My Dark Writing Secrets in Blog Hop Form

Do you hear that sound? It's kind of like the "Jaw's" theme. Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, daaaaaa! Oh no, hide the children because the writing process blog hop has landed. That's right, My faux wife Leila of Threedresses.org nominated me to carry the blog hop torch.

Lelia and I have been fast friends since we bonded over not being at Comic Con to see the Firefly reunion. Sniff, no touching Caption Mal for us. At least we have our Jayne hats to keep us warm at night. You know you've met a kindred soul when all you have to do is look at them and suddenly find yourself laughing. Also she didn't even blink when I said, "Let's take some pictures with this stuffed lobster." It's a perfectly normal thing to do.

So let's get down to answering those questions in the style we've all become accustomed to.

Why do I write?
I write because deep down I must secretly like torturing myself.   To paraphrase Homer Simpson, "OK brain, I don't like you and you don't like me but let's work together to hammer out some blog posts." Sometimes my brain says, "Screw you, I'm going to catalog song lyrics and shop for shoes instead." Oh man shopping for shoes sounds good. I was just thinking about a pair of...... crap you distracted me again!

I'm not a chatty person by nature, which is probably why there are few things harder than writing. Sitting quietly, ignoring people while doing something crafty?  I'm can do that at pro levels.  Avoiding human contact for days? No problem.  Ahhh the sweet sound of silence only broken by my serger.  If you boiled it down, I'd say that 80% of my personality is "Miss Havisham only with fresh cake." That leaves the other 20% that wants to show stuff off and crack jokes.  So I write to appease that part. My brain gets battered into spiting out semi-coherent sentences and maybe something amusing if the stars align. I'm making this process sound awful and sometimes it is like pulling teeth. However if something is actually funny/informative/helpful to another person, then it was worth the effort it took to write about it. 

P.S. Once in a while writing is really easy and I sit at my computer gigging until my husband wants to know what's wrong me. I tell him I'm drunk.

What am I working on?
I'm working on accepting that I'll never be "top blog", but that I can work on making some parts of my blogging better. Sadly not the writing part cause I think being a mom has permanently damaged it. Good bye collage writing style that got me complements, hello disjointed ramblings. But hey we got Froggie and other assorted goofiness. Those things make me happy, cause I'm a big kid at heart.

I'm also working on planning my fall wardrobe...unsuccessfully.  My personal style seems to be in a state of flux, leaving me starting at patterns in a confused manner. I haven't the slightest idea what to make. Don't you hate when that happens? No matter what, I should stop procrastinating on making a new coat.  Hopefully my coat mojo returns from Canada with maple sugar candy and a handsome Mountie soon.

How does it differ from others of its genre?
Hacking and Fitting and Froggie, Oh My!  I have a small amount of guilt about my parents paying for a college education, only to have me stay home and bake copious amounts of cookies. Sorry Mom and Dad. Here have a plate of cookies.  At least I can share some of my knowledge with others through the blog.
Those parents also happen to both be teachers, so maybe some teaching germs infected me.  Ahhhh get it off, get it off! I swore I never teach anything!!!! ( I did swear this as a teenager. I also swore I'd never wear animal prints. Yeeeeeah.)

I didn't set out to make my blog different in these ways. It just sort of happened since I like hacking patterns, am super anal about fitting, and might be too crazy not to invent stories about Froggie.  Guess I'm "writing what I know." If that's the case then we really should discuss cake at some point of time. Froggie agrees to bake samples.

How does my writing process work?
Buckle up cause it's a multi-step process....

Step one - Get hopped up on chocolate.

Step two - Stare at blank screen for 45 minutes. Type and delete two sentences over and over again during that time.

Step three - Blank out and come back to find that there is a small usable paragraph written by some part of my brain that hasn't been damaged by mommy hormones. Or maybe written by Froggie, he tends to lurk around the keyboard.

Step four - Talk about fitting cause people like that and it usually produces a few more paragraphs.

Step five - Eat more chocolate, think "Be funny, be funny."  Wish I had cake.

Step Six - Stare at screen writing nothing for another hour. Then start padding with pictures.

Step Seven - Further pad with pop culture reference, stories about frog or weird things my husband says "Haa haa haa he said my dress was a T-shirt with a belt. That's gold Jerry, gold!"

Step Eight - Yell at Desmond to keep it down. God, is it too much to ask you to be completely silent for hours? (snort!)

Step Nine - Put comas everywhere.

Step Ten - Check for errors, miss half of them and hit publish. Celebrate by surfing the internet for pictures of Idris Elba

No Idris, don't hurt that beautiful sweater. Wait, maybe you should. Oh lord I'm so confused.

Anyway, time to rip my eyes away long enough to nominate two other bloggers to take part in the blog hop. I'll be tagging two ladies that I met because of the blog and then got to know through instagram and sew-a-longs.  

First up, Heather who blogs at "Where Heather grows."  Heather has been whipping out garments left and right this summer with out a frog assistant.  Maybe she has the pugs trained to hem.....if so I want some video.  I love her pink hair and seeing the same pattern remade in several different ways.

Secondly - Lisa G who blogs at "Notes from a Mad House Wife." Lisa is also a sewing maven and I love seeing what's she's working on in her instagram feed. Our fabric taste is somewhat similar, so I'm often drooling over a make before it's even finished.  If we were a similar size and build I'd be copying everything she sews.