NaNoWriMo: How Can THAT Be a Misspelling?

Clickety clickety clickety. Caught up in the writing-verging-on-mindless-keyboarding warp-spasm that is the essence of National Novel Writing Month, a weird thing started to happen.

You know that phenomenon when you find yourself reading way past your bedtime and your eyes start to cross a little?  And suddenly, common words don't look ... right?  You see the word "and" and it looks like the publisher goofed up. You think, "That should say 'and' and it says, wait ... what?!  It does say 'and.'  How could that be?" And then (because of my age) I think, "Wow.  I might be having a mild stroke." so I put my arms over my head and stick out my tongue (because, according to the internet, if you can do those things, chances are you are not having a stoke.) Then I turn off my clip-on reading light, say my prayers and generally go right to sleep.

When I wake up the next day, I check the last sentence I read.  "And" is "and" ... and appears to have always been that way.

Now I have this thing going on where I type a word and Word doesn't like it.  That normally doesn't bother me in a first draft; misspelling stuff is part of the "get it out, get it out fast, get it out now!" But twice so far I have stared angrily at the monitor, feeling strangely victimized. "There's nothing wrong with that," I think, almost seething with resentment. I do the right-click thing to have Word offer me some correctly spelled options, but the word I want isn't there.  The word I want is already on the page.

The first time it happened, the word was "annoyment," as in: Vicki felt a flash of annoyment.

"Annoyment" is a damn fine word.  What's the problem, Word?  Jealous?

The second time it happened, the word was "functual," as in: "I'm sorry.  That restroom isn't functual."

"Functual" is an even better word!  If it were one, that is.

Look at NaNoWriMo, for crying out loud. That's a word.  Blogger doesn't even flag it as a misspelling anymore. And don't even get me started on the word "blog."

Time to stop squandelling word count here and get back to work before my eyes cross for the day.

On Relevant Blogging and Tucking in the WIP

I just read a post at shark literary agent Janet Reid's blog that talked a bit about writers and their platforms and whether or not agents read writer's blogs/tweets/tumbls, etc.  Ms. Reid says busy agents don't have time to muck about in social media unless they are toying with the idea of taking that particular writer on as a client.  She did go on to say that just because time-strapped successful agents don't generally blog-surf, a writer's blog should not be a mess.

In other words, the blog should be well written.

Also, the blog should have something to do with the writer's work, and that's where this blog is deficient.  Here, then, is a post about my WIP (including some hastily thrown-together artwork)—

My work-in-progress is a YA dystopian novel and the working title is Lena Ladimer Chronicles: Bury the Dead. I've spent the summer knitting it together after a rather long period which I will call a hiatus ("hiatus" is to "avoidance" as "research" is to "Netflix binging.") Here's the working blurb:

When a suspected international cyber-attack disrupts power and communication, bookish 13-year-old Lena Ladimer is stranded along with her mother and their neighbors in a small rural neighborhood on Tootin Hollow Road in Gibeon, Connecticut.  As her mother withdraws into an incapacitating depression  and death stalks a neighbor, she attempts to chronicle the neighborhood's day-to-day efforts to survive.  Armed with a blank leather book, a supply of pens and her great-grandfather’s 1947 Thin Paper Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, she tries to make sense of events by writing about them.

The fear, uncertainty and inconveniences of daily life seem as nothing when she learns her father is dead.

She sets off for New Reading, Massachusetts to exact revenge on her dad’s killer.  She enlists the help of her best friend, neighbor Gus Lennon and two others, but does not reveal the real reason for the twenty-mile journey.  Instead, she tells them she wants to make sure her father has been properly buried. They all have their own reasons for wanting to go, and when the others finally find out Lena’s intentions, a startling connection to her father’s killer is revealed.

Back in Gibeon, the neighbors have welcomed Dana Griggs, a refugee and old college acquaintance of Lena's mom. When the children return from New Reading, they discover that Dana also has startling connections, connections that could mean the destruction of the neighborhood on Tootin Hollow Road. Lena and her friends must play a dangerous game to thwart Dana's plans and time is running out for all of them.

Lena Ladimer Chronicles: Bury the Dead will be an entire first draft by mid-January.  My critique group in Windsor is now reviewing finished chapters and the feedback has been wonderful.  For the first time in my writing career, I'm starting to get smiley faces about pacing.  Pacing!  Me!  "Hello, my name is R. T. and I am a recovering info-dumper. I have come to believe I am powerless over backstory, and my penchant for exposition has become unmanageable."  Compliments on pacing is a really big deal for me!

