Sad day

Today is the day when I have to stop listening to Thoroughly Modern Millie music under the pretense of researching for the book because I have to listen to The Wedding Singer music for the day job. Auditions are in three weeks which means the season is starting and my REAL life is about to get as musical and high school drama filled as those of my FICTIONAL characters.

But really, Millie is such a better show. LE SIGH.

Adventures

My first adventure is that I posted a piece of flash fiction today on The Great Noveling Adventure. Its horrorish and very difficult for me but you can check it out if you'd like. L.S. Mooney tries to be spooky

My second adventure to speak of is that I am currently in Washington DC with my boyfriend for the weekend. Yesterday I had the great pleasure of hanging out with the always amazing Jenny Adams Perinovic and her lovely husband (who happened to be having a birthday as well). We visited the Library of Congress and talked about Everything. We talked writing and books, and drama, and life. She is great and we need to live close together again. LE SIGH. 

At present, I am sitting in a Starbucks in the heart of DC drinking tea and attempting to write. Life is good. 

Word vomit

I went to sleep last night with my G4 notebook open on my bedside table. I woke up this morning with cat puke all over it. #catladyproblems, I know. But for real, I was pretty much freaking out at 5:30 this morning without any real time to deal with it. I wiped up what I could and set it up to dry before I left for work, but honestly I don't know how salvageable it will be.
I grabbed another notebook from my drawer (yes I do indeed have a whole drawer of blank notebooks, it is a sickness) in case I'm in a writing mood but all day I've been stressing about the few pages I have written in the vomit notebook that I haven't yet typed. I spent quite a while today feeling incapable of writing because i might lose those pages (if the ink ran, the pages stick etc). Now, however, I feel kind of liberated. I was a bit stuck in those pages anyway. I didn't really like them and felt like I was taking the story in a weird direction.
Therefore, I've chosen to view the cat puke incident as an act of the cosmos, some higher writing god telling me to get it together. I'm pitching those pages and starting fresh in the new notebook.

Library Love

One of my seemingly numerous day jobs is a substitute teacher at my former high school. There have been a bunch of changes in the district this year. With major budget cuts last spring, several teachers lost their jobs. A few also retired, including the grumpy old librarian who was essentially a male version of Madame Pince with a handlebar mustache.
The library of my memories as a student, student teacher, and substitute was a brittle and stuffy one. And not in an endearing nostalgic kind of way. More of a I'm going to get thrown out of here breathing too loud, don't you dare bring that water bottle in here, you heathen, you don't deserve to touch books kind of way. Really inviting. Not.
When I was subbing last week (the first time this year because I was in the other state) I passed the library and it was a completely different place. There was a Newberry Honor bulletin board on one side of the door and a collage of the best 100 YA titles to date on the other. Just inside the door, I saw a display table of Halloween themed books for October reading.
Later, I asked a student who the new librarian was and suddenly the world made sense again. The new librarian is the former elementary school librarian. The zany, quirky woman who made library period in grade school awesome.
As a rule I'm not a big fan of change but I am definitely a fan of this.

The Great Noveling Adventure!

I forgot to tell you! I am officially joining The Great Noveling Adventure. I will be posting on Saturdays starting next week, 19 October! I'm so incredibly excited.

Also, I bought a Disney Princesses calender and a HUGE package of stickers today because I'm trying the sticker technique. (learn about it here: http://youtu.be/kvDtCIA-_dk)

In other news, I am listening to my G4 playlist for the first time in a while and OMG it is so spot on. Sometimes I really know myself/my brain/my writing. :)

A great book and mini rant

A few days ago I read Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan and LOVED it. Well, loved it right up until the end.
The book full of sass and friendship and boys and magic and secrets. It was well written, imaginative, quirky, and painful. I forced myself to read it more slowly than I normally would because I was enjoying it so much and didn't want it to end. It was so good.
Then it ended.
The end is absolutely heartbreaking, but that wasn't why I didn't like it. I didn't like it because a few pages before the end it suddenly became really clear that this was the first book in a series and things were just taking off, not wrapping up. And nothing against series. I know they're trendy, plus more of a good thing. But sometimes I just want a book to be self-contained. I want it to end on the last page.
That being said, I still love Unspoken, and I plan to continue the series. I just feel have a preference to single books.
ok, end rant.

Musical Family.

You all know musical theatre plays a big role in G4, right? Well, musical theatre played a pretty big role in my own high school existence and I now do choreography for my old high school (this is a blessing and a curse). 

When I was a senior, I adopted a musical little sister. Not everyone does it, at least not formally, but I did. She was the cousin of the lead, far too pretty for her own good, and completely innocent in the ways of musical drama. I already knew her vaguely from working with the elementary school musical. (As I write this, I realize just how big a part of my life musicals were and are. Suddenly I am no longer surprised I am writing a story like G4.) I also had her father as my global history teacher. K, as we'll call her, was just what I needed my senior year when I was full of nostalgia for all my past shows and worried that I would never perform musical theatre again (which I sadly haven't). 

K is in college herself now, a volleyball star at a big ten school where she doesn't really have time for musicals anymore. I haven't talked to her in a while though I keep tabs on her through her cousin (the lead from senior year and also a good friend). Despite writing about a high school musical, I actually hadn't thought about K in a while. 

Then, today, she posted on my Facebook wall. Bam. Social media strikes again. She called me Big Sis, and I was flooded with nostalgia and I missed her. I missed sharing stories and helping her deal with first year issues. I missed coming back to see her in her prime years later. I missed everything about my little sister and our wonderful musical memories. I miss you, K. 

I'm taking the day off from writing because I'm liable to make stupid choices because I'm thinking about my musical life instead of Mirella's.