I Left My Brain Somewhere…

By G. Parker

I've decided, upon contemplation, that I don't have much brain matter.

Oh, I'm sure the cranial cavity is full of the gray stuff, but what I mean is that there's nothing inside of it. There's no density or solidity to the mass. You've heard of the term 'air head', there is simply too much air and not enough thought. I never would have used the term regarding myself, but if the shoe fits, wear it, right? My guess is the brain fairy sucked mine out like all the other kids at 13 but when I was an adult and she put it back, I was busy having children and most of it just leaked right back out.

Take a couple of weekends ago, for instance. I was fortunate to be one of the many of our blog group to attend the LDStorymakers conference in Provo. My husband came with me and took notes in a couple of the classes. I took reams of notes, in fact, I typed most of them on my handy little Palm Pilot (which I prefer greatly over the AlphaSmart).

We got home, and I was bursting with new story ideas. He was full of editing ideas. See the difference? While I know editing is necessary to every story and everything a writer does, it doesn't like to stick in my brain. The gray matter has too many other things filling it up, and simply pushes the editing stuff out.

I'm glad that we have paper, emails, and files to keep all this information together; otherwise I would totally be lost. It took me a couple of days to figure out how to get the notes off my Palm Pilot, let alone try and go over them. We were given so much information it was mind boggling.

One of the instructors, the world famous Jeff Savage, let us email him so that he could send his outlines for the Query class and the Outlining class. But have I taken the time to go through them? No, I've been too busy working and writing. Sigh. As a result, my brain matter isn't getting much denser, and if I don't start reading and studying the things that help my writing, my novels aren't going to get much depth to them either.

So, if you see a piece of gray matter floating past you in the air, grab it – it might just be mine and I'm really trying to keep hold of what's left.