The Swine Flu is circling my house

The Swine Flu is circling my house…My youngest son has broken his arm in three places…It hasn’t stopped raining in weeks…and We’re Months Behind in Our renovation…And Yet I’m writing so I notice none of it**


**Before I start this let me say, my son is doing fine. (Well as fine as one does when one is 21 months old with two broken bones in his arm. He is not being neglected in any fashion. He has been taken to several doctors and is wearing a cast**


Sunday Morning before my youngest son broke his arm, we sat in my living room.
My Husband: Rebecca?
Pause.
Husband: Rebecca? Hon?
Pause.
Husband: Rebecca, are you listening to me.
Short answer: No.


Now please don’t take this to mean my husband is annoyed or ignored. While I’m sure he would prefer to have my full and undivided attention at all times, he knows how much I love and adore him and it’s not like at this point in our lives he is surprised I can get lost in my own head.
You see this is the problem with me when I’m writing. Nothing else exists besides what I see in my head and what I put down on paper. (Or these days type down in paper.) At that particular moment, my characters were falling from one dimension to another. No more on this, I don’t share my work before it’s contracted, I learned that one’s ideas can become someone else’s ideas out here in cyberspace. Not that I wasn’t thrilled to read Annie Nicholas excerpt yesterday. It was awesome, wasn’t it? Truthfully, I also don’t want to post anything that hasn’t been grammatically polished by a professional either. My friend Dodie loves to point the problems with the things I’ve written, after I’ve posted them. I think I’ve developed a complex. Love you Dodie.


Anyhow, I digress. When I’m writing, I am actually living in the world of my own invention. The characters are having the actual conversations that I write on paper, sitting, eating, or doing whatever it is that I’ve described them as doing. The real world ceases to exist for a little while. I can write almost anywhere and do this. The one place I can’t: airplanes, which is really a problem because I HATE to fly and if I could write on the plane, then I could forget where it was that I actually sat. But I think I’m in such a state of perpetual anxiety on the airplane nothing will help at that point.


I know this is not true for all writers. Some writers can’t write at home, some can’t write anywhere but at home. Some have to be in their ‘space’ where they won’t be disturbed or where they have written notes and made outlines. Not me. If no one was speaking to me, I could write in a bar filled with all my friends.


Do any of you have special writing places or can you write anywhere?


It’s kind of funny isn’t it, you could be sitting next to me in a coffee shop and you have no idea I’m actually not existing in the same room with you, but instead I’m off in some other dimension where the grass is actually orange.


And that’s the entire hint as to what I’m working on that you will get until I either dump it or sell it.


Best to all of you and please be careful this playground we call life this season. People do break bones.