Linkage
As you may have noticed, this blog is now landing at http://kaitnolan.com. If you are one of the kind souls who links to this blog, I humbly beg you to update your blogroll. While you're there (or if you're adding a new link), it's probably best if you list me simply as Kait Nolan instead of the blog title (as I have amply proved my fickle nature on that point). Thanks! You're made of awesome!Because I am hard at work on this LAST LECTURE (all cheerleading is welcome), I have to share a video worth a lot of belly laughing.
My husband has been saying since the first trailer came out that the wolves looked like Snufalufagus. Damn that just doesn’t get old. :wipes tears of laughter away:
As I have mentioned here before, I’m deep in the midst of prepping a Theories of Personality course for next semester. I’ve been breaking my neck to get all the lectures written and the powerpoints mad, and I’ll continue to bust my butt in order to get the syllabus, quizzes, tests, etc. finished before January 6th, which is when class actually starts. Why am I doing this? Well, because when I first started teaching for this university, I was hired in October and my paperwork sat around on some lazy person’s desk in HR such that I did not get access to the system in which I was building my course until 2 days before the university closed for Christmas. Meaning I had an entire semester’s course to write in 2 weeks. I pulled it off, but it sucked. I spent my entire Christmas break at my office at work. I’m trying to avoid that this time. In a perfect world, I’ll have everything written, recorded, and uploaded prior to the start of the semester, so that all I have to do is GRADE and answer questions. This is how I work multiple jobs without going stark, raving mad. Online courses, while a massive PITA to create and set up, are relatively self maintaining afterward.
I set myself the unconventional NaNo goal of finishing these lectures and the novella. I’ve been a rock star on the lecture side of things. I officially have one lecture + one remaining slide to write. I’ll probably wind up expanding a few of the lectures a little, but the worst of it is almost done and we’re not at the end of Week 3 yet. I’ve officially written 12 lectures in the last 5 weeks. My brain is somewhere around the consistency of the porridge I like to eat for a winter breakfast. Consequently the novella has…well, sat.
I needed to rewrite a few scenes from the beginining, which I did. I have come right up to the middle of the story and my get up and go done got up and went. I blame it on being firmly sucked into teacher realm. There’s not much overlap between the two and I’m afraid I’m not very good at moving between worlds. I’ve done a few character sketches, made lots of random notes, but I haven’t done any new scene work in about two weeks. Seriously, this kind of stuff is the anti-fiction for me. I haven’t been in the mood to write much at all.
So…I’m just going to let things sit another week or so, just wind up the lectures. I decided it was best because what little I HAVE written hasn’t been productive or useful. So I’ll knock out the mandatory stuff I’ve gotta get done. After that I hope my brain will realign to the fiction polarity and start actually working again. I’m waiting for any of my projects to sit up and speak to me again.
Wish me luck today! I’d love to celebrate finishing the lectures with something tonight.
I absolutely LOVE this time of year when the annual results for the Darwin Awards come out. Here are this year’s winner and honorable mentions:
1. When his 38 caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Provo, Utah would-be robber Jason Ellison did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.
And now, the honorable mentions:
2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat cutting machine and after a little shopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef’s claim was approved.
3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.
4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped… Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies.. The deception wasn’t discovered for 3 days.
5.. A teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.
6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer… $15. [If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?]
7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly.. He decided that he’d just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.
8. As a female shopper exited a South Carolina convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, “Yes, officer, that’s her. That’s the lady I stole the purse from.”
9.. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti , Michigan at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn’t open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren’t available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away. [*A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER]
10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on an Atlanta street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline, but he plugged his siphon hose into the motor home’s sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges saying that it was the best laugh he’d ever had.
I’ve been on a YA kick lately, having knocked out Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver and Simon Holt’s The Devouring in the last week. I’ve been listening to Alyson Noel’s Evermore on audiobook over the weekend, and it really brought home to me something that bugs me about some YA.
Of course it seems that the majority of popular YA these days is in first person. It is supposed to give us an up close and personal view of the hero or heroine’s head, deepen our experience of the story. But something I’ve noticed in a lot of the YA I’ve read (though not Shiver or The Devouring)–and I include the Twilight books in this category–is that a lot of them take that first person point of view and turn it into a story where the hero/ine is sitting there telling us the story. The whole story. In a tell the story rather than show it kind of way. This is not a good thing.
