Another Place

Rethinking NaNoWriMo

2011-11-02T14:16:00.002-06:00

I participated in NaNoWriMo—that crazy, madcap month when anyone can become a novelist—for nine years running. Starting when my son was nine months old, corralled in a playpen beside the laptop, and continuing until he was in the third grade, I set aside every November to write a novel. I wrote through everything. I wrote while packing to move to Seattle. I wrote while temporarily living in a business hotel in Cincinnati. I wrote while recovering from swine flu-induced pneumonia. Last year, in what would have been my tenth anniversary with NaNoWriMo, I stopped.

I had a good reason, though I didn’t write about it at the time. My mom had breast cancer and her surgery was at the beginning of November. I couldn’t, I decided, do everything. It was a relief. After nine years of trying every which way to write a novel in a month, it felt amazing to actually live through a November, to experience it like a normal person. Well, like a normal person helping her mother recover from a mastectomy, but a normal person, nonetheless.

As November approached this year, I thought a lot about writing my tenth novel. I love NaNoWriMo. I love being part of an event where writing takes first priority. Writing is glamorous during NaNoWriMo. It’s social. It’s trendy. It’s a lot of things that writing usually isn’t at all. NaNoWriMo is compelling. It’s also transient. It involves a lot of writing just to write and a lot of words that go on the page for the sole purpose of being words on the page. After 450,000 of those words, I think it’s time for me to move on.

This November, I’ll be writing. Oh yes, I’ll be writing, but I’ll be writing at my own pace. I’ll be writing daily, but maybe not 1667 words a day. I’ll be living this writer’s life and feeding off all that novel-writing energy in the air, but I’ll also be living November.

I’ve missed November. It’s good to see it again.

Writing Prompt: Don't Forget the Turtle

2011-09-05T10:05:00.003-06:00

I attended Tacticon down in Denver this weekend (so much laughter and joy... I missed you all!) and picked up a set of Rory's Story Cubes in the dealer room. A simple storytelling game and a writer's aid all in one--how could I resist? Today's prompt is a visual one.

Prompt: Work all five items below into a story or scene. Make at least once of them important or symbolic to the story as a whole.

Spoil A Reader Sunday

2011-09-04T09:00:00.001-06:00

Bookshelf Industrial Pipe (M... stellableudesi... $50.00	Adjustable Velcro Bandolier ... cleverhands $25.95
Mr. Darcy Proposal organic t... Brookish $22.00	fight evil read books square... BookFiend $6.00
Hand Forged Copper Bookmark ... FarOutCreation... $13.00	I Didn't Expect - Print copperinc $10.00
Small Handbound Leather Jour... JustaBrenda $18.00	Large Academic Weekly/Monthl... PocketSquares $20.00
The Ghost's Library Num ... MoonIsSingingP... $20.00	Library Cart Earrings Librar... ALikelyStory $19.95
Custom Personalized Eco Frie... savethedate $27.95	Darkended Library - 7 book n... TheBlackSpotBo... $320.00
Nancy Drew Note Card Gift Se... newnanc $10.50	Jorge Borges Library Quote F... rawartletterpr... $18.00
Zombie Emily Dickinson Alter... fairygold $4.00	OOAK restored altered childr... Raidersofthelo... $550.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

WIP Wednesday: Immith Inches

2011-08-31T13:55:00.002-06:00

"I had this character who..."

If you're a gamer or you spend any time with gamers or if you've even ever set foot in a game store, you've probably heard those words. (The same could probably be said of writers, for that matter. All the people I identify with have active inner lives.)

I once had a character who was a fearsome and powerful witch from the far-off land of Rasheman. Her name was Immith. She wore a mask and carried a whip and a magical staff. I loved being Immith. She was awesome.

For the past year and a half, I've been working on a series of art pieces using the character sheet I originally created for Immith more than a decade ago. I wrote about the first such piece in this entry.

Today, I'm making "Immith inches."

Yes, that's my workspace. Yes, it's usually that messy. The finished product will look quite a bit different from what you see here and I can't wait to share it, but in the mean time, you can see some of the other pieces in my gamer series over at Palimpsestic.

Writing Prompt: G is for Go and Great and Gargantuan and...

2011-08-30T08:15:00.000-06:00

I just bought two new Moleskines. It's time to fill them up.

Prompt: Get a pen and some paper and set a timer for five minutes. Start writing every word you can think of that starts with the letter G. Don't stop until the timer goes off. Yes. Five minutes is longer than you think.

Now, reset the timer for 10 minutes. Pick one of your G-words as a title. Start writing, working as many of the words you just listed in as possible. See where it takes you. If you're on a roll when time's up, keep going. If not, pat yourself on the back and consider this a good warmup for your verbal brain.

Tomorrow, do it again with another letter.

Spoil A Reader Sunday

2011-08-28T09:52:00.000-06:00

You can always buy a reader books. You know that. But I found all this other great reader stuff I just had to share. (By the way, they're all under $50.)

Mini Journals - Leather - Se... wayfaringart $25.00	Steampunk Literary Cog Earri... TRVA $20.00
Bookish - 8x10 Original Fine... urbanantique $17.00	Literature Lists Literary Ch... charmedearth $8.00
Buy 1, Get 1 FREE Sale In Go... RetrospectPhot... $24.99	Vintage French Book Cover Cu... SimpleJoysPape... $42.00
Ampersand (&) Typographic We... SlippinSouther... $31.00	Literary Bracelet - Allen Gi... TheLetterG $26.00
Vintage Tiny German Religiou... CopperAndTin $20.00	Brooch - paper book brooch f... bookity $24.50
THE COBB Lip Glossary - citr... LatheratiSoap $4.00	The Sud Also Rises -- handma... englishmajorso... $5.00
Tragic Literary Figures set ... waywardgirl $25.00	cat girl - Library Masquerad... marisolspoon $30.00
Library Librarian Bracelet L... ALikelyStory $31.95	French Literary House - Fair... 58cherries $12.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

That's My Bag, Baby

2011-08-26T15:25:00.000-06:00

“Would love to see your current bag that you keep on you at all times,” my friend, Jaymi, said on Twitter yesterday. Twist my arm, why don’t you? I love seeing the things people carry. It’s always a surprising insight into who they and what they hold important.

Here’s what I bring with me.

1. My Mountainsmith bag. My husband did some work for Mountainsmith many years ago and they provided us with piles of gear. It was a brilliant marketing move on their part, because I’ve bought more since. It’s good stuff. This particular bag was part of the initial haul. It’s at least six years old and still looks practically new. Everything else you see fits inside here.

2. An Eagle Creek zipper bag with my iPad and my GorillaMobile Yogi (those bendy legs, which are just about the most brilliant invention ever).

3. Eagle Creek cinch sack containing geocaching necessities. I use my phone as a GPS, but this bag contains a pencil and some small toys to exchange for goodies when we find a cache.

4. Yet another Eagle Creek bag with various cosmetic necessities—lip gloss, a stain stick (anyone who’s met me knows why I need this…I’m hopeless), miscellaneous pills, Burt’s Bee’s “green stuff” (my secret Mom remedy for everything), and some bobby pins.

5. Moo cards!

6. Bluetooth earpiece, my iPhone, my Moleskine notebook, my favorite Bic pens, and a wire-formed hippo. What? You don’t carry a hippo?

7. Prescription sunglasses, which I rarely needed in Seattle, but always need in Colorado.

8. Reusable shopping bag.

9. Wallet

10. Headphones and a microfiber cloth for the iDevices.

11. Splenda. Pretty sure these are remnants from my recent cross-country Splenda-stealing crime wave.

Happy, Jaymi?

Here I Am

2011-07-26T17:32:00.000-06:00

On my return to Colorado a month ago, a friend gave me a mirror compact with the words, “Here I am,” on the front. I think those words often. Here I am, in sight of the Rocky Mountains. Here I am, home again. Here I am, in the same neighborhood, in the same house, in the same room. It’s surreal being here after almost four years in Seattle. I feel like Rip Van Winkle waking up from his sleep. The world around me is so familiar, and yet, oddly altered, as if I spent the last four years in a dream.

Around the house, little things have changed. My office now has to accommodate the trappings of Palimpsestic—supplies, completed art, photography props, and shipping materials. I’m daydreaming of having a work table in here, something I never considered when the space was just used for reading and writing. Our dining nook, once a toddler’s play area, is currently lined with roleplaying books and board games. Games were our primary source of entertainment in the rainy Northwest and our collection exploded while we were out there. And of course, we now have a ten-year-old instead of the six-year-old with whom we left. His bedroom looks undeniably tweenish, with no hint of the baby who once lived here.

We’ve been repainting. The renters we had in the house didn’t share our aesthetic. They toned down a lot of our bright, saturated colors and, I’ll admit, I may have overcompensated a bit by painting the downstairs bathroom a deep, koi orange. I don’t care. I love it.

I’ve had contractors doing estimates on this and that every week since we moved back. It’s almost like moving into a new house, rather than returning to one we built thirteen years ago. Our nest has been disturbed and we’ve been fluttering around in a tizzy trying to set it to rights.

Before we left Seattle, I told my husband, “We’re not moving back. Not really. We’re moving forward to a familiar place.” When I said it, I didn’t realize how true it would be. Too much has changed to just slot in where we left off, but I’m comforted by the things that are the same—the quality of the sunlight on the mountains, the neighbors drinking wine on their front porch, the gaming group’s inside jokes, the Starbucks barista who still remembers my name. Here I am, surrounded by the landscape and people I love. I am here.

Writing Prompt: One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure

2011-04-19T15:20:00.000-06:00

I've been a terrible writer recently. It's not even that I haven't written anything good. I just haven't written anything at all. The Pacific Northwest is full of amazing, productive, creative people and I am in awe of all of them. The long, dark winters here suck the creative energy right out of me. By the time July rolls around, I'm drained. It seems like it takes until the end of August to charge my batteries... and then the rainy season starts again.

That being said, I gravitate towards writing prompts like a drowning woman gasping for air, so I thought I'd try to share some once or twice a week for those of you struggling along with me.

Prompt: Go to your junk drawer. After taking a quick look to make sure it doesn't contain anything that will kill or maim you, close your eyes, reach in, and pull out the first thing your hand touches. Feel the weight of it. Look at it from every angle. Put it in a place of honor in your writing space.

Now, begin writing about a character for whom that object is not junk, but something of great importance. Describe the object down to the last detail. Where did it come from? What significance does it have? How does the character behave around it? What are his/her plans for it? How would he/she react if anything happened to it?

The ultimate goal here is to use the object as a gateway to your character. If you'd like, you can work an entire scene around the object. Alternatively, you might edit the object out entirely and simply continue on with the character it inspired.

I Can Hardly Believe This Is Real

2011-04-18T15:02:00.000-06:00

While researching (read: drooling over) Geek Chic tables the other day, I came across a reviewer who commented that their furniture is, “the stuff gamer dreams are made of.” Saturday, we went to their workshop and I’m pretty sure I got high off all the gamer fairy dust in the air. At least, I don’t think our five minutes in the lacquer room was enough to explain my post-tour giddiness.

You see, we’re ordering one of these:

It’s called the Emissary and, on the outside, it’s a gorgeous, hardwood dining table. However, take out the leaves, pull out the drawers, and you have a 7’x4’ gridded wet-erase gaming surface with individual desks for seven players and a GM (assuming a table that big will fit in our house… the jury’s still out on that). It is, seriously, the most amazing piece of furniture I’ve ever seen and soon, it will be ours.

We’d seen the tables in person at GenCon several years ago, but Geek Chic is located just up the road in Everett, WA, so we couldn’t resist the opportunity to go over all the options in person with their salesperson or “Enabler,” as her job title aptly labels her. Plus, we got the opportunity to tour the workshop where the furniture is made with the company’s founder, Robert Gifford.

It was amazing. What started out three years ago as a few guys building geek nirvana in their garage, is now a thirty-person operation with a warehouse-sized building and a showroom in the works. The tables are all built by hand out of sustainable woods with construction meant to last for generations. Plus, despite having an enviable backlog of orders, they’re constantly coming up with new ideas. We saw some of the projects in the works and amazingly, I think it will be possible sometime in the near future, to have an entire houseful of furniture designed around a gamer’s inherent… uh… gamerness. There is a slight possibility you’d have to sell your soul to afford it, though.

I'm thinking it would probably be worth it.

A Moment

2011-04-15T13:47:00.000-06:00

This morning when I went out for a walk, I turned the opposite way from usual. Instead of heading for the familiar creek trail, I went towards the lake—a massive body of water, shrouded in mystery behind acres of bramble and a barbed wire fence. I’ve actually never seen Lake Youngs, despite the fact that H’s school is named after it and it dominates the map of our neighborhood. The lake and its surrounding woodlands are kept jealously guarded by the Seattle water district. It should be just a gated no man’s land as you approach the lake and, in a way, it is, but there’s also an amazing transformation that happens in the course of a walk towards Lake Youngs.

