Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Pratchett tries to show me up by writing up a storm.

I read about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in the spring and decided I’d participate when it came around in November.

Famous last words.

You’re supposed to write 50,000 words in a month- 1,667 a day if your output is consistent- and voila, you have a novel. It doesn’t have to be a good novel- it just has to be a complete one. The idea being to get out of your own way- WRITE, dammit- don’t edit. Just let the words come, even if you’re not sure they’re the right ones. And that’s one of my big problems. I’ll agonize over a paragraph, a sentence, a word…and then a bunch of time has passed and I’m nowhere. And depressed.

I’m so terribly behind right now I just can’t see how I’m going to catch up, but I’m going to take tomorrow mostly off and really plow through this weekend. If I can’t kick ass on the book, then I’ll be kicking my own ass for all time…and I can be merciless in that regard.

The funny thing is NaNoWriMo’s prep materials are all like, ‘go tell everybody what you’re doing! Tell them you’re doing this amazing, difficult thing and make them all be super duper nice to you! Make them cook and clean and rub your back every single night and tell you what a phenom you are!”

Riiiight.

That might work with lots of people, but not when you live with a real, honest to god, serious & important capital-W-Writer. Then you feel like what you’d be saying is, “Honey, I know you have actual deadlines and writerly stress and all, but I wanna go play make believe, okay?”

Plus…well, he already cooks for me, so I’m not really about to ask him to do anything else. I’m pretty spoiled already.

If you wanna kick my ass, feel free. Here’s the link to my word count- currently pitiful, but hopefully shooting rapidly upward!

That was by far my favorite comment and my sentiments exactly as posted on a report that Terry Pratchett has early onset Alzheimer’s. The great author himself is, as is his nature, very upbeat and wry about it all.

His fans are trying to do likewise, with varying degrees of success. Go make a year end research donation, wouldya? They have a donor matching program going on right now so it does twice as much good.

Plus, I’d appreciate it, personally- Alzheimer’s is a subject near and dear to our hearts here in the house- it runs throughout Charlie’s family.

In the meantime, I’ve decided that I’m going to move the random Pratchett quote sidebar widget over here- now that all non-NOLA info is here, it makes more sense. I’ll add to it hopefully every few days.

This isn’t a new one, but it is one of my all time favorites, from “The Truth”:

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.

The world *belongs*, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse *me*? This is my glass? I don’t *think* so. My glass was full! *And* it was a bigger glass! “

The doorbell begins its annoying song, setting off a blur of dog tumbleweed racing through the house and smashing into the front door. The blinds chink and clink as the dogs attack them, looking for an opening to investigate who dared approach their domain.

‘Alright, quiet girls!’ I yell over the yowling. Still hoping against hope, I peer through the blinds.

‘Heeeey,’ Alfred calls, his standard greeting, grinning widely so as to best show off all four of his remaining teeth.

‘Yeah, Alfred.’ This is my standard greeting these days, delivered in flat tones while taking his measure. Looks like this could be a doozy. He’d made the extra effort and worn his eye patch over the empty left socket- a mixed blessing at best. He’ll expect to be paid a few dollars just for the courtesy. It made him look a pirate’ ragged at the edges, certainly one who’d seen better days, but still out to plunder what he could.

Oh, and the neck brace. How nice for me- a double header. Ever since he’d been hit by a slow moving car a year ago the brace came and went according to whim. Since it was here today, he must be looking for a little sympathy cash on top of the eye patch bonus.

‘I come to do some work. These leafs got to be taken care of. It looks bad.’ He points to a single leaf that had fallen onto the sidewalk, his manner both proprietary and reproachful: How could you let my walkway sink to this state’

‘Not today Alfred, I’m in the middle of…’

‘You in a mood’’ He eyed me critically, trying to calculate how far he could push today. ‘Hey, your pimple’s gone! God is good, see!’ he said, buttering me up. Read the rest of this entry »

AKA, wiki.

I go there to look one thing up, then it’s off to this link and that link and soon I’m in an entirely different universe than I started out. Trying to explain how I ended up with some bizarre bit of trivia is like playing 6 Degrees of Separation.