It particularly heavily highlights the incredible self-involvement that a lot of teen hero/ines display in their stories. And yeah, maybe that’s fairly true to life, but good fiction is not ENTIRELY always accurate. Because, damn, that kind of accuracy makes me really dislike the hero/ines for being whiny, angsty, wishy-washy, and boring. Possibly this is because I’m not a teenager and wasn’t a particularly typical teen when I was that age. But still. I think it takes a talented writer to write teens, or any characters really, in first person and still SHOW the story rather than tell it.
Many, many writers begin with first person when they start writing. Not all, certainly, but a significant portion. They often think it’s easier. I know I did. I switched sometime in high school to third person and I haven’t shifted back. Part of this is because I’m far more comfortable in third person. I prefer hitting multiple points of view in my stories, so it’s the natural choice. The other reason is that I honestly think that writing in first person–doing it WELL so that you DON’T fall into the tell rather than show trap–is far more challenging. It’s why I’m waiting to start my culinary paranormal series. That story is absolutely best in first person, and it’ll be seriously pushing my boundaries as a writer.
I gave about two seconds of thought to writing my YA trilogy in first person, doing a sort of chapter by chapter POV switch as was done in Shiver. But it’s just not me. And I don’t think I can tell the story the way it needs to be told in first person. I find myself far too bogged down in all the “I”s and “me”s. And so, too, do a lot of authors (YA and adult). And then there are those that do it SO WELL you feel like the characters are your best friend. Everybody has their strength.
What do you think? Do you think first or third is harder?
I spent my weekend in south Mississippi at Desoto State Park at an Adventure Riders motorcycle rally. That’s me on the yellow bike. See how tiny I am compared to our friend Michael?
We very nearly didn’t go. Hubby called Thursday afternoon saying we weren’t, that the fix for his rear brakes was going to take more time than we had. I pouted enough that he relented to try to fix it on Friday and maybe we could go late. He gets the rear hub torn apart, turns out that the seal that his dad thought he had to fix it was the wrong size and the parts store closes at noon on Friday (it was already 1). So then we weren’t going again. Then Dad remembers there’s a spare rear hub in the parts barn, so hubby digs that out and replaces it, refills necessary fluids, test drives it and whee! It works better than the old one. We’re going! Then he makes one more test run up the road and promptly snaps his front brake cable. I should mention that he rides a 1971 BMW R75/5 that’s older than he is. It requires a lot of TLC. So then we weren’t going again. Then he goes BACK down to the parts barn and finds an ancient and kinda sketchy brake cable that he lubes and loosens and says he’ll try. Meanwhile, I run into town to the courthouse to properly tag and title MY bike (which looks awesome with its new yellow paint job). Get back and he’s finishing up, things are working. We’re going again! It’s after 4 by this time. I should mention that Desoto is about 4 hours away. So we race home, pack as fast as we can (which takes an hour since we HADN’T prepped stuff the night before because we thought we weren’t going), then come back out to his parents’ to pick up his bike. Of course it takes another hour there because we had to fix a short and adjust some stuff. We finally got off about 7:30. Naturally he about froze his butt off on the 4 our ride down (with me watching like a hawk as I follow in the truck because I’m starting to wonder if all the stuff going wrong was a sign or something) and we finally rolled into camp at 11:30 to the cheers of the riders still up. By the time we finished visiting, setting up camp, and fell onto our air mattress, it was after 1. We damn near froze to death because we brought the summer weight sleeping bags by accident.
Saturday we went on the big ride–6 hours of roads and trails with a break for a truly superb catfish lunch somewhere around Lucedale (I think)–2 up on hubby’s bike. In the morning we had a little spill (only going about 5 mph as he’d managed to lose a fair amount of speed before we went over). Hubby it the ground, I hit hubby, and the bike pinned us both. He had a bit of a Superman moment, managing to lift his bike off me, from the ground, with one hand. If I hadn’t been so freaked out, it would have been really sexy. But anyway, all was well, just some bruising and no damage to bones or bike. When we got back in the afternoon, we decided to go into Wiggins to pick up a new sleeping bag so as not to freeze that night too. It was my first official ride that wasn’t on my in-laws’ road, with real traffic, real highways and everything. It was really nervewracking, but when I made it to Walmart (15 miles later) without incident or injury, I relaxed a little. On the drive back it was getting dark (I should note, I do NOT like riding in the dark), and we passed this field covered in mist with this gorgeous hot pink, dark purple sunset behind the trees. GORGEOUS. One of those shots that would look totally photoshopped. Naturally, we didn’t have a camera.
