In Which a Distracted Person Should Not Be Given a Curling Iron

The title says it all, I believe, but I shall expound upon it.

Every female at some point or other makes the mistakes (if they can qualify as mistakes; mishaps would probably be a better word) of burning their hair with a curling iron or tangling it in a hairbrush. Compound these two problems and you have a weapon of mass destruction, capable of devouring hair alive and scorching its meal while laughing derisively.

Well, maybe the laughter was my characters making fun of their clumsy brilliant author. Me, burn my hair? Me, get distracted with no one to help? Distracted? I'm never...oh look...a butterfly.

Once I had hopelessly ensnarled my hair in the mutant curling iron hairbrush, I went downstairs for help...only to remember that my family had left only a few minutes earlier. If my characters had been laughing before...

To wrap up a longer than necessary story, I spent half an hour trying to untangle my hair and, when that failed, to do some basic tasks. I discovered that it is all but impossible to brush one's teeth one-handed. Now I am left with a slightly bald patch and perhaps a bit more wisdom than before; I shan't ever get distracted while holding a hot object.

Oh look...it's snowing.

The Marvels of the Human Brain

It always seems, that when one sits down to do homework...

or sleep...

or do an urgent task...

one is assaulted with ideas that demand to be written down or acted upon now.


But when one actually needs ideas...they're gone. Fled into the dark abyss where plot bunnies cower and cliches lurk, leaving nothing but the dangling end of one's train of thought. This is the bane of every author's existence.


However, every thousand years or so, we actually do hit upon an idea at the right time and place. And when we do...beware lest you disturb us, for we have the strength of a raging fire and the force of the great typhoon. And also, to quote Sherlock, we "can't turn it on and off like a tap!"

The Trials of Amateur Photography

Here in Tennessee, our winter weather ranges from the icy teeth of a blizzard to a very mild autumn day. This year we've had hardly any snow, which I'm sure the schools appreciate, but the children hardly do. 

This rainy, cold day, I decided to ignore the urgent call of Aeschylus and attempt to capture some winter foliage with my camera. I envisioned taking beautiful pictures like the ones in nature magazines or Pinterest; a suspended droplet reflecting the surrounding greenery, a naked branch bejeweled with rainwater, an interesting puddle. I fired my camera until the rain forced me indoors. Hopes aglow, I played back the images one by one.

Blurry pictures. 

Busy backgrounds.

Dullness.

I hadn't learned to use all the settings, and so the images were far from what I'd hoped for. Most of them would be trashed, if not all. But instead of putting my camera away as angrily as I could without damaging it, I fiddled with it some more. Learning the settings. Adjusting the focus. Experimenting.

Next time a rainy day comes around, I'll be ready. 

The Beginning of the Wandering

     The mouse hovered over the "create blog" button for almost an hour. Me, write a blog? My trade was creative writing, where I got to kill care for fictional characters rather than chronicle my daily life. But I clicked the button anyway.

     Before I begin my wandering, I suppose I should explain the name. After I found out that my choice of a name had been dramatically taken by someone else, I began hunting for a name that would suit my devious purposes. I wanted to include the word 'typewriter'; to capture the forgotten satisfaction of inky keys hitting paper. But it lacked something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Something that echoed of wind and water, peace and war. Of adventures of forgotten heroes. Of great songs lost to the sighing of the wind. The teller of stories and the singer of songs: the wandering minstrel.

     And so, by combining the machine and the musician, the Wandering Typewriter was born. Though my life is hardly as interesting as the tales sung by the minstrels of old, I hope it shall interest you as you follow my journeying.

     Thus the wandering begins.