A Total Cosmic Convergence & Helpful Personalities

I have multiple personas I call upon as the prevailing need in my life dictates.

Constance was the first to develop. She was helpful because I could readily blame her when I was late or forgetful. "Sorry, you know me, I'm Constancely late / forgetful / or whatever." It's quite convenient. In fact, I highly recommend it.

Right now, Dorothy is in full sway. That's Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.  She deals with the tornadic periods of my life. She helps out in those times when things are coming at me every which way and I'm fighting hard against the tide. I pull her out and use her as a shield of sorts during those Cosmic Convergence periods where everything seems aligned juuust perfectly to make life a challenge.

Hope is there, too, because I Hope this too shall pass and calmer waters lie ahead.

I'm also calling upon Patience, so I don't lose my temper and scream or throw things. Fortunately, Patience hasn't been trotted out too much, and hasn't expended her energy. So that's a good thing.

On the other hand, Constance is taking a few days off. She won't be called again for a while - not until I'm Constancely late, or Constancely forgetful about something or other. Birthdays are one event for which she's handy.

So those are my different "people" who help me through periods where life gets difficult.  Right now, my life feels as if I'm standing under Niagra Falls and trying to catch it in a 5 ounce Dixie cup.


See, what happened was, we had a guy who worked here. A nice guy, affable and pleasant, but one who never "got" it when it came to his job. He faked his way through for long enough that we're now scrambling / struggling to fix what he didn't do. I was the one who did what he was supposed to do before he did it, so I trained him. And I retrained him and sat with him and encouraged him, 'If you have any questions about anything, please let me know'. I stopped by and asked, 'how's it going?' According to him, everything was fine. Until they fired him and discovered things were not fine. Things, in certain cases, were a year past 'fine'.

So, having a bit of a guilt complex because I think I 'failed' somehow - either by scaring him by my personality (which can be strong), or by making him afraid to ask me for help - I offered to step in and help fix what went off the rails. That's pretty much all I've been doing for the past several days, because what went off the rails didn't just go off the rails. It went massively off the rails, like across the verge and over the road and into the next county. And it has to be fixed ASAP.

Not only because it's month-end, which it is, and we don't want to accrue all of this stuff, but also because we have other companies relying on us and if they don't get what they're expecting, we'll be in a world of hurt. So I'm playing catch-up - with, in some cases, a more than one-year delay.

On top of that, I started an online wedding album for my daughter expecting that people who were there and who want to post pictures will do so. Unfortunately, they're not. They're putting them all over Facebook so I'm going to have to go through and pick up the pictures and copy them into the wedding album - otherwise they'll be lost forever in the morass that is Facebook.

Things at home are... well, they are. But it's par for the course so it's what it is and I just deal with it. It does add to the Stress-O-Meter, though, and just makes that Cosmic Convergence seem bigger.

And there are other things at play, too, but this too shall pass and I shall get to calmer waters. I'll have a period where I can breathe and catch up with myself, and this shall go into my Life Book as one of "those" periods. Just like everyone else has, too.

Along with this is the writing which has stalled again (small wonder, given everything else...), but I am leaning strongly toward doing NaNoWriMo in November, and I have an interesting concept for my story - so I'll continue mulling that. It would be cheating to start now, although I could and who would know? But I won't because that would at least partially defeat the challenge.

Authonomy is in my past. I was very upset and sad yesterday, but they're shutting it down at midnight on 09/30 and I wasn't sure which midnight they meant - 09/30 or 10/01 - but I didn't want to be there for it. I'm on the West Coast of the US and many of my Autho-Friends are in the UK and parts East of here. I did not want to be the one to see it ripped out from under me, so I closed my account yesterday. It was hard, really hard, and I had to think about it for several days before I knew I was ready.

However, life will continue and the cosmos will converge and I will muddle along doing what I do from day-to-day.

So - cosmic convergences and associated personas come together once more. And the big piles that I have on my desk are looking smaller, so there is hope. At least large chunks of this particular Cosmic problem are resolved. It's all I can do - chip away at it a little at a time.

I hope your cosmos is spinning calmly and you're in a good place in your life.

