Too Much Winter

It's snowing again. Still. Yet. Actually, it's kind of a slurpy, sloppy, drizzly mix of rain and sleet and snow and all other forms of wet that I am so sick and tired of that I'm ready to spit. Although that would just contribute to the amount of moisture on the ground, so I'll restrain myself.

Winter just doesn't want to give it up this year. We had two sunny, warm days that were designed to lull us into a false sense of impending summer. I weeded and pottered about in the flower beds and had a wonderful time. Bruised my shin on the wheelbarrow. Got bitten by a group of disgruntled ants that didn't take kindly to their domain being disturbed by the dandelion plucker. Still, I have my summer hands coming along nicely. I just can't garden with gloves on - need to feel the dirt. That means cuticles that have dark shadows (whatever happened to Barnaby?), my fingernails are looking a bit ragged, and the myriad lines on my hands have noticeable furrows where the grime is ground in. I love summer.

But now it's back inside to wait out the deluge. I'm knitting, reading, and thinking up some new perils for my heroine, but I'm a bit at loose ends. Think I'll put the zipper in the vest I knitted for husband and get to work on some other projects. Might even write.

Symbol

A solitary eagle with a teardrop in its eye
Looked out across the future
And couldn’t help but sigh
For heroes who had given all
Watched comrades fall and die

I saw the image everywhere
Its message dark and bleak
And I wondered if my countrymen
Still had the nerve to seek and find the ones who’d do such harm
Revenge would seem so sweet

But as the days turned into months
And months turned into years
I wondered if the evil ones
Would ever know the fear of justice calm and purposeful
Relentless in pursuit
Avenging angels guided by Him who knows all truth

Then dawned a Monday morning
A spring day cool and wet
The news that day was something I never will forget
The mastermind had run to ground
The quest for justice met

I lift my eyes to search the skies
Mid the splendor of the land
And soaring high above my head
An eagle takes command
All power, grace, and glory
His wings spread wide and free
His tears now dry
He exemplifies
My country 'tis of thee

There are those who say we’ve gotten weak
That our courage has been lost
But heroes still abound today
To serve – not counting costs

They formed the ranks at Bunker Hill
Swept in at Normandy
And God willing they will still be found
From now through eternity.

I'm guesting over at the Blood Red Pencil. Please stop by and say hello.

bloodredpencil.blogspot.com




See you there!

Spring Cleaning

I've been cleaning. Really cleaning.

1. Washing light fixtures
2. Chasing dust bunnies with the Swifter
3. Washing windows inside and out
4. Cleaning the blender
5. Sifting ancient crumbs out of the toaster
6. Washing the toilet bowl brush canisters. Ick.
7. Washing curtains and ironing them
8. Looking with suspicion at the dog as she comes in from the fields with muddy paws
9. Balancing precariously on 15 foot ladders as I attempt to replace the light fixtures from #1
10. Drinking wine.



Somebody's coming to look at the ranch this weekend. Maybe this is the buyer we've been waiting for. It's been tough to write when I keep thinking of things that might turn off said potential buyer. My computer keyboard is a mess of spilled coffee spots and lemonade stains. Sigh.

Keeping the place clean gets really, really old. I am a clutterbug by nature. I need to revert to type. Will it ever happen???

Research

What a broad topic. Research, for a writer, encompasses so many different things. For example, today I watched a show on Ian Fleming and his role in WWII and how it related to his James Bond series. Fascinating stuff.

Then I watched an episode of The Rockford Files. We've got the entire series on dvd. The mob had surfaced again - it's kind of a staple - and while they were being true to form, there was one spot where they discussed the difference between NY pizza and the stuff offered on the west coast.

So. What do these two shows have in common? Well, for the book in progress that involves Carla, Gino, and the Mob, plenty. For the second book in the WWII series involving Katrin and John, plenty.

The point is that everything is research for a writer. People we meet. Places we go. Appliances that break down. Strange stuff that pops up in the course of the average day. It's all grist for the mill. It's all research.

Chinese Curses

"May you live in interesting times." Boy Howdy. If there's anything at all my generation of Boomers has done, it's been to live in interesting times. The earthquake in Japan brought back memories of my own earthquake experience.

