Now that we are heading into October and saying goodbye to summer, I am starting to settle down from last season's whirlwind travels. Alex agrees that staying home this past weekend did wonders for the soul.

Someone once said that when you travel, it takes a few hours for your soul to catch up. I think we've finally reconnected on that front, as weird and poetical as that sounds.

So now that we're up to date, I actually had time to frame this lovely baby to the right. It's a limited edition poster from Neil Gaiman that Alex bought me a couple of months ago. It's been hanging out in a cardboard tube on my desk. And now it's hanging out in a brand spanking new frame above my piano.

This was all thanks to having time to do chores today.

This also meant I had time to actually work on assignments and jobs that had been collecting dust!

And we're going to eat turkey burgers cooked at home tonight!

But in all this quiet solitude, I re-read the blog entry I wrote for the MFA Years concerning Stonecoast in Ireland. I am going to wait a few days to post it, so I had more time to go over it a couple more times. And there I saw all these pictures and read all these things I'd done, and I really did think to myself, "Did I do all that?"

I really did.

I quit my job a little over a hundred days ago, and I did all that.

Imagine what I can do with the rest of the year.

(Final note: This art piece is by the amazingly talented Chris Riddell. If you would like your own copy (the money goes to charity), check out this link here.

http://neverwear.net/collections/frontpage/products/brand-new-chris-riddell-illustrates-neils-words-on-hope-limited-edition-print )

1996 was a year to mark in the mind of an impressionable eight-year-old girl.

My kid brother was born in May. I told my second grade class that when I wasn't there at school, it would mean he had come along. I knew that day was Tuesday, but I wanted to keep them in suspense. On Wednesday, I asked Mom if I could bring in blue cupcakes to announce the gender to my fellow students.

They didn't care if the cupcakes were blue or pink, they were just glad for the sugar.

It was also the year my dad was a cop in a Lifetime movie, Gone in the Night, originally created for NBC Primetime. It was shot in my neighborhood, and the whole of Roanoke Estates was abduction-crazy because that's what the story was about: a little girl who was my age getting abducted from a house that looked like my house in a neighborhood that was literally my neighborhood in the movie, and to add a cherry to all this, the set dresser gave her a comforter identical to the one on my bed.

Let's all watch Daddy in the movie and then head to bed. Sweet dreams.

But there was something else that happened that year, and it was my dad becoming obsessed with rock climbing. In the dead of January, he would pack our equipment in the back of the car, drive us to the Y, and throw us on a wall. It was amazing, thrilling, exhilarating, and I did it all to do my favorite part: repel down.

If you have never repelled, you have never lived.

My dad started to make plans to save up for Everest for himself, and we all went out to Long's Peak for a scouting of the trail and hike to see how hard it would be for two kids and a dad. The answer was too hard. We'd have to wait a few years.

1996 was also the year that the IMAX came to the city zoo. The IMAX was brand new around the world; the 90's version of the iPhone. It would be that fall when my third grade class went to see Dolphins or whatever that stupid movie was.

The IMAX was cool.

For anyone who knows anything about the IMAX, they know that one of their first documentaries was the buzzed-about film called Everest. It would hit theaters next year, and for the first time, IMAX was sending up a whole crew to make the trek. Wow.

You can imagine how happy my dad was.

And this all collided into a perfect storm on May 10th.

Now I don't know why it's our formative years that shape us as storytellers or even as human beings, but for some reason, now in 2015, when I see Jan and Rob sobbing on the phone to each other in this fall's Everest, I feel like I remember it happening. I feel like I had been there.

I feel my heart breaking all over again.

See, the movie that was being shot down the street? That was all fake to me. But there was a documentary crew that captured a man's death. There was a woman just as pregnant as my own mom, and she was sobbing on the phone. Sarah. She named the baby Sarah.

And watching the adaptation tonight in theaters, I don't know what I think. It puts all these other "based on a true story"'s into perspective.

A true story is thicker than a fictional one, I think. Because you can walk away from a fictional one. I still ache over Sirius Black, but I know he was created for me to do that. I still can't deal with Rob dying on a mountain. Because he really did exist.

My brother was born ten days after Rob died. My dad gave up on Everest. We never made it to Long's Peak. Our lives continued on, but that image of Jan and Rob on the phone kept with me.

And I wonder now, walking out of the theater and seeing Keira Knightly playing Jan ... I wonder if we do a service to them by retelling their story, or if in some way, it's a little sick.

I'm going to be honest. I didn't even know there was a super uber bloody red moon of awesome proportions until we went over to my parents' house for pizza last night. Because let's face it, my life revolves around writing and Disney and pizza, and anything out of those three categories usually goes unnoticed. So pizza led me to the blood moon, is what I'm saying.

"The moon will look the best at 9:47," Mom said, and I told her that was nice.