Just a few blocks from our house, neatly-manicured suburban lawns give way to bucolic countryside. It’s not unique to our neighborhood, I suppose. Most of western Washington is like this—nature just barely kept in check by sheer grit and determination. If you turn your back for even a second, a blackberry bramble sprouts. Look away for a minute and you have a thicket. Still, the magnitude of the change is startling.

This is my house:

This is four blocks from my house:

Slightly further out, you start to see the kinds of scenes usually reserved for deep in the country. Sprawling farmhouse lawns like those I remember from my childhood in Illinois. Rusted-out cars covered in flowering brush. And then… walking along a rural road maybe half a mile from home, I smelled a bonfire.

Oh, the memories. I lived a good part of my life in a place where people built bonfires in their yards as a matter of course. We built one on the school playground for PTO barbecues. It seems unthinkable now. The PTSA here wouldn’t let children within ten feet of a lit grill, much less hand them sticks and sit them down on a hay bale next to a roaring fire. It’s a smell I associate with happiness, with cookouts and campouts, and being surrounded by people I love.

As I got closer, I saw the flames and watched a man throwing wood from the back of his truck into the inferno. He had a radio playing loudly in the garage, “I'll fly away, oh Glory. I'll fly away in the morning. When I die Hallelujah, by and by, I'll fly away.” For a moment, everything stopped. I couldn’t hear the cars on the city roads a few blocks away. I couldn’t hear the birds singing their endless spring songs. I couldn’t feel the drizzle—that rain, soft as an exhale, that you have to watch still water to be sure is really falling. There was just the crackle of the fire, the smell of woodsmoke, and a gospel song filling the air.

It only lasted an instant and when it was over, I wanted nothing more than to get home and write.

Perhaps, this is how we know passion. Passion is the thing that calls to you after a moment of stillness. It’s not always words for me. Sometimes it’s my husband or my son. Sometimes it’s art. Sometimes it’s dance. Whatever it is, though, it’s always a beacon. It just takes the right moment to see its light.

20 Things I Will Miss About Living in Seattle

2011-04-14T19:23:00.000-06:00

It's true, my Colorado friends, we're coming home! I'm excited to see everyone again, to hike in the Rockies, to get my high altitude lungs back, to have my house back, and to watch those spectacular Colorado sunsets. In three years, though, I've learned to appreciate living on the west coast. I keep mentally adding to this list as the days count down.

1. The spectacle of Mt. Rainier appearing, as if by magic, out of the clouds
2. Pork hom bow at Pike Place Market
3. Flowers at Pike Place Market.
4. Moss
5. 360-degree Fourth of July fireworks from our unincorporated King County cul-de-sac
6. Game nights with Pete and Gen
7. Cougar Gold
8. Hiking to Otter Falls and sitting with my feet in the chilly water
9. Buying vegetables at the Carpinito Bros. farm stand
10. August
11. Overturning rocks to find starfish and crabs at Saltwater State Park
12. Feeding seagulls at Ivar’s on the waterfront
13. Sounders fans
14. Using my umbrella
15. KUOW
16. The beaches at Olympic National Park
17. King County Library System
18. Riding a ferry to an island for a day
19. Taking the light rail into the city for free museum night
20. Hearing a dozen different languages spoken on the street

Again

2010-12-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

So, I won again. I am blown away and a little embarrassed and a lot honored, but here are my top ten:

All "Yule" Need for the Holidays, by beyondtherockz

Bookworm, by fourelephants

Hot Off the Grid, by KnotChaCha

Midnight Sunshine, by withaflourish

Secret Garden, by magalerie

Gifts for The Logophile, $30 USD and Under, by ImpossiblyAlice

What Goes Into Making a Square Inch of Art?, by cindycolumbia1958

Her Restless Heart, by lexiloohoodesigns

Give Your Apartment Personality for $50 or Less, by whatnomints

The Little Things Will Do - Gift Guide for Him and Her, by theothermagdalene

See Me Judge

2010-11-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday, while checking my email at the airport, I discovered I’d won the Non-Team Challenge on Etsy. All week, while I’ve been in Illinois with my mom, my email has been beeping with the news of more and more treasuries featuring one of my mini pennant banners. It was my honor to look through all of them this week and pick my favorites. I did finally come up with one winner (see the non-team link above to find out who), but I wanted to also give some publicity to my top ten favorites. So here they are, in no particular order:

Gold Rush - A Gift Guide for Pioneers, by KitzieG

Just a Little Something to Brighten Your Day, by weebit

For the world traveler, by jenni4k

Funky TRI-angles for the Holiday Season!, by Beaditi

Gathering Your Berries For Winter, by zwzzy

Reincarnation, by Lolailo

"Going Somewhere?" Gift Guide for the Traveler, by whatnomints

Come Away With Me..., by wearitoutvintage

All Roads Lead to Paris, by KarmaRox

RE-IMAGINE - a gift guide for the eco-conscious, by theelmsvintage

Tiny Beautiful Things

2010-09-27T14:12:00.001-06:00

“Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.” —Julius Erving (Dr. J)

“Do exercises for writers instead of just reading them.” —Heather Sellers, Page After Page

I am not motivated today. The sky outside is neither brilliant blue nor textured grey, but a vast, featureless white. It’s a blank canvas, which is rather how I feel, like I’m staring into the depths of my soul and there’s simply nothing to see. I suppose some days are inevitably like this, just as other days overflow with creative energy. Those days, I wake up and can’t wait to get to my desk. Today, I would very much like to spend the entire day clicking from web site to web site and feeling sorry for myself.

Last Monday was an “on” day. I’d been reading up on methods for pricing artwork and several sources recommended setting a price per square inch and simply calculating the area of each piece and adding any special material costs to determine a selling price. That idea immediately appealed to me because, whether I’m writing or collaging, I hate tracking my time. It sucks the joy right out of the creative process to realize you’re not even making minimum wage for your efforts and probably never will. As I began recalculating my prices, I started thinking about what one might find in a square inch of art. In larger pieces, I suppose, there are bound to be some fairly boring square inches—patches of plain grey or simple backgrounds. Some square inches, though, some are exquisite gems.

One of the loves of my writing life is the burgeoning genre of nanofiction. I love the challenge of creating a story whose length belies its resonance. I love the idea of capturing moments, small parts of experiences that continue to shine long after other memories fade. As I did the rote work of changing prices in my online store, it occurred to me that I could create a collage version of nanofiction—tiny, exquisitely layered works of art that anyone could afford, that would resonate beyond their size, and that would let people hold wonder in the palms of their hands.

I spent the next two days making what I call “square inch art.” They look like this:

Beautiful, aren’t they? They're selling quickly, but I still have a handful on my desk. On a low motivation day like today, I think it helps to hold one and to be reminded just how small a spark of inspiration can be.

The sun just came out and the white sky is opening to reveal stretches of blue. It’s time for me to do something I love.

Actually, I think I just did.

Og Filled In

2010-07-26T00:35:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, we were on our way to run some errands when my husband took a sudden right turn into a neighborhood we’d never driven through before. I immediately knew why and a glimpse of neon poster board at the edge of my vision confirmed my suspicion. Garage sale.

The sale was a block down at the end of a cul-de-sac. We pulled in beside three or four other cars. A pile of discards sat at the curb and I looked at my husband excitedly. He shook his head. “We can’t fit a wood pallet into the car and, even if we could, what would we do with it?"

“But it’s so pretty!” I said. It was, too—the distressed wood streaked with blue paint and black markings. I’m sure I could have figured out something to do with it. Garage sales do this to me. Nevertheless, we passed up the pallet and walked up the steep driveway to the sale proper. My husband son lingered at the tables in front, while I made my way straight into the dark recesses of the garage, which contained boxes upon boxes of books.

Well… some of the books were in boxes. Some were laid out individually, positioned like museum relics, despite their 25-cent price tags.That’s where I found Og, Boy of Battle. It was a plain, green hardcover with yellowed pages. The spine had been broken and taped back together. Here and there, pages protruded, ripped almost in two by time and abuse.

I grabbed Og, along with a second book (a late 1940s home medical reference) and was on my way to pay for my items when a stooped, grey-haired man came to meet me, eyes shining. “I see you have my favorite book,” he said.

“This one?” I asked, holding up Og.

“Oh, I read it over and over again as a boy!” He took it out of my hand and thumbed through the velvety-soft pages.. “Of course, you can tell by looking at it that it isn’t that old.”

“Not well-loved, either,” I said, smiling as he stopped on a torn image of three boys pointing spears at a tapir.

He held the book so my son could see. “He’s a cave boy, you know, so he fought all sorts of prehistoric creatures—snakes and sabre-toothed tigers and wooly mammoths.”

My son nodded.

The man handed the book back to me. “Enjoy it,” he said, looking at my son. “And if there are any pages missing…” he tapped his head “…fill it in from here. Your imagination. It’s better there, anyway.”

We paid our fifty cents and got into the car.

“I think I might like that book,” my son said.

“You might,” I said. I opened it and read aloud:

The great snake dwelt in the dismal, murky, stinking, mud and slime of the great swamp into which the river, that coursed by the cliff abode of the Hairy People disappeared.

“I don’t understand what you just said,” my son said.

Treacherous islands of giant reeds and canes that rattled together like the bones of skeletons in the wind seemed to float about on the slime and ooze, and long-legged gangling birds, with great silent flapping wings and sepulchral voices flew about among the trees or strode across the muddy surface with strides so awkward and grotesque as to make them appear like gnomes who might dwell in that dank and dark land of mystery.

“Um…” my son said.

I closed the book.

I have no doubts that Og, Boy of Battle exists in the hearts and minds of hundreds, if not thousands, of old men. There, it’s a tale of bravery and adventure, of a heroic boy in a dark swamp, but some stories don’t hold up through generations—not in the same words, at least. Some stories have to be kept alive other ways. I have plans for this book and I hope I do justice not to the Og on the page, but to the one in that man’s mind. The true Og is the remembered Og, not the one in encased in 1930s purple prose. The real Og isn't on that page at all. The real Og is filled in from someplace better.

And the Winner Is...

2010-07-21T22:37:00.001-06:00

As selected by random.org, the winner is comment #7...

aquariann!

Congratulations!

The Great Bookmark Giveaway, Part Two

2010-07-14T14:01:00.000-06:00

I have a lot of books.

I know… you’re not surprised. Believe it or not, though, I actually wander through my library occasionally and look for books to cull. Granted, this generally happens right before a trip to Elliott Bay. No point in making room on the shelves if you’re not planning to get more books to fill them up.

The last time I dragged a pile of books to the trade-in counter, I found it closed for the bookstore’s move to their new location. Woe is me. I lugged my heavy bag back home, stopping at every used bookstore along the way, but no one else was buying what I had to offer. As a result, I’ve had a to-sell pile sitting next to my bookshelf for months.

Glancing at the stack the other day, I was struck by a brilliant idea. Art! I grabbed The Scarlet Letter from the middle of the pile and started tearing. Behold!

I thought, since there are a lot of pages in The Scarlet Letter, I’d give the first couple of these away. The first one was won in a contest on my Twitter stream. The second one goes to someone here.

Here’s how to win: Go to my Etsy store and find your favorite item. Post it in the comments and tell me why you like it, what you’d do with it, or how you think it would be best displayed. In one week, I’ll choose a random commenter to receive a Scarlet Letter bookmark. Be sure to leave me some way to contact you—an email address or Twitter name. Good luck!

I Should Mention...

2010-06-14T12:15:00.000-06:00

Last month, I was interviewed by the fantastically gracious Anna Alexander for the MuseCraft newsletter. You can read my top five writing rules and my thoughts on Renaissance men here (PDF link).

On Life at Home

2010-06-13T23:41:00.000-06:00

“Oh, I couldn’t handle not working!” one of my friends exclaimed over a game of cards last night.

The other two women at the table chimed in immediately. “Oh, I know! I was just depressed and miserable the few months I went without a job.”

“I couldn’t see myself ever becoming a housewife. I’d go crazy.”

I stared down at my cards as they shared horror stories of inactivity.

“I like it,” I said, finally, and added, perhaps a bit too defensively, “I didn’t have a dead-end job or anything. Before, I mean. I was a manager.” I bit my tongue to keep from adding, “And I was a women’s studies minor. I’m still a feminist.”

They nodded, but I could see the pity in their eyes.

“I like the freedom of it,” I said, flailing. “When things are stuck—creatively, I mean—I like being able to clean or pull weeds until the juices are flowing again.” Pathetic.

They all nodded. This time, I didn’t look them in the eyes. It’s not like I have a lot to show for all those “creative juices”—a dozen or so published stories, a small body of artwork no one wants, nine deservedly unpublished novels.

Most of my friends here in Seattle are living on two incomes with no children. We’re living on a single income with a child and we’re sacrificing a lot to do it. More, I think, than most people realize. Enough that I wonder if it’s worth it.

