I still can’t believe my hockey team, the St. Louis Blues, lost to that upstart Nashville team whose logo is a cross between a cat and a beaver with really bad teeth problems. But that was the other post for today.
I am probably going to kick the bucket soon. I hate that bucket. I just don’t like it. But in spite of impending doom for me and the world in general, I am making some changes. After all, life is change. We can either change or be dead. And I am definitely not going to kick that bucket today, no matter how grumpy its existence makes me.
One change I have made is in Toonerville. I finished snowing all over Al’s General Store. I added two kids and their cat on the bench outside (in short pants during a winter scene… stupid kids) and fat old Huckleberry Wortle on the front steps looking for someone to play checkers with and tell lies to. But don’t offer to be the one playing checkers with Huck. He’s a conservative Republican with Tea Party leanings, and he will tell you things about Obama, government, and people in general that will make you so mad that you will want to go to the bench and kick the kids’ cat.
Toonerville is undergoing a winter renovation. If I ever get to rebuild the layout, it will now have snow where grass used to be the plan. It is still temporarily in storage on streets that are really book shelves. And the Trolley goes nowhere.
I have also been experimenting with shifting focus, as you can tell by the blurry trolley and track light in the foreground.
In addition to photography, I am making changes to my publishing directions. I recently bought a subscription to a video-editing program and now intend to inflict Mickey-made videos to my blog. To be completely honest, I made the purchase at the begging of my daughter who was using the free trial for a school project and ran out of free before she ran out of ideas. Sound genetic to you, does it?
I have been forced to make publishing changes. I am almost done paying the huge penance for publishing Magical Miss Morgan with Page Publishing. That is a mistake that won’t be repeated. I will self-publish from here on out. After MMM, I will attempt to publish Snow Babies via Amazon.
My current manuscript, The Baby Werewolf, is undergoing forced changes as well. The primary factor here is my unique ability to lose things all together. Two of the three parts of the original hand-written manuscript are now missing, and have been since we moved to Dallas in 2004. Bummer. Coatimundies from South Texas are probably reading it, laughing up a storm, and cursing me for not having lost part three along with the rest of it. They surely can’t wait to find out what happens. But since I have to do it all from memory, it will be different from what they read.
And even though writing a blog post every day is hard, I have decided it is worth it to continue. After posting every day for thirty consecutive months, I have learned that the practice not only sharpens my basic writing skills, but also generates more ideas than it consumes. I am a writer because I write. And continuing to write makes me even more of a writer. So the madness will continue.
Catch a Falling Star 