Best~
Philippa

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Day Two - Pulse is Still Strong, Still Breathing

After the shock of learning that the incubator for me and for many other aspiring writers is being shut off at the end of September, a lot of energy has been spent scrambling to find a viable alternative.

It's wonderful being in a group of creative and resourceful people. I don't consider myself so. Just because I express my imagination doesn't make me creative or resourceful. It just means I spend a lot of time in front of a computer writing what I think or feel or imagine.

On the other hand, there are a few that have set up a free website for writers. It isn't polished and pretty, but it's pretty cool that it's free and has many of the same message boards as the forum on Authonomy. Yesterday, I signed up and it's a place where I can keep in touch with the acquaintances I've made on Autho until the last of the dust settles.

I started re-upping my profiles in other places, too. Book Country being the first, Scribophile will be next. I signed up for Scribblers - the site created by the resourceful gentleman from Authonomy and I'll go back to Scribophile which is a little strange in its format.

There will be life after Authonomy, but people are already scattering, and that's sad. Some choose not to be on Facebook, which is fine and understandable, but the thought of losing touch with them is depressing.

Yes, I know. Life will go on, and I'll have fond memories of them, but there will be a hole where they once stood.

Since I didn't know them well or personally, it will be a small hole, but a void and my life will be poorer for not having them there. Ah, well.

We all make choices and everyone lives with them. The benefit is that I had the chance to get to know these people a little, however fleetingly, and I am better for it - so I win even though I also lose.

Perhaps, once the silence of not participating in an active group settles around them like a cloak, they will reach out and join other sites. Who knows, perhaps we'll stumble across one another again - on the other side.

But there are a lot of people that are wanting to stay connected. I've reached out to many of them on Facebook, and on Book Country. I'll do the same on Scribophile. It won't be the same, but that is a part of life and living.

Change is hard for people. But to remain static is to die, so change is good. It refreshes and regenerates and, no matter how sad I am to see Authonomy go, I still say that I am richer for having belonged.

So - I'm off to struggle with the change, to embrace and accept it by signing up on the writer's sites that I can find so I can see which will become my new 'home'.

Have a lovely day!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

NOO-O-O-O-O-O!!!

The sad word came down yesterday that Harper Collins is closing down its Authonomy website come the end of September.

Personally, this is like losing a really good friend. Authonomy is the site on which I first came out of my cocoon and made my writing public. It's like losing my crib or something and for the past twenty-four hours I've run the gamut of despair to resignation to acceptance and back. Which is why this post is arriving so late in the day - I'm back in denial and flailing for answers that just aren't there.

Autho and I didn't always see eye-to-eye. It didn't always like me and I didn't always like Autho, but it's been like a drug. I kept going back for more and now, come midnight (I guess) on 09/30 it will go dark - and that's sad.

There are a lot of great people there - some I will miss more than others, but all of whom have enriched me in one way or another. They have held up the mirror and revealed my own warts, or they have supported me when I've stumbled.

We users may cross the river and gather on the other side. Discussions came up, after the gasps of shock, about how and where and I hope at least some don't burst like soap bubbles on a windy day.

Yes, there are other sites. Yes, there is Scribophile and Book Country and Wattpad for the writers, but they aren't nearly as interactive or exciting as Authonomy has been.

On Authonomy there were stamping feet and flying objects (mostly imaginary) when people had sharp disagreements, which was part of its charm once the tempest died down. It was like being in a bar before, during and after a John Wayne-type brawl.

Scribophile, for one, is far more civilized and disagreements are frowned upon - heavily moderated - which reduces the popcorn munching interest of standing on the sidelines and watching two or three or several people going at it.

I haven't been on Scribophile for nearly a year, so maybe things have changed.

I also have an account with Book Country, but I haven't been there for nearly as long as Scribo, and the last time I was there it was just about the least friendly / most unusable site I've ever seen. Have things changed? I don't know but I guess I'll find out.

Well, this goes to show, yesterday was, indeed, one of THOSE days.