The thing is—my lack of creative output notwithstanding—I do really like being at home. I’m the child of a single mother and a workaholic father who lived across the country. The thing I most wanted to give my son was a stable family and parent to come home to after school each day, but I know he would turn out fine even without that. Millions of children do. I did.

I fear it makes me sound lazy and unambitious to say, I enjoy not going to work, but it’s true. It’s also not the same thing as saying, I enjoy not working. What I enjoy is not working for someone else.

Actually, it’s not just that I fear it sounds lazy and unambitious. I fear it is lazy and unambitious. I am incredibly lucky to be married to someone who understands and appreciates the art of creating a family home. My husband intuitively grasps both the social and economic value of a stay-at-home parent (perhaps because he had one).

I chose this life, I love this life, and I still have a harder time comprehending its worth. Until, that is, I think of my family and friends. I think of all the New Years rung in from my living room. I think of all the homemade dinners eaten at my table. I think of my son’s friends waving to me on the playground and of knocks on my door in the midst of a crisis. It turns out I am working for someone else, for many someone elses. I’m bringing love into our house... and any published story is just icing on the cake.

Artist's Statement

2010-05-14T17:51:00.000-06:00

Our lives are going paperless. We communicate by text and email. We pay our bills online. We read books on Kindles and iPads, sent to us in pristine bits and bytes. No one touched our ebooks before us—not even to pack them in boxes or line them up on a shelf. We don’t touch them either. No one touches them at all.

In this digital world, I find myself pausing in awe each time I get the opportunity to hold a piece of history in my hand. These things would once have been insignificant—an old matchbox label, a lottery ticket, a book in which a woman wrote her name. Today, they are magical remnants of a time that is quickly fading from memory.

I hope their magic carries into the art I make with them. These inconsequential items bear the weight of history. They ask to be touched. They beg for connection, for their stories to be imagined, invented, and then told. I tell them or, at least, parts of them. I combine artifacts with paint, dye, paper, and textiles to create a palimpsestic context for the objects that brings out both their inherent beauty and their potential narrative.

The Thing at the End of the Process

2010-04-26T20:02:00.000-06:00

I am fresh from an hour-long art class with some of the first graders at my son’s school. When I first volunteered for the art docent program several months ago, I went in armed with caveats. “I have no art background,” I warned the coordinator. She assured me it was fine. “I can’t draw at all,” I said at the first training. Everyone said that was okay. “I’m not an artist,” I told the world. We all know how that turned out.

One of the things I love about doing art classes with kids is the moment when they realize what they’ve done. Often, I show them a completed project at the beginning of the lesson and they are convinced it will be too hard for them, that theirs will never look as good as the example. Then, they go through the process, they learn the techniques, and their artwork comes out beautifully—better than the example, even, because it’s their own creation, something no one else could have made quite the same way.

I feel just like they do sometimes when I start a new project. I’m sure it’ll never be as good as what I’ve done previously, that the pieces will never come together, that it will end up a wild mess. It usually doesn’t.

I took some pictures of a project coming together. For a long time, I’ve wanted to do a D&D collage. Characters created for a D&D game take on a life of their own. They’re like characters in a novel except sometimes they’re even richer, having been colored by input from the outside. My characters are collages, themselves—bits of me, of my friends who play with me, of my husband who runs the games, and of the writers and designers who created the worlds we play in. When those characters are retired, parts of us inevitably end up hidden away with them and I wanted to resurrect those bits somehow or, at least, to commemorate them.

I started with an older edition of the D&D Players Handbook and the character sheet from a character I played many years ago. (If it matters to you and you’re geeky enough to understand this, her name was Immith and she was a Rashemi witch in a Forgotten Realms campaign.)

I tore a page from the PH and ripped a section from the character sheet. I had reasons for the bits I chose, but they probably wouldn’t mean much to anyone else. Using a technique new to me, I drew some traditional batik patterns on the two pages with white crayon and then dyed them with some strong tea.

Then, I started gluing things to a prepared canvas. I added some thick brown paper with lots of inclusions and some thin white mulberry paper. I arranged some scraps of fabric over the tops of the papers. I stained some thin cork with oil paint. I rolled a few of the tiniest dice ever and glued them down where they landed. I kept adding layers until I was happy. I tried three times to add a hand-drawn picture of a mask, but I wasn’t a good enough illustrator to be happy with the result. The whole process took several days, after which I sealed everything and stood back to look.

This is the result.

It’s on my mantle now and I’m amazed I made such a thing. It makes me happy to look at it. That’s the feeling I hope those first graders have. And I hope they keep finding ways to have it their whole lives.

My Life in Second Place

2010-04-25T14:40:00.000-06:00

I confess, I always wrinkle my nose a little when I read someone’s biography and they call themselves a “writer and artist” or something similar. If you’re a writer and an artist, I think, you’re probably not especially good at either. Pick a side, I think.

I have always wanted to be the type of person who is incredibly good at one thing. I’ve always wanted to be the best and, in all my life, I’ve never been that person. In grade school, I won the school spelling bee, but I only took second place in the county, and I never got to go to state. In high school, I was second chair trumpet in the band, I placed in the top three (but not first) in a lot of speech meets, and I was drafted onto the math team, where I performed well enough to get some recognition, but not well enough to win anything.

I dance just well enough to perform in public. I code just well enough to understand the back end of a web site. I’ve been published in a quite a few small publications, but there are no shining beacons of New Yorkerness on my resume.

In short, I’m pretty good at a whole lot of things, but not the best at anything. It shouldn’t bother me, right? Very few people are the best. To achieve that goal requires a level of dedication and sacrifice that I’m not willing to offer.

And yet, I’ve always thought I was destined for greatness and, in my mind, great people do one thing and they stick with it. Perseverance. Devotion. Let me get out my thesaurus… Commitment. Endurance. Focus. Patience. Or, as writers like to say, “Butt in chair, fingers on keyboard.” You stand firm in the face of rejection. You take it on the chin over and over and over again.

It’s occurred to me, though, that it’s possible to do all that, to get rejected again and again, and never get the reward. Perseverance does not always equal greatness. Sometimes, it just equals a life of taking it on the chin.

Maybe it’s time to embrace my eclecticism and learn to be okay with not standing on top of the podium. I’m not sure I’m ready for that, but I know where to start. I’m going to add the phrase “and artist” to “writer” in my biography. I’m picking a side… and it’s right in the middle.

How Things Are

2010-04-08T21:41:00.001-06:00

Almost four months have passed since my last entry and it feels like nothing. The weather is the same—more or less—but, because it’s April, we all step outside without our coats and pretend it’s not just as cold and rainy as it was in January.

I’ve barely been writing, just little snippets here and there to accompany my collage. Mostly, I spend my time sitting at the card table in the basement, painting things and then glueing them together. I’m more satisfied with my artwork than with my writing, perhaps because I know less about pictures than I do about words. I make something that’s beautiful to my own eyes and I’m satisfied with that. I’m never satisfied with my writing. Not ever.

This is how things are right now. I tear. I glue. I paint. I touch pieces of paper that no one has loved in fifty years or a hundred years. I find them compelling in their fragility. The Methodist Hymnal I've been using once belonged to someone named Sandra. She wrote her name in pencil on the front page. How easily such things could be lost to time! I hope I’m rescuing them and not dooming them. I make up stories about them, but I never love the stories as much as the things themselves. I’m a harsh judge when it comes to stories.

WIP Wednesday: The Voice

2010-01-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

Wednesday is almost over. I’m sitting with my husband in a cafe, looking out at a rainy street in Kent Station. This is the fourth coffee shop we tried tonight, the only one still open at the staggeringly late hour of 7pm. It was our last choice because it doesn’t have wireless. Or rather, it has a tease of a wireless network that dangles the prospect of internet access in front of us and, at the last possible moment, refuses to let us join. The wireless network here is Lucy to our Charlie Brown. We know this, and yet I’ve tried to connect at least ten times in the half hour we’ve been here. My husband is somewhat less desperate, leaning back in his chair and holding his iPhone in both hands like a lifeline. He’s been reading Twitter. And email. I can see it in his eyes.

‘Just write,” I tell myself. “You have that half-finished story. The half-finished novel, too. You have plenty to do. You should welcome this respite from connectivity.”

I don’t welcome it. Writing has been hard recently. There’s a voice inside me saying all the things I know better than to let my inside voice say. “You’re not good enough,” it says. “If you were, you would have succeeded by now. Also, just so you know, you’re not lucky, so even if you were good enough, it wouldn’t matter.” The voice stops to congratulate itself on this low blow before noticing me again. “I see you’re still not writing,” it says. “That’s because you’re lazy you know. Untalented, unlucky, and not even hard-working. Look at you. You have the full triumvirate of failure.”

I ignore the voice, more or less, and open Merriam-Webster to look up “triumvirate,” wondering if it only applies to people… or deities. Safari can’t open the page because my computer is not connected to the internet.

This is how it is almost every time I try to write recently. Instead of writing, I’ve been sitting at the card table in my basement smearing paint on canvas, ripping and gluing scraps of paper atop the paint, coating it all with layer after layer of sealant. It’s easy work and, more importantly, it’s work that doesn’t matter. Not to anyone, but most importantly, not to me. It’s just a thing I do. It’s the way writing should be, but isn’t.

I had an idea, though. I thought of a way to trick the voice. “I’m just collaging,” I told it. It believed me and, quickly, I turned from the patterned paper to the keyboard. I wrote this:

They lay together in her room, bathed in an amber glow from the batik cloth she’d thrown over the window to block the afternoon light. She marveled at the fine hairs on his shins, lit up like dust motes in a sunbeam.

The voice stayed silent. I wrote a few more lines and listened.

The voice was paying attention to something else. I wrote a few paragraphs.

“Have I mentioned,” the voice said, ever so casually, “that you’re fat?”

Reading 2009

2010-01-07T14:14:00.000-07:00

First off, a quick announcement. I got word this morning that my story, "Ursari," which was a runner-up in Nanoism's December serial contest, will appear in PicFic this April. I'm especially pleased that they'll be running it straight through, with one tweet a day over the course of a week.

Second, I wanted to post my montage of books read in 2009. I'm proud of my 2009 reading. I dove into several genres I don't ordinarily read and crossed eleven Pulitzer winners off my to-be-read list.

The Grey

2010-01-05T16:43:00.000-07:00

It’s winter in Seattle and this winter isn’t like the others I’ve experienced in my brief time here. Last year and the year before, there was snow. Kids took their sleds to the hill two blocks down and they slid right down the street. We built a snowman with a carrot nose and a patch over one button eye. School was delayed and called off for ridiculously small amounts of the white stuff, but at least it felt like winter. At least, those years, we had the moment that makes winter worthwhile, the moment when you look out the window and you see it happening—those white flakes suspended in the sky, so beautiful they take your breath away.

This year there’s no snow. This is the kind of Seattle winter I was warned about. It’s not that cold, but it feels frigid. It feels colder than cold. The sun hasn’t made an appearance in weeks and the grey is seeping into everything. The sky is grey. The plants are grey. The houses are grey. I think my skin may be grey and I’m fairly sure the cheerful red-shaded lamp on my desk is starting to give off grey light. Today and tomorrow, we’ll be pulling the Christmas lights down as if in admission of defeat. We can’t hold our own against this grey. It’s senseless even to try. It will be grey until June. I can see the grey now, rubbing up against the window. It wants inside and it will get there. I’m not resolute enough to keep it out.

Beside me on the desk, I have a stack of books about summer, about beach houses and resorts and falling in love, which is, in itself, warming. I have a cup of warm vanilla chai. I have a space heater tucked next to my feet, blowing hot air at a pace almost—but not quite—fast enough to defeat the grey. I have a scented candle burning. On the wooden screen in front of me, there’s a picture of an outpost in the Moroccan desert, draped in rugs of saffron and deepest red. There’s a clipping of a vacation house on the African savannah, screened to let the breeze in and bathed in yellow light.

From outside, I can hear a bird twittering away as if it were spring. That poor, deluded bird.

This is what I have to look forward to for the next five (maybe six) months until summer comes again. This grey. This endless grey. How does one persevere in this? How do you find inspiration and beauty? How do you feel alive?

I usually end with something upbeat, some glimmer of hope, because there’s always hope. Right now, though, hemmed in by the grey, the only hope I can find is one word, shining far away on the horizon.

June.

Achievements

2010-01-04T15:27:00.000-07:00

Recently, writer Adam Israel has been blogging about his journey through Booklife and I find it absolutely compelling. I’m not sure when I became such a person obsessed with goal-setting and measurable progress. I’m pretty certain I used to be someone who flew through life, accepting all the wonderful opportunities that fell into my lap and fully expecting to receive more. Not anymore. In fact, I’m rather skeptical that anything will fall into my lap ever again. So here I am—instead of holding my arms out in expectation of abundance, I busy them setting up markers along the road as I trudge it.