There. I have now blogged about my WIP.  Soon, I have to figure out how to do a little tab so I can post the first 1000 words of Bury the Dead, which I'm putting in for a nap with eight chapters good-to-go for review.  That will get me through November when I'll be participating in NaNoWriMo; 50,000 words in 30 days makes for a WIRP—Work In Rapid Progress. Last year, NaNo was the perfect break from all my WIP problems and gave me an opportunity to write the NaNo way: wanton, unfettered and heedless of spell check.  Yeehah! I should probably put a tab on here for that effort as well, Drum Witherspoon and the Shepherd's Treasure.

(And Janet Reid ... if you ever read this post, I just want you to know I constantly abuse adverbs here on purpose because I totally love them and if I use them in my WIP, my critiquers gleefully slash them with red pens.)

It's Sad When You Have to Read Your Blog to Find Out What You've Been Doing

It's Sunday morning before Mass, and I'm blogging.

The writing life has not been part of my existence for the last few weeks.  I've been in graphic design mode.  I designed my darling niece Jane's wedding invites from top to bottom. No longer are brides content with an engraved invitation on white or cream linen stock.  They want color and all paper goods associated with the happy event coordinated.  It all started with the lovely shade of green the bridesmaids will be wearing. My niece sent me an email with a few Pinterest ideas which fleshed out the "vibe" she wanted in the design, along with her preferred fonts.  Before I knew it, I was learning about Pantone hues and belly bands and envelope liners. I was in contact with vendors for envelopes and specialty paper and teeny weeny tissues. I had to relearn calligraphy, but that is like riding a bicycle.  After two sheets of practice addresses, one would never know the last time I wielded a cartridge pen was fifteen years ago and I only ruined six envelopes with blobs and other mistakes.

The design my niece selected is so ... her.  When my sister, her mom, saw it, that's exactly what she said ... "That is so Jane!"  Mission accomplished on my end of things.  The invitations were all mailed from the Bradley Airport Post Office yesterday, so in a couple of weeks I will post the design on my graphic design blog.  I also designed some graduation cards for Greeting Card Universe, some Fourth of July cards and a series featuring the "Keep Calm" meme as it applies to boiled lobsters.

But I haven't been writing much.  I missed the deadline for the WIP It Blog Fest.  I had no new WIP material to present to my writer's group last week, either.  I did write two possible entries for WRiTE CLUB 2013, and spent a couple hours today working on the one I think will appeal to the voters (which is everyone on the Linky List) before I sent it in, but I feel ... rusty.

I thought to myself ... what the heck have I been doing?  Where did I lose so much time?  Then, I looked at my last blog entry and realized, "Oh, I went to Houston and was gone for five days."

How could I forget I did that?  My brother, Sam, is recovering from a burst appendix and my sister and I flew down on US Airways Buddy Passes.  We ended up spending an overnight in Charlotte, NC and got to Houston at 9:30 the next night. We didn't tell him we were coming so as not to disappoint him if we couldn't get there.  He was so glad to see us, and we were so glad to see him.  It was like an earthly foreshadowing of the "Angel of Happy Meetings" Prayer.

Then we spent the next three days cooking, going to doctor's appointments and watching the most appalling stuff on television.  If TV is the harbinger of things to come, the apocalypse cannot be far off. We spent a good deal of time visiting and talking and that felt as if we were doing what we were meant to do.

Fiesta Supermarket, Houston TX ... my new favorite grocery store with the most amazing produce section ... ever!

So, after seeing my blog and realizing that I had traveled, it occurred to me that if I am not writing on a daily basis, other faculties begin to shrivel.  Capacity for memory.  Easy grasp of ideas.  Patience with an unfolding story. Empathetic observation of character.  My life, little by slowly, becomes digital. A blog post here, a YouTube video there.  I don't even do household chores in a cohesive, satisfyingly analog way. I dart about, doing everything marginally.  That's it ... my life is meant to be lived in the body of the story and I'm scrawling out on the margins..

As soon as this post is up, I'm spending the rest of my pre-bed cup of tea visiting with my WIP. One of my goals this summer is to finish the first draft (and, yes ... summer goes all the way through September 20th.) I am going to invest in a notebook, something I can take everywhere along with my pens and paper.

I started this blog post at 9:00 a.m. and it's now 10:48 p.m.  I've come back to it on four separate occasions, and now it's done. A peaceful night to all, and if you're a writer reading this, I wish for you the writer's life in the days to come.  I wish it for me, too.

