Captain's log, stardate 1980........

The next tale I'm working on was started that summer, 1980, while I was babysitting for my neighbor at their camp in Newport and spending the weekends going home to help my mom take care of my dad, who was dying of cancer - lymphoma, or cancer of the lymph nodes, to be exact.  I was mostly in charge of the care of the smallest child of the family, but while she napped, I told parts of my story to entertain her older brother.

In some ways, editing the story draws me back to those days of sitting out in the sun and telling the "clean" version of the tale, as it's quite violent in places, but in other ways, I see how much I - and the story - have grown since those days.....

My writing space is starting to change, as well, as if my spirit needs a more mature space in which to write now.  My original notebooks, complete with notes on napkins, scraps of paper, even a few pieces of cardboard that I wrote on during breaks at a job where I was building cabinets for a while sit on my new work space in a corner of our living room, sorted and waiting for the editing to finish and the real work to begin.  The new work space has several reasons for existing. 

First and foremost is the fact that my desktop is dying a slow, lingering death on the desk in my "office" just outside my bedroom, partially due to the fact that the desktop was put together from parts of other computers for me by my son while he was in college, rather like the Frankenstein's monster.  It was a step up from the over-the-counter HP Pavilion I was using at the time, as the HP had about 4 gigs of hard drive, and the new computer had about 40 gigs of hard drive.  Only problem is that now, some 6 years since it was originally built for me, all the drivers are starting to have issues, so although it's attached to the printer, making it very convenient for me to pay my bills and get the confirmations of payment as print-outs, it takes FOREVER to load each page and is prone to crashing at the most inopportune times.  And of course, there's the fact that it still has Windows XP as it's base platform and it would cost me more to upgrade than the machine is worth.  So, naturally, I prefer to use my laptop...

The second reason I needed a new workspace revolves around the laptop, which my husband bought me a few Christmases ago in response to my expressed wish to be able to write in something other than a notebook when we went on vacation.  The laptop's "workspace" prior to now has been a TV tray in front of the futon, where my husband could watch television while I wrote, or checked Facebook, or surfed the 'net, or whatever struck my fancy while he watched his sports or fishing shows.  It was on the futon that I let out the reins on Chase Benton - and almost came out of that 22 day marathon with a hunch back, as I had to lean forward to reach the keys......

So, enter the huge metal desk that was left behind by the former owners of our house, which our children hauled up to the second floor to use as a school desk.  When they moved out, the desk stayed in the former bedroom that we repainted and turned into our living room, and the desk was, at first, taken over by my husband as his fly tying bench.  When the children finally removed all of their various pieces of furniture about a year ago, he moved his fly tying bench Into the other, smaller bedroom, which had a built-in desk (also from the prior owners of our house). 

I've tried to use the big metal desk as a writing desk a few times, but there was a slight problem:  I didn't have a desk chair unless I wanted to constantly be hauling the desk chair from my office on the third floor down to the living room on the second floor.  Since the desk chair is quite heavy - and I'm quite clumsy - I had tried substituting in a massage chair that we bought eons ago, but it's in a permanently reclined position, so it was even harder on my back than the futon.  I tried using an old rocking chair, but when I leaned back to stretch for any reason, it would rock back - and because it no longer has rockers that sit quite even, I would find myself having to constantly get up and reset where I wanted the chair, which is VERY distracting when you're trying to concentrate on a story line.

So, this past week, when my current workplace had a sale on desk chairs, I got a really nice one....and I can't express how truly liberating it is to sit in a comfortable work space, close enough to my husband that he doesn't feel the need to come up over the stairs to tell me what's going on in whatever show he's watching, yet far enough away to be able to put in my ear buds and ignore the television, and concentrate on working on the old/new tale.  Roth Garrett and Rhawneth Kenna are speaking to me about what happens after the part that I had already transcribed onto the computer, and all the bits in between the scenes I have on the various notes are finally coming in.

If you don't see me here for a month or so, that means that the writing is going well, so while I'm working on the next tale, feel free to visit the brand-spanking-new Facebook page I've made for it.  Instead of continuing to struggle with a clever title that someone else hasn't already come up with, I've decided to name the book after the lead character: Rhawneth.  During insomnia periods, when I didn't want to ruin the work by reading and trying to edit when my brain wasn't functioning 100%, I've found several models to represent the many characters who inhabit the world Rhawneth lives in, and they appear on the "fan page".  I would appreciate any feedback or alternate suggestions for the characters here:  https://www.facebook.com/Rhawneth

Thank you, Constant Reader, for coming to visit my blog yet again and wading through another long dissertation.  Let me know if you have anything you would like me to address in future blogs.