That one time I stood on a stage in front of people…

 

As a “writer” I find myself answering the same 3 questions.

1. Where do you get your ideas?

2. What’s your writing process?

3. What are you goals?

 

~The first question is an easy one to answer:

Have you met my kids or my dog? These posts just write themselves! The truth is, writing a humorous blog is not really all that difficult.  Life is funny- even if it doesn’t feel particularly funny at the moment. Sometimes you just have to look a little harder to realize it.

~The second question just makes me laugh.

My “process” goes a little something like this:

Step 1: My kids (or Spike) do something that makes me mad.

Step 2: I look for the humorous life lesson I can extrapolate from the situation.

Step 3: Stand at the proverbial fork in the road…

To my left is the path on which I come upon the humorous life lesson. I develop a witty title, take a shower and write the post in my head between shaving my arm pits and conditioning my hair. Then I send up a small prayer that I remember what I wrote. The next 3-10 days are spent reminding myself that I really need to get to my computer and write that funny post I vaguely remember concocting in the shower the other day. Next I remind myself I need to shave soon. And, eventually, I sit down to write.

To my right is the path on which I discover there is nothing humorous and no lesson to be learned; therefore no post is written and everyone is grounded.

Based on how inconsistently I post these days, I think you can infer which road is the one less traveled.  Boys…

~I’ll admit that the 3rd question is a bit harder to answer…

Writing is a hobby. I have no intention of making any real money or becoming one of the “biggies” we all know.  There’s no book in my future-  I have nothing to say that hasn’t been said… Probably better than I ever could, quite honestly.

That being said, I have tried to set a few small goals to push myself and my writing.  First, I wanted to be syndicated on some of the bigger sites.  Thanks to Scary Mommy, Mamapedia and Mamalode I’ve been able to accomplish that goal.  Next, I hoped to be published in a real book some day.  The HerStories Project and Scary Mommy made that dream come true.  And I was even paid for something I wrote on TheMid last month! Of course, the day after I received my fancy $100, our car battery died and needed to be replaced. Cost: $120. Nothing says, “Congratulations on your accomplishment” quite like calling a tow truck.

So, what’s next?

Truthfully… nothing. Or so I thought…

Apparently,  “nothing” was not an acceptable goal, according to Luke. So when I mentioned that I was kind of maybe sorta thinking about auditioning for Listen To Your Mother Orange County he chimed right on in.

“You should really do it, Mom. You’ve already met your two goals, so you should try something new. *pensive pause* Actually, there’s no ‘should’ here, Mom. You have to do it. You always tell me to push myself and try new things and to get past my fears. So now it’s your turn. You’re going to do it. You have no choice.”

He was right. There was no ‘should’ about it. It was time to set a new goal, step out from behind the computer and give voice to my words. So I signed up for an audition slot, gave it my best shot, and made the cast.

And now there is a video of that one time I stood on a stage in front of people…

That’s just my normal.