October 17, 1989

Tempus fugit. Twenty-two years ago. Sometimes it seems as vivid as if it happened yesterday and other times it seems to belong to another lifetime. The house didn't bounce well, in the Santa Cruz mountains. We were just one mile from the epicenter. We survived and rebuilt and eventually I wrote a short story about it. I offer it here for your perusal.

Angels and Other Pedestrians

I had never met an angel before, at least not the Biblical kind with sword and majestic wings, but I did believe. And that afternoon of October 17, 1989, I met one. His name, he told me, was Gus.

The late afternoon sun filtered through the canopy of redwoods, creating a mosaic of golden puddles on the forest floor. I had spent the better part of the day traipsing the Forest of Nisene Marks, storing up enough autumn to carry me through the long, rainy winter that was a mere month away. The crunch of twigs and crackle of leaves that had been shed by the underbrush sent up a tart, tangy fragrance as I walked, and I inhaled appreciatively.

I thought ahead to fires in the fireplace, soup simmering on the stove, and lazy Sunday afternoons curled up on the sofa with spiced cider and a mystery novel at hand, while winter storms raged outside. It was an altogether perfect day, but the absence of birdsong lent a discordant note. The forest was so silent, I almost felt an intruder, and through all the peace, there seemed to be a shadow just out of sight, filling all the sunny spaces with a kind of darkness.

“Foolishness,” I said aloud and thought how strange that the presence of nothing can create as much unease as a real and present danger. I shook off the unwelcome feeling and set out towards home. It was time to meet my daughter where the school bus stopped at the end of our road, and Keri would be a chatterbox, full of junior high school news. I quickened my pace.

A half hour later we were seated at the dining room table, sipping hot chocolate and munching ginger snaps. I had one more bus to meet, one more child to gather up, but Park’s bus wouldn’t arrive until five-thirty. The high school students traveled by public bus, and the end of the line was about seven miles away, giving me just enough time to stop at Glenna’s home on Redwood Lodge Road to pick up some starts for my hillside garden. Glenna had called several friends to help her clear out her overgrowing plants, and Keri declined my invitation to tag along, choosing to stay home and do homework, or more probably, start a series of phone conversations with Nadia and Rachel and all the other chums she had left all of an hour ago.

Living in the country offers many advantages, among them a sense of safety. Our neighborhood was its own little community of six families on a mile-long road that dead-ended at the Wises’ home. Isolated from the larger world, we all watched out for one another, and so I was not concerned about leaving Keri for a bit. She was level-headed, and our neighbors were home. Keri could call Sharon if she needed anything before I returned.

Redwood Lodge Road was three miles north on Old San Jose Road. Glenna’s house, a stone cottage with landscaped flower beds and herb gardens, was about a quarter of a mile down that road. There was also a small swimming pool, nestled among beds of vinca, lantana, and impatiens. These were the plant starts that Glenna had promised me, and I was armed with trowel and cardboard boxes to gather my harvest and haul it home.

We were kids in a sandbox, digging and chattering. We talked of soil amendments, light and shade preferences, water requirements for each prize we captured. Then, eleven miles below the surface of the earth, the ground slipped, and we witnessed a vision of hell. Like a wild horse unleashed, the ground trembled and bucked and leapt. Those of us standing were thrown to the ground, where we rolled helplessly. I was being flung in the direction of the pool, and a bizarre thought raced across my mind, a minor headline in the next day’s paper: “Woman drowns in midst of drought.”

With growing desperation I saw the distance steadily decreasing between me and the pool, and water sloshed over me in waves. Drenched, I finally snagged the metal frame of the diving board with one arm. I hung there, like an inebriated mermaid, flapping alternately over the water and over the ground. Once anchored though, I could look up to see the drama in the skies. The redwoods were swaying crazily, crashing into each other and snapping off large sections of their tops, which crashed to the ground below. And then, twenty seconds later, a lifetime later, the earth quieted.

Spent and bruised, I looked towards the house, but all that remained was a jumble of stone and brick. The garden was strewn with debris, and huge limbs from the redwoods littered the drive. My heart ached to see Glenna’s loss, but Keri dominated my thoughts. When the first aftershock hit two minutes later, I had already decided what I must do.

