What to do while waiting for edits redux.

What to do while waiting for edits redux.  While I’m waiting for something, I like to keep busy with something else.  It’s the best substitute for patience I’ve ever found.  When people see me crocheting, they often comment on my great patience.  The truth is, I’m not patient at all.  I have to keep busy, or I go crazy and my anti-rage med threatens to fail.  One of my dreams is to organize a readers’ theatre Shakespearean group while waiting in line.  Then all of us would be entertained.  When my anti-rage med threatens to fail, I visualize a huge image of that med projected on the wall above everyone or I engage those ahead of me and behind me in conversation.  People love to talk about their pets.  I discovered a fellow cat fancier just the other day.  Discussing our pets probably ranks equally with talking about our kids or grandkids.  My sainted mother taught me how to engage in small talk.  

Currently I am trying to decide whether to work on my autobiography, which is on a back burner, or on a story about Merlin the magician, which I gave his original Cymric spelling to, Myrrddin,  which is on another back burner.  And of course, there’s coloring, which I do when the words won’t come in either narrative. Also I’m getting ready for the main NaNoWriMo which begins in a few days.  I need to get my research and playlist shipshape.  

I’m pretty excited about my story this time around.  It’s a story I’ve been trying to write since I was 16, about a girl who goes back in time twice, the first time to 1920s Chicago, and gets involved with gangsters, the 2nd time to World War II with a mission, to get the Japanese-Americans out of the internment camps and into uniform to fight in Europe against the Nazis and the Fascists.  Then she comes back and has to cope with the results of her time travel.  This time around, I’m adding a 3rd time travel trip to 1949, to prevent the Vietnam war.

There’s an old song from the 60s that I’m reminded of right now, “Countin’ flowers on the wall, that don’t bother me at all, playin’ solitaire ‘til dawn with a deck of fifty one.  Smokin’ cigarettes and watchin’ Captain Kangaroo, Now don’t tell me I’ve nothin’ to do.”  I don’t smoke or count flowers on the wall.  I’ve way more creative things to do than the guy in the song does.  If worst comes to worst, I can always take out my paper dolls and design clothes for them. I find it a great pity that just when a  kid learns to color inside the lines, and fairly accurate rendering of the flow of fabric, she must give up paper dolls in favor of more mature pursuits.  It was paper dolls that got me interested in fashion, and in the history of costume.

Then there is the library book I’m reading, continuing my reading of Don Quijote de la Mancha, written by Miguel de Cervantes, who was a 17th century author, and the novel is a broad parody of the romances about knights, damsels in distress, and the derring-do that were popular during the Siglo del Oro, the Age of Gold that occurred after the Spanish were defeated by the English in 1588.  I find that reading it in the original 17th century Spanish is enough of an intellectual challenge that I can stave off senility for a few more years.