"A Problem Page For All!"

I love Sarah Brightman's voice! I don't have any albums of her except Phantom, though. Is Eden good? I think I saw it in Borders a while ago.

Did you enjoy the movies? I really want to see Calendar Girls; I saw Erin a couple times a year or so ago. I love the story, about activism and giving We the People fair treatment!

We own Fried Green Tomatoes, Steel Magnolias, and P &P. They're all most excellent! Especially the first and last. Actually, it's been ages since I watched Magnolias; I'd like to watch it again, but it's a real tear-jerker. You sort of have to be in the right mood.

Write your story! Jump in! My mantra these days is to do the things that scare me. I'm plugging away at my novel, even though it scares the living daylights out of me. Even if it's crap, you'll be doing something, creating something, and that's most eminently worthwhile in and of itself. For instance, Rachel and I have started dancing together twice a week. We were each choreographing a dance. We thought they were good, but they were sort of boring. Then, earlier this week, Jimmy was listening to Eminem and Rachel blurts out, "What I really want to do is ballet to rap music." Well! That got us going, and we've about half choreographed a very cool piece to an Eminem song. It reflects us much better than the other ones...but if we hadn't been plugging away at the others, I don't think we'd ever have stubled across the idea for this one. It's like we had to give our creative psyches time to warm up with those boring dances before it gave us the idea for this one.

All this is to say, write your story! If your creative juices need time to warm up, give them time! Feel free to let it be horrible! Anne Lamott, in her lovely book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, says over and over and over again that you've got to bang out a lot of "shitty first drafts" before you can get to the heart of what you're saying or what you mean to say.

Yes! Your birthday is coming! You must be so excited. I keep trying to think of something to send you, but my mind's a blank. Argh!

Hugses, Me

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