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Tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow morning at 8 am we’ll re-open the Schlock store and begin selling the next Schlock Mercenary book. So much depends upon the book selling well enough. 600 books sold is critical. If we don’t sell that many, then we’ll have to borrow money to pay the printer. That would be a disaster. 1800 books sold is the happy dance number. That is the point at which we’ll have paid for the print run and gotten enough money to pay all our bills for the next six months.

It would be so wonderful if we sell enough books tomorrow that I can stop worrying about money.

I spent all day today doing preparatory tasks. I did accounting. I emailed all the people who contributed to the book to tell them that they’ll be getting free copies. I didn’t email people who contributed and are local because I plan to hand out those books in person. If your name appears in the book, you’re due a free copy and I need your mailing address. (Or a reminder the next time we see each other.)

Most important, I closed the online store and set it up with the new merchandise. At 8 am tomorrow it will re-open. Then Howard and I will start playing “click.” It is the game where we keep hitting refresh to see how many orders have come in during the last few minutes. I hope we click all the way up to our goal tomorrow. I hope. I hope. I hope.

The other day Link and Gleek were talking and comparing teachers. Gleek was saying that she likes her first grade teacher, but misses her kindergarten teacher. Link countered with the information that he hadn’t liked his first grade teacher at all. I found this information interesting because at the time Link was in first grade he told me repeatedly that he liked is teacher and Gleek spent a majority of Kindergarten butting heads with her teacher. I think that young children are hardwired to love those who have power over them. It is only later that they are able to look more objectively at the situation and decide whether the emotion was warranted. I suspect that this is a survival trait and explains why even severely abused children love their parents.

I don’t blame Link for disliking his first grade teacher. She repeatedly called him stubborn to his face and had a complete lack of understanding of his personality. We fixed her understanding and she stopped calling him stubborn, but he still remembers how she made him feel. And yet at the time he loved her and was convinced she could do no wrong. In the years since, the positive things the teacher did have faded away, leaving only the sharp memories.

For me it was my second grade teacher. I remember believing that she was beautiful and wonderful. But I also remember sitting in abject tears in front of the whole class, while she stood over me. She insisted that I tell her what I had used to scratch up the surface of my desk, and refused to listen when I tried to explain that I’d recently traded desks with a friend because I was short and the friend was tall. I also remember this teacher accusing me of sending love notes to boys, which showed a complete misunderstanding of who I was at that time. Now I think of her and she isn’t even pretty, let alone beautiful.

I wonder what Gleek will say of her Kindergarten teacher if I ask her again in a few years.

The good news is that this year’s teachers are amazing. I like them both. I think that the kids will walk away from this year loving their teachers and they will continue to think fondly on them even when the years go by. That will be like my first grade teacher, who I loved unquestioningly. I’m still glad every time I think of her even though I don’t remember her very well anymore.

Today was my first day teaching creative writing to a group of 4-6 graders. The classes were smaller than anticipated. I was willing to take as many as 15 per class, but only ended up with 5 in one class and 6 in the other. The smaller class size is better I think because I can give the kids more attention.

The basic lesson plan for the day was simple. I showed them a book full of stories that my kids had written that I’d gotten printed and bound through Lulu.com. I explained that the goal was for each of them to write a story to be put into a book like the one I was showing them. Then I read Aunt Isabel Tells A Good One by Kate Duke which tells about the elements of story while simultaneously telling a story. After a short discussion about the elements of story, we then created a class story. At the end if there was time I’d have the kids brainstorm a little bit for their own stories.

The plan worked exceptionally well for the later class. The six girls were all attentive and participated enthusiastically in the creation of a story. In fact they had so much fun creating a group story, that it will have to be finished next week. I’ll have to adjust next week’s lesson plan to accomodate for that.

The early class was a much wilder ride. That class had one boy who was there because his mother told him that he had to be. It took me about 2 minutes to realize that this kid is extremely smart. He absorbed things like lightning which meant he was simultaneously interested and bored. He kept himself entertained by doing acrobatics with his chair, teasing the girls, and trying to derail my discussions. He was not malicious at all, just bored. It was actually entertaining for me to take his attempted derailments and bring them back onto topic.

I assert that all stories have to have problems in them or there is nothing to read about.
He declared that he’d write a story where nothing happens. Absolutely nothing happens except a guy picking a booger out of his nose.
I point out that picking a booger isn’t nothing.
He says it is nothing. Just a guy sitting in a class picking boogers to impress someone.
I point out that the minute he said “classroom” suddenly we all had a picture in our heads and this is why we need settings. I then start asking who the guy wanted to impress and why. In short order I had the whole the class spinning a setting and character motivations around this booger picking. As we did, it I had ready made examples for why these story elements are important.