When Evil Casts a Big Pall on Everyone

Last Monday morning, I posted about an exercise I intended to do for a writer's group I belong to here in town.  It was due on Thursday.

On Monday afternoon, around 3 p.m., I watched (along with millions of people) as two puffs of smoke photographed from an aerial camera on a helicopter trained on the finish line of the Boston Marathon turned out to be the most hellish of devices: home made bombs made to kill and maim as many people as possible based on the design.  The design.  Design implies thought, planning, creativity, ingenuity— plans to bring something into existence which was not there before.  Design is usually associated with positive outcomes; architecture, fashion, graphics, ships, airplanes, gardens, musical instruments, computers, medicines ... and the list goes on and on.  We forget the list also includes guns, weapons and the delivery systems for mass killing. We forget that things designed for good (computers, medicines, airplanes, ships ... even buildings) can, with only minor changes, deal death.  A pressure cooker, for many of us, has its design accompanied by images of a beloved grandmother canning the bounty of her garden or peach trees, or, in my case, my husband canning his delicious spaghetti sauce.

And just as a weekend gardener will design elements of his garden taken from the design for, say, Versailles, which he learned about from books or the internet (and perhaps he even took a class or two ...), there are terrorists like the young men who deployed the home-made bombs on Monday, using specific plans based on designs for IEDs found on the internet or in handbooks. (The older terrorist may have even taken a class on how to make these things.)


Monday afternoon and evening was kind of a blur, and my degree of separation from the event is pretty big.  But here in New England, everyone has some connection to the Boston Marathon. My son ran it four Aprils ago.  He knows a number of people, runners and their supporters alike, who went this year.  He was anxiously awaiting texts from them.  My niece, doing a semester abroad at University College of Dublin, skyped in tears Monday night.  How could she find out if her friends from the UConn running club were okay?  How could she find out if her friends who went to cheer the runners on were okay? We sent her a Facebook message with a local news station's website which had comprehensive links to help folks find their dear ones.

It's 1:15 here in Connecticut.  I'm sure there are victims and survivors thinking ... "It hasn't been a week yet ... another hour ... at this time last week, she was still alive.  He was still alive.  I still had both my legs.  I still had legs.  We still had our little boy.  We still had our daughter. Happiest day in Boston."

And two young men, although murder had entered their hearts, were not killers ... yet.

And since this kind of evil is one of the most confounding mysteries of our humanity, how do we, as writers, respond?

I think the very best response to this mystery is found on the blog of a remarkable young woman -- wife, mother, writer — and her post following  the Sandy Hook killings in December, Make Good Art.  It was the first thing I thought of when I loosened the grip the horror of the Marathon bombings had on me (for even my prayers were anguished,) as I wrenched myself away from the relentless news coverage.

Thank you, Faith E. Hough.

Blog on Blocks

Oh, jeepers ... I have to start blogging again.  I follow a blog called Writer Unboxed and when one comments, they actually post one's latest blog entry along with one's name.  And my latest entry was NOVEMBER.

The main problem for me, though, is when I don't blog, I don't write as much. Blogging is not only a way to have a constant flow of discreet, written entities that have a beginning, a middle and an end (thus ... they are FINISHED, DONE, AWAY!) but it's terrific warm-up for larger, ongoing efforts.

So, this is a "jumper cable post."  The blog battery has been dead, the blog out on blocks in the yard and come spring, the weeds will start growing up through the engine unless I get rolling again. In the YA novel I'm working on, those poor kids have been stuck in a post-cyber war, dystopian setting for four years now (although it was "peak oil" back then. Cyber war gets the job done quicker, and it's lately been in the news quite a bit.)  At least they were having horse-back riding lessons last time I peeked in.

When I blog, I move that situation along, as well. Stories are not meant to languish.  A forgotten story is much like a neglected friend; for me, the relationship becomes full of self-recrimination and guilt.  I don't have the spirit and hopefulness concerning my book when folks ask me about it, because I have let too much time pass.  The main character floats before my eyes and asks questions like, "What's the last name of the homeless bike guy?   What's my aunt's full name?  What's my riding teacher's dog's name?  Hmmmmmm????"  I looked in on the book last week to write an ending for it as an exercise, and all I can say is, thank goodness I kept an Excel file of all the particulars. I am, though, "well-rebuked."

And I will be doomed to keep writing these, "Oh my, look how long it's been!" posts. Because the only person who cares, really, is me.  If I want others to consider reading my writing, I have to write often and get it out there for folks to read, on purpose or by accident.

"Okay ... start it up!"

Jumper cables, anyone?