UPDATE: “End of the week” means Wednesday evening, April 7.

On the Ides of March, Mind on Fire blogger John Remy (@johnremy) orchestrated a project wherein artistic types were given a prompt to create something based on the prompt (in this case a randomly drawn Tarot card). It could be anything.

I couldn’t participate, as it was short notice and I didn’t have time, but I’ve been building the playlists for my books and it got me thinking about how much I depend on music to inspire my writing, keep me enthusiastic, pump me with adrenaline, and pretty much feed my subconscious what it needs to do my job for me.

So now I’m totally ripping him off and putting a different spin on it: music. I’ll post one track every week for the next three or four weeks (as long as people are interested), and see what you come up with. With John’s permission, I’m going to copy and paste his rules:

1) Each week, starting Thursday, April 1 (April Fool’s Day!), I will post a track that played a significant role in my books.

2) Use the track as a spark for some kind of creative activity. It can be a sketch, a paragraph from your novel, a tweet, a photo, an interpretive dance, a poem, a political blog post, a video. The activity can even change from week to week. The only requirements are that:

a) you leave some element of the project undetermined until you hear the track, and

b) the final creation has to be done by the end of the week, and

c) it has to be linkable.

3) I will then post links to everything everyone created by the time I post the next track the next week.

4) The Twitter hashtag will be #mojogce if you care to keep track that way.

I have a cross-section of readers from the Mormon lit crowd, genre romance, and independent authors of all variables. I’m curious what that intersection can produce and anyone can play, even if you don’t think you’re creative (and you would be wrong anyway).

I’ll be drawing from these playlists: The Proviso, Stay, and Magdalene.

Have fun!

Tweet This Post

Dude DVRs all the series dramas (and a few sitcoms) he can pack into the box, and he watches them in chronological order (natch).

About two years ago, we started noticing something very odd: Across all the dramas, across all the networks, there would be a theme of the week. It’s as if The Great Producer in the Sky (aka James Cameron) said to all the writers in television, “Okay. This week’s writing prompt is underground BDSM sex parties, a murder, and collector’s wine. GO!”

Amongst a good dozen dramas, this writing prompt will show up at least three times, sometimes four, all in different permutations. Now it’s just a running joke. Dude says, “The theme of the week is…”

While it’s interesting and curious to see how each writing team interpreted the prompt to fit their characters and canon, it’s super annoying and gets very old very fast.

And it’s one reason I’ve pretty much stopped watching TV dramas. Homogeneity pretty much sucks the fun out of…well, everything.

Tweet This Post

The DDJ has been a little slow lately, and I’m mostly caught up on B10 Mediaworx business (repeat: mostly), and I need to work on my other creative business. However…

…I also need to do some things to my house, keep it clean (because it’s driving me nucking futs and I can’t work in this mess anymore), and not feel so lost on days my DDJ is slow.

So I’m going to need to implement a routine. I could use the one my hyperregimented mother used while I was growing up. I could do Flylady (and I haven’t seen a more horribly organized website since Geocities). I’ve hung out at Organized Home and I like it. But in the end, I’m going to have to establish my own routine and lemme tell you. I am the least regimented person in the world, especially when my to-do list and the ideas flowing through my head start to overwhelm me.

I usually cope by throwing stuff out. STUFF MUST GO!!!

For some reason I don’t know, I always start these projects in the refrigerator to tackle those nasty glass shelves.

I’m going in. Pray for me.

Tweet This Post

1. Finish Magdalene.

2. Make some pretty things.

a) An afghan (Tunisian crochet, the only kind I like) for XX TD.

b) A Hobbes doll for XY TD.

3. Get better at the ebook formatting thing.

a) Continue self-tutoring in SVG so I can get The Fob Bible completely digitized (text, no problem, but it’s graphics heavy).

b) Give more priority to embedding fonts.

54. Shamelessly rip off RJ Keller’s 2010-in-photos idea.

65. Get my foyer, living room, and dining room decorated and my art up on the walls, including my kitschy matadors ~1950 and my cheap bought-out-of-a-car-trunk-in-a-parking-lot-but-expensively-framed Pissaro.