Park was on the bus, somewhere between Los Gatos High School and Summit Road. I had no way of knowing just where, but I did know that he was not alone. Keri, however, was. I must get to Keri, and as quickly as I could.

My car keys were in my purse, which was across the yard, wedged up against an earthen bank. I moved on shaky legs to retrieve it and then drove as far as I could in the direction of home. Far turned out to be only as far as the main road.

Landslides and downed trees blocked the route. I turned off the engine and sat, trying to suppress the panic that was beginning to overwhelm me. And I prayed.
Leaving the useless car behind, I started out on foot to cover the three miles home.

I had no idea how I would negotiate the mountains of loose dirt, downed power lines, rocks, boulders, and crevices that gaped like so many wounds in the earth. There were perhaps ten or twelve people afoot, their cars abandoned. I recognized a few parents who had also been on their way to meet the bus. Their faces grim and set, they kept moving in small groups, away from me, towards Summit Road. I was the only one who needed to go back. I felt the first cold chills of fear struggle to break through. I spun my head wildly from left to right, looking for something to orient me in this unfamiliar new world. And then, behind my right shoulder, a calm voice said, “I’ll go with you. My name is Gus.”

I turned and saw no one, until I looked down. Gus was short. In his mid-thirties, with curly black hair, he resembled a dark leprechaun. I stared at him. I had no idea where he had come from. He was just suddenly there. He was also carrying a pair of hiking boots. Temporarily speechless, I gawked first at him, then at the boots, then at the mountain ahead and shook my head to clear out the cobwebs. A calm purposefulness took its place.

“I’m going about three miles down this road and then a mile or so uphill on a gravel side road. I don’t know what we’ll find,” I said.

His response was, “I’m ready. You need to get home.”

“We have forty-five minutes until the next aftershock.” I had absolutely no idea where that idea had come from. It seemed as etched in stone, however, as the Ten Commandments. That meant we had forty-five minutes before the earth moved and the landslides began again. The danger was considerable.

And so we set out. Two pilgrims in an unholy land, to use a line from Indiana Jones. Around rocks and boulders, clambering up steep loose dirt that seemed to stretch to the skies, and then slipping back down the other side only to encounter yet another and still another mountain. We talked, or rather I babbled. I told him about my family, about my husband working down in Santa Clara Valley. About my son on the bus somewhere on the highway, and my other son in Santa Cruz. And about Keri, waiting for me - scared, possibly hurt, and I didn’t dare think anything else. Just get home. That was the only goal.

The silence of the morning seemed to belong to another lifetime, replaced by the sounds of falling rocks and clods of dirt, but something else drowned even that out. This was the insistent hissing of propane tanks, ruptured and leaking, sending thousands of gallons of gas into the air. The fumes and the constant hissing now threatened fire.

And then came the first whiffs of smoke. Somewhere up ahead fire had broken out. My side throbbing, I had to stop for a moment and didn’t want to, but Gus provided a reassuring presence, and I rested just a short while. Gus told me he had been traveling and was on his way home to see his father. When I commented on his hiking boots, he just said, “I try to be prepared.”

When finally we reached our driveway, I steeled myself for the final and difficult climb home. The smoke was closing in on three sides, and I could hear the crackling of burning wood up ahead.

At the top of the hill, we saw the fire and a house ablaze, flames reaching through the roof, snapping and crackling. The heat seared our faces as we passed on the left. Guilt spread over me as my first thought was, “It’s not our home.” I said, “That used to be such a nice house.” The words dropped like stones from my lips. We kept walking. There was nothing to be done for the neighbors' home. I prayed they were still in town.

The relief I felt at another’s loss haunted me. But it meant, at least, that Keri was not trapped in a fiery prison. And then we were home. Gus was the first to spot Sharon’s car, driving up the road, Keri in the passenger seat, holding one of our cats. All pain and fatigue forgotten, I sprinted the last bit and held her for all I could.