As another one of those comeuppance moments, I misspoke on my Twitter post the other day - my post came out: Boycott Philippa Stories which was NOT my intent at all, and I got poked for it in a Tweet I discovered yesterday morning. One of those cases of 'unintended consequence' and not seeing the problem until after the fact - so I just smiled, deleted my original and re-tweeted.

Then I discovered Autho is biting the dust.

A sad, awful, distressing day indeed. But yesterday passed and I'm into today. I've re-upped my account at Book Country and will try that. I'll re-up my account at Scribophile, too. Another site, absolutewrite, has my name and I'm just waiting for them to unlock the door.

Some members on Autho are discussing ways and means to create our own website - which would be marvelous and cool, but I suspect that as such things do, it is more doomed to failure than likely to succeed. The first blush of crisis is wearing off and some members are starting to shrug their shoulders and say 'oh well, it was fun while it lasted'.

I guess, as with everything else, time will tell. In the meantime, I hope your past two days have been marvelous, and I wish you more of the same, tomorrow.

Best~
Philippa

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Flash! Flash! Flash!

I got 350 words written and was boring myself, so I deleted that and decided to post a Flash piece instead of drivel. Watch this space, though, because I’m seriously thinking of offering a serialized book (probably starting next week).

This was originally written in response to a photo posted on Authonomy.

Death or Life

Muscles clenched, constricting sinew and bone to the point of pain.  Aaron shivered as if cold, even though he wasn’t.  He was coming down.  A wave of sickness swept upwards from his gut and he shivered again, hard enough that the side of his tennis shoe scraped across the concrete, sharply echoing.

Squinting, he looked up.  Concrete walls, their once smooth surfaces pitted and spalled with age, covered in places by streaks of various colors and layers of spray paint.  It wasn’t even either imaginative or good.  Just lines and waves and … crap.

Another roll of sickness waved around.  He lowered his head, moaning, “Fuck.”

As though he was ninety instead of nineteen, he turned onto his knees and climbed to his feet.  His jeans and sweatshirt showed spots and stains of activity he couldn’t remember.

“Ah, fuck.”  The whisper, created when he realized the large wet spot at his crotch wasn’t water, bounced back.

He was in a tunnel, maybe eight-feet in diameter.  To his left, gray deepened to black.  To his right, gray became so white he couldn’t see anything through it.  He shuffled to the right.  The dark was too heavy.  He didn’t think he could lift it to see what was inside.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to.  Scuffling feet echoed away behind him until he emerged into a concrete swath piled with the debris of storms and people.

Trash intermixed with vegetation spotted the channel and lined the ditch.  Where dirt met concrete, a rough trail parted the mess, leading upwards through brush that lined the high watermark, disappearing toward a line of trees.  He stank.  It hadn’t been the tunnel.  Some of the stains on his clothes were vomit.  “Shit.”  He shuffled over and attempted to climb the trail.  It was hard to lift his legs and move his arms.  Everything felt like it held the weight of the world.  He struggled on, until, at last, crawling the last few feet on hands and knees, he made it!  Lifting himself upright, he looked around.

The world looked so … normal.  Perhaps five feet ahead of him was a chain link fence, about four feet tall.  Tall weeds and grasses defined its line while trash and food wrappers papered the diamond-patterned mesh.  Across the demarcation between civilization and hinterland, a broad asphalt path ran by.  Beyond the asphalt was an expanse of grass, dotted by a few individuals and clusters of people walking, standing, sitting, talking, laughing or just watching.  Farther, the horizon was a line of trees and parade of sleek, glossy buildings.  He didn’t recognize anything.

“Wha …?”  He turned in a circle, trying to place himself.  Where am I?  A pair of bikes sailed past leaving chatter and laughter behind.  From the other direction, a couple of joggers padded closer.  Their expressions as they drew near – the determined ‘I’m not seeing that’ – spoke volumes with ‘Loser’ being the kindest of their thoughts.

He watched them pad away, uncomfortable to be him in that moment, not sure he wouldn’t think the same thing if it wasn’t him standing there with pee and vomit and God alone knew what else all over his clothes.

