Tag: writing

Cosmic Pushback

And the fates laughed. I knew that as soon as I made a plan, the universe would rebel.

“You have five hours scheduled into your week for writing? How about if I send you a rotator cuff injury? What if you had to spend your time on doctor’s appointments, special exercises and ice packs, all while moving at 75% your usual speed? What then, hmmm? Think you can handle it? How about if I pile on two unexpected snow days out of school for your children? Think you’ll do those five hours now?”

And I reply:  Ohhhmmmmmmm. I will not wait for my normal life before I start writing. Ohhhmmmmmmm. This is normal life; I will write anyway.

But I didn’t make my five hours the first week. My writing log tells me I clocked a total of 4.1 hours. Looks like I have some make-up to do in the next seven days.

A Writer’s Resolutions for 2010

I’d like to announce that I’ve already made progress on my writing-related goals for 2010 by improving my blog, however slightly. Look over to the right.  I finally have a “follow” button and have also add an RSS feed option.

My writing goals for the coming year and beyond can be summed up under one umbrella resolution: Treat my writing more like a job. This means I will establish regular office hours and I can’t take off from work willy-nilly. If I need to miss work, then I’ll need to make up the hours.  With the demands of my “real” job, my old house, my two children, my pets, etc. I find it all too easy to sacrifice my writing time to dentists and veterinarians and school staff who need volunteers to help with a project, not to mention all the time I spend at the hardware store. Since my regular job is part-time, in theory I have a couple of days a week when the kids are in school that I should be able to devote to my writing. In reality, those are the days I end up doing all of my appointments and errands. Then I try to fit in the writing around all the rest. A lot of times, the writing doesn’t happen. I aim to change this.

I’ve broken down my general intention into smaller, specific goals. From past experience I’ve learned I need to keep my goals limited to things I can control.  So my list doesn’t include the goal of having someone else publish a piece of my writing, but it does include how many pieces of writing I want to finish and send out during the year. The hope is to have them published, of course, but since I can only control my end of the process, that’s where I need to focus.

My list of writing goals:

Set regular office hours and stick to them, at least five hours per week.

Finish the rewrite on my novel and offer it for consideration to at least ten outlets (publishers and/or agents) before the end of the year, unless someone accepts it before I reach ten.

Write at least four short stories and send them out into the world. I decided on four for the year, because I have four ideas floating in my head right now.

I currently have a book of poetry entered in a contest. If I don’t win that, I will offer the manuscript for consideration to at least ten other outlets or until it is accepted for publication, whichever comes first.

I will not let a month end without sending out at least one item.

I’ll update my blog at least three times each month. I figure once every ten days or so is a minimum. I will learn more about the nifty features of my blog and attempt to improve it.

Happy 2010 everyone! Let’s get some writing done!

Vocabulary

I used to pride myself on having a large vocabulary. I know words such as noesis, after all. I even know and use some words you only find in the most unabridged of dictionaries. Stoit, for example, means to move in a staggering fashion, like Captain Jack Sparrow in those pirate movies. When I was a kid, I always aced vocabulary tests in school.

Then one day, I was walking with a friend and pointed out the lovely violets in someone’s yard. She corrected me, letting me know the plant was creeping myrtle. Since I have a brown thumb, I’m not great on plant names. The more I thought about it, the more I realized there are whole subject areas of vocabulary in which I’m deficient: plants, cooking, knitting.  What does al dente mean anyway? What are you doing when you braise something? Is a purl a little bead you fasten into your scarf?

One of the most generally known rules of good writing is “be specific.” Don’t say “tree.” Say “juniper” or “thorny locust.”  How can I be a good writer if I don’t know the difference between violets and creeping myrtle?

It turns out other writers have the same problem, this lack of an omniscient vocabulary. Nobody knows everything about every subject. That’s where research comes in. If I want to have one of my characters knitting and speaking knowledgably of the process, I don’t have to have the knowledge already stored in my brain. I can read knitting magazines, books and blogs, and talk to one of the 1,000 people I know who do knit in order to lay some nifty terminology into my story.

Writer’s Digest has a whole series of books dealing with need-to-know information in different areas. Need to poison one of your characters, but don’t know much about poisons? Serita Stevens will help you out with the Book of Poisons: A Guide for Writers.  Want to get your legal vocabulary straight for a courtroom scene? Try Order in the Court: A Writer’s Guide to the Legal System by David S. Mullally. Not clear on the difference between an abrasion and a contusion? You may want to browse Body Trauma: A Writer’s Guide to Wounds and Injuries by David W. Page.

Violets: 

Creeping Myrtle:

A Whole Lot of Writing Going on

Through my local public library, I logged into an Infotrac database – General OneFile – to do some research. I stopped before I started, stunned into a case of the vapors by a number I saw: 83,083,630.

“Currently searching General OneFile with 83,083,630 articles…”

83 million articles?! Let me add some more punctuation to illustrate my reaction. ?????!!!!!?????!!!!!

Who wrote all of that? Why should I add to it? Should I add to it? Is there too much written already? Maybe people should stop writing for a while. How can I make my writing noticed in a sea of 83 million+ articles? Do people feel overwhelmed with written word overload? Would more written words be nothing  but piling on? Is there anything left that hasn’t already been written? Will the questions generated by this number never end?  All of this went through my head in about 10 seconds and then started looping on replay over and over.

