Introducing ECro Does Wrong

Hey you guys! All sixteen of you! Plus whoever is trolling the blog dealie on blogger that lets you blog hop. Plus my stalkers. I really don't think I have any stalkers. But if I do, and you're reading this, good job. I didn't even have an inkling about your stalking. You must be a really great stalker. You should message me and we should hang sometime. I like people that pursue their passions adeptly.

Anyway, I'm writing about my writing. But not the kind of writing that I'm doing on this blog. This kind of writing belongs on another blog. The blog is called ECro Does Wrong. No, I won't explain the title. You'll have to read my other blog to get it. Please read my other blog to get it. You reading my inane ramblings does the same thing for me that clapping does for Tinkerbell. It makes me aggressive, pouty and prone to chasing men several times my size in both height and weight. Eww. And now the mental picture arrives.

I think I'm sort of funny. This blog will have the bulk of funny stuff on it. And I swear on my posts. Lots. I mean, I attest to their validity as posts but I'm also going to say bad words. Raise your virtual hands if you like to hear Erica swear! Of course you do! Too bad you can't actually hear me swear over a blog. I'm open to performing unplugged readings of my posts to intimate groups of literary elites if the money is right. Just message me. Especially my stalkers. Just have dip there. I like dip.

Um, okay, who likes to read swearing and pretend that it's coming out of my mouth?

All of you that said yes to the above question, give ECro Does Wrong a little something something with your times and affections. And yes, adding -s to words makes them funnier by rights of me acting dumber.

Now go!

ecrodoeswrong.blogspot.com

Maui, Meet Writer's Block. Writer's Block, Meet Maui.

This is going to be a funny post. Or rather, I intend for it to be funny. You might not find it funny. Anyway, I'll shut up and just write it. But I'm warning you all now, because so far my posts have been all writerly and all serious and stuff. It's been me at the laptop with my hand against my forehead full of the writer woe that plagues a bunch of us. Specifically writers. I've been woe-ing it up, drinking too many Sprites and whiskeys (yes, I pluralized whiskey) plagued by writer's block. Writer's block is lame. If you haven't had it, don't get it. Because that shit is contagious. So everyone stay the hell away from me. Thanks.

So I came to Maui. No, wait, that's not right. I didn't actually high-tail it to Maui because I had writer's block. I ran away from you all so you wouldn't get my disease. They used to have a leper colony just off the coast of Maui. It was fitting. You're welcome.

No, I came to Maui because I wanted to make fun of tourists. I like doing that sometimes. Makes me feel good about my days in two-dollar-a-night rooms in Thailand with their cold showers that consist of a kitchen sprayer you can use either sitting on the toilet OR standing over the toilet. All the Maui tourists make me feel hard. I watch them with their fancy shell leis and their wads of brochures and I think, I'm badass. I'm so hard. But if I'm so hard, then why do I have writer's block? Writer's block shouldn't affect someone that can both shower and shit at the SAME TIME. It doesn't seem right.

But it's affecting me all the same. So tourists are good fodder for material, right? You can watch them get on the tour bus and off the tour bus and pretend they are complaining about their feet hurting or about the poi not being purple enough at the last luau. I mean, that's gold for a writer. Pure gold! Oh, those inspiring tourists with their orthopedics and matching Hawaiian print clothes (they sell them for the whole family at Hilo Hattie. I kid you not. You and your spouse and your kids can match on purpose and be pretty targets for some dude with a mullet who is high on ice to mug you all and kick your children after you leave Bubba Gump's Shrimp Co. in Lahaina). Pure plot gold!

No. The answer is no. Tourists can't cure writer's block, no matter how you dislike them. And the worst ones, the ones that make me want to write "taro is the Hawaiian's potato" over and over again until my fingers split rather than look at them are the Honeymooners.

"Awwww," you might say. "How romantic." Stop it. Stop it right now or leave my blog. No cooing over the honeymooners. The ladies all have fake plumeria blossoms in their hair and the men wear Tevas with socks. They don't deserve your lauding. So stop.

Besides, I don't want to use them for prompts because my main characters in my latest novel are having a rough time of things. Two things are plaguing them. First, they are married. Second, one of them was kidnapped and shot up with heroin and the other is talking to people that aren't there. They are are as far from being on a honeymoon as I am from Idaho. Jesus, that was a shit comparison.