At the big cookout dinner that night, all the guys (there were about 40 of us in all) were pointing out me and my bike to their wives (who mostly just showed up for the dinner) and saying “Don’t you want to do that?” Evidently I am an oddity. I’m the ONLY wife who rides and has her own bike, and apparently this makes me the coolest wife. Hubby says the guys are really jealous as their wives won’t come out to play. The whole thing cracks me up.
We took another short ride Sunday morning to enjoy the last of the gorgeous weather, then came on home.
Let me tell you I am GLAD that I got to sleep in my own bed last night! Of course the next several days will be the graduated doing of laundry and household chores that were neglected while we were out of town. Which was a lot since we left in quite a hurry on Friday night. But it was a GREAT weekend. I had a blast, the weather was beautiful, and I got out of town for a much needed, totally unplugged weekend.
Now it’s back to the grindstone and so far Monday has been one of Those Mondays with one thing after another going wrong. But it will be okay. Things will steady out, I will catch up, and I will get back into the swing of things. The semester is winding down for class, so I’m trying to do a big final push to tie up loose ends with current classes and finish the last 3 lectures for Theories of Personality. I would REALLY like to have them all written by Thanksgiving. Which would leave me with December to record them and get all the quizzes, discussion board questions, and tests written. Oh, and somewhere in there, I’d like to get back to my novella. But in the meantime, I have to finish parsing out some missing data for the Evil Day Job.
This is more properly a blurb or character sketch than flash fiction. It doesn’t have a proper ending and it’s rather long, but it’s what derailed my productivity on current projects this week, the character who so rudely interrupted the call of nature earlier this week to start whispering her story. This is what she told me.
The brackets holding the stall together were metal and shiny. In the curve of the L, she could see a reflection of the bolt from the right side, a phantom image that seemed to echo into an endless, optical void if she let her eyes blur just a little. She had plenty of time to notice such things while she hid in the restroom, feet perched on the toilet seat as she waited for the stadium to empty out. She’d made a mistake coming here tonight, forgetting that it was a home game and it would be hours before all the people were gone and the Friday night lights were turned out. But Kara was too near the Change to make it back to her car and go somewhere else, so she’d ducked into the bathroom and locked herself behind the graffiti covered door to wait.
No one realized she was there. They assumed some kid had crawled under the stall and locked the door before climbing back out. The floor was so disgusting that nobody cared enough to try to rectify the problem.
By halftime she’d memorized the two dozen names and assorted messages that ran the gamut from vulgar to “I love Jesus.” She resisted the urge to pull a pen from her purse and correct the misspellings and poor grammar that riddled the lot of them.
She held the beast at bay, her attention split between the announcer’s coverage of the game and focusing on identifying the voices that came in and out in a steady stream, babbling about inane high school concerns like who came out with who and what so and so was wearing.
Blind, foolish sheep, Kara thought.
Her legs ached, but she didn’t move. She had to stay hidden. That was the Rule, the moral imperative for people like her. Though “people” was probably too generous a term.
The Bears lost. Kara was grateful. A victory by the home team would have ensured that students hung around far longer to celebrate before drifting away to after parties or Waffle House. Instead they left in droves, shouting insults in response to the jeers offered by the visiting fans. Still, nearly an hour passed before the last students departed, and she heard the snap of the stadium lights being turned off. Someone stuck their head in the ladies’ room and flipped off that light, leaving her in darkness.
Kara made not a sound. A little while later, she heard the rattle of the gate being shut and locked. Her ears strained for the rumble of that last engine cranking up and driving away. Still she waited, body trembling and eager, until she heard nothing but the quiet of a late autumn night.
Then, and only then, Kara Ransom unfurled her stiff limbs and quietly slid back the bolt on the door. Her sneakered feet crunched on the garbage littering the floor, and the noise sounded too loud to her ears. The cleanup crew wouldn’t be coming until tomorrow morning. As she opened the bathroom door, she noted that they’d have their work cut out for them. Concession garbage, programs, and cheap mangled pompoms littered the stretch of concrete beneath the bleachers. The lingering scents of popcorn and nachos and lousy pizza stained the night air.
