Category Archives: Monkey Miscellany

17 July 2012

Pathetic Much?

By thefallenmonkey
Books to be returned...

(Photo credit: hashmil)

Go figure my last post on “productivity” should date back to over a month ago. Hm. Sure, we writers don’t have to write every day, but maybe we bloggers should post more frequently than every six weeks. Sorry, folks. Thanks for sticking with me if you’re still out there. 🙂

As per usual, I’m full of excuses, excuses. Back-to-back writing and editing projects have proven more of a workload than I’d anticipated, and my personal writing projects have suffered for it. And summer is not proving helpful so far as hosting and traveling has predictably kicked into high gear. One unanticipated trip I recently took was home to Chicago—a force larger than myself compelled me to go, I think, as I couldn’t stop dreaming night after night about going there and hugging my family. Waking up was never so tragic. So thank you, frequent flyer miles.

The price I paid for that, though, was the hectic situation that was returning just before taking in another visitor, a former student of mine whom I’d taught as a freshman in high school and will now be a sophomore in college. But it was so special to have that time together and introduce her to the literary and historical wonders of London, and we experienced a phenomenal performance of Les Miserables last night. As she departs for Chicago today, I leave for Paris tomorrow for a week-long working holiday—or “worliday,” as one journalist so obnoxiously put it, considering that, to me, the concept of “working holiday” is obnoxious in itself. Yet, alas, often necessary. At the very least, my husband and I will finally have an easy enough getaway for just the two of us (perhaps sipping a little absinthe in a few old Hemingway haunts) while still keeping on top of real life.

And THEN we return to the Olympics. Tickets to volleyball, basketball, and track & field, two of which my in-laws are coming in town to view as well. After a week hosting them in London, we’ll travel with them a week in Istanbul. Another worliday, I expect. Then two weeks after that this selfish bastard finally caters to someone other than herself by volunteering a few days in southern England for Honeypot, a children’s charity that provides respite breaks for child carers—i.e., gives some semblance of childhood to those who’ve had to grow up too fast. I’m also initiating the process for a potential return to the classroom this fall as an English teacher, short or long-term TBD. Well, all of it TBD, really. Just exploring options.

Amidst all of this, I can’t determine when. To. Write. It’s awful, I know, and maybe I should have my “writer” membership card revoked. But you know what I’ve been escaping to in the meantime, whenever I can catch a break? Books. I’ve been reading again and reading often and reinforcing if not rediscovering my love of it. It helps me as a writer, sure, as reading does for us all, but it’s also become a source of great comfort in view of that challenging writing and publication process. As long as reading books still gives me joy, I won’t despair if I myself never publish one. As long as I can appreciate the talent of other writers, I won’t lament if my own talent never develops to their calibre. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying—oh, HELL no! I love writing, and I still have characters and situations swarming around in my head that need a place on the page. I’m set to begin querying again on manuscript #1 and hope I can get manuscript #2 ready for it, too, by autumn. My writing life goes on, that’s for sure; I’m simply saying it won’t die an agonizing death if doesn’t go beyond my computer.

On a side note, the small publisher I edit for has just seen one of its titles make the New York Times Best Seller list and another climb to an #11 Amazon rank in its category on Kindle (#23 for the print book), which is exciting and promising for the joy I reap from editing as well!

“So long as books are open, minds can never be closed,” Ronald Reagan once said, and so long as my mind is open and life full, there will always be ideas for what to write next.

7 Comments | posted in Monkey Miscellany, Musings on Reading, Musings on Writing

29 May 2012

Ahhh…Thanks. I Needed That.

By thefallenmonkey

Two little gems found their way into my Inbox today. Rather than me paraphrase their marvelously refreshing perspectives (no time), I’ll leave it to their words. But, really, as a writer, professional, and human being, if you value your time, priorities, and sanity in the least bit, please do follow these links to read both articles.

Because honestly, in the midst of a hectic week, I am shouting from the rooftops a big huge freaking THANK YOU for someone just effing saying what I’ve long insisted to myself yet have dismissed as lazy excuses. Amidst the humming neuroses of others, let’s fight the good fight to keep it real.