I’ve gotta get help.  It was a fleeting thought, one that encompassed both now and the future.  He had hit bottom and he knew it.  At the fence, it took an effort but he managed to crawl over it.  Which way do I go?

Vague memories, flashes of a group he didn’t remember, in a car he didn’t recognize, passing scenery and what seemed like days of partying.  He was burned out, his brain fried and he didn’t know anything about anything.

One kind lady stopped long enough to tell him he was in Des Moines, Iowa and pointed him in the direction of the nearest street.  There, someone else, keeping their distance and showing their pity at the same time they lifted their hand, had directed the way to the shelter.

Blocks of painful shuffling later, he arrived at the tired old building that someone or a group had tried to perk up with new doors and bright paint.  It didn’t hide the hopelessness.  “Lipstick on a pig,” Aaron muttered as he pulled the door open.

Inside, the bearded old-young man, with the creases of addiction, pain and regret for what was lost etched deep in his own face, looked at the newcomer.  He saw himself from just a few years before, before the jaws of need had loosened their grip.  Now it was still a battle some days, but most days he could get by without too much of a fight.  One day he hoped it would be easy, but it wasn’t, yet.

“Welcome.”  He said with an encouraging smile as he stepped from behind the counter.  “Looks like you could use some help.”

Aaron ghosted a smile, “Yeah, you could say that.”

Six months later, Aaron’s darkest days were behind him.  He had suffered mightily for weeks while addiction fought against resistance.  For days, he had screamed and cried, begged for just one more hit, but the shelter workers had seen it all before.  They had all been there before, and knew how it would go.  Eventually, Aaron’s pleadings had dropped off.  The frantic, frightened look had gone through the cunning I can get away with this to the resigned, strengthening I don’t need that anymore.  Now he worked behind the counter of the shelter, welcoming Life’s rejects as they came, helping them get started on the path to wholeness.

In another few weeks, his classes would start at the community college.  He didn’t care that he was taking the most remedial of the remedial classes.  He was looking forward to living.  Nancy, the health worker who volunteered at the shelter had smiled last time she had been in.  Things were looking brighter than they had in years and maybe, just maybe, he could crawl all the way out of the pit into which he had fallen.

* * * * * *

Best~

Philippa

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Whinge, Whine and Other Lovely Words.

When I started writing a few years ago I soon realized how limited my everyday vocabulary had become.

It’s not that I didn’t have the mental thesaurus available. It’s just that I never used it. It was weighted down with dust and inertia – it wasn’t going anywhere because I hadn’t driven it in so long.

Then I started writing. Suddenly I had to find extra words for things – you know, synonyms. Those different words that mean the same or almost the same thing, all so I wouldn’t end up repeating myself all over the place.

Within a matter of months, my vocabulary flourished again and my writing outgrew it. I needed more words (yeah, I’m a greedy slob, but that’s a different subject). So I started looking and do you know what I discovered?

Americans are bereft. We are pathetic in our language (borrowed, I grant you, and then abused).

For instance, when someone complains here we say they’re ‘whining’. That rhymes with wining as in dining and it doesn’t have the same punch as the Brit alternative.

Now, when a Brit or other non-American who uses the proper British pronunciation for stuff, s/he says ‘whinging’ (soft ‘g’ in the middle – win-ge-ing). With whinging, you can picture the snot-faced kid with the tear stained soulful stare and catch in their throat as they tug on their parent's garment – Mommee!

Gobsmacked is another one. What do you picture if I say, ‘I was gobsmacked!’? It's perfect! I picture smacking myself on the cheek, or over my mouth - gobsmacked.

See? You see? It’s beautiful – evocative – and we don’t have it here. We could, but we don’t because it’s Brit. So what do we have in its place? Shocked? No. Stunned? Borr-ing. Surprised? Oh, come on – that’s positively limp.

Foppotee yet another great word. I don’t know that most Brits even know about that one – but it really is a great word. Really great because it’s so far out of common use that if you say it about someone, no one will know what you’re saying (check it out – look it up). It has made it into the Urban Dictionary, but when was the last time you heard it used?