So watching couples wait with hands clasped for a woman at The Pearl Factory to pry a pearl out of an oyster that is only there because an irritating bit of sand was stuck in the poor mollusk and left there for years so that some newlyweds from Minnesota could have a keepsake doesn't really play into my tale of a dystopian future where my characters are unraveling and loosing it all. Because it's not an apocalyptic future for clams and other two-shelled sea creatures. Then it would be pure gold!

But it's enough to annoy the shit out of me.

And hey. I'm writing.

And as a writer, I lie. A lot. I didn't come to Maui to make fun of the tourists. I came because I could. And sometimes that's all it takes. Writers need to get out there and live so they have things to write about. Things like Maui's dramatic waterfalls on the road to Hana, or the way the amorous Humpback whales propel their bulk out of the ocean because they understand the value of play more than most humans. But those would be pretty things to write about. And I'm in the mood to bitch.

Besides, I'm blocked or something. Better go get some more writing fodder. Better find me a sunset or a lilikoi or a place to watch the surfers. I do this for all of us, for all of our states of health. Once again, you're welcome.

Room to Write

I'm not one of those writers that can write just anywhere. I envy those types. They are the ones with laptops balanced on their thighs, riding the motions of subways or the ones that sit, tapping away with ear buds in, stopping to sip at a bit of coffee, while a cafe full up on humanity hums around them.

Put me in those chaotic situations and the last thing I want to do is write. What I do instead is take in the people, digest their features and words, catalog away the things that might do well in one of my stories. When life is too darn ripe, I absorb, not create.

So I need my own space. I've had it in the form of a tiny desk pushed into a closet, sans doors, for two years now. My hard Ikea chair, my too-high tabletop, these things have seen me through hundreds of thousands of words.

But there is that pesky urge for more. You know it as well as I. More lemon cake, more fireworks, more expansiveness.

So I'm about to move out. Move out to a room of my own, one constructed by my loved ones and myself. We started the room in August. It didn't matter that we'd never built a tiny house from the foundation up. All that mattered was that I needed room to write. So we made it happen.

Paint is going on the walls. Soon the floor will be put in, a desk built that's just the right height to keep the tendinitis in my wrists placated. I'll put in a light over the desk, something that puts out what they call "daylight" light. Something that will mimic the sun for me at 4am, when my muses are just waking up, poking me to stay with them, lifting up my eyelids with the tip of a Sharpie pen.

End of a year. End of writing in a space that's been kind to me; still kind even though I've outgrown it. A new year will see my room finished and me in it. I'll put characters through the motions of life in that space. I'll be a character through the motions of life in that space.

Until I feel the call to write somewhere new. I can't discount this. The craftiness of The Future can never be discounted. Maybe I will become one of those transient authors that carry their stories with them everywhere and steal minutes from the craziness around them, turning it into tranquility and then creativity. Maybe I'll get better at dissolving myself into my worlds instead of living in my own world. But the question is, what is the difference between my own world and the worlds I create? A fine line that one. Thick as one of my hairs.

It's a question I can't answer, no matter where I write my life or live my writing.

For now, it's enough that I just have the room to figure it all out.

Early Bird Illustration

Cool peeps, listen up. I'm stoked to be working with one of the best artists in Boise, Rick Walter. We are working on a graphic novel together. We are also, more immediately, working on a weekly webcomic. I'll let you know when that gets pushed out in January.

The series is about children from a place called Dalaman and the naughty, spectacular things they do. Check out the link below to see some of his work on the cityscape.

If the humors are rising, let them. It's pretty exciting stuff.

Early Bird Illustration

What does she write?

Well, she writes about stuff. Lots of stuff. Some of it is even fun. She writes at a desk meant for eating on, in a red room meant for making music in. She sits in a green Ikea swivel chair, on a flowery chair cushion her mom bought her. And she writes. And some of it is good. Some of it stinks.

Most of it is indeterminate in nature. Hopefully someone like you will give it the thumbs up or thumbs down one of these days.

Sometimes she writes blog posts completely devoid of content. Like this one.