“Real Writers Write Every Day“ – from The Editor’s Blog

Excerpt:

You do not need to write every day to be a real writer.

Pilots don’t turn into non-pilots if they don’t fly for a day or a week. Surgeons are still surgeons after a week’s vacation.

There’s nothing magical about writing daily that endows the title writer yet takes it away if a writer doesn’t put pen to paper during a 24-hour period. Writers may be different from other folk, but writing is no wooey-wacky profession. You don’t have to give more to it than is required to do the job, to fulfill the contract, to finish the manuscript.

“Two Lists You Should Look at Every Morning“ – from the Harvard Business Review Blog Network

Excerpt:

[W]e try to speed up to match the pace of the action around us. We stay up until 3 am trying to answer all our emails. We twitter, we facebook, and we link-in. We scan news websites wanting to make sure we stay up to date on the latest updates. And we salivate each time we hear the beep or vibration of a new text message.

The speed with which information hurtles towards us is unavoidable (and it’s getting worse). But trying to catch it all is counterproductive. The faster the waves come, the more deliberately we need to navigate. Otherwise we’ll get tossed around like so many particles of sand, scattered to oblivion. Never before has it been so important to be grounded and intentional and to know what’s important.

Never before has it been so important to say “No.”

Hear, hear! Now I can exhale a bit.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Monkey Miscellany, Musings on Writing

3 March 2012

Invasion of the Sock Monkeys

By thefallenmonkey

Milo, I so see this being the cover of your next sci-fi novel.

OMG. As in Oh, Monkey Greatness.

I just found out (seriously, two minutes ago) that the Sock Monkey originated in Rockford, Illinois, which is but an hour from my hometown. And this weekend is the Sock Monkey Madness Festival there! Wow, so there’s validation that there are people out there even kookier than me.

According to Rockford’s Midway Village website (www.midwayvillage.com):

The Nelson Knitting Company of Rockford manufactured and sold Rockford Red Heel work socks from 1932 to 1992 which were used during the Great Depression to create a folk art sock monkey stuffed toy. Aware of the sock monkey craze, Nelson Knitting acquired the patent for the sock toy and included the sock monkey doll pattern with each pair of Rockford Red Heel Socks sold starting in the early 1950’s.

Ahh, sock monkeys…the “fabric” of our lives…

How crazy that I never knew about this.

Er, no—what’s perhaps muy loco is that the two-day festivities include a Make-a-Monkey workshop, beauty pageant, Hall of Fame induction, and sock monkey hospital to repair the loved and weathered among the vintage sock monkey species. (I took my panda bear to one of those, actually, when I was a kid; she got sewn up by a nice little old lady who also wrapped the arm in a bandage. 🙂 This would indeed be the same panda I still hug at night from my RBU post, “CSI: Chronically Sentimental Individual,” if you’d like some more back-story on that aspect of my dementia.)

So, as Rockford evidently becomes “Sockford” this weekend, I am celebrating this newfound connection I have with the sock monkey—and lamenting that I’m missing out on stuffing one by just one weekend! Perhaps I’ll have to content myself with installing laser beams into the eyes of the one I already have, as inspired by the poster…

8 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Monkey Miscellany

24 February 2012

It’s in the Cards…

By thefallenmonkey
Seven of Coins from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck

7 of Pentacles from the Rider-Waite tarot deck – Image via Wikipedia

So, reading The Night Circus has gotten me wanting to run away with the circus. Unfortunately, the best I could offer as a contortionist would be the Wheel or Plough poses from yoga—although let it be known that I did fly through the air with the greatest of ease a few years ago, swingin’ (as all good monkeys ought to) upside down from a trapeze and doing a couple catches at a one-day Chicago trapeze school. Anyway, I’ve decided it’s probably safer for me to just sit indoors at a table, so I’ve started studying the tarot. I’m not saying I’m convinced of the fortune-telling aspect of it, but my inner-Jung that believes in a universal consciousness is positively fascinated with the archetypes represented among the cards, as well as how tarot can be used simply as a means of personal meditation. It centers the mind on an aspect of life to reflect on, brainstorming proactive ways in which to drive one’s own future, to the extent one can. This is useful for a scatterbrain like me whose overly analytical mind will otherwise spiral in any number of directions at any given time. I swear, it’s like the hamster cage at the pet store with all my little thought-rodents sprinting (and going nowhere) inside their wheels.

