Wednesday, January 24, 2007

May dragons eat my toes. . .


That's my new motivating self-curse; It's for when I'm sitting staring at the computer screen, tempted to rearrange a paragraph one more time out of fear of writing a new scene instead. My new mantra shall be: I will write the next scene, or may dragons eat my toes. It worked last night. I wrote a perfectly awful 6 pages before the awfulness finally ate into my brain and I slumped over unconscious with the horror of it. But no dragons ate my toes, so that's good. I believe the dread of that happening will wear off shortly -- I mean, I do have some sense of reality, thank you. I do actually know that there aren't any dragons in the world. Oh wait, what's this? Eek!


Don't let him near my toes, please. (And to think that in my last post I referred to Komodo dragons as one of the world's greatest hits!)

I made oatmeal for dinner the last two nights in a row, so you can see I'm really straining myself. I'm wearing two pairs of socks, and a sweatshirt with a big cowl that I can pull up over my face if I get cold, and I'm sitting Indian-style. I have a bad habit of treating my knees like I'm still a teenager, and then when I get up I hobble. I have to unfurl myself often from the writing desk (or writing sofa as the case may be) to help Shiloh get up -- sometimes she can manage on her own, but she needs a lot of tush-boosting now as she's gotten very rickety very fast. She sleeps with her tongue poking out; it's cute but sad. My poor old dog baby.

There are big stacks of books on the coffee table that we brought home from ALA. How fun was it to walk around picking up free books? Pretty dang fun, I tell you, but also heavy. Librarians are strong! It's tempting to just sit and read, but I remind myself what would most certainly happen if I were to do that. That's right: dragons would definitely eat my toes. With soy sauce, and chopsticks.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are hilarious - I love the way your mind works! And a K. dragon did eat Phil Bronstein's toe (editor of San Fran Chronicle and ex-husband of Sharon Stone).

Left-handed Trees... said...

Paris Parfait's comment is just hilarious, given your post. Ha...I'm incredibly impressed!!! I need some sort of similar mantra myself as today I just sort of stared at the laptop until the battery died and then said, "See I just wasn't meant to write today!" Then I read this quote (which was like the dragons to me):
"Just write. If you have to make a choice, if you say 'Oh well, I'm going to put the writing away until my children are grown,' then you don't really want to be a writer. If you want to be a writer, you do your writing...if you don't do it, you probably don't really want to be a writer, you just want to have written and be famous--which is very different." --Jane Yolen-- YIKES...back to work!
Love,
D.

Anonymous said...

Just read about your first book signing - congratulations! Free books? What a dream come true!
Watch out for those dragons - they're very sneaky, but they can't resist clicking their chopsticks together in anticipatory glee, so when you hear them coming, type like mad!

xegbp said...

I went to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago simply to see the K.Dragon. It was huge and sleeping on a rock, I am sure that if given half the chance he would have tried to eat the toes of all the people in that room looking at him, fortunatley there was a thick sheet of glass between us and him.

Anonymous said...

Ouch, that quote from Jane Yolen HURT. Guess I have to write through the pain. ;)

You can do it...and emerge with all of your ten tootsies intact!

xoxo,
m

Claudia said...

You need those toes to help balance those stiff knees!

madelyn said...

I would love a dragon to
TICKLE my toes...

I love love love oatmeal -
just love it to bits with
cream and maple syrup.

hugs!

(have fun reading all your
new books)