Moving more quickly now, she left the shadows of the bleachers and crossed to the chain link fence that separated the stands from the quarter mile track and the football field beyond. In one, smooth move, she vaulted the fence, landing crouched on the other side. Her gaze swept the stands, both home and visitor before she strolled to the sideline bench and began to strip. Her movements, normally so restrained and clumsy, so as to appear human, were swift, fluid. Human eyes would see only a blur of motion. She laid her clothes neatly on the bench beside her purse and stepped into the grass. It felt gloriously cool beneath her bare feet. She gave one last, appreciative wiggle to her human toes before letting go and giving in to the animal inside her begging for release.
Kara bent double at the waist, planting her hands in the grass as her bones popped and shifted, taking her from biped to quadruped. With a tingling itch, fur sprouted along her bare skin even as her hair retracted and her ears moved higher along her skull. She was getting better at the process, now completing the Change in under a minute. As the last of the prickling died away, Kara lowered her front in a feline version of Downward Facing Dog then dropping her haunches and shifting to Cobra, stretching her long, lean muscles in preparation for a run.
Oh God, it felt good to move and stretch after all those hours trapped in the bathroom. A purr of pleasure rumbled in her chest. Satisfied that she’d worked out all the kinks, Kara took off, zooming down the field and approaching the goal post at a thundering 65 miles per hour. She careened around it, using her tail for balance as she shot onto the track. She lapped it once, pushing for top speed before slowing down to a more comfortable lope. Moving back to the grass, she put her imagination to work conjuring illusory gazelles to stalk and hunt. For nearly an hour she played and ran, working off the buildup of energy that she found so intolerable in human form, until at last, sated and tired, she flopped belly first onto the cool grass to rest.
She’d waited too long since her last run. The effort of keeping her pace within normal human bounds had made her tense and irritable, her movements unnaturally jerky. Noticed. Being noticed was Against The Rules as laid out by her mother. It was why she forbade Kara from joining in school sports to run track or cross country. Her control, her ability to blend in was not good enough when she ran. So she lived for the stolen nights when she could be herself under the watchful eye of the moon and no one else.
But it was time to get back.
Kara rose to her paws to pad toward the sideline bench where she’d left her clothes and froze, one paw hovering above the ground.
Something had moved in the bleachers. Kara trained her gaze into the shadows beneath the announcer’s box and picked out a shape. A human shape. Tentatively, she lifted her nose and sniffed at the breeze. Male. Definitely human.
Shit. How long has he been watching?
He wasn’t moving now, standing instead in that tense stillness where he hoped he hadn’t been seen but was ready to run like hell in case he had.
Kara struggled with what to do. She could leave. Her kind were not known for their fighting skills, and she had no desire to kill him. But her stuff would still be sitting on that bench, and the driver’s license and car keys would point straight to her. She could grab her purse in her teeth and make a dash for it, but she couldn’t jump the exterior fence in this form. So confrontation was the thing. He could never outrun her, even in her presently exhausted state. Not unless she let him. So she’d stalk him, scare him until he ran away. Then she’d get the hell out of here.
She took a step toward the fence, then another, eyes never leaving the dark figure.
He didn’t budge until she leapt the fence, and even then he crept backward at a turtle’s pace, as if afraid to startle her.
Kara climbed the bleacher seats, her claws clicking against the aluminum with each step. The scent of his fear was acrid in her nose. As he edged back, she could see his muscles trembling with the need to move.
Why isn’t he running?
And that’s where it stops. She didn’t tell me why he isn’t running, and as I have no idea who he is yet, I don’t know either. But I’ll be curious to see where her story takes her.
Read it. It is made of awesome. That is all.
Okay I’ll be a little more expansive. The language is beautiful, the take on werewolves purely unique, and the ending made me weep in the best possible way. It truly was a book I did not want to put down. I’m so bloody furious I have to wait until SUMMER for the sequel, Linger. But seriously, great, fabulous, wonderful book. A must read.
Buy it. Read it. Share it.
I am DEEP in the second week slump of NaNo. While I am often that person who touts “Hope springs eternal”, I don’t really have a prayer of reaching 50k. And I’m okay with that. I didn’t really think I would. The thing that’s falling to the wayside seems to be the novella (for which I still have not hit on the right title, though thanks to all the folks who offered suggestions). I’m smack dab in the middle. I have my outline and know mostly how the rest of the plot unfolds, but my brain isn’t too interested in it this week. Instead it was hijacked by a new character in the bathroom earlier this week (I know, really), whom I believe I’ll offer up as a Flash Friday blurb tomorrow so you can at least see who has been occupying my time. She seems to be finished talking to me for a while, so I have no idea what her story is or where it fits in with…anything, but she’s introduced herself, which means that my brain will be percolating on her as we go forward. I have, thankfully, been moving forward at a steady pace on my lectures, thank God. I have 3 remaining. So that part, at least, I feel confident that I will successfully complete for NaNo. Yay for sanity.