Anyways, the only reason I bring this up is because I can’t help but share that the day after I wrote my previous post, “The Roads Newly Taken,” I drew the Seven of Pentacles card (also known as Seven of Coins), pictured above. In that previous post, I had literally written “Am in pausing-to-take-stock mode” and “I just need to stop now and then to assess the situation“; I also said I was “placing the needle back on my same broken record.”

What a nice supplement, then, provided by this card, which means (according to but one source among several that I’ve taken to cross-referencing):

“The Seven of Coins is the card of assessment. It represents those plateaus along the path of life – the times when we can and need to rest and take stock of where we are and what we should do next. It is not uncommon for us to find ourselves in a rut in life, banging our heads up against the same brick wall and trying out the same solution to the same problem. […]

If we are to grow as human beings and not be content with revisiting the same plateau all our lives we need to make sure we are making good and conscious choices. These choices need to reflect where we are in our life today – our feelings, dreams, ambitions – and not our goals from yesterday or those unconsciously passed on to us from our parents. It is fine to drop once-held ambitions which are no longer relevant to us. This does not equate to a failure if we did not complete these goals but rather a success that we are able to be honest with ourselves and move forward in a more truthful way. Perhaps our dreams are now more ambitious as we realize we are stronger than we previously thought, or maybe they are less as we feel the need to slow down. Either way, the most important element to consider is the truth derived from sincere and honest contemplation of who we are now and what we need or want for ourselves at this time.

Huh.

8 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Monkey Miscellany, Tarot Journal

22 February 2012

The Roads Newly Taken

By thefallenmonkey

[Warning: The rocky trail ahead is just me placing the needle back on my same broken record. Am in pausing-to-take-stock mode, and writing is my way of therapeutically reflecting through it, so please don’t feel you need to keep reading if you’ve already heard all this crap. :)]

It’s been a lot of work and reinvention of my professional self this last decade and a half, what with making the Finance-to-Education career move and then the USA-to-UK geographical move that abruptly demanded I figure things out all over again…just when I’d had it all sorted. I was happy as an English teacher, truly, and gave a go at teaching in London. But let’s just say I know the joy to be found in teaching, so when I found myself treading water through an unpleasant situation that didn’t let me fully be who I am, well, signs to move on simply don’t come clearer than that.

I was devastated having my professional playing field leveled on moving overseas, but I find myself looking back on these last three and a half years—which had always felt rather random and drifting—and seeing what I’ve been doing in that time is finally starting to gel. I think. Even when I was teaching and loving it, my primary love for the English language and literature that I instructed naturally fed my dreams of also becoming a writer and editor. So, I’ve been biding my time writing web content and editing fiction on a freelance basis, and I’m on the cusp of finishing a second novel. And while my editing to date has been for the same small publisher, I’ve just been approached for my first outside gig and am thinking of shaping that independent role into something more official.

Baby steps.

The querying and job-searching continues as I seek to ultimately become a published writer and full-time editor. It’s humbling to compete with so many talented writers likewise seeking publication, and it’s humbling to compete with young graduates for the same in-demand entry-level jobs. I’m 35 with a Masters degree and CFA and have applied for an unpaid internship, for cripes sakes. It’s fair to say I officially checked my ego at the door in 2008. And now I’m wriggling and fussing a bit, as we newborns will do while we wait for our sight to sharpen and learn new uses for our arms, legs, and minds.

But in the meantime, best thing I can do is keep cultivating mah skillz, yo—hoping they pave a relevant path toward what I suppose is shaping into a third freaking career. And London itself just continues being its wonderful, literary self for me to absorb and enjoy, introducing me to Charles Dickens’s great-great-great-granddaughter, Lucinda, last week and various publishing professionals last night in the very space Sir Laurence Olivier dressed and rehearsed for his stage debut. Ahh, London. I love ya.

