With all of the discussion about Facebook turning into toilet land I thought it might be a good idea to start blogging the ‘fun stuff’ that I did on facebook- you know those fun comics and stories and random things I write or think about that don’t really fit on My Enduring Bones.
Now straight up I have to say, I have WP’s Business plan- that is not cheap but it has what I want so I’ve got it here for My Enduring Bones.
However, I don’t want to use my Creative Writing Blog for random posts and I don’t want to have to pay WordPress anymore in fees because I already pay them around $300.00 and that is all I’m willing to give them.
Plus, I’m not crazy about WordPress’ templates or their ‘block editor’ because those things are great if you’re setting up a website but not so great if you’re writing. I mean you can make them work, but ” make them ” isn’t exactly a phrase anyone in retail would use when selling a product.
The business plan allows me to access a plugin that lets me use the old editor theme, but I do post on another blog that doesn’t have that option so I have to use the block editor and I really, really hate it. But I can ‘make it work’.
I don’t see any reason to purchase another plan for another blog that I want to use for fun the way I used Facebook.
I went over to Blogger.Com which I used back in the olden days of blogging and opened up a couple of new blogs- for free. Plus it’s a Google thing so I don’t have to spend a lot of time shifting my media around because I can tap right into it.
I know that a lot of WP Bloggers don’t like the fact that Blogger dropped its subscription option, but in my case I have a ton of subscribers but I don’t get tons of hits so I really don’t rely on that to determine the health of my blog or to grow it.
My biggest complaint about Blogger is that I have to set the font size before I start to write because if it’s to small or big I have to select all of the text and then change the size. It’s like working with an old school typewriter- which is no big deal because I used one of those for over 10 years
There’s probably a way to address that but I haven’t got around to figuring it out yet.
And for the most part their Blogger.Com themes are limited but I really don’t care . You can dress them up a little, but what counts is that they’re basic and they work. But like I said, I used Blogger.Com for years and years so I just had to take a refresher course ( of sorts ) and familiarize myself with the changes.
So where is this all going?
Well. I hear the pain, people who are blogging for a hobby don’t want to pay WordPress which is going down the ‘pay to play ‘ route especially since it looks like WordPress is shifting their focus to web design and not necessarily writing.
Me paying extra to be able to access a format that is writer friendly is proof of that.
For now I’ll keep my plan here, but I’m dipping my toes into Blogger.Com water because it doesn’t hurt to learn or re- learn new things and who knows- if I’m out there trying out new things I’ll be in a better position to see what new things might turn up.
Here are my two new ” For Fun ” blogs.
One is shaping up as a fun to jot down ideas or art about Macabre stuff-
Years ago I was in a group of great creatives who were asked to visualize our Muse– what did your Muse look like? Sound like? Was it even human?
Once you had that image in your head you could focus and ask, what am I trying to write here? Who’s in this story? All those questions.
So instead of just talking in your own head, you could take it one step further and ‘see’ your Muse. It actually helped create my richer characters and it helped my with my dialogue.
I found that when I had a face and a voice to bounce ideas off of my writing got a richer- and loads more fun. I was lucky. Me and my Muse clicked right off the bat.
So meet my Muse.
Nah. Just kidding. I went waaayyy out of the box and lucky me, because my Muse is awesome.
My Muse inspired ideas might not be ALL top shelf ideas. But I can count on them showing up like clockwork and I don’t have to torture myself to get to them.
So to answer the question. Who did pop into my head when I asked myself the big question-who is my Muse? Who inspires me to write, to have fun with my craft?
I closed my eyes. I took a breath. I sipped my strawberry margarita ( well, sipped might be an understatment and more then one might have been involved )
and –
Voila!
There he was.
I didn’t over think the process, so I can’t explain the why my imagination roped this one in. Plus I don’t think it matters. Besides I probably have the same look on my face when I’m writing and really in the zone.
In case your not a Whovian, this is David Tennant as The Ghost of Christmas Present- and that character is who inspires me to write.
For a little background-
As we worked together over the years, the photo below illustrates how my Muse reacts when I’m about to kill a story or a poem because it’s not “perfect”
Ok. It’s true. Some pieces I’ve completed were less then stellar. But so what? I wrote them. I put time into them. Plus. I’ve -rewritten a few that turned out to be pretty good.
