Wired, Wireless, and the Three-Eyed Baby

I feel a pesky urge to write fiction coming on, which means it's time for my first post. A bit of good news: I've established a wireless network in my shack-up chateau (wireless for me, wired for my hunky keeper, the scientist). This after much back-burner musing, front-burner tinkering, and a good measure of cursing. Finally I got frustrated and decided to stay wired for a while. But this morning I woke up with a solution in mind and it worked! Voila, a secure wireless network named after the scientist's peskiest parrot. (We have three, plus a cat. Yes, it's a zoo.) I feel victorious. On to writing about writing!

Yesterday I told my great friend A.P. that I was about to rewrite one short story and begin on another. "Oh? What about," he inquired. "A woman who finds a baby in a trash bin," I said levelly. He bit. "Really? How about we find something a little less cliched than finding a baby in a dumpster."

"Don't worry about cliche," I replied. "The baby's going to have three eyes."

A.P. said he thought he'd been smacked down. And that he enjoyed it. I love amusing A.P. The bonus is that I'd avoided a bad writing trap: talking about story topic. If I tell someone what I'm going to write about before I write it, I always abandon that story. It's screwy writer-mind stuff, but I haven't been able to help it.

Of course, the moment I told him I was going to write about a three-eyed baby, the devil-on-the-left-shoulder part of my twisted psyche started talking to me about what symbolism I could find there, and how I should at least create an exercise out of the idea. The angel-on-the-right-shoulder started arguing with the devil about not wasting my time, again, with bad ideas, and I had to go to the gym to drown the din out. Sometimes I can't stand myself.