Sharon had been driving up and down the quarter mile of road that was unblocked by trees and landslides. She couldn’t explain why, anymore than I could explain the aftershock that would come at any minute. And it did. A deep rumble and then the sound of a runaway locomotive, and again the earth trembled. When it subsided, we began to share the news.

Keri’s announcement was, “Mom, I think the garage is crooked.” My daughter has always been the optimist. Actually, when we checked for damage, the garage was the only part still level. The house itself had been moved four feet off its foundation, and the weight of it had collapsed the lower level onto itself. No one in the lower level would have survived. I thanked God that Evan had been in Santa Cruz, not in his room.

“Do you have water? Food?” Gus brought me back into the moment. I hadn’t even thought about what we would eat or drink. The earthquake had destroyed our redwood holding tank and twenty thousand gallons of water had flowed down the hillside, disappearing into crevices and fissures that had rent the earth. The well itself was useless; all the underground plastic pvc pipe had been separated, twisted, and broken. The barn’s tack room, however, produced a prize. From the chaos, an intact bottle of Manischewitz blackberry wine, our remedy for lamb scours. I waved it proudly in the air, and Gus beamed.

“I’m quite familiar with that; after all, I’m Jewish.”

That seemed a logical comment, for some reason. At the house, we had a year’s supply of canned goods. I put up fruit and vegetables each harvest season, and I had hopes that some of the jars would be unbroken. It would be a few days before the roads would be cleared and we could venture into town to get supplies. In the meantime we would make do with what we had.

Neighbors gradually drifted homeward, and we gathered in the open field to tell stories and wait for the rest of our loved ones to come home. Gus said it was time for him to leave. He headed out on one of the back roads with one of the men who believed he could get to Watsonville. And Gus passed out of my life.

There was nothing we could do for the neighbors, but work to keep the fire from spreading to the hillsides, parched after months of drought. We fought the fire without water, using handfuls of dirt, a few shovels, and bare hands. We hurled dirt on the trees and pulled down vines of poison oak as they ignited. We kept at it for hours until the danger was past.

It was night before the rest of the family made it home. From a distance I heard a horn’s insistent bleating, gradually increasing in volume, and when the headlights of John’s car appeared at ten-thirty that night, driving through the field, Park was sitting right next to his father. John had finally gotten to the school, which was being used as a staging area for emergency services, and the first person he had seen was Park. The bus had been exiting the freeway when the earthquake hit. The driver had floored the accelerator, and the bus had cleared the overpass seconds before landslides covered the road.

And then, about eleven-thirty, Evan came through the field on another of the dirt roads that honeycomb the Santa Cruz Mountains, on the pathways that only the locals know. He had made his way home from the Pacific Garden Mall, where he had helped in rescue efforts. He was a hero, but would never speak of his experiences. My heart was full. In that moment I closed my eyes and said my prayer of thanksgiving.

That night we drank wine, ate cheese and crackers, and toasted marshmallows by the smoldering ruins of the Chins’ home, keeping watch over the still sparking embers. We spent the night camped in our own sheep pasture, on mattresses taken from our little travel trailer and bedding rescued from the collapsed house. John had found our ancient Irish Setter, Ralph, hiding in the house, and the old dog spent the night snuggled between the boys. We told stories underneath the stars; it was a beautiful, starry night. And when the aftershocks rocked the earth, we held on to each other and waited for the morning.

In the course of twenty-four hours our lives had been changed forever. We had been reminded that this life and everything in it is temporary, and the only constant is change. It is a difficult lesson to learn and so much is uncertain. But of one thing I am sure: God sends His angels to watch over us and my angel’s name was Gus.

The Comfort Zone

"Write what you know." If you're a writer, you've heard that piece of advice more times than you care to remember. If you follow it to the letter, however, you're going to get bored quickly and so will your readers. You've got to push yourself to learn new things, explore new ideas, and to boldly go where you've never gone before (I watched one of the original Star Trek episodes last night).

What does this mean? It means to break out of your comfort zone. Take a chance. Story is everything, and story comes directly from your characters. So, how do you create a character who doesn't share more of your traits than your twin sister or brother?

1. When traveling, choose a motel that's not one of the chains. Pick an independent in an older part of town and take notes.
2. Get off the interstate and drive through some small and not so small towns.
3. Forsake the boutique coffee shops and seek out the local breakfast diner/cafe.
4. Shop locally. Talk to the salespeople you meet.

