bngn

Bad News: I have developed procrastination to a fine art form, very distressing. I started today well. I pulled out all  the paper I have accumulated since I signed up for my screenwriting course, way back in the middle of December, and I hauled out my three-hole punch and the huge binder already partly filled with the print-outs from the first two months, comprising lessons and drafts - all in chronological order, of course.  It's easy to see that I have to collate and assess the drafts and see if I can come up with a "final" draft. I keep playing around with the middle of the second act, still not sure how to run it. I'll probably try out several different versions. The lessons deserve extra copies, too;  some lessons are so special I intend to put them in a separate folder. Do you like learning how I think and work?  I love to find out other writers' work/thinking habits.  I guess my age is obvious here: I still like to handle paper. I may store material in my computer but I like paper (print-outs) to handle and read and mark up and make notes. Yes, it's time consuming.  That's the bad news but not The Bad News I'm dealing with now.  The really Bad News is that I haven't progressed any further than to spread out a mess of paper all over my dining table. A book I'm reading won out over anything I'm writing.

The Good News is the book I am reading - in fact, I just finished it. I'm sure I've mentioned Lauren Groff (1978) before. This is the third book of hers that I have read.  I haven't read her first one is  The Monsters of Templeton  (2008), and it  was the NYT bestseller list on its appaerance. Wow.  And what a beautiful writer! 

Later the same day:...

.... continuing where I left off:  The book I just finished reading is Arcadia,  Groff's second.  Then came a collection of short stories, Delicate, Edible Birds, that I didn't like so well.  The first one I read, the last one she wrote, is the one I raved about when I read it:  FATES AND FURIES.

Now, I can get on with my work, stimulated, challenged, and humbled. The Good News is I'll keep on keeping on.  I mean, what else would I do?  I hate bridge.

rbf

Yes - RBF.  I guess everyone knows by now that's short for Resting Bitch Face, the one you're caught with when no one is looking - the real you, at rest, if you're careless enough to be a woman.  Men have it too, an RBF, despite the female inference in the title.  But men aren't faulted for it as women are, not nearly to the same degree. Men are supposed to look serious, if not stern, as if they're thinking Serious Thoughts.  My doctor father used to say the ideal face for a physician was one of empathetic, anxious concern, the look that comes automatically to those who supper from piles.

A few years ago, more than a few, when men still looked at me, I would be urged, even by strangers, to smile, to look happy.  All I was trying to do was board a plane, or wait patiently for a line-up to move, or prepare to submit an order for food .  Smiling was not on my agenda. Smiling is expected of women, who are not supposed to have an agenda, not a private one.  This is a long preamble to what I dallied with today.

I was expecting a friend for lunch, still am, though she's two hours late and I have e-mailed my concern for her well-being. Ten minutes before she was due I was all ready so I sat down to pass some innocuous time until she arrived.  I succumbed to one of  those terrible hooks: See how so-an-so looks now.  It went on forever and I never did see so-an-so. The pictures have a certain appeal to an idle curiosity with some time to fill.  Time went on, however, and I was disgusted with the snide, patronising, not to say critical and insulting copy that accompanied Before and After pictures of various celebrities, many of them original child-stars or very young pin-up girls or dashing hunks.

Too bad, the commentary reads, but age or/and fat have caught up with her (female), or him (male). Lots of food and  not enough exercise, too many drinks and drugs and years and lo! how the youth and beauty have disappeared.  Tsk, tsk (remember that spelling for the sound of reproach for naughty behaviour?)  -  too bad. Yeah, you really sound sorry.

These fake sympathizers can hardly conceal their delight at the bad times that have befallen previous screen idols.  RBF is bad enough but it is compounded by bad habits.  Plastic surgery doesn't help. It makes me happy that I have never been able to afford it.  I'm okay, just as I am, RBF and all. 

And my friend still isn't here. I hope she's all right.