Finally Friday's First Flight

Hello everybody. It's me again, Girl Friday.

Today was "The Big Day"... graduation day over at Sears... You're now looking at a genuine certified PI. If you don't know what a PI is, it stands for Private Investigator. Yep, I finished the night course, passed this big multiple choice test, and today I'm a real gumshoe. I got this framed diploma with an actual ribbon on it to hang on the wall and an ID card with an official looking gold star on it. The ID card is in this imitation leather wallet that I can flip open in peoples faces just like Tracer used to do. I used to love watching him do that. Especially when he'd catch the tip of their noses with it. He did that on purpose you know! He was so film noir!

I've been getting the old office spruced up for a couple of weeks now, and that hasn't been an easy job. It's been closed up ever since Tracer abandoned it and took off for Thailand to search for Ace. As usual, when he left he stiffed me a months pay, and I didn't hear anything more from him until I got a letter from Bangkok asking me to wire him some more money. I wrote back and told him the only wiring I'd be doing would be to wire his balls to an electric socket. After that, I didn't hear from the dick for months, and then finally I got word that Tracer had bitten the big burrito and went on to that great wanking closet in the sky. No matter how much of a dick he was, and how many times he shot me, I still learned a lot from that jerk. In between all the pain, we had a lot of good times together, even if I didn't think so at the time. I'll might even miss the cheap bastard someday.

Anyway, that's when I decided that I needed to either find a real job, or to get my act together and open up my own agency. After all, even though Tracer's name was painted on the door, I was the one who kept the business on track in spite of his best efforts to bankrupt us. I don't mean to brag, but everybody knows it was me who was the brains behind the outfit, and he was darned lucky I didn't quit that night in the LDW Chatroom, when he shot me in the knee the first time.

Even though Tracer was a deadbeat and cheapskate, I was still a little bit nervous about going out on my own without him. Then I came to my senses and realized that not only can I do this, but my knees would have a better than average chance that they wouldn't end up with more bullet holes in them. Not to mention not having to replace so many pairs of pantyhose.

So, I've been cleaning out the cobwebs and scraping that disgusting burrito residue off the walls of the bathroom, getting ready to open up shop as soon as I finished the PI course. I even cleaned out Tracer's old wanking closet, but I haven't decided what I want to do with that room yet. Besides, I need to wait until that wierd smell in there goes away.

So what's the hurry? Well, I have my first case! I couldn't officially announce it until I had my certification, but now that that's official, I can let the cat out of the bag.

The job I've been hired for is your standard missing persons case. I'm not allowed to tell you who's paying me, but I can spill the beans on who it is I'm looking for. That way, if anybody knows where this person is, you can contact me and maybe save me a lot of legwork, which in my case is usually very hard on my pantyhose.

See, I've been hired to find Billybear. Yep. Billybear of Billybear Labs has turned up missing. His Lab has been locked up tight for months now, and a certain unidentified party is pretty darned anxious to find him. Anxious enough to pay me a pretty solid advance on my expenses, and way more than I ever saw in those puny little paychecks from Tracer. I've got a couple of good leads already, and a few people in mind to interrogate, so I'm pretty sure he won't be too hard to find.

Well, I think I'll lock up now and catch a cab home for some much needed shuteye. It's been a long day and I'll be getting up with the chickens tomorrow so I can head back into the office and get started on the case. And I almost forgot, Ive gotta think of a really classy name for the agency, so I can have it painted on the glass just like that loser Spade across the hall has.

I'll keep you all posted.

Girl Friday

Has It Really Been Since Thanksgiving?

Geesh... I guess it has, so maybe I'd better post something. I don't have any idea what to write about, so maybe I'll start by writing about writing. How appropriate!

First let me explain a few things to any of you who might be interested. If you're not interested, then look away until I tell you to look again. See, Bitchass has been away. Not away like going somewhere on a vacation, but more like all my energy to write went away and I came down with the worst case of writers block you can imagine. For the last couple of years, it had come fairly easy. Then a couple of things happened that took the wind out of my sails, and my writing went into a funk. It became harder and harder to even sit down and expend the energy.

This is how the process used to work for me. I'd have a vague idea for a story in my head, and I'd sit down at the keyboard and try to become whatever character I was writing about. My recurring characters were easiest, because each time I wrote about them it fleshed out the character more and more and made it a lot easier to become them. New characters are the hardest, but eventually they come around and develop their personalities. The hardest part for me was keeping the characters personalities separate. If I'm not careful they tend to start blending together.

If I was really inspired and into the character, the story would flow out right from the start. But most times it was more difficult for me. I would struggle for a while to get into the flow, going back countless times to rewrite certain parts, but eventually it would come, and the rest of the story would seem to write itself. If you've read much of my stuff, you've probably noticed that I have a much harder time stopping a story once it gets going.

One of the things that made writing easier was corroborating with a small group of others in this blogspace whose writing I really admire. I think my writing improved by leaps and bounds once I began to feel pushed to get better by reading stuff by quality storytellers like Billybear, Miss Tara, Lucky, and Ace, to name just a few. I don't mean to leave anyone out, but these were the people who were most involved on a day to day basis. To this day, I am totally awed by how Billybear can make a complicated storyline come together so effortlessly. I wish it came that easy for me, but I could never do what he does. And there were times that I laughed so hard at what he wrote that I about peed my panties.

I can't put my finger on exactly when I became completely blocked, but it was sometime after Lucky detonated the 10 pounds of C4 under his blog. I don't blame him because I knew his reasons for doing it, and by that time I had lost most of my inspiration for writing anyway. I tried to keep going by forcing stories out, but that usually shows in the finished product and the Emporer soon has no clothes.

I had a good opportunity to write some true life posts when Hurricane Ike and a few other storms visited the area. I thought the Ike stories turned out pretty well, but after the storms went away, so it seems did my writing.

So anyway, I'm hoping that shining the light of day on my writers block will turn things around and get me writing again. Maybe it will, and maybe it won't. I can't say for sure. I feel especially bad for disappointing my regular readers, and Miss Tara certainly deserves to read something new instead of having to depend on the old archives for a chuckle or two. Although, I confess that I too read the archives from time to time when I need a laugh. It's a damn shame that the Real World has interfered, but since Miss Tara, Billybear and Ace have been posting the occasional post, maybe there's hope that they will get going again too. Maybe even Lucky might find a way to resurrect his blog from the ashes. We can always hope.

Well that's about it for tonight. Anybody who looked away because they weren't interested can look back now.

Hopfully it won't be so long between posts this time!

little bitchass