Spectator Sport

By / May 11, 2007 / 2 Comments

We have Mario Party for our old N64 game system. My kids have had many hours of enjoyment playing this game. Frequently they would plug in all the controllers so that they can control all of the players. I’ve seen Link do this many times. He plays all of the controllers in turn so that he can make sure that the right character wins.

Lately though they’ve found a new variation. They set up a four player game and make all the players be computer controlled. Then they sit back and watch the computer play the game. At first this baffled me. Why just watch a computer play? Then I realized that it held the same fascination for them as watching sports on television has for many people. They would each have a character they were rooting for. I could tell how the chosen character was faring by the groans or cheers I could hear chorusing from the family room.

Courtesy

By / May 10, 2007 / 3 Comments

Yesterday I went to dinner. It was a special dinner provided by our church young men’s organization to honor all the women in our congregation. The whole thing was planned, set up, and run by young men ages 12-18 and their youth group leaders. It was very impressive. The young men all wore white shirts and ties. They took the women by the arm and seated them at tables. Then they served the dinner while the women only had to sit and enjoy.

The young men were all so endearingly awkward. I could tell that they had been carefully coached about proper etiquette and they tried hard to remember it all. I think that was what impressed me most. These teenage boys were trying their very hardest to do everything they could to honor women.

I’m glad that the young men’s leaders did the enormous amount of work necessary to put on an event like this one. I think it is good for us all to honor each other and to treat each other courteously. I think of myself as a strong woman. I can manage most things for myself. But there have been times when I’ve been incredibly grateful that a man took the time to hold the door for me. I pay back the kind deed by holding doors for others when my hands are free.

I am not as courteous as I should be. In particular, I fail to extend courtesy to my children. Courtesy means giving the benefit of the doubt. It means choosing the kindest way to say necessary things. It means choosing not to say unnecessary and hurtful things. It means verbalizing our complimentary thoughts instead of keeping them to ourselves. Courtesy is trying to show our best selves to others, expecting them to do the same, and adjusting gracefully if they don’t. Courtesy is treating others as if they are people rather than tools or obstacles. Courtesy is often small, a smile, a held door, a please, a thank you. By such small gestures we as a society define who we are and who we want to be.

The hours sneak away

By / May 9, 2007 / 4 Comments

Each school day I have two precious hours between the time I drop Gleek off at Kindergarten and the time that I have to pick her up. Those two morning hours are my most productive time of the day. After I pick Gleek up there are more distractions and the afternoon ebb in my energy. Sometimes I still get things done, but more often I don’t. I anticipate next fall when Gleek will be in school full time and I will have a long stretch of day in which to get things done.

Today and yesterday my good working hours went into accounting work. I don’t think it should have consumed that much time, but it did.

Where do the hours go? I glance up and the time is gone and yet I still have piles of tasks to do.

One of my tasks for today was to take a nap. I’ve been shorting myself on sleep lately and I can feel it. Unfortunately I didn’t finish the accounting work until 3 pm. In a moment I’ll need to fetch Kiki from school. Then I have to head straight into Cub Scout activities. During cub scouts I have to be high energy and focused on helping the boys in my den.

Maybe the nap will come after that. But there is dinner to make and homework to supervise. Then later this evening I have an event to attend.

Hours of day left and none of it napable.

….It says something about the sneakiness of hours that I wrote this entry at 3:30, but then didn’t post it until almost 10.

Once a writer, always a writer

By / May 8, 2007 / 4 Comments

Why oh why is it that every time I resolve to set the writing aside and really focus on other things, I get seized by a story? Today my brain started turning over possibilities of a middle grade book aimed at Link’s interests and challenges. I’m trying to not let this run away with me. I still have to put other things first. There are household, child care, and business tasks that need more of me for the next while. But the writing piece of my brain is busy stewing away trying to figure out plots and characters.

I’ve had this happen before. Twice during my years of one-baby-after-another I decided to officially give up my dream of being a writer. It seemed silly to hang on to the dream when I hadn’t written a thing for years. Both times I was seized by a writing idea within days of giving up. After the second time I realized that giving up writing just wasn’t going to work. I had to find a different way to banish my sadness over not writing. I chose to try to realize the dreams instead of banish them. It has worked pretty well so far.