"No, like bright red, duh," Alex said.

So we headed outside, away from the television playing  Toy Story 3 (see?), and stood in the driveway, looking up at the moon being slowly gobbled by some sort of Shadow God.

That's my scientific observation.

My life also revolves around comfort, so I suggested we leave the driveway and go up to the lake, where I could recline in my Prius front seat, away from mosquitoes and aching feet.

The lake was packed. Who knew that everyone was into watching the moon? We got the last two spots in the parking lot, and everyone else had to park on the grass, which I'm pretty sure wasn't legal.

We sat there for an hour watching the moon.

Alex and I talked about what the moon actually was, how big the moon was, how close the moon was, what was causing it to turn red (although it didn't look red from where I was sitting), and how long it would be before the Earth was swallowed up by a supernova.

"You know it wasn't long ago we were all Neanderthals?" Alex told me, and he added, "By the time all of this explodes, humans won't look anything like us. If someone from the distant future came to visit us now, then we wouldn't recognize them as one of us."

"Do you think Roswell could be time travelers then?"

"Maybe."

A pause.

"It's sad all of this will be gone at some point."

"We'll get shoved out to the furthest reaches of the 'verse."

"Do you think we'll colonize by that point?"

"We'll have to. Have you ever seen a supernova? It's beautiful."

"No, they're scary. They kill things."

And of course there's that obligatory "I feel so small" sentiment that everyone shares when thinking about watching "all of the sunsets and sunrises at the same time" glide across the little moon, and the shadows show you that the moon isn't even that far away.

"The moon glows red," Alex said, "because it's so close, it's still brighter than the night sky ... look! There's a satellite."

"I always thought those were planes."

"Too high up for planes."

"And they're watching us, right now?"

Later on, I checked into Facebook, only to find all of my friends were watching the same moon, and a good 800,000 strangers had also checked in. "That's just on Facebook!" I told Alex. Then pictures came in from all around the world (although, yes, time differences, but stay with me).

But the thing I'll remember most, is holding Alex's hand.

"You know when I was a kid," I told him, "about every few months, I'd look up at the moon and take comfort in the idea that my moon was the same moon that you looked at. Like I would think about how the person I would be with ... they already existed, and they were out there in the world somewhere, already living out their life, and I just hadn't met them yet."

Alex nodded, because he already knew all this. And I already knew he'd done the same thing.

"And now," I said, "now we're together and we're watching the moon like this."

He nodded again.

That's what I'll remember.

So this is a bit of a continuation of what's been going on lately, as talked about in the blog before.

A lot of people don't know this about me, but before I got into the writing thing, I composed music. I took over a decade of piano lessons, competitively performed, traveled around the country plunking out Bach and Rachmaninoff, and then eventually began to sing competitively and professionally as well.

When I went off to college, everyone thought I was going to go be a musician. I surprised them by joining a theatre conservatory and picking up playwriting. I did this because I thought that someday I'd move to New York and become a famous musical theatre writer. You can't be a jack of all trades, not if you want to go pro. So I chose writing. And writing turned to novel writing. And what use does a novelist have for a piano?

Fortunately, Alex somehow found all of my composition recordings from my olden days, and he listens to them religiously on his iPod. They weren't supposed to be saved, but he has kept them alive in our lives, and every once in a while, he'll pop one of the old songs in to remind me of this little spark I've got that I don't really allow to show.

So I decided, although I don't have a lot of money right now, that I would pull out of my savings, march myself down to Keyboard Kastle, and get myself a good electric keyboard with an audio jack (you're welcome, neighbors).

I'm usually pretty frugal unless it comes to vacations, and so a big buy like this still has me shaking. But the way Alex looks at the keys when I play ... the way he said to me, "I can't wait to hear you writing music again" ... I know I made the right choice.

This picture here shows the corner of our little apartment where the piano will go. We're clearing it all out in the next 48 hours, and by Tuesday night, I will be able to start making things again.

So why is it important to get a piano? Aren't I a writer? Aren't I supposed to be focusing on my book? Is this just all a way to procrastinate writing the book?

No. It will help me write the book.

Let's go back to what we were talking about yesterday. Remember Disney? Remember how he did things his own way? Well, I'm going to do things my way. When I wrote my other book, I scored half of it. I wrote songs about the characters. And I needed a song to listen to while writing this one specific scene, and it didn't exist. So I wrote it. Recorded it. Listened to it while writing the scene.

Sometimes we can't pigeon-hole our creative heart. Sometimes we just have to be weird, be ourselves, buy a piano, and do our thing the way we know how to do it. I'm trying to trust in myself as an artist without worrying about looking dumb or messing up. Art usually goes hand-in-hand with messing up, and we forget that as a community. If you are so scared on not being perfect, you aren't going to do anything. Art isn't perfection. Art is the crappy paint splatters that get in those places you weren't expecting them to fly.