As our world increasingly becomes more and more homogenized, it's a challenge to break out of the same old, same old. It's a challenge worth taking, however. Real people have stories to tell. You just have to look a little deeper.

For example, on our last trip out west, we stayed at an older motel on the outskirts of a small town not far from a freeway interchange. The motel was a large, rambling affair probably built in the '70s. Just a couple of cars in the parking stalls. A wrecked chain link fence separated it from a truck stop, which was the main source of guests. And in the morning, a young teenaged boy with a backpack stopped by the breakfast bar and spread peanut butter on two slices of toast. The school bus pulled up out front and the boy got on. "He lives here," the manager said.

What a writer could do with that.

Editing Doldrums

Been working on some editing projects the past few weeks and finally beginning to see daylight. Some common problems for folks wanting an edit seem to center around, "Do whatever you need to. I want this to be the best it can be."

Would that were so. One thing I've learned over the years is that you can't edit for your friends or family. Maybe it's part of the "no prophet is revered in her home town" syndrone or whatever, but folks you know often take offense when the red pencil is applied to their work.

The real scenario is - What I meant was, read this and tell me how great it is. I didn't expect you to tell me there was anything that could be improved upon. It's a great piece of writing. If you can't see that, well....

So, being the quick study I am, I learned to work with writers I don't have an emotional attachment with. It's easier on the blood pressure for sure. In that regard, I've found some real gems among those submitted for my critiquing. Check out Linda Stroh's Trust Rules or Ashley L. Knight's Fins, for starters. I think you'll like what you see.

POD: The Balance Sheet

For the last two weeks, I've been talking about print on demand. I've offered my experience with the process and have shared some of the problems I've encountered. Today's blog wraps up this topic.

Technology

Print on Demand (POD) is technology. It's neither good nor bad. It's a means to an end. It's another iteration of getting the word out to the reading public, and as such, it's not going to be the final stop on the publishing juggernaut that writers must negotiate in today's rapidly changing market.

The Good

1. POD is as green as paper publishing can get right now. It's not carbon-footprint free, but it beats having tables of remainders that end up ultimately in the landfill.
2. POD allows writers to self -publish without kow-towing to agents or big city publishers.
3. POD allows small presses to offer services to writers who otherwise would languish at their computers without ever seeing their books come to fruition in print.

The Huffington Post noted Kelly Gallagher, vice president of publishing services for New Providence, N.J.-based Bowker's remarks on POD: "We're seeing that the face of publishing itself is changing. Non-traditional publishing, especially related to print-on-demand, continues to offer new avenues and opportunities to grow the publishing industry. Given the exponential growth over the past three years, it's showing no signs of abating."

The Only Constant

The only constant is change. POD provides a good venue for getting your novel or nonfiction work published. However, the prognosticators are predicting we'll see the end of paper printing within the next five years. That means eBooks are the next BIG THING; in fact, they already are.

ePublishers weekly reports the sales of ebooks in the U.S.A. for the first quarter of 2010, more than 90 million dollars, predict a record year for ebooks. epublishersweekly.blogspot.com

So there are some thoughts on POD. After weighing the pros and cons, I chose it for my novel. It's not perfect, but it's one way to get your work before the public.

Hidden Costs of POD

Nothing is ever simple. No newsflash there, but it's true. We all know, as writers, that we're responsible for the publicity of our books. We may not like it, but we accept it. However, when getting the word out starts to eat into the old savings account, it sure makes one long for the days when a writer could just write.

Explanation.

Schlepping your latest novel around to Indie bookstores is taken for granted as the author's responsibility in the promo department. It's not quite that simple. Many bookstores respond with, "Can we have a copy to look over - read - pass around among our employees to get a sense of what the book is about? -

TRANSLATION

We want to be sure your small press published tome isn't really junk. Maybe you are self-published and this is your own company. Times are tough. We don't want to take a chance.