76. Expose my real identity to you all (in case you haven’t figured it out already and no, my real name is not famous in the least bit) and my artsy-fartsy business because I think you might like it. But to do that, I need to work on the super-outdated website.

87. Get The Fob Bible into college curricula, where I think it belongs best.

98. Implement some fun ideas I have for The Proviso et al.

109. Get back on the low-carb wagon, exercise, and load up on the probiotics/coconut oil.

110. Sit down and relax, watch a movie with Dude once a week or so.

There. I fixed it.

Tweet This Post

And I don’t even know why.

I don’t differentiate my real life friends and my online friends.  People become important to me for different reasons. This person was important to me in a lot of ways.

Happy new year.

Tweet This Post

…for the rest of the year, most likely. I reserve the right to come back and rant. It is my blog, after all.

Many projects on the table, most of which I’m behind on (oh, there’s a surprise):

• Re-doing my foyer and living room. What, you thought my DIY re publishing thing is a new development? No. I’ve been a DIYer at heart since I saw the first episode of This Old House when I was a wee bairn (as in, their first episode, too).
• Christmas chores. You all know what they are. But I’ve recently got a yen to quilt us a new tree skirt. That will have to wait until next year.
• Much cooking and cleaning in preparation for my family’s big Christmas Eve shindig. Moms, dads, inlaws, outlaws, aunts, uncles, cousins, and babies. Lots and lots of babies. Very fun having the biggest house in the family. Ah, but I love Christmas Eve, almost more than Christmas Day (you know, now that we are Santa). Also? I love my mom’s cookies. And I love my Christmas punch (see previous post).
• Probably some yard work. I really need to get out and mow my lawn.
• More weatherproofing.
• Fandamnily outing to see the Plaza Christmas lights. (Photos by Eric Bowers, KC Photographer extraordinaire who also does a lot of Manhattanscapes—you must visit his blog and galleries and message board. Really.)

(This one? 47th Street.  If you read The Proviso, you know what Giselle did near here.)

• And, last but not least, the Darling Day Job (feeling blessed at the moment).

My blue tree from the last two years turned red this year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Mojo, Dude, XX and XY Tax Deductions!

Tweet This Post

So in light of today’s confessional, I need to talk about something that occurred to me Saturday and has been percolating ever since.

One reason I despise sitcoms is because so often the dad is made out to be an idiot. Yeah. He is. He goes to work (usually at a job he hates), provides for his family, and gets slammed at every turn. Why is he putting up with this?

A mobile phone commercial from a couple of years ago (I forget the provider) has stuck in my head. A middle-class black family, with the kids completely disrespecting the father for some reason, and I thought, “Yeah, that Stupid Dad thing transcends race. All dads are stupid according to Hollywood and Madison Avenue.” The only dad I can recall on TV who wasn’t portrayed as terminally stupid was Bill Cosby, but as everybody knows, he’s got very definite opinions about what is and is not acceptable behavior in parent-child relationships.

Anyway…

Saturday I went out (outside!) to blow leaves. Manual labor gives me the opportunity to let my mind wander, and I was thinking about my husband, who was at work, a typically structured corporate-type job (albeit with hours that are a bit out of the norm), one he sometimes doesn’t care for very much. But it’s secure and we have good health insurance.

I’d been spending my day fiddle-farting around. Did a couple of ebook jobs, did a little DDJ, did some cleaning, some reading… Yelled at my kids (that’s normal). I decided to go do this little chore and it occurred to me about an hour into the job that my husband is the reason I have the freedom to fiddle-fart around, arrange my day any way I want it, and…

…self-publish.

I would never have done this without him behind me. He believed in my talent when I didn’t and spent years pounding his faith into my head. He sacrifices endlessly for me financially and with his time, and this venture that would not exist without him.

No, I would never have done this on my own. It was him, his faith in me, his willingness to sacrifice everything for me. He bears my temper tantrums and my moodiness and my not-very-niceness (read: bitch-on-wheels-ness) with grace and equanimity. He comforts me and dries my tears and helps me solve my problems. He gave me children and supports them and me, helps corral them to let me work.

I’d have nothing were it not for him.

Tweet This Post