Besides, it doesn’t hurt to keep those around. It’s like when you were a kid and your parents would keep a growth chart for you, or like mine they simply stood you against a wall and draw a mark over your head.
I like reading my early work. Some of it was not half bad at all – for a newbie.
This gives you the a taste of what it’s like having my Muse telling me that I can write, or not write but honestly. Which is the right thing to do? If I reach into that well of creativity what is the answer I’ll bring back up?
I would say, ” Look for pictures to post on Caturday. “
It works. Most of the time.
So this this is the Muse I talk to when I’m writing, who acts out the character’s parts in my head when I’m writing because this character was fun and energetic and a little devilish too.
Plus he looked pretty cute.
Yes, I know.
There are probably deeper, more meaningful ways of approaching my writing. I could take more writing classes, I could read MORE great literature and absorb poetry like a luxury luffa sponge that you score at one of the expensive Spas that have security guards inside the door.
Or I could just sit back and ask my Muse- ” hey, are you up for a story about a serial killing Nan and the ghost of her demonic sister? What do you think, does that sound good- and he looks at me like this:
Guess what.
I’m going to start writing.
I’m not sure that this is the way this Muse thing works for everyone, but me it works like a charm.
I fell in love with this painting ( Corner of Plönlein in Rothenburg By Aleksander Gierymski) the second when I saw the way the light brought the green building on the right alive- that was the image that brought my eye in the scene. I just new that was the building where you could hear people talking or laughing or arguing.
How could that building not be full of life? Look at the color! I loved it.
Next to pop up was the little figure in the archway- I noticed that figure before I noticed the figure next to the cow.
I thought the artist was very clever and as always I wondered how they decide what figures to tell their stories and which ones are supporting characters- in a screen writing class I took we learned about which characters drove the story. I suppose I look at paintings that way now.
And then KABOOM there was the character that made the entire scene come to life, it told you everything about the people who I think you can see in some of the windows, the people walking on the street –
it was the cowpie in the middle of the road.
That smelly pile made the picture real for me- there were all these lovely colors, a nice little story going on with the people and the animals and look at that sky! It’s as calm and pretty as they come.
But what made it real? For me it was knowing what that cowpie smelled like, the squishy sounds it made as it hit the road.
I kid you not it was the cowpie that did it. That’s what brought this entire picture together for me. It became a visual as well as smelly experience. Perfect. It captured all of my senses.
I guess it’s true- the little things really do matter or in this case the big smelly thing that a cow left on a cobbled road and an artist painted with care into his work of art.
Violet didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the end of the world; it was what happened after it was all over that would keep Violet awake at nights.
She’d would be laying there in the dark picturing a dead and lifeless world with a small yellow sun rising in front of a blood red moon while all around her room on tables and in the windows and on their own special tables were dead and dying plants in overpriced planters.
There were no starter plants with tiny little roots floating around in plastic fast food drinking cups in this room. Violet figured it was the least she could do for some poor plant that was bound to die once she got her hands on it.
However, what she did to plants was nothing compared to what she did to those colorful fish you kept in wine glasses with the half marbles scattered at the bottom glass.
Violet had come in from work one day and found all that was left of her fish were blue and red scales and brown goo sloshing around in the inside of the little glasses.
It was on that day she saw those little corpses floating in the cloudy water she decided it would probably be better if she avoided the live animal route all together.
It wasn’t like she didn’t know any better.
There was the puppy got when she was eight.
Santa had brought the puppy in the basket with the red bow tied to the handle and left it by Violet’s bed.
Violet had dragged the cold ‘sleeping puppy’ out to the living room stuck it in front of the Christmas Tree bright and early on Christmas morning and said to her parents, ” It coughed all night, I don’t think it feels well. Can we exchange it? “
There was the kitten four years later that started to bleed from it’s ears and not to soon after that the baby brother that turned from pink to dark red right in front of Violet’s eyes.
Then she grew up and moved out and started with the plants.
It was like having a bad tooth…your tongue just wants to go to it and poke around. That’s the way Violet was with plants; she just kept buying them or planting seeds and they just kept dying on her.
And Violet kept watching.