Yesterday, instead of writing a single word (I did try. I stared at the unfinished scene I was working on, then at the blank next scene and nothing came.), I went on a reading binge. Hubby was late getting home, so after I got supper started, I sat down with Simon Holt’s The Devouring, which is aptly titled as I tore through it in 2 and a half hours. Some seriously creepy stuff in there, though thankfully I did not have nightmares like I did after reading Strange Angels (It’s the zombies, I tell you! Though, The Devouring did have a scary ass clown. If you have seen or read It and aren’t afraid of clowns, there’s something wrong with you.). I’m really intrigued by how dark a lot of the stuff coming out for teens is now. They didn’t do that when I was a teen. They played it safe. Which is probably why I didn’t read much teen fiction when I was that age and just skipped right over to the adult stuff.
In any event, following The Devouring, I started Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver. Oh. My. God. I love this book. I’m only about 25 pages in, and I’m already hooked on the voice and the characters. I certainly have not been able to say that about many books I’ve picked up this year. Maggie, my hat goes off to you. I actually heard about the sequels to both Shiver and The Devouring first and went back to find the first ones. I’m always really happy when that happens because then I have something immediately to turn to when I love it. Except that with Shiver I don’t. Linger doesn’t come out until NEXT SUMMER. That makes me want to wail. I hate waiting for good books. It’s not that I don’t have lots of other things to read, but when I have something that I know is going to be good (as opposed to the stacks of TBRs that might not be), I like to be able to dive right in.
Anyway, I’ll be taking Shiver with me on this weekend’s campout/motorcycle rally down in DeSoto State Park. I may do a little writing by hand if I’m so inclined (I won’t be going on one of the planned rides, so I get the nice empty campground to myself), but I’m not going to be counting on it. It’ll be good for me to unplug and recharge with nature. Supposed to be gorgeous weather, just perfect for camping. There will be hot dogs and marshmallows (because the presence of campfires demands the roasting of tasty things on sticks). And it will be me and about 35 men. Because I am, apparently, the only “cool wife” who actually rides and is not just showing up Saturday night for the big cookout dinner. This should be entertaining.
At the time of this writing, my laptop is on its last, battery-powered breath. I have been able to prolong this death by considerable contortions and applying pressure to the wound. You see, my laptop cable has broken. AGAIN. I have had this happen on virtually every laptop I’ve ever owned. With the exception of the cable Callie ate as a puppy and the one that got fried in a massive power surge, every other cable has broken at a stress point –usually the SAME stress point–right where the flimsy ass wire meets the part that plugs into the actual laptop.
This makes no effing sense to me. Laptops, by their very nature, are portable. It’s why most of us have them. And if they’re portable, that means that they will be moved, packed up, unpacked, plugged in, unplugged, etc. A LOT. Ergo, the charger cables that go with them should be STURDY. Yet it is the behemoth desktop machines that have the power cables you’d need bolt cutters to sever. Someone explain this to me. When I was ranting about this last night on Twitter, someone mentioned “well, they’re laptops…they’re supposed to be used on battery.” Maybe so, but I have yet to have a laptop with a battery that lasts anywhere approaching more than 30% of the time advertised. Laptop batteries suck. When they make one that really, truly lasts for the 4-6 hours I’m on my machine actively working, then we’ll talk. And for most of us with laptops, it is our main computer, so they should expect as much or more use on them as the big desktop machines.
Naturally, they did NOT have a replacement cable available through Amazon Prime, so there’s no shipping in 2 days. I wound up going with one on Ebay that I hope to God will be here by next week because I really don’t know how long all my machinations and manipulation of the cord to make the internal wires touch so the machine will charge is going to keep working. And let’s face it. Having a non-functional laptop is going to really put a crimp on my NaNo word count. Not that I think I’m going to win anyway beyond finishing all my lectures (3 to go), but it’s the principle of the thing. Not to mention what I do admit is a rather alarming addiction. I’m sure my husband would love to see how I respond to being without a computer for several days (apart from Friday through Sunday when we’ll be without all electronic devices because we’ll be camping at a motorcycle rally over the weekend).