RESULT

Writers, at the beginning, may drop off a copy here and there but this eats into any potential for ever earning a buck. If you've commissioned someone to do your art work or paid an editor to ferret out your goofs, add this to the cost of doing business. At some point, you have to say, "No. Sorry, but I can't afford to give away any more books."

FALLOUT

I reached that point today. Visited an Indie bookstore in Anacortes, Washington, and they were skeptical. Wanted a copy. I showed them the book. Gave them a business card. The press release. The great reviews. Still, they were unsure. We left it at that. Are they going to pursue my book? Probably not. But honestly, in the hopes of selling one copy, can I afford to donate one to them? To every bookstore that wants to be sure I'm not a whacko off the streets with an overactive printing press in the basement?

What's the answer? Anybody have any ideas?

Reviews, POD, and Simon and Garfunkel

Great Review for Yours Truly
Received my first major review on Sunday - The Historical Novel Society online reviews took a look at Headwind: The Intrepid Adventures of OSS Agent Katrin Nissen and found it worthy of note. Wowsers. Yipperooni. Ahem. Here's the link: http://historicalnovelsociety.org/hnr-online.htm

I've been waiting semi-patiently for a couple of months for this. Afraid they'd hate it. Hoping they'd like it. Not sure what I'd do or say if they hated it. Not sure what I'd do with it if they liked it. Now it turns out to be a pleasant dilemma.

The First Problem

POD. Print on Demand is a technology, and it's a green technology, when you consider how it works. Headwind is published by a small press - Chalet Publishers LLC, so it should be considered different from the vanity presses who crank out whatever comes their way or self-published books that haven't been vetted.

The major chains don't stock POD books, so if you're looking for Headwind or any of her sister novels -or brother ones either, for that matter - you've got to go online to Amazon, B&N online, or visit your favorite Indie bookstore and hope the author has left off a copy or cajoled (great word) them into stocking.

Marketing yourself is a royal pain in the patootie if you're not the type who loves promoting yourself. I'd rather be researching and writing, but I've been trying valiantly to do all the right things. Next week I'll share the grand list of what I've done in this regard. Still, it's a slow, slow process and not always successful in the end.

The Second Problem


Price. Pricing is difficult for authors to understand. I'm not sure I understand it even after having it explained to me. Small publishers have to price their books so they can make some kind of profit. Often this means the price of one of these undiscovered gems is nearly double what you'd pay for a trade paperback at the grocery store rack or the airport or the major booksellers. Who's going to take a chance on a new author and pay $16.95 when you can grab an AUTHOR off the rack for $8.99? I know, it's not exactly double, but it's close.

Times are tough. Sales are even tougher when you're faced with the PROBLEMS of POD.
So, fellow and fellowette authors, what's your take on this? Any small press publishers out there want to share a point of view?

The Rockford Files and Simon and Garfunkel

I like ducks.

It's been one of those eclectic weeks, as you can see by the heading for the blog. Before I get into the dissection of said topic, I want to thank Rediscovered Books and Megan for hosting my book signing there last Thursday. Also, thanks to Kathy, another Partner in Crime, and Ashley, a friend and the author of Fins (YA fiction) for helping make the evening fun.

Now. I need to attend to the Middle Portion of the Book. Sigh. It's a great feeling to reach the 100 page mark, but the joy is short-lived. After all, it's about one-third of the way through and the MIDDLE is often the MUDDLE for writers. Stuff needs to happen. So...

I've been recalling what experts have told me. One important thing is to consider what the worst possible thing to happen to your characters might be and then make it happen. So I'm doing just that. Fortunately, I've got the MOB to work with and they do some really bad stuff.

I'm thinking kidnapping, extortion, car chases (that's from Rockford), and some poetic moments (Simon and Garfunkel). Going to work on this now.

This Christmas we got the entire Rockford Files series as a present. I am a serious James Garner fan. The Mob is ever-present in these shows, so I'm taking notes. Have my pen and paper by my side while I'm viewing.

If you're curious about the Simon and Garfunkel connection, I'll get into that next week. Hope your writing is going well. Going to check out some of my favorite writer blog sites tomorrow. Also going to scope out a possible root canal. I hate my hair and my teeth. Grrrr.