After we had fleshed out the booger story, I leaned over conspiratorially to the kids and said that I wasn’t sure their moms would like to read a story about boogers in the book, so we were going to make a different class story. Then away we went.

This group was far more disparate than the later one. We had Derailment Boy, a pair of Giggle Girls, and then two Quiet Girls. It was quite a challenge to make sure that the needs of all those kids were met. Also they were way into pop culture and shooting things. I allowed them to turn Mickey and Minnie Mouse into bubblegum-gun toting villains, but I carefully steered them away from the idea that it would be fun to make Donald into a pimp. Goofy did get to try to pick up Cinderella though.

Teaching the two classes was both exhausting and invigorating. I love stories. I love helping create stories. All of these kids had huge reservoirs of creative energy. Teaching them these elements was like unleashing a flood. It washed over me and I got to direct it some. Not one of these kids had anything akin to writers block. This tells me I’m approaching things right. Because if I just stuck papers in front of them and said “write a story” half of them wouldn’t be able to start. Interestingly, Derailment Boy was the one who arrived with a complete story in hand and who finished a second story before the hour was over.

I’m looking forward to teaching these kids again. And now that I know who they are, I can craft my lessons a little better.

Today’s Sunday School lesson was on Charity. Not the “giving money” kind, but the “pure love of Christ” kind. The message I carried away is that to truly be charitable we need to care about the welfare of others more than our own wants and sometimes even above our own needs. (Not always above our needs because we need to take care of ourselves too.) I sat listening to the lesson and remembering how just prior to the lesson I was accosted in the hall by a fellow mother who had been asked to sit with Gleek’s primary class. Two adults are necessary to make sure that class doesn’t erupt into chaos. But this other mother also had a 2 year old who wouldn’t let her go. She was faced with the prospect of sitting with wiggly six year olds while managing a clingy two year old. I could tell she was hoping I’d volunteer. I didn’t because sitting with Gleek’s class is not high on my list of fun things to do. Besides, I reasoned, I needed the spiritual refreshment of listening to the lessons.

I listened to further discussions on Charity and realized that no matter how annoying it would be for me to sit with the class, it would be harder on this other mother. I was putting my desire to be away from my kids above hers. This other mother is also pregnant and I doubt she gets breaks from her kids during the week the way that I do. Someone needs to be there for the kids. Someone needs to teach them how to behave and help them learn. I realized that all these things were greater than my desire for a peaceful hour or two. I quietly went to relieve that mother.

I sat with Gleek’s class. Predictably, Patches left his class and came to sit with me. Gleek and Patches were both so glad to have me there. And because I was there by choice rather than coercion, I did not mind being there at all. I’m sad to miss my own lessons, but honestly I think I got the lesson I needed for today.

I stared down at the lonely few numbers scattered among empty spaces on the form. At the top was boldly emblazoned “Character Sheet.” I’d filled out similar forms before, but according to different rules and over a decade ago. Role playing games are full of numbers which affect other numbers which affect what the character can and can not do in the game. Even in my roleplaying heyday (20 years ago now) I was never in it for the numbers. What I enjoyed was the community creation of a story where one person, the Game Master, creates the plot and setting. Everyone else creates a character. All these elements are thrown together and an adventure begins to emerge which is different than anyone expects before hand. I love the interaction of characters and plot bouncing off of each other. It is why I write fiction.

But before the play, comes the character creation. I remembered loving role playing games, but felt overwhelmed. Howard, of course, had his character all ready to go. Howard games every Thursday night, so he isn’t out of practice. He was the reason I sat there, with empty spaces daring me to figure out how to fill them. It was a chance for us to play together, to laugh together. Such time is critical to maintaining a solid relationship and for us it had been very sparse lately. So I was there despite my worries about the cost of the time and of the creative energies which such a game requires. Howard helped and the spaces on my character sheet began to fill.

There are two common approaches to take when creating a character. One is to ask “who do I wish I could be,” the other is to ask “who would be an interesting character for this game.” Going the wish fulfillment route is difficult for me because I’m pretty happy with the person I am. But the person I am doesn’t make a very good character for an adventure story. So, I looked closely at the setting and the other characters. I created a character who filled skill gaps and who would bounce interestingly off of the other characters. Lady Brona Raylethorne was heavily lifted from the cartoon character The Tick, but I thought that would be fun. Unfortunately part of why The Tick works is because he strings together elaborately odd mixed metaphors. That is incredibly difficult to do on the spur of the moment. We began to play and I found that I was not doing my justice to my imagined character.