Thank God for my work computer where I can at least deal with my classes and check email and stuff.
In any event, I make a plea to laptop cord manufacturers to make your power supplies STURDIER. And get to work on making some that charge wirelessly. That would be truly awesome.
I’ve been writing for seventeen years. Coming up with characters and stories for longer than that. I have learned that characters have very little respect for personal space, time, prior obligations, or anything else relating to living life in the real world. It’s not their world after all, so I suppose I really shouldn’t be surprised at their lack of consideration. Usually they like to pop up at inopportune times like when I’m studying for finals or paying attention in meetings. But today–today I had a character come to me at the most inopportune moment. While I was sitting with my pants around my knees, answering the call of nature.
Seriously? In the bathroom? Is no place sacred?
I hate it when friends or coworkers talk to me in the bathroom. And here some character comes and starts whispering in my ear. Um, hello? Busy!
But it turns out that she was hiding out in a bathroom stall herself. I guess she was bored. Or maybe lonely. She hasn’t told me yet why she’s hiding in a bathroom stall or what she’s waiting for. But she’s finally consented to tell me her name and that she’s a teenager. So that’s a start.
What’s the strangest place you ever received a call from a character?
I’ve been on the warpath in one of my classes this morning. One of my students called my call FIVE TIMES this morning while I was trying to get ready for work. Did not bother leaving a voicemail to say what the problem was. I didn’t call back. I scrolled back to the first one to see when he or she call the first time and it was AFTER 11 PM LAST NIGHT! Seriously? Did you really think that I was going to be awake and inclined to deal with whatever you deemed an emergency after 11 PM on a Sunday night when I had to be at work this morning?
What happened to phone etiquette? I think it disappeared with the birth of cell phones. Suddenly you can call anybody, anywhere, at any time. They are suddenly supposed to be available to you no matter what. And evidently we are all supposed to be paranoid enough to call back any unrecognized number so there’s no reason to leave a message. I’ve got news for you buddy. I have my cell phone for MY convenience, not yours. If I don’t have the time to answer right that second, I’m not going to. And if you don’t leave me a message indicating you have actual business with me, then I assume you are a wrong number.
I also woke up to an inbox full of emails from students. A few were legitimate issues with quizzes locking up. Fine, clear them out, give a 24 hour extension, be done with it. One student emailed me last week to request an extension on a couple of different quizzes because she evidently didn’t grasp the concept of going to the NEXT PAGE of assessments. She emailed me last night to say they weren’t there. Well no shit, sherlock. You had a 24 hour extension from the time I emailed you back. If you don’t bother checking your email until the weekend and miss your window, that is not my problem and sure as hell isn’t grounds for a second extension.
The Sunday before last, I had it brought to my attention that my big Unit 2 Exam (at a whopping 110 questions) had a 60 minute time limit on it. It wasn’t supposed to have one at all. So given that it was my screw up, I gave students the opportunity to retake it by last night if they emailed me that they were dissatisfied with their grade so that I could clear their attempt. One student didn’t make her first attempt until AFTER the first deadline and then emailed me last night saying she’d be ready to take it again this week. Um, no. That’s not how this works.
Seriously people, I consider myself a reasonable woman. I conduct hard classes on purpose. I expect you to work. If something happens, I’m willing to work with you on it. But your being lazy or stupid or thinking you’re going to take advantage of me is just not going to put you on my good side.
I really don’t understand where this expectation that things should be handed over and easy comes from. Life is not like that. You have to be responsible for yourself, for doing what is expected of you. And if you don’t, you have to accept the consequences. And what is up with this striving for nothing more than mediocrity? Does no one have pride in a job well done? A good grade earned? This is why that movie Idiocracy scares the crap out of me. I see so clearly how we could end up there.
I hope I’m dead first.
It’s Sunday morning and I’m back from garage sale madness. I left Thursday night for my mom’s and spent Friday and through noon Saturday trying to sell a bunch of stuff I no longer needed or wanted. I’m pretty pleased. I made $158.50, got rid of several things, and took the rest to the Salvation Army. It’s liberating to get rid of stuff that’s cluttering up your life. Of course naturally, I brought back nearly as much as I got rid off. I sold our old coffee table and picked up the new one my mom had upholstered for us as an early Christmas present (it’s beautiful, thanks). I brought back all my size 8 and 10 dress clothes that have been living in my clost at Mom’s since I finished graduate school. I’ve not quite shrunk back into all of them, but they are inspiration to try to be good during the holiday season. And really, I’m nearly 30, I should keep all of the clothes that I own at MY HOUSE. I brought back the handful of kitchen items I snagged from the garage sale: a new cookie sheet, a food chopper, new 1 cup liquid measuring cup, and those bottle pourer things you can put in olive oils (or dish soap or whatever).
