People Watching

On my way home from Vegas! Hurrah! I'm not a big city hustle and bustle kind of person - too much farm girl in my veins.

More characters from my people watching excursions. Last night I walked along the Strip and observed. I wonder how many of the crowd were natives and how many tourists. Years ago my younger sister lived in Vegas and told me that the natives don't come to the Strip unless they work there. But surely . . . not even for a show???

I passed an elderly Asian woman with her silver hair in a punk style with patches of pink. She was dressed entirely in pink, including her pink translucent walking cane. Tottering along in front of Treasure Island, she smiled as if in her advanced years she knew something the rest of us didn't, something special for her pleasure only.

I'm waiting in the airport now with a family seated behind me in the waiting area. Mom, Dad and two kids one of whom is obviously newly diagnosed with diabetes. The parents' conversation focuses on how many carbs in the pizza the kids want and how best to handle the injection the child will soon need. And can they have ice cream during their layover in Phoenix.

People at the slot machines - I wonder why they never look like they're having fun? No smiles. No expression of pleasure in their eyes. Just staring and repetitive motion as they insert coins and watch the wheels spin around.

Plenty of time to people watch. In our zeal for a direct flight, my co-worker and I ended up with an almost seven hour wait between the end of our conference and the flight home. What were we thinking?!

I'm here trying to tune out the incessant click and hum and chiming of slot machines enough to write. He's wandering the airport shops and most likely trying to figure out how to have just one more cigarette before he has to pass into the no-smoking zone.

But yet another people watching interruption. Another traveler desperate to connect with something other than the airport activity asking to borrow my power chord. Dead electronics are never any fun but especially in an airport waiting area.

What's the point of my ramblings today? I'm procrastinating with writing but, unlike my procrastination habits at home, today I have nothing else to do.

Back to writing.

Characters everywhere!

I'm in Vegas this week for a day-job related conference. If Orlando, or more specifically Disney World, is the happiest place on earth, Vegas must surely be the most . . . self-indulgent. After all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?

Melon breasted women with spray on tans and Barbie hair hanging on the arm of men older than Methuselah.

Middle-aged men sucking in the beer belly and preening in the mirrors in the elevator (I'm staying at the Mirage) checking teeth and smoothing well gelled hair combed back to cover the burgeoning bald spot.

Young women with their navels and butt cracks exposed, pouches of belly/hip fat bulging over the tops of too tight, too short skirts or too tight jeans. They walk swinging their hips and strutting through the casino - one with fur-topped, calf-high boots.

By the time this conference ends in two days, I'll have so much material for characters I won't know what to do!

I'm not a gambler and all the hyperactivity in Vegas puts me on sensory overload within a few hours after I walk out of the airport. But what a place to people watch! And I've got my Kindle to keep me company when the sessions get eye-gouging boring!

Kindle and the Age of the E-Book

Back when Amazon first released the Kindle, I did the happy dance to finally see an electronic reading device that was designed with the reader's experience in mind. Based on Jeff Bezo's comments during a Charlie Rose interview when the product launched, the Kindle was designed by readers for readers rather than by techies for readers. The design emphasis is on the device not getting in the way of the reader's experience of being pulled into the story.

When I got my tax rebate I just had to be a good citizen and do my part to boost the economy. So I looked at my wish list of expensive gadgets I think I just must have and ordered a Kindle. (It beat out a digital SLR camera that's more pricey but, hey, wait until income tax return time next year!)

The device arrived on my doorstep this week, just in time for an out-of-town trip. Of course, there's tons of stuff you can buy from Amazon to use on the device - books, magazines, newspapers, etc. I was a little disappointed that the selection of magazines, newspapers and blogs isn't as extensive as I expected. But all-in-all a good assortment.

I was even more thrilled to be able to download a book by one of my favorite e-book authors, *lizzie starr (published by Wings ePress). In the past, although I love her work, I've struggled to read her books because I had to sit at my computer to do so. Her Tales of the Double Keltic Triad series is wonderfully captivating (*lizzie I'm waiting for Toccata in Fuge!).

Downloading from a non-Amazon site took a couple of extra steps and a few pennies more but it's worth it if I can enjoy my favorite e-pubbed authors. I'm hoping more readers feel that way too and sales of e-books get a boost from Amazon and Kindle.

Are we thinking too small?

For those of us who've been pursuing publication without success for a long time now, why do we keep going? Romance Writers of America recently hosted three authors that took a long time to publish as part of their series of classes for RWA PROs. Two of the authors mentioned that they didn't break into print until they learned to understand the use of emotion in their work.

That stumbling block was in the back of my mind when I was reading Walking in this World by Julia Cameron. In reading her discussion about how we often rely on what is mirrored to us by others to find our way as creative people, I wondered how often we don't see something about our work - like the lack of emotion in the story - because it's not reflected in the mirror?

Cameron says "In this way [seeing only the part of our artist with which others are comfortable], quite inadvertantly we often get miniaturized. We often get fragmented."

So what's the moral of the story? Maybe it's that when we limit our exposure as artists to a homogenous group of people, we don't get an accurate view?

It's okay, but sometimes uncomfortable, to march to the beat of your own drummer.