Moby Dick or Shopaholic?

Last week I went to lunch with an old friend, and we were joking about the novel I could write, coming up with ridiculous plots for it. I’ve forgotten them all now, but rest assured they were brilliant. I asked him if he thought he had a book inside him, and he said yes, in fact he’d written one as a teenager. “I wonder if I have it somewhere,” he said. “I hope so, I expect it’s dreadful.” We agreed that it was likely to be entertainingly awful, especially as it was a fantasy novel.

Once, a friend said my life would make a good book. “I mean, I’m not saying it would be great literature or anything, but it would be a good read,” she said, somewhat insultingly. “So, what you’re saying is, it would be a trashy novel minus all the sex,” I said. Other friends have discussed how fun it would be to write a screenplay together.

I know we’re not the first people to think we have a novel inside us. Far too many people think that, and far too many publishers agree with them, in my humble op. The nice thing is, I/we get to let our urge to write come out in fits and starts, through blogs. No need for plot, no need for a certain number of pages by a certain deadline. No need for discipline or well-constructed sentences, even. I like blogging, and I like reading others’ blogs. I do wonder whether all the writing practice is setting someone up to write the great British/American novel, or if it just substitutes pictures of kids, hiking anecdotes, and meandering streams-of-consciousness for what could be a new Hemingway or Austen.

I don’t personally think I’ve got the modern “Mansfield Park” within me. I’m not sure I even have “Bridget Jones Diary 3.” If I were to write a book, I’d want it to be a light and fluffy travelogue and/or romance. What would you write?

Busy Nothings

I have two items of business to discuss, ladies and gentlemen.

1. You know how everyone in Utah right now is all, “It’s like we’re living in Seattle!” because of the weather? Well, I have a theory about this.

I hypothesise that, a month or two ago, while we were all asleep, a large comet hit the earth and knocked it off balance a little. It shifted the earth’s position a few hundred miles, and gave us a temperate, humid climate.

Guys, we ARE in Seattle.

I’m a little surprised that none of the TV meteorologists have mentioned this possibility. Although maybe they have. I wouldn’t really know, I don’t have a working TV any more.

2. Last month I took a work trip to Phoenix, visiting both Bryn and Britt in the process, and Britt told me I needed to blog about what happened at her house, which I frankly think shows a lack of delicacy, CONSIDERING.

She and I went for a swim/hot tub, and she wore a dress down to the pool as a cover up. I wore a swimsuit and towel.

Later, we walked back to the building, and Brittany said “oops.” Which is rarely a good omen. She’d forgotten the key to the back door of the building.
“So we’re locked out?” said I.
“Not exactly. We can get in the front...”

Which is all well and good, except they live on Central Avenue. Opposite a Metro Station. And while I’m not THE most modest person on earth, I do prefer not to walk down major thoroughfares in large cities dressed in a two-piece swimsuit.

Brittany appeared to think the situation hilarious, and openly, if insensitively, bemoaned the fact that there weren’t MORE people around to see and be entertained.

So if every you see someone walking around who seems to be inappropriately dressed, and you hastily judge them as crazy, take a moment to pause. Perhaps they are a trusting friend, who thought they were out for a dip in a private pool. Or perhaps they were trying on their Hallowe’en costume and got locked out when they took a moment to empty the rubbish. You just don’t know.