There are others, too. Beautiful words, lovely words that convey meaning and layers of meaning – veritable depths of meaning – and they rarely get used.

Plethora. A word that fills your gob and rolls right off your tongue.

Loo. Quick, succinct, not untasteful – ‘Pardon me, I must run to the loo.’ It just sounds so… so poncy!

Poncy. Great, great, great word! Posh, over the top, snobby even.

Sorry. Oh, the Brit understatement in that little word! It was bandied about on Authonomy a while back, offered up as the most useful word in English English. It can mean anything from an apology to a slur against one’s mother all dependent upon the arranging of the stresses.

SORree – apology

sor-ree – sneer

sor-REE – your mother wears army boots

See? You see what I mean? And there are so many others!

Scintillating and query (another Brit word not used here except if you're a computer geek talking about asking for something from a database).

We do have to careful, though, because we commonly say things that make the British eyebrows go up. Yeah, it's good exercise for an eyebrow, but it's almost always unintended.

Pissed here means angry. Yeah, I know that we all know that, but did you know that in other English speaking countries it usually means drunk?

How about that polite 'excuse me'? Nope - don't say it! Don't! It's the 'pardon me' for unfortunate bodily noises. You say that in a crowded restaurant and you might get a table to yourself, but it will be accompanied by many an aghast stare.

Did you see that? I slipped another great word in there - aghast. Agape. Awestruck (the original meaning, not the watered down modernized weak-as-water variety).

Fanny pack. Uh. No. Don't. Don't go there.

Fanny in England doesn't mean bottom or bum (although it is a diminutive <== [another one!] of Frances and variants [<==boom!]). It means, like... well, turn the woman around 180d (on the horizontal plane, please) and there, her... um... northerly nethers, at the top of her legs, between them.

So if you say fanny pack to a Brit, you're being very impolite. S/He might take offense and you'll be gobsmacked (in a not-a-good way) in next to no time.

Now - grab a thesaurus or hang out with your erudite friends, strike up a conversation and see what fantastic words you come up with today!

Best~
Philippa

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First Blog

Good morning!

Admission:  this is my first try at blogging and it's a bit intimidating.  What do I say?  Will anyone care?  Probably not, but we're all doing it anyway, so why not me, too?

I don't know what this will be - ramblings, little tit bits of information about me, about my place in the world (Sonoma County, California), grumblings.  Maybe a flash fiction piece or something longer.

You see, I want to be an author.  A friend of mine and I are currently writers.  We put things down on the modern paper of a computer screen - stories and so on - but we haven't yet been discovered.  So we're writers.  Once we're discovered and get published, or publish ourselves, we'll become authors.  It's kind of like caterpillars to butterflies.

Eighteen months ago I decided to stop writing in a vacuum and see what was available to budding writers for honing skills and gaining some visibility.

I discovered Harper Collins's writer's site, Authonomy - https://www.authonomy.com/ - which is a place where writers of all stripes and abilities get together.  We post books, we talk, we fight, we laugh, we joke.  It's kind of like Christmas in a big dysfunctional family at times, but it's my second life.  When I'm online, I'm almost always there, laughing and fighting, writing and posting. 

Right now I'm on the cusp of moving from writer to author.

A few months ago, one of the published and highly successful Authonomy members posted a link to the Inca Project - http://www.incaproject.co.uk/.  It is a website for new, recently discovered or undiscovered authors.

I submitted a bit of my writing based on their requirements.  They accepted me as a member.  A couple of months later, after gathering my courage, I offered the person who runs the site my MS.  He read it, wrote back that he loves it and wants to see it set loose on the world.

Largely because of his wonderful and much needed pushiness, my chrysalis is splitting.  In another couple of months my first book will be out on Amazon and I will emerge into the world with a brand new shiny set of wings.

In the meantime, I'm working on other things.  It's my passion.  It's what I love doing more than anything else, which is another reason I created this blog.  It's an extension of my desire to write, to write well and to provide entertainment and a little escape from the stuff 'out there'.

So - that's my first blog under my belt.  I'll be back and, hopefully, I'll have something more interesting to offer.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me at:  Philippastories@twitter.com