The Tally Sheet

Last week I shared my resolution to write three pages a day. With one week gone, here's the tally sheet: 15 pages written. I'm feeling good about that, although realistically, there may be 3 good ones there, 3 that need serious revision, and the rest that need tossing. Maybe. You just never know where one of those off the wall ideas will lead. So, will I toss anything? Not yet.

During the rest of the week:

1. I spent 6 hours in the dentist chair on the way towards spending more hours there before the bridge is complete. Last night part of the temporary came apart - along with some serious pain - so it's back to the dentist for the SECOND temporary bridge today.

2. Spent a couple of hours with Dell support getting rid of three Trojans that managed to sneak past my anti-virus and malware programs. That's what happens when you visit questionable sites, I guess. But I really needed to learn how to break into a museum without tripping the alarms. Sigh.

Off to the dentist (a 120 mile jaunt, but the roads should be clear), leaving husband to hold down the fort. I'll stay in Boise until my Book Signing and Reading at Rediscovered Books in downtown Boise on Thursday night (7:00).

Packing for three days is a pain, especially with a sore mouth. Sipping coffee off to the side. Packing the computer, though, because somewhere along the way, I plan on getting my 3 a day attempted.

Happy writing week, everyone!

Three a Day

That's my goal, now. Write three pages every day. Robert Parker did it - or maybe it was five pages a day - and he was an incredibly prolific writer. I'm no Parker, but it is a laudable aspiration.

So, where am I? In last week's post, I said I was stuck. I'm now unstuck and am moving ahead at my 3 a day pace. What I'm writing is dialogue. I like to write dialogue. It comes easily for me and t also takes up a lot of space. That's nice.

Description is something I have to think about before I can write it. So I'm making notes, highlighting them in yellow, and inserting them in the text as I dialogue away. Stuff like "describe bedroom" or "describe her face" - things like that.

I have to put on a different hat for writing description and I'm not there right now. The conversation is moving along nicely, however, and I'm going to keep at it until I talk myself to the end of the novel.

Hope everyone is writing well this week. Share your own tricks of the trade, if you'd like. I'd love to see them.

Timelines

The New Year is a good time to think about organization. For writers, organization is essential and it's easy to get sidetracked, waylaid, distracted, and otherwise off task, when a plot is plodding instead of prancing along.

That's where I am right now. STUCK. Oh sure, I've been thinking about the wip a lot:

Before I fall asleep
While I'm doing laundry
Making dinner
Driving anywhere
As I'm ripping out inches from my pullover as I find another goof as I knit.

Essentially, my plot is dragging and it's dragging me along with it.

Solution

Going to shorten the timeline. I printed out a calendar and blocked off ten days. That's going to be the extent of the timeline for the plot. Before, it was this amorphous (?) thing with no borders. No sides. No trim edges. Now, at least, I've got some basic outline for the action.

Some authors have all their action take place in one day - Dan Brown's Lost Symbol occurs over the course of one night, for example. Right now, though, I'm feeling better about the shortened timeline.

Next job is to think like the Mafia.

What's going to happen to Frankie? That's today's job.

A True American Heroine

No, this isn't going to be a political soapbox oratory or a resurrection of early American history. Oh no. This is about a woman who is a true heroine of this great land of opportunity. There are many, but I've got a few names that I'd like to throw into the mix and will begin with my favorite of all time:

MARCH FONG EU
(1975 candidate photo)

Yep. Dr. Eu has indeed been a politician - she served as California Secretary of State and if she hadn't been, she wouldn't have been able to accomplish one of the greatest services to womanhood that has happened in the Great State of California.

So, you are wondering by now, just what exactly did this woman do?

She took a sledge hammer to a toilet on the steps of the State Department. Yep. Why? Well, why not? Back then, a woman had to pay to use a toilet out in public. Men didn't. Pay toilets were commonplace and if you had to use the jane (slight modification here to match the gender) and didn't have a dime or a quarter, you were out of luck. Meanwhile, those of the opposite gender who needed to use the john, didn't have to pay this discriminatory poll tax.


March had had enough. This symbolic gesture led to the end of pay toilets for women. In 1973 she made her point and endeared herself to women throughout the land. To this day, I bless her.

Who are your heroes?