So can you tell I’m just feeling out my sense of validation here? Glad I warned ya? Not to worry—I’m very content. I just need to stop now and then to assess the situation…because I work just as hard now as I ever did, but without the compensation or recognition. Fine, I guess I’m not money-motivated. But I’d also always been one of those people who functioned best within the straight-and-narrow, doing everything I was supposed to with clear goals in mind. MY goals, fending for myself. And then I became someone’s wifey. And then supporting his goals resulted in resetting mine (no small feat when you’re as stubbornly independent and feisty as me and will rage against anything threatening your autonomy and inner life). And now that my never-expected-to-have-to-set-new-goals-so-soon new goals are finally clarifying, the road to reach them, I see, is a little less marked and a lot more meandering than what I’m used to. In fact, it looks to me like there are multiple pathways still lying ahead, some flat, some steep, some wide, and some narrowly hugging a cliffside. All of them, though, appear to converge on the horizon…so I guess it’s time for me to just stuff my yapper with a protein bar and take a hike. 🙂

13 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Monkey Miscellany

10 February 2012

Tumble 4 Ya Blogfest!

By thefallenmonkey

In offering my two pence to the Tumble 4 Ya Blogfest (for which we’re supposed to share our big crush of the 1980s), here goes…

Let me just say, I was a teenage bridesmaid in my sister’s wedding.

Not quite 16, but close enough (15).

And it was no longer the ’80s, but close enough (’91).

It was all close enough to the scenario I’d dreamed of since I was a little girl, when I was so certain I’d grow up to find true love in high school.

I’d always have a crush on an older, utterly inaccessible senior.

I’d always watch him when he wasn’t noticing in my shy, gawky, and dorky way in the hallways, stalking his locker and envying whatever girls he talked to.

I always believed that maybe, just maybe he was watching me, too, when I wasn’t looking.

So far, it was all going to plan so, so well.

You see, once my sister was married (“Married?” “Mellied! Geez…”), I was going to exit the church behind her and the rest of the bridal party yet strategically hesitate by myself in the doorway when, there in front of me, the cars would part to reveal only Him. Leaning against his lipstick-red sports car. Wearing that sweater vest.

And then I’d say, “Me?”

And then he’d say, “Yeah, you.”

And then Thompson Twins would fill the air…

*

*

Uh, yeah, that didn’t happen. But that didn’t mean I’d ever, ever stop crushing on my True ’80s Love…the one who’d completely warped my concept of romance and made me rue the day I’d ever watched a John Hughes movie. I speak of none other than… [drumroll]

* * * JAKE RYAN * * *


I hear these days that actor’s a carpenter, married with children. Ah, c’est la vie… I ended up moving on to marry a Ryan and have a beloved godson Jake, so I guess I got my “Jake Ryan” after all if I really want to grasp at that dream.  🙂

Sending a shout-out to Nicki Elson, Suze, and M.Pax for hosting this, like, totally rad blogfest – it’s been gnarly to the max!

So who did YOU tumble for in the 1980s?

*

27 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Monkey Miscellany

28 September 2011

And now a word from our sponsors…

By thefallenmonkey

* * BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP * *

This blog is temporarily on hiatus.

The Primate was at first preoccupied with October travels,
and now with November NaNoWriMo.

(see sidebar widget to track my progress…
…and have mercy. I joined 12 days in.) 

Please stay tuned for The Fallen Monkey’s winter season line-up, though, when it returns to its regular schedule.

Same Monkey Time. Same Monkey Channel.

*

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26 September 2011

On Priorities, Parks, Parents, and Publishing

By thefallenmonkey

Yowzah. Sorry I fell out of the tree again. These have been weeks of prioritizing, and unfortunately if I’m to make any blogging a priority, it’s gotta be the one I actually get paid for. 🙂 In the meantime, while I haven’t been the most attentive commenter on your blogs lately, I’m glad to see you all are keeping busy and doing well, too!

