writing

She Likes to Play for Double or Nothing

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I imagine that going to Las Vegas is a lot like pregnancy and childbirth. It’s grueling and painful and in the end, you feel awful. And six months to a year later, you’ve forgotten how terrible it was and want to do it again.

At least that’s my theory. The last time Hubs and I went to Las Vegas, I told him that I thought I’d had quite enough Vegas for one lifetime. That was in October of 2006. And yet, a few months ago, over dinner with our friends J and F, the subject came up and somehow I found myself saying that we were long overdue for a Vegas trip. Note to self: the next time you start to say something like that, shut the f— up.

It’s nothing against Las Vegas, it’s just that every time I leave there, I feel a little worse for the wear. And it’s not just the gambling and the inevitable monetary loss, but the walking (my feet hate me), the smoke (God bless my beloved town that passed a smoking ordinance), the noise, the time adjusment, and the crowds.

But despite all that, I thought I’d make a list of the best Vegas experiences from this trip.

Best trip back through time: The Boneyard. The boneyard is were all the classic Vegas signs go to rust. The museum is trying to raise enough money to restore and preserve the signs and one way they do that is by offering group tours of the Boneyard. It’s money well spent.

Best food: Bouchon. If I do cave and go back to Vegas, it will be for the sourdough waffles at Bouchon. That was the most amazing brunch ever and, by Vegas standards, it was reasonably priced.

Best sleeping spot: The Bellagio. Okay, so maybe I’d go back again if I could stay at the Bellagio. The room was wonderfully swank, had a shower and a ginormous bath, but even better: automated curtains. You have not lived until you have opened your drapes simply by rolling over and pushing a button.

Best trainwreck experience: The Rio. All I can say about The Rio is OMG. From the skanky waitress costumes to the horribly choreographed “Show in the Sky,” the Rio is the best place to see Vegas kitch, and I don’t mean that in the good way.

Best casino to remind you how old you are: The Hard Rock Casino. The people who can now legally go to Las Vegas are eleven years younger than me and they all congregate at the Hard Rock Casino. On the plus side, I realize that I don’t miss my twenties at all.

Best reason not to go back to Vegas: Readjusting to real life. In Vegas, we were never in bed before two or three in the morning and most of the time I didn’t even notice. Now that that has caught up with me, I am regretting it. Twelve hours of sleep did nothing for me yesterday. I can only hope I’ll fall asleep soon, but unfortunately, it’s only midnight on Vegas time.

Sigh…

Well Now I *Really* Love the Frog

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Gah… 6:30 on a Sunday morning is a ghastly time to be awake. Someone needs to tell my cats that breakfast is not due for another two hours at least.

But since I’m up, I’ll brag on my friend Laura of A Life in Scribbles. She’s an extremely talented artist an has a real gift for comics. She took a blog post that I wrote last month (How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Frog) and turned it into an amazing comic! I’m so honored that she chose my piece to illustrate. Please check it out. It’s very, very cool. Click on the illustration a couple of times to get it larger.

Enjoy!

Scenes From the Coffee Shop

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We interrupt this (surprisingly productive) writing time to bring you breaking news. Virgin Galactic‘s second space port is being built right outside my adopted hometown of Las Cruces, New Mexico. It is! Really! I looked on the internets.

I’m sure this is old news to everyone but me. I was just sitting here at my little coffeeshop table, minding my own business when I heard the guy at the table next to me say something about Las Cruces. Now, I always tune in a little more closely when I hear Texans talking about Las Cruces or New Mexico. There are some pretty wild ideas floating around about my dear state. Most notable is the idea that the Organ Mountains are hollow and home to super-secret military underground bases. I once went on a blind date with a Dallas boy who had the inside scoop on these bases. Apparently they were infiltrated years ago and the military is keeping it all hush hush for fear of causing world-wide panic. Who were they infiltrated by you might ask? Spies? Terrorists? Nope, aliens. Snake aliens!

How happy am I to be married now?

But anyway, at least half the time I hear someone mention Las Cruces it’s usually to repeat a conspiracy theory about the government covering up aliens or nuclear waste or lizard people or whatever. After all, my fine state is home to Roswell and people get confused, you know? And while I don’t fault anyone their beliefs, I am a little more Scully than Mulder. So when I heard him mention Las Cruces and spaceship in the same breath, I had a moment of discreet eyerolling. But then I googled. And it’s true, New Mexico is getting its very own space port.