…I think the Seattle winter may be getting to me.

Anyway, Adam wrote about “achievements” he’d like to have in his writing career and it got me to thinking about my own achievements. Sometimes, it’s hard to maintain one’s self-esteem as a writer when all your accomplishments amount to somewhat less money than a teenager makes in an evening of babysitting. I have to remind myself that the milestones I’ve already reached were once as far away as the ones I’m striving toward now.

Let’s check some things off, shall we?

Publish a story in an edited online publication. CHECK
Publish a story in an edited print publication. CHECK
Have a story nominated for an award. CHECK
Make a professional story sale. CHECK
Win a contest. CHECK

Oh, but there’s so much more to achieve. The advice to writers is always, “Don’t think about the glory. There’s no glory. Butt in chair. Hands on keyboard. Write the book. Put in the work. The writing comes first.” But, honestly, what’s wrong with envisioning success every now and then? My nose is raw from rubbing against the grindstone and I think I deserve a little daydreaming time. These are the achievements I see on the horizon. When I let myself.

Publish a story in a print market with a circulation over 5000.
Publish a story in an anthology.
Win an award or contest with a cash prize over $500.
Win an award requiring a nomination.
Have a story solicited.
Sign with an agent.
Publish a novel with a major house.
Do a reading at The Tattered Cover in Denver.
Have a book go to auction.

What do you strive for, when you allow yourself to dream?

Resolved

2010-01-02T18:59:00.000-07:00

My favorite thing about the first day of a new year is sitting down with an unmarred Moleskine planner and writing my New Year’s resolutions on the first page. 2009 notwithstanding, I have a pretty good record with New Year’s resolutions. I set specific, quantifiable goals. I look at my list almost every day. I think about my progress every month. It works for me.

Recently, though, I’ve discovered that I have to make similar resolutions every year. The kinds of things I resolve to do aren’t things that can be checked off and written out of my life… and they don’t really get easier. There are still miles to be run, words to be written, and books to be read. Maybe I’m doing it wrong. Maybe I should resolve to do once-in-a-lifetime things—to climb mountains or swim with dolphins, but I confess, I feel like those things aren’t where my life is right now.

In 2010, I resolve to:
1. Exercise an average of 90 minutes a week.
2. Finish and query my novel, Things Between.
3. Get paid for writing and art.

I’m going into 2010 feeling both beaten down and doggedly determined. Maybe this year will be the year something spectacular happens for me, but if it’s not, I’d like to feel like I at least made it a few steps closer. If I keep trudging, I’m at least giving spectacular a fighting chance, right?

2009, Quantitatively

2009-12-30T20:36:00.000-07:00

Words written: 81,309
Submissions: 58
Pieces accepted: 9
Pieces published: 8
Books read: 108
Minutes of exercise: 3029 (that I counted)
Pounds gained: 8
Camping trips: 2
Day hikes: 7
Museums visited: 8

WIP Wednesday: Beat Draft

2009-11-04T18:16:00.000-07:00

It’s the first Wednesday of November and I have, on my hard drive, a wonderful, terrible thing. It’s wonderful, because it’s a new novel, full of characters I’ve just met and situations whose implications I’ve only begun to grasp. It’s terrible because… it’s terrible. Just horrid. In between all those fantastic, meaningful situations, my characters ask themselves endless streams of rhetorical questions. They prattle on about their histories as if they’re being interviewed for a Lifetime biopic. They have great difficulty moving from one place to another. Extreme difficulty. It often takes them pages to take three steps across the kitchen.

It’s okay.

This year, I’m finally calling my NaNoWriMo novel what it is. It’s a discovery draft. I’m spending a month to write 50,000 words so I can see what happens. I’m okay with that. In fact, I’m okay with it even if I get to the end of the month and decide the story isn’t viable. It’s only a month and, chances are, at least some of the material I generate writing 2000 words a day will be useful somewhere. If not, well, I’m trying some new draft techniques and the month will have been worth it as a writing experiment.

One technique I've started experimenting with over the past couple of days is similar to what author Lazette Gifford calls a “phase draft.” I call it a “beat draft” after Sandra Scofield’s brilliant description of scene structure in her The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer. This isn’t quite the same as a screenwriter’s beat sheet. (At least, I don’t think so. I’m not a screenwriter, so I guess I don’t know for sure.) This is smaller. My beat draft drives the pulse of a scene by spelling out each action the characters will take. For example, for an upcoming scene, I wrote:

• Turtle tackles Kyle
• Tells him about Ev’s disappearance
• Kyle drops suitcase in hall
• Kisses Cindy
• Asks after Ev
• Squeezes Cindy’s hand
• Pulls Turtle off leg
• Picks up suitcase
• Goes upstairs
• Cindy closes door

This list, of course, contains none of the real emotional resonance of the scene and certainly none of the sensory detail. It’s just what happens. Gifford’s phase draft is more detailed, but it does something similar in that it lays a gridwork for each scene, a frame on which to hang the real writing.

I’m amazed at how much more easily the words have come since I began writing my scenes this way. Now, whether the scenes are any better than they’ve been in previous years remains to be seen. I won’t be revising this novel for quite a while, but I’m sure when (and if) I do, I’ll find myself, once again, amazed by how wonderful and terrible it all is. For now, it’s about the process more than the product and, I’m happy to say, this is a process that seems to work.

Them Goals, Them Goals

2009-11-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

It’s that time again. What… NaNoWriMo? No… well… yes, but there’s plenty of time to talk about that. I am seizing the day, instead, for some backwards-thinking retrospective. Remember those October goals?

Reasonably Low Goal: Submit four pieces to market, including two new pieces for the Nanoism contest.
Success! 4/4 pieces submitted (3 new).

Reasonably Low Goal: Send next 50 pages of Things Between to beta readers.
Progress: 31/50 pages sent.

Reasonably Low Goal: Do four writing group exercises to generate new material.
Progress: 2/4 completed.

Reasonably Low Goal: Prepare a rough synopsis and scene list for new novel.
Unreasonably High Goal: Outline the entire new novel using the first eight steps of the Snowflake Method.
Progress: Synopsis and character perspective completed (first three steps of Snowflake Method)

My “reasonably low” goals would have been perfectly reasonable, had the month gone as expected, but the reality turned out quite different. My son was out of school for almost a week with the H1N1 flu, the same virus (I think) took me out of commission for several days, and to top it off, I ended the month by being diagnosed with pneumonia, just in time to start NaNoWriMo. Luckily, it’s a mild case and we started pummeling it with antibiotics right at the onset of symptoms, so I’m confident I’ll be up for the challenges of the month ahead. As it is, I’m reasonably happy with the way the month went. At the very least, I didn’t give up.

Wee WIP

2009-10-28T15:42:00.000-06:00

I took a short break from contemplating the novels (I say “contemplating” because I’ve gotten precious little real writing done since the flu hit last week) to write something new and small. As I mentioned earlier, Nanoism is running another contest this month, this time for five-tweet serials that tell a life story. These suckers are not easy, but once I had my concepts in place, they turned out to be pretty fun to write.

I think nanofiction is a great exercise for the revision brain. The thing about these stories is they’re so short, almost the second you get the idea down on paper, you’re already revising. I know, I know. I hate revising. But this revision is different. It’s contained. Nanofiction calls for laser-focused revision. It’s not the big, messy revision that greets a newly-minted novelist. This is precise stuff. A phrase here, a comma there, the constant tradeoff between the word you want and the limited space available for it. Revising a piece of nanofiction seems to use the same part of the brain as solving a crossword puzzle or playing Scrabble and it’s just as enjoyable. It’s utterly engaging. It’s a game.

I wonder if there’s a way to translate the fun I have revising small things onto the larger canvas of a novel. Perhaps I’ll get there when my large strokes are all in place, when the scenes are all in order, the plot arcs smoothly, and even the paragraphs flow without without logjams. Then, I can get out my detail brush and my magnifying lens and tweak each sentence. I’m looking forward to that.

WIP... Thursday?

2009-10-22T19:11:00.000-06:00

So, when I said I was working on a novel, “novel H1N1 flu” was not my intent. However, I’ve had a child home sick for three days with a fever, body aches, and respiratory symptoms, so it seems that’s exactly the “novel” occupying my attention this week. I’m not nearly as sick as he was, but I am a bit under the weather and I’m trying to avoid making it any worse. The two of us have spent a lot of time curled up on the couch watching DVDs and playing Plants vs. Zombies.

Yesterday, we watched both Toy Story and Toy Story 2. There’s a scene near the beginning of Toy Story 2 where Woody, the cowboy doll, dives out the bedroom window in an effort to rescue another toy from the dreaded yard sale. It’s a pivotal sequence that sets Woody up to be discovered and stolen by a toy collector, which is the main plot of the film.

Amongst the outtakes for TS2, Pixar included an alternate version of this moment. In that version, Woody is tossed out the window quite accidentally during a raucus game with the other toys. This cut scene was storyboarded and rough-animated. Some of it was even fully-rendered. It was an entertaining scene. You could even say it was a good scene. A lot of work went into this scene. And they cut it. The writers said it was too coincidental, that they needed a stronger reason for Woody to land outside. They were right, too. The rewrite made it better.

I guess the lesson for a novelist is obvious. Sometimes, you’re pretty far along before the need to fix something becomes obvious. It’s okay. It can still be fixed. Whole scenes can be removed or reworked. Characters can be deleted and rewritten. The fictional world is malleable. And if all the minds that collaborate to create the storyboard for a Pixar film still find mistakes that deep into the process, how can a lone novelist expect perfection the first time out?

I have a chapter of Things Between I’ve been procrastinating sending to beta readers because I’m starting to doubt the whole first section of my book. It’s okay, though. That’s what they’re there for, right? Writing is fixable and fiction was made to be molded.

WIP Wednesday: Two Novels

2009-10-14T17:32:00.000-06:00

The school bus came about twenty minutes ago. I left my writing cocoon and walked through the pouring rain to meet it. That was the only time I left my desk all day (except for food, drink, and bathroom breaks). I feel amazingly like a working writer today and it will only continue. My son has his weekly kendo class this evening, which means my husband and I will find a quiet corner to tap away on our laptops, free from the distractions of housework and television.

I’d say I’m about shin-deep in novel revisions now. If this draft were bound up in paperback form, it would be a slim 25 pages, but it’s growing every day, as I sort through the great pile of text that is my first draft. I’m deleting a lot of scenes and writing a lot of new ones, but there were gems in that first draft. It’s exciting to find them and put them in their rightful places.

Besides Things Between, there’s another project starting to niggle at my consciousness. November is less than a month away, which means another frantic month of writing another novel. There’s not much to this new novel yet, not even a rough outline. I am starting to get to know the characters, though, and I have the first scene in my head. That’s enough to start. That, and a title. It’s called The Replacement Wife.

And that’s all I’m going to tell you right now.

An Evening With Nick Hornby

2009-10-10T14:19:00.000-06:00

I can still vividly remember the night in 1995 when I stood randomly plucking books from Barnes and Noble’s Discover new writers’ shelf and read this:

My desert-island, all-time, top five Most memorable split-ups, in chronological order:
1. Alison Ashworth
2. Penny Hardwich
3. Jackie Allen
4. Charlie Nicholson
5. Sarah Kendrew

I bought that book, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, and every novel he’s written since. He’s a huge influence on me, in terms of how to write a modern, compelling, and approachable story, so I was excited to see that he was reading from Juliet, Naked at the Seattle Central Library last night.

I saw Hornby read once before, at The Tattered Cover in Denver. It was a (comparatively) small affair, during his book tour for How to be Good. This event in Seattle involved a full, 400-person auditorium, a line around the block, and latecomers turned away at the door. It didn’t matter. Even from twenty rows up, he was funny and engaging. Most importantly, just being there renewed something in me as a writer.

After the reading, one of the audience members asked about the writing process. It turns out, Hornby is what people in writer circles call a “pantser.” That is to say, rather than using a detailed outline, he starts a book with an idea, some characters, and an opening scene and from there, it goes where it will. He also said he rents an office and, after dropping his child off at school, goes there to write for a regular work day. Minus the rented office, that sounded an awful lot like what I do every day. It sounded even more like my process when he admitted that he estimated his day of sitting in front of the computer involved about 43 minutes of actual writing, amidst quite a lot of email-checking and coffee refilling. It was comforting to reaffirm that even successful writers doubt their first drafts are worthwhile.

The whole thing only lasted a little over an hour, but I stepped out of the library and into the night air excited about writing and about what I might accomplish if stay the path. This is something I should do more often. In fact, I absolutely will.

WIP Wednesday: Novel Barbie

2009-10-07T12:08:00.000-06:00

I wish they made a Barbie that said, “Writing is hard,” because I’m beginning to suspect math has nothing on the process of revising a novel. I’m seven chapters into the rewrite of Things Between and it is undeniably the hardest writing project I’ve ever undertaken.