The other day I decided to dig into my file box full of old stories. I wanted to see what was in there. I was surprised at how much of it there was. Apparently I’ve been a compulsive writer for longer than I can remember clearly. I found the hand written draft of The Purple Rabbit which was my very first story. I started it one day when I was six years old because my older sister was writing a story and I wanted to be just like her. I’ll never get rid of that draft even though the pages are yellowing and beginning to crumble around the edges. I love the child handwriting.

There were many other stories. Most of them I’d completely forgotten about. I didn’t stop to read many of them. I just flipped through the pages, scanning to remember what the story was and who I’d been when I wrote it. Some of the stories proclaimed their origins very clearly like the prophecy based story I began after reading David Eddings. Or the epic book about a revolutionary war that I planned out after reading Les Miserables. Many of these stories were reflections of the things that captured my imagination at the time. Absorptive reflective juvenilia, to use Bujold’s term.

Every so often as I flipped through, a scene or an entire story jumped off the page at me. I would sit there with that one piece of paper and know for sure that here was something I could work with. Something in that piece of writing was not a reflection, but my very own. These ones I set aside for further consideration because they still live even after spending a decade in a dusty file box. Everything else went back into the box.

I’m not a person who keeps things for sentiment sake. I pitched my yearbooks when I was only a couple of years out of high school. I gave away most of my stuffed animals and toys as I outgrew them. Award certificates get pitched. But I’ll never voluntarily throw away these stories I’ve written. They say more about the person I was at the time than any other object I could keep. I love watching my handwriting change and mature even as the stories themselves change and mature. I look at them and remember so clearly when this particular story lived in my brain and absorbed all my thoughts.

For better or for worse, I am a writer. What I am not is an author. To be a writer only requires that I write. To be an author I have to be published. My goal is to be an author too, but that will take a bit more time.

Economic lessons

By / May 7, 2007 / 4 Comments

Today Kiki came and asked me if she and a friend could make cookies. They had big plans to make a pile of cookies and sell them at a corner stand as a fundraiser. I happen to know that lemonade/cookie stands tend not to make much money when they’re set up in quiet residential neighborhoods. But the best way for Kiki to understand this is to let her experience it for herself. I agreed to let her make cookies on the stipulation that she reimburse me for the ingredients. She and her friend happily made a batch of cookies. Burned the cookies. Then made a triple batch of cookies. By this time it was 6 pm and I told her that she’d better freeze the cookie dough. That way she can bake the cookies on the day she intends to sell them. She cheerfully did this. Then I required her to clean up every bit of the mess that she made.

So far Kiki is still cheerful and hopeful. I intend to give this every chance to succeed. I’m going to recommend that she make flyers to pass out advertising the existence of her stand to neighborhood kids. But I expect that she and her friend will sit on the corner for hours and not make enough money to cover expenses. But she will never just take my word, she’ll have to learn this one for herself. And who knows, I could be wrong.

EDIT 5/14/2007: The sale happened last Saturday. Kiki and her friend sat on as street corner for 3 hours. They came home with a profit, but only because three adults seriously overpaid for their cookies. After expenses Kiki had a $2 profit. She enjoyed the experience, but doesn’t seem in a hurry to do it again.

Pleasant Sunday

By / May 6, 2007

Today was pleasant. The whirlwind in my brain quieted a little and I was able to drift along on the current of the day rather than constantly planning the next thing while still in the midst of the current thing. We were invited over for dinner and that was truly enjoyable. Eating food I didn’t have to cook is always nice, but the company was good as well. They even had a kid friendly house so I was able to relax rather than child manage. Even better, Gleek and Patches fell asleep on the ride home, so I didn’t even have to do a real bedtime.

Tomorrow I need to pick up my motivation again and get things done, but today was nice.

