It’s a Rust Belt Girl roundup for an end of the work week that also coincides with the beginning of CRAZY summer vacation.
Going with the “roundup” theme, I can say that the cows are loose, having broken the fence, and now they’re just roving around the plains willy nilly. (I know I’m impressing you with my vast knowledge of cowpoke life right now.)
Let’s be real. There are no cows. The cows are the items on my to-do lists, lists which don’t actually exist anymore, because so much of my life has gone digital.
I used to have real paper-and-pen lists: meal plans and menus, work to-dos based on deadline, and post-its galore with snippets of story ideas. Concrete things I could hold in my fingers. Then I’d go about numbering the items according to importance.
What happened? Hmm. Could it be that I jumped on social media last year, and my lists are collateral damage?
Whatever. The upshot: I’m bringing back the lists, because they’re real.
Because…my children (though they are playing virtual FIFA soccer at the moment) are real. Their need to be fed and watered (and maybe even educated and socialized even on the hottest days) is real. Yep, it is really summer now, and they are really home—ALL DAY LONG.
You don’t need to be a mom to lose your cows—or to rein them in (or is that only with horses?).
Author Amy Jo Burns talked about writing while mom-ing in my latest author Q&A. She also talked about her memoir, an essay, and her upcoming novel. I bet she’s got real lists.
With two work deadlines looming, these cows will dominate my lists for the next little bit. But, fear not, I will leave time for creative writing and tinkering, literary agent soliciting and journal submitting…and even dreaming—doing some of that right here.
What’s on your reading and writing list this weekend, this summer?
Want to know what I’m reading in my stolen moments–when I’m not abiding by my lists? (One of the best novels I’ve read in a long time!) Find me on FB.
Rust Belt Girl 
My biggest goal this summer is to start submitting some of my poetry and short stories to journals and writing contests. I need to get organized… and stop procrastinating.
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Awesome! Fingers crossed for you. I know I’ve said it a bunch of times on my blog (and I get no kickbacks for it) but Submittable.com makes submitting to journals so much easier! Yeah, organization–part of my whole list strategy. Ugh. Not easy. Good luck!
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I’ve set a goal to read every Agatha Christie novel and short story. I hadn’t read any of her work until last fall. Now I don’t know how I resisted her narratives for so long. Her body of work can be consumed like one binges TV shows on Netflix, even if the stories are not sequential to each other. I think I’ve read about half of her novels. I wish she could come back to this life and write a novel in which Miss Marple and Poirot solve a murder together. Somewhere on YouTube there is a mash-up of five Country-Pop songs played simultaneously without any discordance of sound. Christie’s posthumous novel would be the Golden Age mystery equivalent of that.
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Now I’ve really got to try one of her novels–never have! That sounds like a wonderful mashup novel, your Miss Marple and Poirot mystery. I wonder, would they become romantically entangled? Poirot is pretty alluring!
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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a fine read. Marple and Poirot could have made a great couple, but I’m sure there would be an going tension of trying to change one another. He’d try to make her more elegant while she’d try make him less bombastic.
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I am a total list-freak. I have multiple lists on me at all times (on a scrap of paper, in my diary, in my notebook, on my cellphone,…). I would be lost without my lists! 😉
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Today I downloaded Melanie Gabrell’s book! So that’s on my to read list, once all my Jack the Ripper research is over. I also recommended it to a couple of work colleagues.
I use sticky notes on my work laptop – there are always far too many as I rarely delete. When I’m at work I will often write a list and tick off the task as complete, otherwise, I might forget something.
https://melaniegabrell.com/2018/06/11/i-published-a-book-right-now-its-free/
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That’s so exciting about Melanie’s book–I’m going to download it too!
I wonder, does researching such a dark subject, like Jack the Ripper, freak you out ever? I know my mood changes, depending on what I’m working on.
Sounds like you have a good system of lists. I’m doing OK with my work lists, but everything else having to do with my creative ventures, my home and kids is all up in the air. Time to jot it all down I think.
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Yes, I do get freaked out. During daylight hours I’m fine, if it’s dark and alone it’s unsettling and I lock all doors!
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Lists are so great!!…if I can remember where I put them. Love your analogy of the cows 😂
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