This one’s a little different, though. I’m doing a little research on vampires for a story I’m working on and the wiki entry is pages and pages and pages long. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

At least it’s not all breathy- most of it focuses on the myth’s origins and such. I sort of scanned until I hit this line, about ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet:

She was seen as a special goddess for women and was patron god of menstruation.

Wow. A god specific to that? Now that’s specialization. Well, at least we know who to curse next time around the cycle.

It made me wonder, though. As a recovering Catholic (similar to a recovering alcoholic, but the hangovers are guilt-induced), I wondered if they had a patron saint of menstruation.

I found out that no such saint exists. After a split second of surprise, I laughed. Of course there isn’t!

For one thing, if you’re bleeding, you’re not breeding- you’re on your own, sinner.

There is St. Margaret, who is the patron saint of childbirth- she’s got quite a story:

She became a shepherdess and when she spurned the advances of Olybrius, the prefect, who was infatuated with her beauty, he charged her with being a Christian. He had her tortured and then imprisoned, and while she was in prison she had an encounter with the devil in the form of a dragon. According to the legend, he swallowed her, but the cross she carried in her hand so irritated his throat that he was forced to disgorge her (she is patroness of childbirth). The next day, attempts were made to execute her by fire and then by drowning, but she was miraculously saved and converted thousands of spectators witnessing her ordeal-all of whom were promptly executed. Finally, she was beheaded.

Uh…let me get this straight. A dragon threw her up, and that makes her the saint of childbirth? Damn, somebody’s got their orifices seriously confused.

Personally, I prayed to St. Epidural when I was in labor. Much more useful.

I’ve never been able to resist a clean, new notebook. I really try to not even go down the school supplies aisle in the store, lest they cry out to come home and be added to the cache. And yes, it’s always in the school supplies, never in the fancy notebook section. It always seems like you’d better have something Important to say if you’re going to spend big bucks on something like that.

I have very random approach to the thing- just open it, somewhere, anywhere, and go. I never know what I’ll find, flipping back through them, and since some are several years old, much of the context has been lost and it’s all a bit mysterious.

For instance, I’m writing this (the first time…before the typing part, of course) in one notebook while flipping through another. The hyroglyphics inside seem to indicate it’s at least 3 years old:

• Phone numbers of unknown origin (Alma? in a 216 area code?)
• Two full drafts of stories, one which I thought I’d send away to publishers, but never did
• My grandmother Millie’s phone & room numbers for the hospital where she died
• Something in big red Sharpie: “Must be tlp file?”
• Several rounds of flight info: “fl 143 LGA 3:15 MSY 5:22″ No idea who was flying. When? Why?
• From a much younger Alison:
  

  MOM:
  Two large zuc
  bread
  food bro
  GARLIC
  1 1/4 lb beef (I’ll go with you.)

  She might’ve been young, but still old enough to know better than have me go to the grocery store for her. I certainly wouldn’t have gotten everything on her list- I hate zucchini, have no idea what a ‘food bro’ is, and might not get enough GARLIC to suit her.

• A full inventory of the shop, before Quickbooks, before Nancy, and before a great many inventorial acquisitions.
• Directions to God knows where: “1 or 9 train- @ 96th get 2 or 3, off @Fulton.” Sounds like fun! What’s on Fulton?
• The starts of about a dozen stories. Some promising, some not so much.
• One of many to-do lists that starts out with “(1) Call Millie at home”. This would have to be before the cancer, before the storm.

All this plus more doodles, scratches and complete unknowns than I could go into. It might all make a whole lot more sense if I kept just one notebook, using it up a page at a time, all in order, until it was complete.

But since when did I actually complete anything, anyway? lol…

I’m addicted to the Writer’s Digest writing prompts. Every week (theoretically. Lots of times they’re late- not top priority over there) they post a new topic idea and you’re supposed to come up with a short story of no more than 500 words to explain, etc.

It’s actually harder than it sounds. It’s nice to have a framework. And I’ll be honest, it’s a bit of an ego stroke, because some of the posts are flat out awful. Charlie doesn’t see the point, and really, he’s right. I’m sure no one of importance reads them, and half the time I just ship ‘em over to him to look at anyway, and not even post them.

But I’m looking at it more as a limbering-up exercise. Yeah, I should be doing real writing here, and not playing in the sandbox, but if it gets words across the screen, does it matter so much where they originated?

Anyway, here’s a sample: Read the rest of this entry »