my posts. I’ve got the regular basis down. Okay, I’ve mostly got the regular basis down. Okay, I think about blogging on a regular basis. That one could use some work, but I’m not going to focus on that right now because it needs a lot less work than the latter stipulation.

A consistent theme and message. I’m very consistent in the fact that I blog about whatever the hell is at the forefront of my brain at that particular moment. However, I don’t really think that is what they are talking about. Not to mention the only theme or message that would be conveyed is that I should probably be under the supervision of a shrink. But really, shouldn’t we all?

Anyway, I’ve been putting some serious thought toward this since the beginning of the year. I couldn’t come up with a message to save my life, so I decided to give the whole theme idea a go. I decided that I would do a different theme/topic every month to spice things up. Then I figured out what each of those would be for the entire year. For anyone who has been following me this year, don’t strain yourself trying to find those monthly themes . . . so far I have failed miserably at following them. If anything, instead of making blogging easier, it’s made it harder. I tend to look at my theme and instantly get writer’s block. At the beginning of this month, I looked up my predetermined theme – “New Beginnings” – and I’m still trying to figure out what I was smoking when I decided that was a good idea!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that I have blogged about “New Beginnings” before. Probably more than once. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to be able to come up with a month’s worth of blog posts on that topic. Except for this one . . . I just realized that this post is most definitely about “New Beginnings” as it basically consists of my bitching about my well-intentioned plans, and then deciding to do something else. So other than today, I do not plan on following my themes anymore. Screw em!

I guess that means I need to come up with a message then . . . hmmm . . . maybe I should just come up with better themes. That sounds easier than a message . . .