1 – Plant Kid has a name. Thank you everyone who helped yesterday. I let them all swirl around my brain and before bed I went to the link
![[info]](http://www.backup.susantaylorbrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/userinfo4.gif){kind=small}
had shared with me and I saw a name and I thought, yes, maybe. And this morning I got up and said yes, that’s it. So Plant Kid’s name is Boone. Yes, as in Daniel. And no, I don’t know why except maybe it sounds close enough to Bloom that it works for me.
2 – I contemplated doing a Poetry Friday post today. I mean, I’m off on Fridays now and supposedly I’m a poet and one would think I’d want to do a Poetry Friday post but then I realized I was putting too much pressure on myself which made me feel guilty which made me not want to do anything about poetry. But then I thought about a book I’m reading right now and in it the author mentions the poem HOWL by Allen Ginsberg which I guess had a major impact at the time of being published as well as for some time after. So I went to look up the poem and read it and realized I had absolutely nothing to say about it except it must have scared a lot of people of the times.
3 – I am currently writing three books at once. (Which according to people who know me pretty well, explains a lot about me because I bounce around all the time from thought to thought.) VZ, which is Flyboy’s story, Max which is Max and Frankie’s story, and the book that still has no name but is Plant Kid’s story. (And it is killing me to not have a title for it but, oh well.) Ahem. Anyway, I was thinking about poetry and I was thinking about Hugging the Rock and how I didn’t start off thinking it was going to be a verse novel. I started off with it in prose and it evolved to a verse novel after a whole bunch of things including a suggestion from Janet Wong. So that got me thinking about my various other WIP that I am not actively working on at the moment. (Sidebar – one thing when I am stuck some place where I have I have to sit still but have nothing to say is to make a list of every book I can remember I ever started to write. Sometimes it is just the title because, well, I am good at titles, except when it comes to Plant Kid.) Anyway, I did this the other day and I wrote down this title that I know is perfect for this YA I want to write someday but am too afraid to write at the moment and for the first time ever I thought, hey, what if I did that one as a verse novel? The subject matter lends itself to it. The MC is so much of me that it fits. And I got that wonderful little chill that told me it was a good idea. But I am NOT writing it now. No, really I am NOT.
4 – Money motivates me to write. Not the lack of money which tends to motivate lots of people to write in order to feed their obsession with things like food to eat and gas for the car and power to run the computer. No, money in the bank. Just sitting there. The more money that sits in the savings account, the more I am motivated to write. I don’t know what that says about me except I am very weird.
5 – My favorite pens are no longer my favorite pens. Most of my writing starts in longhand, especially the poems. For more years than I can remember I have used a fat medium point Bic ballpoint pen. I used to love the freebie ones that businesses gave away. They were perfect. No pressure to write exquisite words with such ordinary and functional pens. But I am older now with an always messed up shoulder and writing by hand for any length of time is harder than it used to be. I worried for a while until one day at work I needed a new pen and I went to the office supply drawer and just grabbed one. They are always different depending on what brand the admin can get a good deal on when she orders. This time it was a kind I hadn’t seen before -Sanford Uni-Ball Signo Gel 207. I used it for a few days at work and fell in love. Off to the office supply store to buy a stash of my very own. And lo and behold, they don’t come in just black or blue but a total of 8 different colors. So now I have a new favorite pen.
This writing edition of the Friday Five may soon be followed by the home improvement edition. Or not if I am getting a lot of writing done.
oh wow! I was helpful! I am so glad!
…#4 me too! the more money I have in my art account the better I work!
I am glad too!
The money thing is weird. I spend half the year freaking out that we don’t have enough money, even though we’re doing things to the house and helping out the kids and buying nice gifts and stuff and then I redo the budget and look at the money in the bank and go WOW, we’re okay. And then I can write.
So for me it’s not the writing account (though perhaps if I added to it more often it might be) it’s the household one.
LOVE Plant Kid’s name! š
Yeah! It’s works, right?
I’m still on the fence about this afternoon but I’m going to go take a shower, just in case. š
I’ll be there! And I’ll look for you! š
HOWL–I had never read it, but always felt a bit “kindred” with it, just because Alan Ginsberg looks so much like my dad and uncle. Anyway, then I heard someone read it–Bill Baldwin from CWC–and I thought he did a fantastic job. I also though maybe I could see why it was so good.
“So I went to look up the poem and read it and realized I had absolutely nothing to say about it except it must have scared a lot of people of the times.”
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