I do finally want to pop in this week, though, before going on hiatus yet again. I’ll be heading Stateside in a few days for a brief visit to my sweet home Chicago before then undertaking the grand road-trip with my parents to Orlando for our big family Disney World vacation three years in the making. We made this pilgrimage many-a time as kids, but we started the tradition of returning with spouses and grandkids ten years ago. This is the first time since that all of us siblings are able to make it again. So factor in me, me mum and dad, two brothers, one sister, two sisters-in-law, one brother-in-law, six nephews, two nieces, and my brother’s parents-in-law, and our grand total is nineteen. Could be an even twenty if my husband’s eleven weeks of grad school this year didn’t suck away all his work holiday and then some. 😦 In any case, leave it to my parents to be the only ones choosing to drive, so I’m making the journey with them to help out—they’ve had a rough year of health issues, and it’s the least I can do when I’m otherwise missing out on everything, the bad and the good, while living abroad. Time to shift my priorities to others, finally.

And who am I kidding. I love this stuff. Fire up the Family Truckster! Cracker Barrel, here we come! Marty Moose! Marty Moose! Marty Moose!

“This is no longer a vacation—it’s a quest. It’s a quest for fun.”

In literary news, where my freelance editing work goes, I’ve wrapped up the developmental edit of a very fun YA paranormal novel so will await whatever the managing edit may throw back our way. And the second novel I’d edited has just been published! The author has been making a great effort at social media, so it looks like it’s doing well so far. Three-for-three wonderful authors to work with [knocks wood for next time]. And as for my own manuscript, I’ve been revisiting ms #1 after some time away from it and reckon my next step is consulting with a professional editor—I’ve been really envying the process I go through with my authors and would like to see my story get all buffed-n-polished, too. Regardless, I need to get more momentum behind that one; I admittedly haven’t been trying very hard to query. Dare I say it, I think I’ve settled into contentment with just the process of bringing it into being—I’ve entertained the hell out of myself!—so, where priorities go, getting it published has almost come to feel secondary. Or is that what all the unpublished say when they’re in massive denial? 😉

In any case, I’ll try to pop back at least a couple more times this week before the *Disney magic* beckons me…

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Monkey Miscellany

2 September 2011

Room with a View

By thefallenmonkey

All good things must come to an end. *sigh*

I have more to write about my week, but for today as I make my return journey to London, I’ll just pay homage to the charming B&B that I called home the last five nights.

The table where I wrote.

The view of St. Austell Bay and the hills of Tywardreath, Par, and Fowey on down to Gribbin Head.

My sweet lil' room, where I secluded myself when not hiking out in them thar hills.

This is the heart of Daphne du Maurier country, which was no coincidence when I planned this trip. In the posts to follow, I’ll document my literary pilgrimage of sorts.

But for now, I heave another *sigh* in departing this peaceful region where the farmland meets the sea, the air doesn’t turn my snot grey, and strangers actually reciprocate friendly smiles and hellos. (Gasp! Can you imagine that, Londoners?! Looking up from the pavement and breaking through your barriers of fear and preoccupation to meet someone’s eye?! The horror…the horror…). Home-made and jarred marmalade, crisp vegetables straight from the local earth, and eggs straight from the local chickens’ va-jay-jays, purchased on the honor system at the end of a farmer’s driveway. Coastal paths with something new around every bend and questionable signage that lets you get good and lost a few times in the fields and woods, all in the spirit of things.

Cornwall agrees with me.

And my hosts have been most gracious, making me feel part of one big happy household, complete with Tilly the Terrier and the more elusive Barney the Cat and Charles the Chihuahua. Even a pair of other guests nearly brought me to tears (I’m serious) with their pure and utter loveliness. So blessed. So happy. So coming back.

16 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Monkey Miscellany

31 August 2011

From Graphic Leftovers to Graphic Tees

By thefallenmonkey

After all my woe-is-me-ing in my last post, I SWEAR I’m accomplishing all that I’d set out to here in the rolling hills and seaside cliffs of Cornwall. I am writing, and I am hiking. Lots of both.

But excuuuse me that my B&B happens to have WiFi, so I happen to be hopping on the internet occasionally to check email and look things up for writing research. Well, the random cyber-navigation of said “research” has just now led me via Urban Dictionary to a novelty T-shirt site, where I’ve enjoyed a little bit of earned procrastination.

I’m thus compelled to pop in here and share with you in quasi-realtime that I have just read and enjoyed this:

And that this next one has me almost reaching for my credit card:

That is all. Back to writing.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Monkey Miscellany