The Olympics are coming

I can't wait for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC to start tomorrow.  For one thing, live sporting events are occurring in my time zone.  I never realized how New York centric we are until moving from there to the west coast.  I will not complain (in this post  at least) about 10am Sunday football.


Back to the Olympics...  Another thing, these are the winter games and I vastly prefer the winter games to the summer ones.  Sorry track and field, your javelins may be fun, and your runners may be lightning fast, but come on!  No way you are beating out alpine skiing, speed skating (Woot Apolo!), and yes, even curling oh you strange sport you.  Need I even mention hockey?  (Why doesn't Washington have a professional hockey league?)


Now, I am psyched to be watching the Olympics, but a little disappointed that they are happening 3 hours from home and I won't be there in person.  I'll get over it in the next decade or so.  


This year, the two weeks surrounding the Olympics are also playing host to the Pen Olympics, an event happening by the fantastic advice givers Alicia and Theresa over at Edittorent.  Since I am distracted by the internet more often than not, I plan on giving the friendly competition my all.  These chapters don't edit themselves after all.


Go, USA! USA! USA! 


Things that distracted me on the internet:
~  Reading about the Kubler-Ross model.  Since this is technically research for a short story I'm working on, does this count as distraction or accomplishment?
~  Believe it or not, I have another possible accomplishment distraction (can I use those together like that?) - body language descriptions.  Sometimes a shrug can mean different things depending on what body part is doing it.  That's all I'm saying on that, here.


Non-internet distractions:
~  My darling two year old came downstairs with a sliver of paper wadded in her adorable hands, quite proud of herself.  So was I until I saw she had shredded a 1/4 of my working outline for my short story.  The outline I had handwritten and chose not to type because the story would be done in the time it took.  Or not.  Many thanks to scotch tape and my middle daughter for not decimating that roll hidden in the back of the drawer.


Accomplishments:
~  Come on, the distracted has to count today.  Okay, 500+ words on the short.  With last night that makes it half done.

And the underdog takes it...

 I'll admit, I was cheering on the Colts.  I like Peyton Manning, so boyish, out there doing his thing.  Blue clashing against gold, the heartland versus the big easy.  And, as far as football goes, the game was pretty exciting.  Good thing since the commercials weren't anywhere close this year.

The first half of the game went predictably, at least for me.  The Saints made some headway but it was the Colts' game.  I sat through a decent halftime show (I do like the Who, think the halftime show needs to be a little less "safe") and browsed a few writing blogs while watching from the corner of my eye.

A funny thing happened in my complacency.  The Saints started to win.  No, I didn't jinx the Colts through my tv, but I had counted them out.  Counted them as trying hard but not hard enough.  Oh well, maybe next year or something.  The onside kick first took me by surprise.  When Tracy Porter ran that ball for nearly 75 yards for that touchdown that put the Saints up into untouchable lead, I sat up and paid attention.  What I really wanted to know was what coach Payton said to those boys in that locker room.

So - how does this tie into writing?  Well, I could go all metaphor on you.  But I won't.  Some writers identify with the Colts; strong, sure, polish gets the job done.  Some of us identify with the Saints; the underdogs, flounder a little in front then get it together in the back end when it matters.  Because all of our hard work on our writing boils down to what we send out into the world.  How we get it done in the end.

Winning as an underdog is still a win.  Congratulations Saints and writers who are getting the job done. 

Things that distracted me on the internet:

~  Twitter.  Great group of talented writers hanging out at #amwritingparty and #amwriting 

~  The Amazon/MacMillan kerfluffle.  The only dog I have in this fight at the moment is my love for my Kindle.  Better minds than mine have already weighed in and I spent days sorting out the what from the what.  I think the buy buttons are back.

Non-internet distractions:

~  Super Bowl 44.  Next up Olympics 2010.

Accomplishments:

~  6 critiques done for writing group.  No writing/revising for me on Sun, but another 1500 words done on Wishful Thinking.