The whole thing makes me kind of proud, but also I kind of wonder what this does to nostalgic view of the desert southwest and, weirdly, what it does to the stories that I have set in New Mexico. If there’s a friggin’ spaceport being built 45 minutes from where your protagonist resides, you can’t just ignore that. This could lead to some pretty cool opportunities.

Or some big headaches. We shall see.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Frog

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Frog. (v) to frog. The act of “ripping” out already knit stitches by removing them from the knitting needles and unraveling the stitches. In some cases, you merely “frog” a few rows back to fix a mistake. In more extreme cases, one may “frog” an entirely knit sweater to reuse the yarn.

Back when I learned to knit, after I’d made my first uneven garter stitch square thing, I started becoming a perfectionist about knitting. A psuedo-perfectionsist rather. Simply put, I hated to frog and would do just about anything to avoid it. My strategy? To turn a blind eye to glaring errors or dissatisfaction with the pattern. I kept knitting only to end up with an unwearable sweater or a scarf that would get sent to Goodwill.

The reason for this particular bout of crazy was that one of my first overly ambitious projects had been a mohair lace scarf. Being a beginner, I’d made a lot of mistakes and had had frogged to the extent that the yarn had become a frayed mess. The scarf never got made and for the next several years I avoided both mohair and frogging.

About two years and two drawers full of unwearable knits, I was talking about my dissatisfaction with the pullover I’d just completed. The gauge seemed off. The waistline decreases had a few mistakes. It didn’t fit me right. Overall, not good.

“Frog it,” my knitter friend told me. “It’s only yarn. Besides, you can use it for something else.”

And it clicked. Don’t know why it took me so long, but right then I thought, She’s right. It is only yarn. So what if I spent two weeks knitting it if I don’t like it? I went home and frogged the pullover. I raided the unused knits drawer and salvaged yarn from three other projects. For the final liberation, I pulled a wrap off the needles that they’d been on for three months. I’d hated the yarn and was only halfway through. Part of me thought, What are you doing? You’ve spent three months on this, just go on and finish it, but the other part of me slapped that crazy knitter upside the head and began winding the yarn. And that’s how I learned to stop worrying and love the frog.

However, even though I’ve been a writer for longer than I’ve been a knitter (or maybe because I’ve been a writer longer than I’ve been a knitter) I’ve never been able to apply that lesson to writing. When it comes to writing, have the same problems, I don’t want to “frog” any of my stories. This is part of why I handwrite first drafts. The computer seems too final to me and when I handwrite something I know I’ll be rearranging and revising as I’m typing it in. And, in remembering that, I can allow myself to write a shitty first draft. But even doing that, I can get pretty grouchy about having to “give up” any part of a draft that I’ve spent time and energy on.

Today was a good example of that. I spent about three hours in the afternoon working on a draft of a still incomplete story. I recently read Ron Carlson’s book on story writing and am trying to observe his credo — stay in the room — as much as possible. And so this afternoon I stayed in the room. And stayed. And stayed. And I ended up with a good five or six pages. However, I’m also trying to observe Carlson’s other credo about listening to what the story tells you, and I swear to God that at least five or six times I heard the story go, Oh hell no, you aren’t doing THAT. But I persevered and at the coffee shop this evening, I realized that of the five or six pages I’d written, I had maybe three paragraphs that were usable.

I know that’s part of the writing process, and I’ve come to accept that there are entire stories that sometimes just have to get out on the page so that one gem of a line can be used elsewhere. I deal. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be grouchy about it. Anyway, as I was ripping pages of my notepad I thought about how a story is only a bunch of words. They can be rearranged and reused elsewhere. Maybe even in this story, but definitely not as they are and not right now.

I’ve met a few writers who claim to start fresh on each revision by completely rewriting the story from scratch. I envy that. Even though I do a lot of revision, I can’t claim to ever throw out the original draft and start fresh. I envy the writers who can, though, and I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good exercise to rewrite one of my more complete stories without ever referring to the original or even the latest draft. Could be interesting.

So why not try it? It’s that part of me, that crazy knitter part from before, who is thinking, My god, what a waste to completely undo everything that you’ve worked so hard on. Leave it alone!

I think it’s time to slap that crazy knitter upside the head.