writer’s block

Is Lisa Kogan Dead or Something?: And Other News of the Day


Over the past three days I have had an incredible amount of traffic on an old post inspired by a Lisa Kogan column from O Magazine of a year ago. 

In the article, Kogan ponders the possibilities of losing one’s mate. Not literally. She just wonders, as many of the more morbid among us do at some point, what it would be like to be widowed. 

She was trying to be funny and I didn’t find her subject or style too amusing. Not because I don’t have a gallows humor gene – I do. Once, when my late husband was lamenting how much being dead without me was going to suck (he had dementia, remember), I reminded him that time probably flew by much more quickly in the ever-after and that he would eventually have my second husband to keep him company anyway.

He didn’t laugh. Neither did my co-workers when I related the story to them. Probably you aren’t laughing either. 

I suck at the humor thing as much as Lisa Kogan.

But getting back to the sudden surge of her presence in my search terms, I decided to google her to see if anything was up. Maybe she died? Or perhaps she wrote a book and is making the rounds of the talk shows and morning “news” programs. Doug and Annie Brown, the couple who had sex for 101 straight days and then wrote a book about it, (and why I didn’t think of doing that I will never know) show up in the search terms whenever a news article or review about the book turns up. Lisa, however, doesn’t appear to have done anything of late aside from her latest column in O. Which wasn’t that good. In fact, I found it annoying and thought that The Bloggess could have done a better job with the topic.

But I digress – often, yes, I know – there just seem to be an awful lot of people interested in Lisa Kogan. And so far as I could ascertain, she hasn’t died. Which would definitely explain people searching for her. People who read O anyway. But she didn’t. As far as I know.

And why am I writing about search terms?

Because I am still working on Kumari!

Yeah, I know I said it was done. It is, but the revising continues because it’s not quite right. So I signed up for an online writer’s workshop for sci-fi, fantasy and horror writers (I think horror but I can’t remember exactly), and posted it for review. Only one review as yet and it confirmed my opinion that the story is still light and far too staccato as far as flow goes.

Revising is one of those things that either takes off like a brush fire or feels like mental constipation. There is no middle ground. 

I can almost feel the direction I need to go but can’t squeeze the right words out. Once I find the chink in the wall, I know the meat of the story will pour out, but I am not quite there yet. 

Hence this post. Which is my alternative to cleaning or baking or blanching veggies for the freezer. I could have attempted to tempt my husband into a nooner when he was home for lunch instead but we are into day three of a “cleanse” and things are getting fragrantly ugly. No constipation there. Anyway, we just had a nooner, and a nooner habit could become an impediment to say – employment – and we don’t want that. 

What I need to do is re-order a few sentences and paragraphs for flow and tone down the royal “we” of the story’s language and flesh out the character’s parents and the priests a bit. I also need to play up the global warming theme of the setting. I don’t think that is coming out although I don’t want to “go there” in terms of explaining what is happening specifically to the climate/geography. I am not a techie when it comes to sci-fi. More like a Bradbury.

Off to stare at my draft some more. Perhaps it’s like meditation? If I let my mind focus and then drift, it will come to me.

Writer’s Block


I can write about anything but my stories right now it seems and I am a little frustrated. I guess it’s a good thing that I can write at all and so I will try to focus on the up side, but I feel a little like I am screaming into a wormhole. Maybe there are people on the other side who are hearing me but I feel a bit alone here on the blog. I have my loyal commenters and they help, but the anonymous come and read? and go without a sound, just a click of the counter. Maybe it is feed back I am missing? Maybe I should start a page for a piece of fiction? But I worry about exposing my fiction to the web on my own because my publishers consider stuff on blogs as having been previously published which is ironic since they don’t give you writing experience credit for being a blogger in the first place.

I still haven’t heard back on any of the stuff that is out and the superstitious side of me thinks it is because I haven’t gotten my residency card or a work permit yet. If I had one or the other, things would start to happen. I have gotten my first approval and Rob sent in the fee for my work permit which I should have by the end of this month or beginning of the next. The PR card itself is waiting on an FBI fingerprint background check. We didn’t do that back in October because it wasn’t clear that CIC wanted both that and a state check. Another example of how badly worded the application directions are. They have been sent and will take about a month to get back. Add to that another month for CIC to get the results and process them and we are now looking at June for residency at the earliest. Frustrating. 

My mood of the day is frustrated. It’s not spring. I can’t focus to write really. I feel fat. My child is crabby. And the coyotes are too afraid of Cat to eat her like we hoped they would. Seriously, we have a Cat that is too feral to keep indoors but too tame to dump in the woods and a fields all around us stocked with coyote. Since it has been warm, Cat has been living outdoors instead of in the garage and not one blessed thing has happened to her expect perhaps she is keeping the coyotes away from our yard. I kid you not, even the toms in the neighborhood are afraid of her, so the idea that she would frighten wilder animals is not that far-fetched.

Jordan was home for supper last night. She brought her “friend”. He is an ex-boyfriend whom I am not fond of simply because of the things that Rob and Farron have related to me. Jordan has a way of attracting decidedly off-beat, and in need of social skills, young men. She was telling us about the latest to be attracted to her, a young man with two inoperable brain tumors who works at the liquor store with her. He has attached himself to her like an extra appendage and she is too polite to reclaim her space. And it’s not just the brain tumor. She would feel sorry for him regardless because he is just one of those people who appears to have been raised by wolves but probably just had your average two people who shouldn’t have ben parents upbringing that so many of us get stuck with. Except that most of us survive that and he didn’t. The brain tumors are just icing on this rather untasty cake.

Katy was quite taken with Jordan’s friend because he played games with her before dinner. She gets so excited when either of the older girls comes to visit but she doesn’t understand that they are much too old to be the sisters that she longs for. Jordan’s friend promised to play games again after dinner but instead sat at the table chatting – as adults are wont to do. After a while of waiting patiently in the living room, she ran upstairs and burst into tear. I went up and comforted her. Her feelings were hurt and it’s hard to explain to her that she just isn’t going to have a sister kind of relationship with Jordan or Farron or anyone they bring home. That is just something she will have to learn over time. There is too much of a gap and despite their willingness, neither of the older girls is going to be able to bridge it given the short amount of time Katy sees them and that will likely only get worse as they get older too.

Environment Canada promised sun today and it’s 2:30 and only just peeking. I am trying to be patient but I want spring. I want warmth and sun and dry.