C-LEE-NING UP

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." 

- Mark Twain

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Ringo.  He's gorgeous, isn't he?

Sometimes I wonder how he got so pretty.  The contrast in this picture made me think of a few interesting things, so I thought I'd sit down and share.  In about an hour, I'll have to get up and go to solo and ensemble, which basically means my group gets to play for a judge and then get a rating.  And that's all.  And we spend weeks and weeks stressing and preparing over it, only to have them rip us a new one with their comments or criticisms or suggestions.  Sometimes I feel like my characters do the same thing to me.

I've had some very strange writing experiences lately.  There are occasions where I will sit down at the computer and read over things and think to myself, 'Hey.  This sounds kind of familiar, but when did I write this?'  And other times, I'll sit down to reread something, and I'll want to hit myself.  Because it's so obviously not me writing.  It's the character, inserting themselves into a scene that they weren't supposed to, screwing up my plot, and messing with all my plans.  I'm addicted to those plans, but things really never turn out the way I want them to.  It's like my plans are all wasted, but they still help, so they're not?  It's confusing.

I've also had a few out-of-body experiences lately.  Or I've looked at people and I don't see them - instead I see a character.  Someone or something of my own creation.  It's confusing and weird and when I look back, the image is almost always gone, but it's so strange.  I get so attached to these characters that it's crazy.  I have so many of them.  It's a collection of all these people who practically live in my head, but I'm not sure where to put them all.

I feel like if I wrote something in the personalities of my characters - of everyone I write about, maybe if I blogged with them, I could do something I'd never managed before.  Writing in their personalities is one thing, but blogging about their day - in first person - would be different.  Very different.  It sounds so interesting and appealing that I think I'm going to do it.  I'll try to squeeze something in later so that I can test out this crazy new idea.  Maybe it'll help me write too.

But for now, I'm going to go shower and fix my hair and do girl things.  After all, I have to look nice for something that I'm going to get torn down for, right?  Not that I think we're terrible, but it's a few weeks early.  Too early to do this.  And I'm not really looking forward to it.

For now, I'm outta here.  I have to... do stuff.

So here I go.
-Lee