So yes. That's why I got a piano. And as soon as that sucker is hooked up and ready to go, I am punching out a rendition of "Land of Nod," because I'm sick and tired of trying to get myself to like Natalie Merchant's version.

Last night, I sat down with Alex, and we had a heart-to-heart, and by heart-to-heart, I mean I ranted for three hours and he nodded and said some wise stuff every half an hour or so.

But sometimes you just kind of have to rant. Sometimes, those of us who make sense of things by verbally talking through them, need to just blah blah at someone until we can understand what we're trying to figure out what exactly we're trying to figure out.

And that's the thing, so much of the time I have no idea what's wrong with me, I just know something is off. "I don't know what I want, but I know what I don't want."

And through all this blabberty-jabberty, it became clear that I had lost my muchness somewhere along the lines. Somewhere around losing a coveted production spot in undergrad, I started to doubt myself. Then I read all these how-to books, got onto the blogosphere and saw so many people not making it, and I started to think, "What do I know? I know nothing. I'll do whatever everyone else says I should do."

This started to eke into my real life, until we were getting ready for the wedding and I put my foot down and said, "Dammit, I'm going to wear purple chucks and no one can stop me!"

Some people snickered. Others loved it and called it "whimsical." But what matters is that when looking at this picture to the right, I feel like that's me. I feel like I was true to myself. And so I had the wedding I wanted.

Now with this idea that perhaps, just maybe, I should follow the beat of my own weird little snowflake heart, I've started listening to music again in order to find inspiration for my WIP. In college, I compiled a fake soundtrack for my book like it was a movie. Today, I did the same thing. Cover art and all. Is it weird to do such a thing? Yes. Did Ernest Hemingway ever partake in such flibberty jibbet? No, probably not. Although I would love to see his cover art for The Sun Also Rises. It would be so awkward.

This revelation of mine was backed up by watching that new PBS documentary on Walt Disney. They report that he didn't know exactly what he wanted to be, but he knew what he wanted to do. No one before Disney had thought to put a real soundtrack to a cartoon that interacted with the characters. No one had the optimism that Disney held in his Mickey character. And so he made something new. People thought he was nuts, because he wasn't following the pre-approved structure, but he did his own thing and succeeded.

So really there's no point in writing if you're not going to be honest to who you are, because I'm the only person I know who wore purple chucks to her wedding, and I'm the only person I know who can write this book that is in my head.

So you do you. You go out and follow your gut instinct when it comes to creation. Because what will come out of your endeavors will be original. It will be creative. It will be the best parts of you.

So today, I put on a new song I found, I focused on one paragraph, and I spent five minutes writing that paragraph.

Somehow this is a skill I have to learn over and over again. Don't rush through the action. Don't let the action override the characters' feelings. Write from within. Take a moment to breathe and describe what you're experiencing.

I never learn this lesson, I drive myself into the ground, and then I have to relearn the lesson. It's not about quantity. It's about quality.

So now I think I have a good escape scene, and I have already cut 4,000 words from my WIP. That's awesome.

Am I gaining weight?

I ate half a pizza today. I ate half of a whole pizza. It was so bad for me. I was supposed to eat turkey burgers at home, but instead I spent money I don't have on a pizza.

I don't have any money. I have no money. I took a year off to write, to do contract work, and it's not enough for me to take any sort of vacation or go out to eat. I'm living off a shoestring budget, which I haven't done since undergrad.

Once in undergrad, I treated my friend like crap. Now she's not my friend. My other friend isn't my friend, either.

All of the friends I now have will eventually hate me. It's just a matter of time, a matter of when I screw up and offend them or do something hurtful. Even my best friends, I will lose.

I am losing to time. I am almost thirty, and did you know, according to this documentary I watched tonight, that Walt Disney was a famous and innovative success by the time he was thirty?

I'm almost thirty. I'm getting old. I had a cancer scare already. Do I really think I'm going to live forever?

I don't have forever. My MFA program is disappearing faster than I can enjoy it.

I can't enjoy anything. I don't even enjoy writing this book anymore. I wonder if it's showing in my writing.

I wonder if I am ever going to believe in myself as much as the famous people believed in themselves. I thought all of everyone knew they sucked, but then asshole Cormac McCarthy was quoted on Facebook today, announcing that he always knew he could write. Asshole Cormac McCarthy.

Melissa McCarthy is fat. I'm fat. So fat. I was feeling good about my weight, but then I ate wedding cake out of the box and I had that pizza this weekend and that other pizza this evening. I really like pizza.

I shouldn't have eaten the pizza.

I should have written more. I wrote three hours today, and it wasn't enough.