You’d never expect it. You’d think writing the first draft would be the hard part, conjuring all those characters and events and emotions out of thin air. You’d think diving into the frightening unknown would be the most difficult step. It’s not. That step is equal parts daunting and exhilarating. The hard part is going back again and again, knowing it could all be for nothing. This could be the project that, after it’s tweaked and massaged and plucked to perfection, still ends up being set aside because all that isn’t enough.

I know, I know. Writers compare revising to polishing a gem, to adding details to a sculpture. They say revision brings the pleasure of truly seeing your story for the first time, seeing it how it was meant to be told. Maybe I’ll be saying that too in a couple of months. I’m not saying it right now. Instead, I’m telling myself over and over again that it doesn’t matter if this turns out to be not enough. Not now, at least. What matters now is that I’m doing the work.

I’m giving Things Between the chance to reach its potential, whatever that potential may be. I am giving it every opportunity I can give. If it wants ballet classes, I’ll give it ballet classes. If it wants to learn karate, I’ll find a karate teacher. If it wants a pony, I’ll it we can’t afford a pony and have no place to keep a pony and this should be a lesson in learning to accept disappointment.

Even so, when this novel grows up, I sure hope it’s grateful, because writing is hard.

September Wrap-Up, October Goals

2009-10-01T12:00:00.000-06:00

With the shift in seasons well underway, the beginning of September seems like a scene from another lifetime. My goals were modest because, at the time I set them, we were in limbo over the teacher’s strike and I had no idea when I’d be able to be back to a normal schedule.

It ended up lasting two weeks and, in the two weeks remaining, I have to say, I rocked.

Reasonably Low Goal: Submit four pieces to market.
Unreasonably High Goal: Submit twelve pieces, including two previously unsubmitted stories.
Success! Low goal exceeded. 7/4 submitted, including two new stories.

Reasonably Low Goal: Send first four chapters of Things Between to beta readers.
Unreasonably High Goal: First fifteen chapters to beta readers.
Success! Low goal met. 4/4 sent.

Reasonably Low Goal: Do two writing group exercises to begin generating new material.
Unreasonably High Goal: Do all eight September exercises.
Success! Low goal exceeded. 3/2 completed.

October brings NaNoWriMo prep, as well as a “contest-type-thing” from Nanoism that I want to enter. (Have I mentioned recently how much I love Nanoism. I had another story there in September.) Here are my new goals:

Reasonably Low Goal: Submit four pieces to market, including two new pieces for the Nanoism contest.
Unreasonably High Goal: Submit twelve pieces, including four new ones.

Reasonably Low Goal: Send next 50 pages of Things Between to beta readers.
Unreasonably High Goal: Next 100 pages to beta readers.

Reasonably Low Goal: Do four writing group exercises to generate new material.
Unreasonably High Goal: Do all nine October exercises.

Reasonably Low Goal: Prepare a rough synopsis and scene list for new novel.
Unreasonably High Goal: Outline the entire new novel using the first eight steps of the Snowflake Method.

WIP Wednesday: Priorities

2009-09-30T13:14:00.000-06:00

I finished my first Writer’s Accountability Chart last week and so far, I really like having metrics by which to gauge my weekly productivity. As I read on Twitter earlier this week, “Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the Internet.”

By the numbers, here’s what I accomplished last week:

5 sets of morning pages (that’s 15 handwritten pages)
2 blog entries
678 words written
9 pages edited (rewritten, really)
2 submissions
LOTS of focused reading (by this I mean either reading books in my genre or reading to research potential markets)

I think I could have done better, but that gives me a good baseline to set goals from. Also, I’m happy with the writing I did. The new words were clean and the revisions extensive.

Revising the novel has made me think about a few of the short stories I retired after they reached their rejection threshold (not that I have a firm “threshold”—I just eventually decide a story’s had enough and put it away). I’m itching to dig in and give them the same treatment I’ve been giving the novel. Right now, though, with NaNoWriMo coming up in a month, Things Between is the first priority. I want to be deep enough into this book that I’ll still be excited about it after the next novel is drafted and marinating.

…but “A Blueberry Shaped Like Trent Lockhart” really could use a good going-over
…and I think “Well-Upholstered” could probably be rescued with a little work
…and there are all those unfinished baubles in my “Pullouts” folder.

It’s a good thing I’m in touch with my priorities. Next week’s numbers are going to be awesome.

Work-In-Progress

2009-09-23T12:16:00.000-06:00

Today’s my first Writing Wednesday! Theoretically, it’s not all that different from any other day. I mean, I spend at least five days a week sitting at my desk with the laptop in front of me, but usually there’s also dishes to be washed, groceries to be bought, meals to be cooked, library books to be returned, and bathrooms to be cleaned. Today is my day to turn my back on all those distractions and write without guilt… even though the car really needs to be vacuumed and the kid is almost out of clean socks and, oh yeah, we only have one egg left. It’s Writing Wednesday.

I’m working on the novel, Things Between. After a lot of experimentation, I think I’ve finally found a revision method that works for me. I’m a terrible reviser. In that way, I suspect that Nanowrimo is actually bad for me, because it encourages fast and loose drafting and I am definitely more of a revise-as-I-go sort of girl. It’s much harder for me to “fix it in post” than it is for me to just do it right the first time. My compromise is to open up my original draft and a new, blank file side by side (actually, I’m using Scrivener’s split-screen feature) and rewrite from scratch, using the first draft as a guide.

So much has been rewritten and rearranged that it’s hard to find snippets to compare directly, but here’s an example:

Original: Attendance was bad that semester. Who (besides Dr. Wu, of course) would blame us for choosing the whole, golden world over a withered professor with a squeaky dry-erase marker? Usually, at least half the desks in the stuffy classroom were empty, but mine was always occupied. If you could say one thing about me in those days, it’s that I was responsible.

Revised: The classroom on the third floor smelled of floor wax and crumbling plaster. Think of any college classroom with hardwood floors and initials carved in wooden desks and you’ll have a good idea of it. This was in the late 90s, the age of dry-erase, so there was no chalk dust, but every once in a while you’d catch a whiff of the alcohol scent from the markers and they squeaked occasionally as the professor spewed equations across the board. We were well into the semester—it must have been mid-October—but half the desks were empty due to the spate of unseasonably warm weather. Those of us who remained spent the hour in a logy, post-lunch stupor, cursing ourselves for the responsible upbringings, strict moral codes, and faltering grades that conspired to keep us imprisoned while our bolder classmates played in the Indian summer sun.

No sentence goes unscrutinized. No wonder it’s taking me forever.

Accountable

2009-09-20T20:28:00.000-06:00

The strike is over! School started on Tuesday and I’ve had four days now to ease into my fall writing schedule. It hasn’t been without snags (I wrote all of about 150 words yesterday), but it’s been good. I’m starting to feel like a writer again.

A few days ago, I read Mary Rajotte’s blog entry about her writer’s accountability chart and decided to adopt it for myself. Monthly goals are helpful in seeing the big picture, but they get accomplished through weekly and daily accountability so I printed out my own set of tasks and pinned the chart to my bulletin board. (For those who are curious, my accountability categories are: morning pages, blog entry, new word count, edited pages, submissions, focused reading, and planning/outlining.)

See that yellow column in the middle? That’s my “Writing Wednesday.” In James Scott Bell’s article, 10 Disciplines for Fiction Writers, he writes about having a day blocked out exclusively for writing. His is “Super Tuesday,” but Tuesday is my volunteering day, so “Writing Wednesday,” it is (also “Wonderful Wednesday” and “Whine-Free Wednesday” and “Working Wednesday” and “Why-Did-I-Ever-Think-This-Was-A-Good-Idea Wednesday”). I don’t expect to accomplish every task on the chart every day, but on Wednesdays, at least, I’ll have a good shot.

The beginning of a new school year is a great time to reevaluate routines and strategies and to refocus on what I really want to accomplish. I’m so glad to be back and I can’t wait to start making checkmarks on that wonderful new chart.

Tiny Fiction

2009-09-06T19:40:00.000-06:00

My story, "Hundred Year Storm" is up at PicFic.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

2009-09-02T19:22:00.000-06:00

School was scheduled to start this week, but my son’s teacher is standing with his colleagues and a picket sign on the corner halfway between the bus stop and the school, and his superintendent is assiduously recording robot calls and filing legal motions while ignoring the bargaining table. Needless to say, my triumphant return to daily writing is rather limping. I am verklempt. I had plans for September. I had goals. I had deadlines to work towards. I had words frothing at my fingertips waiting for the seal to be released so they could flow out. I was counting on having the luxury of time, but instead, I’m faced with the frustration of uncertainty.

I know there are writers out there who manage to get work done with small children at home. (I used to be one of them.) I know there are writers who get up early each morning to write before homeschooling their children. I know this is possible. I just don’t like it. I want my September.

My low and high goals this month reflect the fact that school might not start at all this month. Until the strike is resolved, every day is up in the air.

Reasonably Low Goal: Submit four pieces to market.
Unreasonably High Goal: Submit twelve pieces, including two previously unsubmitted stories.

Reasonably Low Goal: Send first four chapters of Things Between to beta readers.
Unreasonably High Goal: First fifteen chapters to beta readers.

Reasonably Low Goal: Do two writing group exercises to begin generating new material.
Unreasonably High Goal: Do all eight September exercises.

A Little Horn Tooting

2009-07-17T10:55:00.000-06:00

How could I forget? Two new publications in the past month:

Overboard, in The Shine Journal
and
I won Nanoism's first Twitter-fiction contest. That story is here.

Up a Hill and Down Again

2009-07-16T21:41:00.000-06:00

At dusk, the trail through the wetlands glows with a magical light. The morning power walkers and track teams of the afternoon are long gone, making way for families on their post-prandial walks, couples holding hands, children riding bicycles with training wheels. I am jogging up a killer hill, in the company of my iPod, to a playlist that ranges from punk to swing to gospel to honky-tonk to middle eastern techno. It skips from era to era, from country to country, like Dr. Who in his Tardis (perhaps with less emphasis on England, but not much—my interval cue is the bong of a Tower clock).

I nod to a gasping older couple as I pass them, trying to ignore the ache in my calves and thinking about the motley collection of songs I’ve put together. It has the same problem I always encounter in my writing. It don’t know where to land. I don’t know where to land. I don’t know where my power lies. I don’t know how to tap into whatever it is that lies at the core of who I am. I don't know. I don't know.

Last week, my mom visited me in Seattle. On the way home from the airport, she pointed to the bobble-hipped Elvis who has lived on my dashboard for the last eight years. “You like Elvis?” she asked, incredulous.

“Of course,” I said. “Dad…” I trailed off. She didn’t need any more explanation. My parents divorced when I was six, but she knows he gave me Elvis in the cradle.

I’m just past the turnaround point, the fourth bong of the Tower clock, when he makes his appearance. "Amazing Grace." I’ve hit my rhythm and the way back is more downhill than up. I pass the couple from the hill and nod at them again. The husband shakes his head in wonder at my endurance, which makes me smile. I’m not much of a runner.

The woods are beautiful, but I haven’t lived here long enough and their beauty—any beauty, really—still sends my mind racing back to the place I came from. To the mountains and the plains. Elvis gives way to a country song about going home. “She’s back to her cowgirl roots, back in her cowboy boots. She’s got everything she thought she didn’t need.”

I have that farm in my blood. Just like I have the speakeasies of old Chicago in me and, after thirteen years in Colorado, the staggering profile of the Rocky Mountains on the western horizon too. I have the rhythms of the doumbek in my belly. I have the screaming, pounding beat of an angry youth in my feet. It’s all me, I realize. My power is all of it and more.

I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I hit the killer hill going the other direction and I fly.

Up and Coming

2009-06-16T18:37:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, I opened my mailbox to find a familiar envelope—my name and address printed neatly in the center, a Forever stamp in the upper right corner, and no return address in the left. The dreaded SASE. I try to submit by email or web upload whenever possible, but some contests and journals still only accept mailed submissions and, inevitably, they send their rejections via slips of paper stuffed into self-addressed, stamped envelopes. An SASE in the mail is almost never good news.

Except this one. It contained a check. THEMA bought my story. “The Matlin Women Can’t Resist,” a slightly creepy, surreal story, will appear in the March 2010 issue, themed Put it in your pocket, Lillian.

I’m excited because the publication of this story will represent two aspirations achieved. I think of aspirations as different from goals. Goals are concrete, quantifiable objectives I set for myself. Achieving or not achieving them is generally entirely within my control. Aspirations are hopes. They’re things I’d like to see happen and things I can work towards, but they’re not things I have immediate control over. This year, I aspired to publish in a print journal and to place a story longer than flash fiction length. “The Matlin Women Can’t Resist” just happens to be a full-length short story. And THEMA is a quarterly print journal.

It’s going to be a long nine months before I finally have a copy in my hands, but I can wait. Who knows what the rest of the year will bring?

It's Not Easy

2009-06-01T13:13:00.000-06:00

So… May.