Author’s bio

By / May 5, 2007 / 20 Comments

I’ve been reading Under Cover of Darkness a short story anthology. As I’ve been reading I’ve paid special attention to the author bios that accompany each story. I’m fairly certain that these bios are written by the authors themselves although they are all in third person. Most of the bios read like resumes as if the writer is trying to demonstrate to me their writing qualifications. Other bios read like Oscar acceptance speeches, full to the brim with thanks for specific people. But the bios that impressed me were uniformly short. Larry Niven has a story in this particular anthology. His bio simply reads “Larry Niven has written science fiction and fantasy at every length, and weirder stuff, too. He lives with his wife of thirty-six years, Marilyn, in Chatsworth, California, the home of the winds.” Larry Niven has nothing to prove to anyone and it shows in his bio. If he tried to write his bio like a resume, it would have been longer than his story.

If/when I get to write my bio for an anthology. I’m going to keep it short.

Lessons learned

By / May 4, 2007 / 6 Comments

I have just finished my third re-draft of the story I intend to submit to Julie Czerneda’s anthology. This has been by far the most painful writing experience that I’ve ever had. I’ve often heard writers talk about bleeding over their work. I never felt that way about writing until this story. I’m not sorry for the experience. It has taught me lots about how I write. Here are a few things I’ve learned:

  • 30 days is a very short time for me to try to go from nothing to completed story. In order to accomplish this feat I have to push the creative process hard. This is rather like giving pitocin to a woman in labor. The baby is born much more quickly, but the contractions hurt a lot more. In the end the speed of the labor does not affect the quality of the baby. Given the choice I much prefer having leisure to let the process be natural and much less painful.
  • I should not give my stories out to be critiqued the day that I finish the draft. At that point I am still emotionally invested in the stories and the commentary begins to feel like a personal attack when it is not. Also, the critiques are sure to mention problems that I would have noticed on my own if I’d only given myself enough time to see them. Then I’m angry at the critique for telling me stuff I already know and angry at myself for not seeing it before I handed the story out to be read. Also I start feeling embarrassed that I handed out such a poor draft to be read.
  • Tearing a story apart and redrafting only days after finishing the previous draft is very painful. I need to give myself time to detach from the story before restructuring it. When I’ve just finished drafting I remember clearly how much work it was. The last thing I want, is to do all the work again. It also renders further critiques on the previous draft pointless. This is a problem when I don’t wait for all the critiques to arrive before I start redrafting. This time I was in such a hurry that I’d start redrafting after each critique rather than taking time to compare critiques and decide what needed changed. I do much better if I get all the critiques and let them simmer in my back brain for awhile before I start to re-work the story.

No one gets to see this redraft yet. I am going to put it aside and think of other things for three days. On Monday I’ll re-read it. If it still feels really good to me, then I’ll send it off. If it still needs work, then I’ll do the work. I may decide that I need other opinions, but I don’t think so. In the middle of this process my confidence in my ability to write was shaken. This is my fault for not giving my instincts time to work. I rushed too fast to get the opinions of others. Now it is time for me to slow down and trust those instincts.

Snippets from a kindergarten field trip.

By / May 3, 2007 / 8 Comments

I went on Gleek’s kindergarten field trip today. I had a group of 6 kids to keep track of. I announced that they were all my chicks and I was their mother hen. That meant they needed to follow me everywhere. This declaration was met with a chorus of “Yay!” then the cheerfully trailed after me and cheeped all the way to the school bus. We got off the school bus and they followed me and cheeped until we got near the farm animals. Then they scattered. I spent the next hour calling “Where are my chickies?” and counting to 6.

When the field trip was almost through one of the little boys started scowling at me.
Me: “What’s wrong?”
Boy: “I don’t want to be a chick.”
Me: “Okay. You don’t have to be a chick. Would you like to be a rooster?”
Boy scowled even more: “No!”
Me: “What do you want to be?”
Boy: “A jedi!”

I agreed he could be a jedi as long as he stayed close to me. So for the rest of the trip I was calling out for my 5 chickies and my one Jedi. Things got really entertaining when the jedi decided that his purpose was to slay all the chicks with his lightsaber. Fortunately it was time to get on the bus.

Under “Pandemonium” in the dictionary, it should list “Kindergarten fieldtrip bus.”