God help me, I'm being drawn back into my memoir of growing up with the bipolar rocket scientist. Prose, prose, prose is calling me. On top of trying to finish a novel I started five years ago.
The thing that often gets me through the hard slogging is Anne Lamott's wise and funny Bird by Bird.
I found another humor piece on writing that cheered me along my prosey way: Lizzie Stark's blog on Fringe about the things slush pile readers dread finding. I'm sure I, too, have committed all these literary gaffes, except the one about having a musician as a character. Hmm, must consider that one. The contrarian in me likes it. No, wait! I have a minor character in my Italy novel who is a folk guitarist sitting outside the main church in Assisi selling lavender sachets and strumming his motley way through an easy life. Yes, I have committed that literary cliché too. All is well.
It is fun to look back on the heady days of the space race and Red Scare, the missile men and their (then) astonishing feats of putting things (and even monkeys) in orbit around our planet. And doing it all with slide rules!