Ok, so I wasn’t really the bad seed. Neither my mother nor my father ever called me that. I was just the difficult, determined, challenging, stubborn, and most importantly …. hard headed child. Yes, it came as no surprise to me. But to actually hear those words spoken. Out loud. In front of others.
Granted, my actions throughout my childhood pretty much speaks for itself.
The determination to have my way and defy my mother while I was still young enough to be in a walker just so I could touch a plant.
The refusal to let a single tear slip from my eyes when a slapping war ensued over an ashtray. (Again, I was at a young age.)
Move to my teenage years and my poor parents were dealing with sneaking out, breaking curfews, ditching school, falling grades, calls from the police, and dropping out of high school. Still, and this is by no means an endorsement for bad behavior, but I didn’t turn out so bad. It took many years, yet I know that the person I am today is a direct result of my parents guidance.
Sometimes, I guess being a bad seed isn’t so bad, if you have the right guidance with a dash of carefully administered love, you just might be like the ugly duckling and manage to transform into something those you love can be proud of. Hope I have managed to do that.
Now that I am done sharing my very round about thanks to my parents, the update is as follows-
1. I hereby forbid myself to work on any other story (outside of plotting) other than my paranormal WIP ~ Chosen. – Again, doing well I think. I have thought about my Young Adult Book, but no writing…but then again there has been little writing at all since the last update.
2. All current 117 pages of said story have been printed out. I realize this is working ass backwards, but I will use that to help fill in my plot structure and story arc. While doing so, I will not open up the original document and all notations will be made in either a notebook or in the side margins of the printed version. – Ok, hard to do bad on this when I haven’t opened the document or worked on the story at all.
3. The nights when the kids are with their dad…. I will limit my online time (i.e. the devil Facebook) outside of a brief check in or status update. The kid-free time will be utilized for writing and research. - This didn’t really happen due to the kids not being able to go to their dad’s in the last two weeks.
4. I will gag my internal editor as much as possible during this process so that I may actually have a finished draft before all is said and done. – This would have worked better if I hadn’t decided to change the setting for my story, which I did during the course of the last few days.
5. Once a week, I will blog about my progress. – Has been more than a week, but I did it, so it is all good.
Well, what do you know. I love The Bad Seed. It’s one of my favorite stories and inspirations.
Comment by Jamal W. Hankins — September 16, 2009 @ 5:14 am