Hereby Resolved

This is the second day of the New Year, and in my studio are four new drawings.

Once again drawing from my husband's great wisdom, I made use of the "Paint" program on my computer, and sketched some ideas for cartoons and cover art for the next book to appear on Lulu.com. For some reason, Paint appeals to me for sketching. Maybe it's because it doesn't make eraser fuzz for my studio carpet; maybe it's because Control+Z makes a shitty line disappear. It might even be because if I don't like what I've done, I just close the file without saving and no one can rummage around in the trash and say, "Why are you throwing this out? I thought it was cute!" (*cute* -- gaaagggggg)

So far, so good.

I have about 900 words on a new story; I have a novel to edit and expand (that will be the one that might get shopped around, so don't expect to see it on Lulu); there's a cookbook that needs to be written; and today while showering I had a sudden inspiration to scan all the dumb childish cartoons I did while in grade school and high school (and a couple done after college) and put them in a book on Lulu. The originals are in a lockbox in my studio closet, far from the sunlit air, and I worry about them. What if there was a fire? Should I have them in a safety deposit box? What if they fade, or mildew? Uploading them into a book through Lulu, I can have a copy on the shelf (no, dears, these are really stinko stupid kid comics, so they won't be available to the public) to remind me of those uninhibited flights of fancy, and the files will be there when Lillian's grandchildren need to download another copy of their ancestress' silliness.

Put the bag over your head, I'm about to talk about merchandising again.

There is no market whatsoever for the cartoons about Cat and Deb. Not one. But those cartoons are priceless, in spite of the fact that they would NEVER be picked up by a publisher. However, one of them was lost. It was a strip about Cat using an electronic helmet hair-dryer, like those used in beauty salons long ago. It short-circuited when Cat used it (as anything electronic did when Cat used it) and sent her into outer space.

Back in the mid-sixties, electronics were still exciting and outer space was, too. In sixth grade, we thought the strip was hysterically funny. I still get tears in my eyes thinking about it. Unfortunately, someone misplaced it. Whether it was me or the real life "Cat," or her mother, I don't know. But that stupid silly comic strip is gone. I don't want the rest of the comics to be "gone." Hence the book that I intend to pull together this year.

All our writings are like that. All our stories. They may be lame, they may be of interest only to ourselves, but I guarantee you there will come a day when your relatives or friends or decendants wonder about what you thought about, and if you don't write them down somewhere, the relatives and friends will be shit out of luck and wish they weren't.

Write, you hounds. Write about it all.

Happy New Year.