So it’s not really a shock that she couldn’t sleep at nights.
And then it got be too much.
One evening Violet’s dying and decomposing plants couldn’t keep her mind off of the little things that nibbled away at her mind during the day so she reached for her TV remote control and when she pushed the ‘on’ button the little black and silver box hummed in her hand and she knew the battery was dead.
She reached over and turned her bedroom light on and then she popped the back panel off of the remote.
Along with plant murder she had rotten luck with batteries too. She had guessed that if she bought batteries from someplace other than ” Dollar Bonanza” (where all the stock was a dollar or less) they might last a bit longer.
She reached into her nightstand drawer for some new batteries when she saw that the battery in the remote control had split at the seam and the acid had started to ooze out and then before it ran off the side of the battery it had hardened and turned to dust.
She dropped the remote on the floor and reached for the little ivy plant that was dieing in the planter shaped liked an elephant. She touched one of the leaves and felt it turn to power between her fingers.
Now that was a new one.
Violet reached over and turned off her lamp but she didn’t sleep.
It wasn’t soon after that she stopped sleeping all together.
So instead of sleeping Violet did a lot of thinking; she thought about her dead and dying plants, her puppy and kitten and little brother. She thought about the way no one ever sat next to her on the bus.
Even if her seat was the last open seat and they had to stand.
She remembered the way her own Mother would wipe her hand against her hip after helping Violet brush her hair and the way her Father would hold his hands out to stop Violet from rushing into his arms the way all little kids do.
It was strange, those little gestures that people used to keep Violet away. They were the same gestures Violet saw when someone had a coughing or sneezing fit and the person standing next to them would turn their head or pull in a long deep breath and try not to exhale until they were safely away.
That’s exactly the way people acted when they got to close to Violet.
One morning Violet brushed her teeth and combed her hair and put on a bright yellow t-shirt. Yellow was her favorite color and today she wanted to do something nice for herself.
She walked down to the Lake and watched birds fall from the sky and bees drop from flowers. The trees put up more of a fight. She could hear them creak and groan and she could hear the leaves whither and then curl and crumble right on the branches.
When she got to the lake she put her hand into the water and she watched it thicken and could smell it go bad and then the fish all rose to the surface and tried to jump to land and before they were airborne for more then a second they fell dead back into the water.
Violet got up and walked to a little hill and when she got to the top she sat on a bench and she could see the route she had walked because it was a dead route now and unless you were looking you probably wouldn’t notice the narrow trail of death; but Violet did.
That was it for Violet, this was all she would ever do-she would infect anything unlucky enough to get to close to her and then it would die.
Violet looked at the trail she had walked and saw the dead trees and plants she had passed could see the trees and grass and plants further away start to turn brown and curl and she could smell them turn to dust.
Violet Delaflote was spreading.
Violet walked to the lookout spot next to the Lake she had infected (there was no other way for her to think of it) and she figured she could just walk out and keep walking until the water covered her head.
She couldn’t swim, she had never learned how…not after watching her swimming instructor drown all those years ago. ” She had some kind of Virus, ” her Dad told her ” and when she dove into the water she got sick and couldn’t breathe and she drowned.”
Violet passed the picnic table and walked into the water and she was surprised at how easy this was turning out to be…but what was the alternative?
She was a serial plant killer and she lived alone.
That was Violet’s life.
She kept walking and by the time the water was up to her chest she realized what she was doing…she spun around went under and fought her way back to shore.
When she turned around and looked back at the lake…she covered her face with her hands and screamed until her throat felt raw.
Then she ran.
She ran and ran until she came to the Shopping Mall and she collapsed on a bench outside of the food court.
People were eating and laughing and scowling and living…and when it came down to it Violet decided she wanted to live too. She wanted to eat soft pretzels and drink strawberry lemonade and she wanted to shop and be rude to salespeople…just like everybody else.
That was what Violet wanted, she covered her face with her hands and she cried for the life she would never have.
When it came right down to it Violet decided she might only be a germ that had somehow disguised itself as a short woman with okay skin and dry hair but she still wanted to live just like anyone else.
She knew though she couldn’t do that like everyone else and Violet knew that was alright.
So she took her hand away from her mouth and nose….and she sneezed.
