Monday, March 4, 2013

Japanese bumpers and 80's beats

I rented a Toyota corolla Friday for the weekend. I needed to run errands that I can't do on my bicycle and visit relatives I hadn't seen in awhile. I also needed to club hop and cruise the boys du jour! I may be turning 45 in two days but I still have some wild oats to sew! Anyhow, with my 80's music blasting, cyndi Lauper, Eddie Money, Journey, Micheal and Madonna I'm ready to paint the town pink.
    As I zoomed around town I thought about the notes, drafts and research materials I found regarding the, as yet untitled, sequel to Rainbow Plantation Blues. There are 181 longhand draft pages, mostly in pencil, 72 pages of  what I call  ''plot scenarios''  and who knows how many pages of printed research that I did on the web. The printed research is on black confederate soldiers[yes, they did exists], and antebellum slave weddings and funerals. I have to research these things and weave the facts into my fiction. The plot scenarios usually come to me in the middle of the night. I'll wake up suddenly with some idea of how to weave some fact about, lets say, slave weddings into the story and I have to get up immediately to write it down or I might forget it. It's annoying to be disturbed if  I'm having a dream about some piece of trade I might have seen on the street that day. But an artist must suffer for is work. Art, like beauty, is pain.
     I also thought about the mountain of work I have ahead of me in sorting out this draft, the research and the notes. I have to re-read all of it! Actually, I have to add more because 181 longhand pages, typed, is only about 90 pages and this is just the first draft of the sequel!
     I decided that rather than get myself all worked up because I'm approaching Mt. work my butt off at the next turn, I would just blast Cyndi singing Girls Just Want to have Fun and do just that!

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