I worked on the novel almost every day in May and yet, looking back, it almost seems as if the month didn’t happen at all. I only finished about half the editing I was aiming for, mostly because the two chapters I worked on turned out not to be editing at all, but rewriting. Or, more accurately, just plain writing—mostly new material in service of a new, clearer vision of what the book was meant to be.

At least, I think that’s what it was. It might also have been tinkering and waffling and generally dragging my feet over text that will likely never be as good as I want it to be. It’s hard to tell sometimes.

I have draft manuscripts of eight different novels. That’s somewhere along the line of half a million words. I’ve think I’ve proven to myself that I have the discipline to write in quantity. Still, the idea of finishing a novel, of having a polished manuscript ready to send out to agents, seems like a Herculean task. In part, because there’s a very real possibility that, after all that work, it might not go anywhere. There’s every chance that my completed, polished manuscript could go from agent to agent, editor to editor, and inspire love in no one at all. It’s one thing when that happens with a short story, but a novel? As often as I tell myself to just keep writing, just keep sending things out, always keep irons in the fire, there’s a point where being rejected eighty or ninety or ninety-five percent of the time becomes soul-searing. What’s to keep it from being one hundred percent? Every publication comes with the dread that it might be the last.

If I were the kind of blogger who wrote to offer advice and inspiration, I’d spout the old standards. I’d say the only way to ensure failure is to stop trying. I’d say that you have to write for love, not money or glory or fame or any of the other things very few writers ever achieve. I’d say that sometimes you just have to sit down in front of the keyboard each day and put in the sweat equity. I’d say that the road is different for everyone and you just need to follow your own path. I’d say those things, and sometimes I’d believe them. Sometimes, I do believe them. After all, you believe what you have to in order to keep going.

Outside, the sun is shining and there’s a gentle breeze rustling through the (out-of-place) aspens. It’s June. I’m at a cafe table with my laptop and a coffee cup (empty, except for a constellation of black grounds) on the table beside me. I have five more months until my self-imposed novel deadline. I got two rejections last week (four, if you consider that one place hit the “no” button three times). The manuscript file is open, waiting, right behind this window.

Once again, I’m going to choose to believe.

May Goal

2009-05-04T12:23:00.000-06:00

Reasonably Low Goal: Rewrite/revise 4 chapters of Things Between.
Unreasonably High Goal: Finish the second draft..

This is May’s only goal.

Things Between, as some of you know, is the novel I wrote during last year’s National Novel Writing Month. After five months, I’m about five chapters into the second draft. It’s about thirty chapters long so, at the current rate, it would take me two and a half years to have a workable second draft. I don’t want to wait that long.

Ideally, I’d like for the novel to rewrite itself with no input from me. It’d be nice to just open my computer one day and find a fully-formed novel, as good as the ideal one locked in my head. Alas, I experimented with that method of revision last month and it didn’t seem to work, so I’m going to have to resort to other methods. Like actually revising.

I can almost always come up with tasks that are more compelling than working on the novel. Writing short stories is quick and immediately gratifying. Researching agents and literary journals is interesting and informative. Reading is both essential and pleasurable. Submitting, even with the specter of imminent rejection, holds the allure of potential publication. Working on the novel is slow and messy and frustrating because, even as the novel moves closer to my vision of what it should be, it becomes more and more apparent that it will never, ever be perfect.

The only way I can think of to combat this disappointing reality to to give myself no other choice but to work on the novel. This month, I’m not challenging myself to write any new stories, no quota of writing exercises or submissions. Reading will be a reward. This month, Things Between is my only writing priority. If that doesn’t work, I’m not sure what will.

April Report

2009-05-01T17:20:00.000-06:00

Reasonably Low Goal: Submit 3 exercises to my flash fiction group.
Unreasonably High Goal: Submit 9 flash fiction exercises.
Success! Submitted 3 exercises.

Reasonably Low Goal: Submit 6 existing or new stories.
Unreasonably High Goal: Submit 10 stories.
Success! Submitted 4 stories and 2 picture book queries for a total of 6.

Reasonably Low Goal: Complete 1 new story for a contest.
Unreasonably High Goal: Complete 6 new stories aimed at specific markets.
Qualified success. Completed 1 new story, but not for the contest I originally targeted.

Reasonably Low Goal: Revise 3 chapters of Things Between.
Unreasonably High Goal: Revise 100 pages.
0 revised. Enough said.

I wouldn’t call it a stellar month, but it wasn’t a terrible one either. On the topic of numbers, I also read eleven books, had two shorts accepted, and one published. I’m taking the day off today, but I’ll be back Monday with May’s goal. Yes, that’s singular.

Mid-Month Progress Report

2009-04-17T14:09:00.000-06:00

Thanks to a combination of houseguests, hives, volunteering, oral surgery, and some bad medication side effects, the majority of this week was lost to the vast tangle of Life. I’m not too late for a mid-month report, though, and I think if I buckle down for the next two weeks, I still have a decent shot at having the productive April I’d hoped for. Here’s where I stand:

0/3 Things Between chapters revised.
3/3 flash exercises submitted.
1/6 stories submitted.
1/1 new stories completed (but not the contest story).

That one completed story was a wee thing that was immediately accepted and published by Nanoism. I’m really enjoying the nuggets of fiction various twitterzines bring to my day. They feel like Seattle sunbreaks—fleeting, shining moments, just long enough to change my perspective on the day.

April Goals

2009-04-01T09:00:00.000-06:00

Next week brings both spring break for my son and a much-anticipated visit from my brother- and sister-in-law, so April’s goals are taking into account only three work weeks. I’m using the same high and low goal-setting scheme I used in March because it worked amazingly well.

Reasonably Low Goal: Revise 3 chapters of Things Between.
Unreasonably High Goal: Revise 100 pages of Things Between.

Reasonably Low Goal: Submit 3 exercises to my flash fiction group.
Unreasonably High Goal: Submit 9 flash fiction exercises.

Reasonably Low Goal: Submit 6 existing or new stories.
Unreasonably High Goal: Submit 10 stories.

Reasonably Low Goal: Complete 1 new story for a contest.
Unreasonably High Goal: Complete 6 new stories aimed at specific markets.

March End of Month Rundown

2009-03-31T11:30:00.000-06:00

Reasonably Low Goal: Revise 2 chapters of Things Between.
Unreasonably High Goal: Revise first 100 pages of Things Between.
Success! Revised 2 chapters (first 25 pages of second draft)

Reasonably Low Goal: Submit 2 exercises to my flash fiction group.
Unreasonably High Goal: Submit 9 exercises to my flash fiction group.
Success! Submitted three exercises.

Reasonably Low Goal: Submit 4 existing or new stories to journals.
Unreasonably High Goal: Submit 10 stories to journals.
Success! Submitted 5 stories.

Reasonably Low Goal: Complete one new story for a contest.
Unreasonably High Goal: Complete 4 new stories aimed at specific markets.
Success! Completed 3 new stories.

Success on all fronts and, in fact, I exceeded every low goal except the first. I’m going to continue this method of goal-setting because, obviously, something is working. Alas, no publications or acceptances this month, but I am controlling the things I can control. Bring on April!

Tension in the Details

2009-03-30T12:55:00.000-06:00

The Barnum Museum: Stories by Steven Millhauser was published in hardcover in 1990. That means, by the time I started college in 1991, this book was already in existence. Through all those years of lit classes and creative writing workshops and all the years since, this book was out there in the world and no one ever recommended it to me. How can that be? All that time, it was just sitting on the library shelf waiting for me to stumble on it. I’m so glad I finally did. After the first story, I set the book down and say, “I will never, ever, in my whole life write as well as this.” It’s made me rethink the whole structure of the short story. I can’t wait to reread this book and tear the stories apart to figure out how exactly Millhauser makes them work.

I read the book’s opening story, “A Game of Clue,” just after sending Sandra Scofield’s “Elephant in the Room” exercise (from her The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer) to my flash fiction group. The exercise involves giving characters an activity that allows them to avoid discussing the real issue at the center of the scene and “A Game of Clue” is a fantastic example of just that technique. (The best example is, of course, Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.”)

Millhauser starts by presenting us with a detailed description of a Clue board, a specific Clue board, with one corner obscured by a saucer. He follows with a detailed description of the table on which the game sits. Finally, we find the first character, 25-year-old Jacob Ross, who is angry. The story continues alternating between details about the game and the setting, a fantasy involving the Clue characters, and the interior worlds of the players sitting around the table so that, by the end, we’ve more than witnessed a game of Clue, we’ve discovered the changing dynamic of a family. All the while, even when every character at the table seems on the brink of exploding, Millhauser keeps bringing focus back to the game, to the details. The tension is in the details.

This is a good lesson for me. Even if it’s true that I will never, in my whole life, write that well, I will be applying the lessons learned to my own stories. Perhaps, it will make me just a little bit better. And, for me, that’s what reading and writing is all about.

Mid-Month Progress Report

2009-03-16T09:00:00.000-06:00

0/2 novel chapters revised
1/2 flash exercises submitted
1/4 stories submitted
0/1 new stories completed

This was the half of the month with the vacation in it, so I'm not too terribly worried about meeting my low goals. I'd like to do better, though. They were "reasonably low goals," after all.

The hardest thing for me right now seems to be the novel editing. For some reason, I just feel paralyzed when faced with that manuscript. It's so big compared to the short stories I'm used to. Even though I wrote it, it's daunting.

The coming week is full of school half-days, but since my most productive writing time is in the mornings, I'm hoping that won't affect me too much. Things should be looking much better by Friday.

Blue Sky

2009-03-15T16:57:00.000-06:00

We returned from a southern California vacation Monday night to find snow falling in Seattle. As much as I love softly-falling December snow, I have to admit that March snow is less endearing, especially after five days in the LA sun. Still, there was something slightly wonderful about the white flakes illuminated by the headlights of cars at the airport, of all that hectic travel energy against a sudden and jarring winter backdrop. To step into an airplane on a sunny, breezy afternoon and exit in the same, wouldn’t have been nearly as dramatic a transition. Sometimes, life calls for contrast and Seattle definitely delivered.

Oh, I grumbled, of course. But, secretly, the snow felt a little bit like magic.

We spent most of four days at Disneyland and I dare anyone to walk down Main Street, USA towards that glittering pink and blue castle, without breathing in a little magic. Say what you will about the Disney marketing machine or about Mickey Mouse destroying copyright law, Disneyland has magic in the air and, when you’re there, you can’t help but feel inspired by the immense potential of the human imagination. It’s a world where a fairy tale castles stands at the end of a turn-of-the-century business district, where you can walk from historical Missouri to idealized New Orleans, by way of a Hawaii where the flowers sing.

One area in Disney’s California Adventure, the Blue Sky Cellar, acts as a sort of museum to the creative processes of the Imagineers who work on the theme parks. They say they call the first phase of design on any new attraction the “blue sky” phase. It’s a time when no idea is too big or too crazy or too impractical to be considered. Anything goes in the blue sky phase.

I think I need more blue sky in my writing life (living where I do, I could use some more in my actual life too, but that’s another matter entirely). I’m enamored of the idea of writing without constraint, without being hemmed in by any expectations of the final product. Writing for the absolute peak of what my imagination can render. Writing for the sheer joy of creation. Wild, out-there, fantastic, free, joyous writing.

Except for (almost) daily morning pages, I didn’t think much about writing while on vacation. It was good to spend a few days just living. Now, that I’m back though, the blue sky, it’s waiting out there for me.

March Goals

2009-02-28T21:21:00.000-07:00

I know these bookkeeping-type posts aren’t that exciting to read, but putting my monthly goals out there in writing goes a long way towards keeping me accountable.

Last month, I read an article on Deadline Dames that suggested, “My favorite way to hit a deadline is to set a goal that is reasonably low, and a goal that is unreasonably high.” I thought I’d try that this month, both to avoid a repeat of February and to give myself an opportunity to push beyond my usual “slow and steady” method of working. March is another month with some travel, school scheduling difficulties (a whole week of half days), and visiting family, so the “reasonably low” goals need to have an emphasis on reasonable.

Without further ado...

Reasonably Low Goal: Revise two chapters of Things Between.
Unreasonably High Goal: Revise first hundred pages.

Reasonably Low Goal: Submit two exercises to my flash fiction group.
Unreasonably High Goal: Submit nine exercises.

Reasonably Low Goal: Submit four existing or new stories to journals.
Unreasonably High Goal: Submit ten stories.

Reasonably Low Goal: Complete one new story for a contest.
Unreasonably High Goal: Four new stories aimed at specific markets.

February Wrap-Up

2009-02-27T15:37:00.000-07:00

So. February did not turn out like I’d hoped. Here’s what I said I would do:
• Submit four pieces to my flash fiction group.
• Edit four chapters of my novel.
• Submit four pieces to literary journals, including one deadline-driven, theme piece.

