Author, Author

Yes, I've been bit by the writing bug. For toastmasters, I'm supposed to tell a folk tale such as Three Billy Goats Gruff or Cinderella. Of course, I chose Cinderella and started weaving a story of Cinderella from the stepmother's point of view. I never liked that she was a villian. Angelica Houston gave a marvelous performance in Ever After and it gave me an idea to explore her motivation. Over about four days I crafted the story in my head, but it was getting kind of long, so I figured I better write it down and cut parts out, because the speech is only 9 minutes. So I wrote, got a phone call, and wrote and wrote and looked up and had to go to a meeting, came back and wrote and wrote and looked up and it was time to leave again, came back and wrote and wrote and finished. It was in teeny tiny print, so I enlarged the print and double spaced it. I printed it out and raced off to my next appointment. When I got home last night, I timed how long it took to tell the story, thinking that if it was over a little, that would be ok. It seemed like I had a lot of pages, but about half way through, it stopped and I didn't have all the pages. I looked back at the stuff I'd grabbed from work and sure enough there were a bunch more pages. It was over 12 pages long. It took 20 minutes to read out loud going really fast.

I mentioned it to Adrienne and she read it. She said she liked it. I started to think, this would make a great short story (if I do say so myself)--I should enter it in a contest or a magazine. So Adrienne goes on line and there are bunches of contests for short stories. I wanted to change the ending and then I realized that if I wasn't going to be telling this story, I'll have to clean up the sentences and dialog and there's a lot of work to this writing stuff. But you know how it is when you have so much free time...

There's a gal at the gym who just had a book published. It's called "Oh My God, It's Me" It's some kind of self help book, but she's such a great gal, I'm looking forward to reading it. She's planning book signings and appearances. Some of the other women are coming up with flyers and ideas to help her sell the book. It's kind of fun. So I told her this morning that it was her fault that I got bit by the writing bug--now she wants to read it. It's one thing to share it with family and strangers, but people I know, well, I'm not sure about that. She might actually have an opinion other than mine. We can't have that.