I got better as the game continued. Everyone did. It is the nature of role play that the characters and players develop together as the game continues. The magic of the game is in the playing. I became so completely absorbed that hours disappeared without notice. It all began to flow. There was much laughter and adventure. It was so fun that, rather than break up the game, we moved the game to our house so that I could tend to my kids and still play. Playing with the kids around worked far better than I expected it to. We’ve all agreed that we’ll play at our house again. I walked away from the game spinning thoughts about the characters and wondering what will happen next. I want to play again. Only this time I want to manage the kids better (things got a little chaotic at bedtime) and I want to watch some Tick ahead of time so that I have some of those lines in my head.

I know several writers who keep both Livejournal accounts and Blogger accounts. They post everything to both accounts. Since I’ve begun following some blogs over at Blogger, I signed up for an account. (http://onecobbleatatime.blogspot.com/) This means I can comment without having to type out those annoying “prove you’re not a spambot” strings of letters. This leads me to wonder whether I should start cross posting everything. If you have an opinion about why cross posting would be a good or bad thing, leave a comment below.

A good night’s sleep can work wonders. I like my kids again. They’ve gone back to being generally agreeable and cute rather than screaming, kicking balls of emotion. I’m going to make them go to bed early again tonight and see if this is a repeatable miracle.

It turned out to be a very good thing that the kids were in bed early. Thursday is Howard’s gaming night. The GM for the game had a crisis which left the players at loose ends. They all came over here and tip toed into the house so as not to wake the children. It was a really fun couple of hours. Howard cooked some food. There was talking and laughing. Then we watched Back to the Future. I was really glad that my rough evening had such an enjoyable end.

Today was happy and productive for me. I got to field a bunch of emails from people who are excited about buying sketch editions of the next Schlock book, but who needed special help for one reason or another. I love answering that kind of email because only a little bit of extra effort on my part makes people effusively happy. I figure the extra effort is only due to these people since they’re paying our bills.

One week until pre-orders open. I need to run some orders through and make sure that everything works the way it should. The store had a pretty good stress test with the last book release, but we’re doing some different things. I need to test those.

A couple of years ago I met a very nice man named James Dashner. He was one of a group of people that I visited with at Conduit in 2006 who inspired me to work toward my own dreams. I think the biggest indicator for the success of a writer is that they know other people who have succeeded. A couple months later I lured James and his family over to my house for dinner so that Kiki could stare in wonder at the author of the Jimmy Fincher Saga. She had him sign books and still has them stashed away in her room where no one else can damage them.

James is a fun guy to be around and is just getting ready to leave his day job for a career as an author. I’m very excited for him. As part of this move he’s begun a blog of his very own, The Dashner Dude. As is true with most new blogs, he feels a little lonely over there and would like some company. You can click the link and meet James for yourself.

This entry was made primarily because James offered free books for blog links. I like free books. But honestly, I like James even more than free books and I’d love to see his career as a writer soar.

It is not usually possible for a single child to maintain a tantrum for two hours. However if three children trade off tag-team style, they can make sure that the screaming does not stop. Sometimes it was in surround sound. I spent from 6 pm until 8 pm just managing tantrums. The tantrums are a direct result of lack of sleep, so I bundled all three into bed as fast as humanly possible. Now it is just Kiki and me and silence.

Link’s sources of sadness:
Friend A sent him home because friend A wanted to play with friend B instead.
Friend A lied about the reason for sending him home.
Life is not fair.
We didn’t do allowances today.
He didn’t want to do his homework.
He was itchy.

Gleek’s sources for tantrum:
Kiki won’t let Gleek use Kiki’s CD player.
Bestfriend is grounded and can’t play.
Link got a bath and Gleek didn’t.
She didn’t want to eat what I served for dinner.
She was hungry.
Patches wore her rollerblades.
I scolded her for kicking Patches because he was wearing her rollerblades.
Life is not fair.
She was starving.
She didn’t want to go to bed.

Patches’ sources of sadness:
Gleek kicked him.
Link got a bath and he didn’t.
He needed a bandaid for an invisible wound.
He didn’t want to eat the dinner I made.
He was starving.
He couldn’t find his blankets.
Life is not fair.
I made him go to bed.
I wouldn’t read Harry Potter tonight.