And here’s what I actually did:
• 1/4 pieces submitted to flash fiction group
• 1/4 novel chapters edited
• 4/4 pieces submitted to journals, including the deadline-driven piece

Now, I realize February was a short month, but I’m fairly certain it wasn’t a quarter the length of a normal month, even with vacation taken into account. I can’t even make the excuse that I did a lot of reading in February, because I only finished about five books, an average number for me. I honestly don’t know what happened. I lost days to prepping for vacation, days to travel, days to school holidays, and days to staring off into space wishing the words would write themselves.

I am proud, though, of what I did accomplish in February. I’m still in the honeymoon period with the new story I sent off this week, “The Matlin Women Can’t Resist.” It’s beyond the 1000-word cutoff for flash fiction, which has been one of my goals. I love flash fiction, but I want to work on writing longer pieces, with more opportunity for development. Three of my pending submissions are now longer than flash (and one of those is sim-subbed), so hopefully I’ll get good news about one or more them sooner rather than later.

Now, I’d like to imitate my cats and curl up to take a nap in the rare Seattle sunshine, but I think I’ll do some reading instead. I have a new approach to goal-setting for the month of March. That will be in the next entry.

The Other Side of the Mountains

2009-02-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

Something happens to me every time I return to Colorado. Last weekend, I went back for the third time since moving to Seattle fourteen months ago. Each time my plane sets down at DIA and I take my first steps into that vast peak-roofed travel cathedral, I feel doors swing open in my mind. My chest expands. I can think. I can breathe. I’m home.

The area around the Denver airport is a vast, flat expanse. In winter (and often in summer, too), the view from an airplane is a monochromatic patchwork, ranging from tan to mahogany. On the ground, it’s just brown. When I first moved from the green plains of Illinois to the brown plains of Colorado, I wondered how anyone could live that way. After eleven years there, I learned to see the richness in the shades of brown—the golden of the autumn wheat fields, the texture of plowed furrows under winter frost. You could look out across those plains forever were it not for the intrusion of the mountains in the west. The Rockies aren’t like other mountains—certainly not like the lone, majestic peaks here in Washington. The Rockies were born of violence, of sheer, raw power. They’re staggeringly tall, frighteningly daunting, impossibly long . Their beauty is a punch in the gut. Sometimes, even when I lived there, I would cry at the sight of them.

I’m glad we moved to Seattle. I haven’t been able to say that before, I’ve been so weighed down with the pain of leaving Colorado. I’m glad to have the experience of living on a coast, living near water, living in a city, living in the lush, green, Pacific Northwest, meeting the people I’ve met here. I’m glad of it all in the way I’m glad to have a read a book or seen a movie, even ones that don’t immediately rise to my list of favorites. I’m glad of it in the way writers are always glad for new experiences. Living here is fuel for my imagination, the newness of it is the crude oil of creativity.

But Colorado, that wide open part of Colorado where the mountains of my adulthood meet the plains of my childhood, is where my heart still lives. Perhaps someday, I’ll feel the way those first brazen settlers did when they crossed the impossible Rockies into a land of hope, freedom, and opportunity. Today, the sky is weighing down on me and the trees are crowding in around me, and I’m thinking those mountains were put there for a reason.

At the same time, I'm thankful to be living in the future. Every miraculous trip through the sky reminds me, we're not those early settlers. We live in a time when things left behind aren't left forever, and when words connect us at the speed of light. Even over mountains.

• 0/4 pieces to submitted to flash fiction group.
• 1/4 novel chapters edited.
• 2/4 pieces submitted to literary journals.

One Little Thing

2009-02-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter or Livejournal, I had a short short published in Six Sentences last week. How could I have forgotten to link it here?

Also, a quick update on the monthly goals:
• 0/4 pieces to submitted to flash fiction group.
• 0.5/4 novel chapters edited.
• 2/4 pieces submitted to literary journals.

February Goals 4-4-4

2009-02-04T17:10:00.000-07:00

February is a tough month in which to get anything done. It’s short. There’s a convention (and thus, travel) in the middle of it. And, here in Washington, there’s a whole week of no school following President’s Day.

Heedless of the potential pitfalls, I forge ahead. In February I will:
• Submit four pieces to my flash fiction group..
• Edit four chapters of my novel (the one left from January, plus three more).
• Submit four pieces to literary journals, including one deadline-driven, theme piece.

Why I Hate Editing (Today)

2009-02-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

I hate novel editing. I’ve only managed to edit two chapters of the novel and those, only because I deleted most of the text. If I keep that up, I’ll no longer have a novel by the time I get to the end.

The thing is, I think I might enjoy it under different circumstances. If I could hole myself up in a hotel room—or better yet, a cottage somewhere—and completely immerse myself in the world of the novel for days on end, I think I would revel in it. I would completely give myself over to the book. I’d be able to focus on nothing but weaving together all the strands that make up the beautiful tapestry of the book. If I had that opportunity, revising would probably be an artistic dream.

But that’s not my life. My life is cleaning and shopping and volunteering and tooth fairy visits and report cards and cooking and listening to my family’s tales of days in the trenches of the playground and the game industry. My life is an “I Love Lucy” assembly line of interruptions. Even as I type this, my son is yelling for me to come upstairs and a suspicious odor is telling me my coffee cake might be burning. My life is not conducive to holding all of the intricacies of a novel in my head at once. There’s just not enough space. Sometimes, it drives me crazy.

And yet, part of why I love being a writer is that no one expects writers to work indefinite 50- or 60-hour weeks in the service of their careers. It’s not like being a programmer or an executive or a lawyer. If you’re going to be a writer, you can’t spend your life inside a cocoon. You have to live. You have to love. You have to allow yourself the time to experience every damn thing life has to offer. I love that I can be present in my life and I know that if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have anything to write about.

Right now, though, I’d really like a turn in that cocoon.

Professional Discount

2009-01-26T18:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it’s small things that keep you going.

The junk mail gods have pegged me as a writer, so lately I’ve been getting a lot of subscription offers for everything from The New Yorker to Writer’s Digest to (literally) small literary magazines like Quick Fiction. Even if most them eventually find their way into the recycling, I love them. The ones I love most are the ones that bear big letters or starbursts proclaiming, “Professional Discount!” I like the sound of that, even if the meager Paypal transfers I’ve received for my work aren’t nearly enough to make me a professional writer. Apparently, I’m professional enough to see how much writers pay for The New Yorker and, let me tell you, it’s a steal. In times like these, when rejections are flowing like water and acceptances are (not) flowing like bank credit (isn’t), I’ll take my validation where I can get it.

Even if I’m not really a professional writer, I can say with all confidence that I’ve been a diligent writer. We’re almost through January and I’ve written every single day this month. I’m doing well on my monthly goals too:

• 4/4 flash pieces submitted to writing group.
• 1/1 contests entered.
•6/3 lit magazine pieces submitted.
• 0/3 novel chapters edited.

Okay, so I’m doing well on all but one of my goals. The rest of this week will be dedicated to novel-editing. I printed out the first three chapters last week so I could see them in all their glory. They’re in a plain, black folder, taunting me. “You know we’re only the tip of the iceberg. Why even bother?”

I won’t let them win.

Writer's Brain

2009-01-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

I got a new camera for Christmas and I’ve been carrying it with me everywhere. I love my camera and I take a lot of pictures, but I don’t consider myself a photographer. Even so, sometimes I find myself getting “photographer brain.” It’s a shift in perception that happens when I’ve been carrying my camera around for too long. Everything starts to form itself into photos. The world divides itself into rectangles. The rectangles divide themselves into thirds. Objects deconstruct themselves into shapes, into lines, into light and dark. To bastardize Shakespeare, when I have photographer’s brain, all the world’s a picture.

The other night, while walking back from Hadden’s kendo class, I realized I’d left my umbrella behind. I let H. and Kevin go on ahead and went back to the rec center by myself to retrieve it. Walking alone through the downtown shopping district, with the glowing light of restaurants spilling out onto the wet sidewalks, the world started to form itself into words. I had writer’s brain.

There was a time when in my life when I lived with writer’s brain all the time. I composed poems while I walked to and from class in college. I would sit in my car for a few minutes after reaching a destination to scribble down notes for stories. Even when I wasn’t physically writing, I was always writing in my head. As my life became more complicated, the writer’s brain slipped away. I got HTML-brain and mom-brain and gamer-brain.

Since I started writing daily again, my writer’s brain has been working its way back into shape. I missed the simple pleasure of translating the world into language and the constant rhythm of words in my mind. The return to that mode of thinking is absolutely worth the time and effort it takes to write every day.

Some monthly goal updates:
• 2/4 flash pieces submitted to writing group.
• 1/1 contests entered.
• 1/3 lit magazine pieces submitted.
• 0/3 novel chapters edited.

Goals and Resolutions

2009-01-09T16:51:00.000-07:00

It’s (sort of) a new month and a new year, which means it’s time for fresh starts and renewed commitment. I made several resolutions for 2009, only two of which have to do with reading and writing (read 35 years worth of Pulitzer-prize winners and write daily), but I want to stick with my practice of setting monthly goals to guide my resolve.

This month, I’m thinking in terms of numbers. 4-3-3-1.

In January, I will:
• Submit four pieces to my flash fiction group.
• Edit three chapters of my novel.
• Submit three pieces to literary journals.
• Enter one contest (although, the contest I have in mind allows three stories per entry).

I’m ready and motivated to accomplish more of everything this year—more material generated, more submissions and, hopefully, more acceptances.

2008 in Books

2008-12-30T22:33:00.000-07:00

The end of the year is upon us and it's time to look back over my past year's reading. Beautiful, isn't it? (Note: if you're reading in an RSS reader, click through for the full effect.)

I sorted them by date read, starting in January and ending just yesterday. Standout novels for me this year were The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger, The Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper, Neverwhere and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, and Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance by Lloyd Jones. Plus, I discovered Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, which made for many hours of delicious fun reading.

Many of the books below have reviews if you click their covers.

2008 Book Montage

Good News After Bad

2008-12-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

Three late school starts and two snow days cutting into my productive morning writing time, two rejections in quick succession, some family worries (justifiably) occupying my mental space and well, it’s been a rough week for the writing.

So, that made it all the sweeter to get the news that ”Gone” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. I couldn’t ask for a nicer Christmas present.

1000 Actions
350. 30 minutes editing.
351. 30 minutes editing.
352. Finished a book in my genre.
353. Submitted.
354. Submitted again (fastest rejection ever… nice, though).
355. Finished a book in my genre.

Craft, Art, and Magic

2008-12-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician, by Daniel Wallace the past couple of days. I'm about halfway through and the book is an amazing lesson in how a novel can be structured to reveal layer upon layer of story in a completely non-linear way. I'm quickly falling in love. Last night, I happened on this passage, where Mr. Sebastian describes the work of a magician to his young apprentice:

Craft becomes art, and once it’s art then it’s no longer simply yours: you have to share it, you’re compelled to share it. You have to find an audience who think they understand what’s happening, that the effects in the performance are accomplished through some sleight of hand or legerdemain, misdirection, deception, or possible collusion with a member of the audience, secret mechanisms, mirrors.You will seek to present an effect so clever and skillful that the audience won’t believe their eyes, and can’t think of the explanation, but feel in their hearts there is one. But there won’t be; even you won’t be able to explain it. The sense of universal bafflement is part of the entertainment. It’s a lie made true. Think of it: you will be master of one of the only situations in life in which people willingly allow themselves to be lied to—pay for themselves to be lied to. And only then, after they think they know the rules, only then will they realize that this was the biggest lie of all, and that what they have witnessed is beyond anything their meager minds could imagine, Magic, he said, again and again and again. Magic!

He may as well have been talking about writing, don’t you think? Writers, good ones, use all the rules of craft, all the tricks of the trade, store up countless words the world will never see and, at some point, they transcend the craft they’ve been so carefully honing and produce art. And when it happens, they surprise even themselves.

Magic. Again and again. Magic!

1000 Actions
342. Submitted.
343. Wrote morning pages.
344. 30 minutes editing.
345. Entered Nathan Bransford’s contest.
346. Wrote morning pages.
347. 30 minutes editing.
348. Wrote morning pages.
349. Wrote morning pages.

Second Draft

2008-12-05T20:26:00.000-07:00

I opened up a new draft file for the next version of Things Between (my NaNo novel) this afternoon. That beautiful blank slate made my novel feel full of promise once again. All of the ill will and the frustration and the disappointments of the past 50,000 words were erased in that single click of the mouse.

In his essay, “Fear of Finishing,” Mark Childress writes that, in the mind of a writer, a novel is never better than when it’s unwritten. “After that,” he says, “it only gets worse. Every page you write is in some ways a tiny death… of the illusion with which you began. Every clumsy, unstructured, redundant sentence that you apply to paper is one less deathless, tripping, dancing, rhythmical, internally rhyming piece of brilliance.” I suppose it sounds incredibly depressing to a non-writer, but it’s true. My chances of being awarded a Nobel prize dropped immeasurably the moment I committed my first sentence to paper. Of course, they also increased immeasurably. As, it turns out, they don’t give out awards or glowing reviews or NYT bestseller designation to unwritten novels. It seems unfair, given how amazing those novels are, but alas, such is the way of the world.

