I Never Drove a Bulldozer

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. William Shakespeare

Did old age sneak up on you? Me neither. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know the difference between freckles and liver spots. We can either give in to the crushing depression caused by loss of beauty, strength, and bladder control, or laugh in the face of impending olditude.

I chose the latter when I released my new humor book, I Never Drove a Bulldozer / There’s a Hole in my Bucket List. Several agents critiqued the manuscript and gave me a double thumbs up, then went on to say that humor doesn’t sell. In the service to the newly old, and flying in the face of common sense wisdom, I decided to release my book anyway.

Topics to help ease you through the rigors of middle age:

• Unless you are the Unibomber, you’re going to find yourself in the company of other people. Our relationships can either evolve as we grow older, or we can get used to writing manifestos and cleaning litter boxes.
• Memory is one of the first things to go as we age. Be careful not to get arrested for vagrancy as you stand outside the Starbucks trying to remember the difference between a tall and a grande. Bail is normally set at the price of a tall.
• I’ve looked in enough three-way mirrors at the mall, that I’ve decided the only way to draw the eyes away from my trouble spots is to set fire to the dressing room.
• I’ve started planning on how to fill those empty hours once I retire. The senior center is planning an arts and crafts day teaching taxidermy. It’s BYORK (bring your own road kill).

You too can join the cool crowd and have a copy sitting on the back of your toilet seat. The book is available in paperback or Kindle at Amazon.

Karla Telega is the award winning author of Box of Rocks, a humorous mystery. She has edited two humor anthologies, blogs for Skirt.com Emagazine, and owns the Tart Cookies publishing imprint. She has dedicated her remaining years to making people laugh, losing twenty pounds, and avoiding periodontal disease. You can follow Karla on her humor blog at telegatales.com Click here to see all her listings on Amazon.

Distractions

Distractions: to a writer they can come in all sorts of things, good as well as bad. To me it means … Well, come to think of it, to me it means getting involved in things that have to do with writing, at least sideways, but it means I then do a lot less writing than I should/could. Hey, I’m not complaining, because those distractions are no more than exercises in writing.

How else would you call squeezing a full, head on, in your face marketing of your book in a mere *scurries off to check* Yes, just 140, one hundred and forty, characters to use in an eloquent way telling readers they should really buy our books.

Or keep up a consistent stream of entertaining blog posts that not only show how well you can write, but invites people (read potential readers of our books) to join our blogs and have our network of fellow indie authors on the ready to do the same. Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoy giving other writers a platform onto which they can showcase themselves and their books, but it is mighty distracting, not to say time gobbling.

And then I haven’t even mentioned the Book of Faces. Yes, my friends that one place where I seem to land in jail time and time again for being too friendly/connecting/sharing, while that is the reason I signed up on there. Good thing too, since I’ve found you bunch there. 🙂

Anyway, distractions or the digital kind aren’t all bad, but they can get the writer’s mind, not to say the panties, in a twist and the flow of the writing pace halted.

Shoot! I’ve not even mentioned real life! Can we just do away with that? Why do we need to go out and get groceries or prepare meals, or sleep, for that matter? Right, because if we let the body perish the mind shrivels too and no writing gets done at all. And let’s not forget about those surrounding us writers telling us not to spend all those hours on the computer, wanting attention and things done. Distracting us from what matters most when the story is on a roll and words are flowing freely.

Writing is what matters, but distractions aren’t all bad. There’s parties and nice conversations, which spark new ideas for stories. And there is the very human need to be distracted every now and then. At least I need those delightful distractions to keep me going.

Anyway, there you have it. A lot of words on a topic one can never get a single minded solution for. Because let’s face it, I can be hammering away on my keyboard while music blasts through the house while you might just need peace and quiet.

There is however probably one thing most writers seem to need, or rather two if I may believe my fellow Distractees, and that is coffee and chocolate. 🙂

Happy distractions and I’ll see you all while you’re distracted from writing. Right?