How can I be as good at this, as confident at this, as I was when I was a kid? I used to not care what people thought of my writing. I used to have my best friend who would listen to my manuscript and she loved it and she loved me, and now she doesn't return my messages. I like to think it's because she got taken over by a Yeerk.

Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman had a baby. That baby is going to have parents who understand him. My parents were a lawyer and a wedding coordinator.

Our wedding looked nice, at least. Our marriage is good, at least.

Until one of us dies in a car accident/surgery gone wrong/meningitis/all of the above.

One of us will watch the other one die.

If it's me, then he doesn't have to suffer. But I'll be alone.

If it's him, it'll kill him.

We're both going to die earlier than expected, because we ate that pizza tonight. It was greasy. We're both gaining weight.

Am I gaining weight?

Today, I got an email from an old student.

She asked me how to finish her play. She told me what she wanted to happen, and then she told me what had happened when she went about writing it all down.

She had wanted the good brother to win in the war, or at least die honorably, proving that goodness conquers evil.

Unfortunately, when she wrote it, the good brother was killed by the bad brother with no recourse.

She'd been racking her brain all weekend, trying to figure out how to make this death okay. She came up with some flim-flam ideas concerning saving orphans, and finally she came to me.

I told her that sometimes bad things happen, and she needed to help her audience reconcile that fact.

It's a problem in both life and in fiction that I also have had a hard time swallowing. It's hard not to think about morality when you're neck-deep in reading Les Mis, but it's also something that keeps hitting my fender as I try to get through life. A good friend at the age of twenty-six, one of the kindest people I've ever known, died of cancer in a matter of months. There was no justice following, they were just forgotten by some and mourned by others, and the world kept plodding on.

A friend's whole family wiped out in a highway accident, one of them being an eleven-year-old girl. They went to court, but that didn't bring anyone back.

And then this past weekend, one of the brides in my wedding group came home from her honeymoon and contracted meningitis. She was dead within hours, and her new husband is trying to wrap his brain around that one.

Injustice and death usually hits the good forces in life, and to pretend in fiction that they don't is doing our readers a disservice.

It's something that I am trying to balance in my own project. One of the reasons I started writing this book is because of the end of Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay. Katniss ends her world on such a low, nihilistic note, that I wanted to rebut it as best as I could. Yes, people war with each other, yes, there will always be buttheads in the world, but isn't there some good somewhere?

Can't we hope that we aren't seeing the whole picture? Can't we still believe that things will work out? And if we can't, then what?

My student has struck a nerve in the literary universe, has asked a question that people have been poking for years like a fascinating but painful mouth sore.

I told her I didn't have the answer, but she should push herself to make her ending fantastic.

I realized this morning, as I woke up in yet another hotel room, that perhaps the last year ... especially this past summer and now what is becoming fall ... has been full of hotel rooms.

We've grown to fit the routine of packing lightly, throwing our crap all around the hotel, picking up all of our crap at the last minute, stuffing it into the back of our car, and leaving housekeeping a nice tip.

Every weekend, sometimes every week, there is something that calls us out of the city.

It was fun, but now it's becoming a little worrisome, since our home apartment ... our real place where we really live ... is starting to look like a pigsty, and none of my work is getting done.

Seriously, our apartment is currently littered with my Europe backpacks, our wedding suitcases, and whatever the hell we brought home this time from Kansas City. It's starting to look like airport baggage claim's lost and found.

Of course this weekend was not fun, and yes, it was necessary. We were at a funeral. A week after I entered Alex's family, I accompanied him as a full-fledged family member to a funeral. And there is nothing as awful and uncomfortable as being congratulated on your nuptials and asked about your amazing wedding cake while a memorial video plays on in the background. But I'm glad I was able to be there for Alex. I'm very glad we went.

Afterwards, we spent a lot of time with the nieces and nephews, and I started to realize that I've now known Alex's family long enough to see the kids grow to college age, the collegians grow to adults, and the adults grow to super-adults. Alex and I are nearing our thirties, and it comes as a shock that only in about ten years, we'll be the ones arranging the Thanksgivings and the Christmases and the presents for some pack of kids we have yet to eke into existence.

These toddlers rolling around on the ground aren't going to be toddlers for long, are they?

I think the older you get, the more funerals and family get-togethers you have, the more you understand that you are one little paint smudge in a larger Monet painting, and you are a very important paint smudge, but one of many smudges nonetheless.

Those who are born will be those with school pictures that are passed around and oo-ed and ahh-ed over. Those with school pictures will go to college and it will be said of them, "I can't believe they're in college!" Those in college will graduate and find someone, and they'll be those with weddings. Those who are married will perhaps have some children who are of course born and go through the whole cycle, just behind their parents. Parents become grandparents, grandparents become old, and the cycle continues.

And somewhere in all of that, we find time to write our stories.