I’ve always known that first drafts were, in the immortal words of The Bill Gaither Trio, “a great big bundle of potentiality,” but I’ve always feared and dreaded second drafts. They feel less like polishing a rough gem than beating a dead horse. This time is different, though. That new file seemed every bit as promising as the one I opened on November 1. It won’t stay this way forever, but maybe I’ll come out the other side and feel like my novel is just a bit closer to its deathless, tripping, dancing self.

1000 Actions
336. Wrote morning pages.
337. Submitted two stories.
338. Wrote morning pages.
339. Submitted to a contest.
340. Wrote morning pages.
341. Spent 30 minutes editing Things Between.

Pulitzer Read 2009

2008-12-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

The first thing I did after closing the novel draft I wrote in November (metaphorically—the file is actually still open on my desktop because I can’t stand to let it out of my sight) was to finish reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. It was a fantastic book.

One thing I’ve noticed about being in my thirties is that my generation is coming into its own. More and more of the novels I’m reading, the ones that are going to stand the test of time, are coming from our voices. This is Generation X all grown up and it turns out we’re not the vapid, directionless youth Time magazine had us pegged for. At least, not anymore.

Reading Oscar Wao, I decided on a plan to direct my reading for the next year. I would like to read every book that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in my lifetime. I want to see what American literature has done in the past thirty-five years, how it has grown and developed. What’s more, I want to have that foundation for my writing.

So, here’s my reading list for 2009 (leaving off those books on the Pulitzer list I’ve already read). These won’t be the only books I read next year, but they might be the most important ones:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
March by Geraldine Brooks
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
Independence Day by Richard Ford
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
Rabbit At Rest by John Updike
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
Ironweed by William Kennedy
Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson
Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

If anyone would like to read all or some of these with me, I'd love the company. I'll update my reading list on Goodreads as I go along.

Nano Log, Day 30

2008-12-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

Day 30 - Wrote 2144 words for a total of 50,293. I wrote an ending. I don’t know if it’s the ending, but it’s at least an ending. Amazingly, both of my narrators ended their tales with the same line. “And that was enough.”

1000 Actions
333. Wrote 2144 words (Nanowrimo day 30).
334. Finished reading a novel in my genre.
335. Wrote morning pages.

Nano Log, Days 24-29

2008-11-30T00:07:00.000-07:00

Day 24 - Wrote 594 words for a total of 41,836. Half school day today.

Day 25 - Wrote 1713 words for a total of 43,549. Another half-day and I volunteered at the school all morning. The only reason I wrote as much as I did is because there was a write-in in the evening.

Day 26 - Wrote 709 words for a total of 44,258. I spent a lot of today prepping for Thanksgiving dinner which, for some reason, I volunteered to cook. On top of that, I seem to have finally succumbed to whatever death virus was knocking my son and husband out earlier in the month.

Day 27 (Thanksgiving) - Wrote 183 words for a total of 44,441. Honestly, the only reason I wrote anything today is because I’m determined to get to the end of this Nano having written something every single day. I feel like I made it through Thanksgiving cooking with a minimum of stress and frustration but, in exchange, I want to beg off of every remaining commitment I have this weekend and live in this book until I hit 50,000 words. Oh, and I’m losing my voice.

Day 28 - Wrote 1079 words for a total of 45,520. I feel like crap, both mentally and physically. I don’t know how I want my story to end. I’m ready to dig in and start reweaving the places where plot threads are falling apart. Moving forward right now is feeling like wasted effort. This is, without a doubt, the worst final stretch I’ve ever had in eight years of Nanowrimo.

Day 29 - Wrote 2629 words for a total of 48,149. My head is reeling with revision ideas. Tomorrow, I can start molding this into the novel I want it to be.

1000 Actions
325. Wrote 594 words.
326. Wrote 1713 words.
327. Wrote 709 words.
328. Wrote 183 words (on Thanksgiving!)
329. Wrote 1079 words.
330. Wrote 2629 words.
331. Wrote morning pages.

Nano Log, Day 23

2008-11-24T15:22:00.000-07:00

Day 23 - Wrote 2800 words for a total of 41,242. I did something potentially crazy and, at 38,000 words, added a third narrator to my stable of storytellers. Josh, Miu’s eighteen-year-old nephew started talking and turned out to be so fun, he’s got at least two chapters to himself. Here’s what he sounds like:

So yeah, there’s the formative experience of my young life right there. Fantastic, isn’t it? Really makes you want to get to know me better, doesn’t it? I’m a fucking fascinating psychological portrait, if you believe all the doctors and counselors and serious-faced idiots my mom sent me to after it happened. The boy who lived. Fucking Harry Potter. I was only missing the lightning bolt scar on my forehead but, believe me, I didn’t need it. Every kid in school knew I was the one whose dad had offed himself in the backyard. I was a celebrity. Only not the good kind. I was like Gary Busey, the kind of celebrity people won’t make eye contact with and, if they can get away with it, cross the street to avoid.

I don’t know if he’ll remain a narrator and get more chapters to himself or if a lot of his chatter will get wrapped into dialogue later, but I’m glad I took the risk and switched to his perspective for a while. It’s giving me a clearer view of the story as a whole and helping me to understand how to work in some subplots.

Now that I’ve passed the 40k mark, I’ve been starting to think about endings. It’s very tempting to figure out a way to wrap everything up in a nice, neat bow, tie up every loose end, and let my characters live happily ever after, but the truth is, my characters are messed up. They’re scarred. They’re going to end this episode in their lives with some satisfaction, but it’s not going to be perfectly neat and it shouldn’t be. The trick I’m having to learn, is how to achieve that satisfaction without writing a picture-perfect ending and turning the novel into something it’s not. Whatever the answer is, I hope it will come to me in the next 8,778 words.

1000 Actions
322. Went to a write-in.
323. Wrote 2800 words (Nanowrimo day 23).
324. Read a pep talk.

Nano Log, Days 20, 21, and 22

2008-11-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

Day 20 - Wrote 2519 words for a total of 35,535.
Day 21 - Wrote 1346 words for a total of 36,881. I wanted to do pretty much anything but write today. This is the first Nano where I’ve written every single day without taking a single one off completely. I’m happy with the novel, but boy am I tired.
Day 22 - Wrote 1561 words for a total of 38,442. Proof that even BIC (“butt in chair”) sometimes fails you, I stared at the screen all day long and only managed to pump out about 300 words. Mercifully, my husband called around six and offered to take our son out to see Bolt and drop me at a coffee shop to write. The change in scenery worked and I squeaked into my goal for the day, with some time left over for Oscar Wao.

1000 Actions
316. Read a chapter in The Scene Book.
317. Wrote 2519 words (Nanowrimo day 20).
318. Went to a write-in.
319. Wrote morning pages.
320. Wrote 1346 words (Nanowrimo day 21).
321. Wrote 1561 words (Nanowrimo day 22).

Nano Log, Days 18 and 19

2008-11-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

Day 18 - Wrote 2224 words for a total of 32,296. Ah, this is the week three I know and love. It is hard, hard writing. If this were a movie script, it would be the end of act two. Sam just discovered why Miu left him and it’s not good news for our boy. Miu’s narrative is floundering, still. I think that might be because I wrote it in the wrong order. I’m writing some exposition for her that will likely go in between some of the scenes I’ve already written so that she and Sam can climax together. (I know I should edit that last sentence, but I’m totally leaving it in. I’m tired)

Day 19 - 720 words for a total of 33,016. Yup, week three. I feel like I drove off the road. The scenery is awesome, but I’m not getting any closer to my destination.

1000 Actions
309. Wrote morning pages.
310. Read a chapter in The Scene Book.
311. Wrote 2224 words (Nanowrimo day 18).
312. Went to a write-in.
313. Wrote morning pages.
314. Read a chapter in The Scene Book.
315. Wrote 720 words (Nanowrimo day 19).

Nano Log, Day 17

2008-11-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

Day 17 - Wrote 1432 words for a total of 30,072. Today seemed hard. I’m at the point in the story where I didn’t outline as well and the cracks are definitely showing. I wrote some really beautiful things today, but the plot floundered and didn’t really go anywhere. In revision, I suspect much of what I wrote today (especially chapter 21) will end up worked in elsewhere in the story.

1000 Actions
307. Read the introduction to The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer, by Sandra Scofield.
308. Wrote 1432 words (Nanowrimo day 17).

Nano Log, Days 14, 15, and 16

2008-11-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

Day 14 - 1378 words for a total of 24,030. I was reading some of the pep talks in No Plot, No Problem today and realized that week two is supposed be the hardest week. Can that be true? My week two has more or less cruised by and I was ready for a week three slog. Can I be remembering wrong or is this Nano just charmed?

Day 15 - 1000 words for a total 25,030. Didn’t have a lot of writing time, but I was going to get to the halfway point come hell or high water.

Day 16 - 3610 words for a total of 28,640. At this point, I’m just powering through a few big revelatory scenes. I have one more big reveal yet to come and then it’s the quick downhill slide to the end. This is feeling eminently do-able.

1000 Actions
301. Wrote 1378 words (Nanowrimo day 14)
302. Attended a writing workshop.
303. Wrote 1000 words (Nanowrimo day 15)
304. Attended a write-in.
305. Wrote 3029 words (Nanowrimo day 16)
306. Read a Nano pep talk

Nano Log, Days 12 and 13

2008-11-14T13:21:00.000-07:00

Day 12 - 2275 words for a total of 19,900. Many of my words today came from filling in some holes I left earlier in the manuscript, but I capped off the night with some online sprints with the Seattle Wrimo group and, for those, I worked on Sam’s recollection of his and Miu’s first meeting. It was lovely letting the two of them be together for a while, if only in memory. Too bad it can’t last.

Day 13 - 2752 words for a total of 22,652. I'm back on track! I wrote a lot of words (thanks, in no small part, to another write-in), but all sorts of doubts are creeping in. It didn’t help that I started the day out with a short story rejection, my second since the start of Nano. Let’s hope none come during week three, which is officially my least favorite part of November.

On a side note, did you all know that you can click on the little NaNoWriMo icon to the left to read a synopsis and excerpt from my novel-in-progress? Just choose "Novel Info" from the tabs on my author page.

1000 Actions
294. Wrote 2275 words (Nanowrimo day 12).
295.Did online sprints with the Seattle Wrimo group.
296. Commented on a writer’s group piece.
297. Wrote morning pages.
298. Attended a Nano write-in.
299. Wrote 2752 words (Nanowrimo day 13).
300. Wrote morning pages.

Seriously, Universe?

2008-11-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, inspiration comes to my desk. I get it already.

Another Place

Rethinking NaNoWriMo

Writing Prompt: Don't Forget the Turtle

Spoil A Reader Sunday

WIP Wednesday: Immith Inches

Writing Prompt: G is for Go and Great and Gargantuan and...

Spoil A Reader Sunday

That's My Bag, Baby

Here I Am

Writing Prompt: One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure

I Can Hardly Believe This Is Real

A Moment

20 Things I Will Miss About Living in Seattle

Again

See Me Judge

Tiny Beautiful Things

Og Filled In

And the Winner Is...

The Great Bookmark Giveaway, Part Two

I Should Mention...

On Life at Home

Artist's Statement

The Thing at the End of the Process

My Life in Second Place

How Things Are

WIP Wednesday: The Voice

Reading 2009

2009 book montage

The Grey

Achievements

Resolved

2009, Quantitatively

WIP Wednesday: Beat Draft

Them Goals, Them Goals

Wee WIP

WIP... Thursday?

WIP Wednesday: Two Novels

An Evening With Nick Hornby

WIP Wednesday: Novel Barbie

September Wrap-Up, October Goals

WIP Wednesday: Priorities

Work-In-Progress

Accountable

Tiny Fiction

Wake Me Up When September Ends

A Little Horn Tooting

Up a Hill and Down Again

Up and Coming

It's Not Easy

May Goal

April Report

Mid-Month Progress Report

April Goals

March End of Month Rundown

Tension in the Details

Mid-Month Progress Report

Blue Sky

March Goals

February Wrap-Up

The Other Side of the Mountains

One Little Thing

February Goals 4-4-4

Why I Hate Editing (Today)

Professional Discount

Writer's Brain

Goals and Resolutions

2008 in Books

2008 Book Montage

Good News After Bad

Craft, Art, and Magic

Second Draft

Pulitzer Read 2009

Nano Log, Day 30

Nano Log, Days 24-29

Nano Log, Day 23

Nano Log, Days 20, 21, and 22

Nano Log, Days 18 and 19

Nano Log, Day 17

Nano Log, Days 14, 15, and 16

Nano Log, Days 12 and 13