On the other hand, if I believe writing and reading are worthy pursuits, can there be too much of either? And, if 83,083,630 articles have already been published, doesn’t that mean there are plenty of markets publishing stuff?

83,083,630. I’m trying to decide if the number is discouraging or encouraging.

Computer retraining

As I mentioned in my previous post, of all of the deaths that have occurred recently, the death of my hard drive hit me the hardest. It was also the most unexpected. Talk about untimely. I only bought this laptop about seven months ago. Used though. But only slightly.

Thanks to my foresight in having married an alpha geek, I had a new (and more spacious) hard drive installed within days. But now I’m required to help my computer relearn the things it used to know. Kind of like recovering from a brain injury.

“This is a bookmark,” I tell it. “You use it to take me to a web page, so I don’t have to type in the URL every time.”

“This e-mail address I’m putting in your address book is one you used to know. It’s my best friend’s. You used it all the time; I can’t believe you forgot even her.”

“This program is called Microsoft Word. We’ll be doing a lot of therapy using Word. It’s what you need the most for my writing. Oh good, now that you’ve relearned that, I see you’re able to pull up the memory of my novel from the flash drive.”

A writer friend, upon hearing the news about my hard drive, said in an almost-stricken way “Please tell me you have your novel saved somewhere.” It’s nice when people understand.

Actually, I’d done an exemplary job of backing up my writing, so I lost almost nothing. Photos of my children, however…not as much. Bad mommy. Guilty mommy. I’m afraid some of the most important memories have been lost to permanent amnesia. I did have a lot of the pics saved, just not the same percentage I managed with my writing.

Then there were all of the cool quotations I had collected over the past few years. Ah well, time to get out of the old ruts and make some new ones anyway. And maybe time to develop better habits about backing up everything, not only my writing.

Elusive Finish Line

I’ve been working on the first draft of my first novel for a year and five months. For last five months I’ve claimed to be in the home stretch, a place that has proved to have great elasticity indeed. My finish line keeps moving.  I’ve added three chapters that somehow eluded my beginning outline, so how was I supposed to know I was going to have to write them? Then there’s the ever-present problem of finding time to do the writing. I considered telling my kids they couldn’t have birthdays this year because I had a book to finish, but couldn’t bring myself to do it.  Likewise I never quite get to the point of saying to my boss “Sorry, I’m on a roll with my writing. My paying job will have to wait.”

It’s getting embarrassing, as people ask me how the novel is going and I keep answering “Almost done with the first draft.”  I hope it doesn’t go on my tombstone: “She almost finished the first draft.” I started telling people I was writing a novel because I thought if others knew about my project, I’d have to finish it. It would help me to take myself seriously.

At first I spoke with enthusiasm, even when I encountered the skeptical look I knew meant everyone’s writing a novel. I spoke with confidence because I knew I’d be the person who actually finished the task. When queried, I’d report “Got the outline done.” Or “Wrote another chapter last week.” And it sounded even to me as if I were progressing toward something, even if I was getting there at a strolling pace. Now I’m starting to feel like Moses, with the promise of a new land shifting ever onward into the future and a whole nation asking “Are we there yet?” Or like a bad credit risk. I find myself tempted to avoid those acquaintances who are most likely to ask about the status of my novel because it feels too much like “Do you have that $20 you owe me yet?”

I know I’ve done this to myself.  It’s only because I set myself up for it that I have to feel so sheepish now when I answer. I suppose there’s only one solution, and that’s to finish the damn book. Which I guess means my plan is working.  I told everyone I was going to do it. Now I have to keep my word.

Sestina: Example and Form

It’s not about peanut butter, but here is an example of a sestina. I wrote this poem a couple of years ago:

Wasps In Fact

I know the facts of the story.
I was there as witness, of course
and more than that, one of the saved
during the slaying of the wasps.
My father played the hero role
armed with a spray can and ladder.

Not sturdy, it shook, the ladder
as he climbed to the top story.
I never questioned my dad’s role,
the labor of knocking off course
any homesteading plans of wasps,
nor doubted if I would be saved.

The nest was enormous; he saved
it, carried it down the ladder,
proof that the multitudes of wasps
matched the large claims of his story.
The stings he received in the course
of battle also served this role.

He insisted they played no role
in making him sick, the stings, saved
that blame for the flu cutting course
through the city. That the ladder
needed fixing fit the story
well, too, but not illness from wasps.

Now it falls to me, fighting wasps.
My children have filled my old role.
I saw right through my dad’s story
long ago. The spin he used saved
his ego I thought. The ladder
held steady later on, of course.

Raising children has been a course
in hindsight relating to wasps
and the sturdiness of ladders.
Less a character trait than role
requirement, dad’s bravado saved
us from fear; that’s now my story.

Over the course of time, the role
of wasps did not change; also saved:
the ladder’s part in the story. 

***

I’ve seen variations on the form, but they all involved using 39 lines and repeating the same six end words. I took my guidance from The Book of Forms by Lewis Turco. 

You can read more about the sestina here:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5792

When not swimming comes in handy

The lovely part of being the sole non-swimmer in a family of swimmers comes when we go on vacation and stay at a hotel with an indoor pool. Everyone else heads for the water, leaving me alone to commune with my laptop.

I finished a chapter of my novel this past week while we were in Oklahoma visiting family. I’ve been saying this for two months, but I can see the finish line. The first draft is almost done. I have 17 complete chapters, and I’m pretty sure I have three left to go.