I'm off!

I guess the time has come to admit it, so I'll finally admit to it: I'm off. I'm blank. I'm vacant. Being creative, making time for other things besides maintenance of life (hah, gotta love the specifics): it's all gone. Off the map. Me, the person who wrote each and every day and blogged half-regularly: was it just a fluke? Or a placeholder? Am I being overly dramatic? Well, I guess it's a little bit of all of the above.

I'd like to cling to the hopes of having a tiny little residue of energy left to go on - creatively speaking. Some day. I haven't given up the idea of a writerly career. But to get there, I have to write. Every day. Stay in shape. Honestly, it wouldn't be hard to make time if I really wanted to do it now, but the truth is, these days I'm burning on a low flame. And I prefer sleep over writing.

With a second kid, I somehow feel ridiculous talking about the importance of art and leisure. It has little meaning to me. I'm not saying that I found it elsewhere, because there's no infinite wisdom buried beneath baby poop and vomit, but these are the pressing issues in my life right now. Life upkeep. Hey, by the way, here's the test to find out if you are a real writer: If you have the choice between writing a story and cleaning up a spilled drink that drips down to the floor, what would you do first? If you choose writing over cleaning up, congrats, you are a writer! If you are like me, and you can't do anything else, knowing that something is dripping, you are not. Or maybe you have OCD.

There are a couple of other options, for those of us who want to combine the everyday life with writing. I thought about it. Writing about the everyday life. Unfortunately I can't mash up these things. I'm not a baby blogger. I just don't have it in me. And I rarely find other baby blogs to be insightful or original, least of all entertaining - except for the Baby Bible, which I've come to enjoy quite a lot.

Me, I don't want to talk regularly about the ups and downs of being a nurse, janitor, baby feeder. Unless those babies have magical powers hidden beneath their diapers that is, then I could write about it and call it a fantasy story. And in regards to writing about being a parent, there's not much to go on either. My quintessential parental insight basically comes down to one rule, namely "try not to kill kids". Well, there could be a funny angle to this, but it's more like a pun: "Today: tried not to kill kids, and barely succeeded." But that's about it.


Why didn't I jump in while I had more time? It's easy. I'm afraid. I'm afraid no one will care about the story I labored over, and worse, that it's an utter failure, and no one will care,  which is basically worse than having a million bad reviews. Having a sucky story and no reviews. Annoyed people still are an audience. If no one is annoyed, is it like the proverbial tree in the forest? Does my writing even exist? Seems like at the moment, I can't answer these questions.

Right, I do care a little too much for someone who doesn't put any effort in having their story published, don't I! Hah, maybe there is a grain of hope. A little one.

Old Poetry - Pimped Out

Just some old poetry with a new livery. While browsing through the archive, I even dabbled a little in the forbidden arts of typeface mixing. Gesundheit! Trying to visually enhance some of my old stuff can't hurt - to what point you may ask? Well, I don't know yet. But thanks to the awesome gallery of Lost and Taken I will never run out of cool textures to do so. And the best thing: they're free!

Weekend Writing Warriors: Ally with Time

Hello and welcome to this week's Weekend Writing Warriors! Today I'll continue with my short story Imposter, and this is what happened the last time. Click on the cover to read the entire story. Just in case you're wondering, I'm giving these snippets a bit of a dramatic polish as I move forward in the story. :)




Paul was used to sitting around, since most of the time, his job entailed waiting, watching and carefully planning his steps. He had long outgrown the phase of tackling his target like a bull to the gate. That kind of mistake had been part of his novice years. Just like that one time, when he pushed himself on an old lady to get at least some kind of result before she went on her vacation and she got suspicious and called the police. Marriage imposter was the ugly word she had used; and it stung. Paul had to leave the city in a hurry, get new ID, and all for wanting too much too soon. Eventually he accepted that he would have to move at a different pace, learning that time, as he knew he had plenty of, was his ally.