A part of me felt like I should do something responsible with the proceeds, but really, there is very little in life that you do so much work for and make so little money. So I decided to spend it on myself, picking some things off my list that I’m pretty sure no one will get me for Christmas.
I ordered 2 sets of new dishes. On sale even, so I took that as a sign. 
I ordered Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, which I’ve been wanting for quite some time, and which I intend to use when baking Christmas gifts for others this season. I even got about a dozen disposable mini loaf pans from Mom that she’d had hiding in a cabinet for who knows how long.
To go along with the bread, and because we make a fair amount of pizza in our house, I ordered a pizza peel. 
And then I picked up a couple of YA books that I’ve really been wanting to read. Simon Holt’s The Devouring, and Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver, both of which look awesome! I don’t actually anticipate that I will have time to read either of them until December when NaNo is over and my semesters are drawing to a close.
In any event, I am ecstatic to be home and enjoying a lovely cup of tea. I forgot to pack all my tea stuff, which was a minor tragedy as I do not cope well with morning to begin with, and I certainly don’t cope well with my mother (the morning person) sans sleep AND caffeine. For some reason, despite nearly 30 years of evidence to the fact, Mom just doesn’t understand that I am not a morning person. Ergo, I do not function in the morning. Period. I do not talk. I can barely shuffle. I’m not sure I qualify as human until I have had caffeine and been up for at least an hour. She seemed rather alarmed at the massive headache I had when she woke me up at DAWN on Saturday. This was, in part, probably due to the second day without caffeine and the fact that it’s just plain WRONG to wake up at dawn on Saturday. Of course my grand intentions to sleep in this morning were foiled because I woke up to answer nature and couldn’t tune out my husband’s snoring to go back to sleep again. So up at 7:45. Oh well, I have laundry going and will be working on a grocery list here shortly.
I managed to write Thursday and Friday night, but I just couldn’t do it last night. A grand total of 4 words. My brain was just too tired. I really look like I haven’t written all week because my total novella word count hasn’t changed by much. I’ve been rewriting some scenes that weren’t working. I’m happier with them now, so this coming week will be all about new material. Now I just need to find a little over 600 words for today so that I make my goal for the week on the novella. Anybody have any idea what a secret military base under a Montana mountain would look like from the outside? Yeah, me neither.
This is my 1,000th post at Shadow and Fang. I would like to say that I have some brilliant insight to share that everyone will want to retweet, but to be perfectly honest, I’m having one of my rare “I hate writing. Why am I doing this to myself?” days.
I don’t really hate writing. I’m just frustrated. It’s a lot of stuff boiling down to things not going as smoothly as I want them to because real life prevents me from having enough time or attention to devote to the work (GO AWAY ALREADY!), so I inevitably miss stuff and have to start over with another draft or another outline. Just ONCE, I would like to be able to take a story (whatever length) and just write it, one draft, clean it up. Turn it in. Like I always do term papers. I was totally that kid who wrote the term paper and went in reverse and deliberately messed stuff up because they insisted we have a “rough draft”. But that’s one of the things that I’ve learned over the last three years. Writing fiction is NOT like writing a term paper. It’s a whole lot harder. And no amount of my God-given book smarts is going to speed up the process. And that is the end of my whining. Thanks for listening.
Despite not being where I want to be, I’ve accomplished and learned a lot over the last three years.
I finished the first draft of HOC. It was an opus 9 years in the making that will probably never see the light of day. But it was the first book I finished as an adult, which was a significant step as it totally suffered from multi-draft-itis. I made significant strides in the rewrite before hitting a massive procedural snag and abandoned it for other things.
I made the somewhat painful transition from pantser to plotter. Anybody who’s been around since this past summer read my Pantser to Plotter series, so you already know most of my thoughts on that. I’m still trying to refine the process to work for me.
I’ve read a lot of craft books and learned how much I don’t know. This was both illuminating and depressing. I had the same feeling when I got out of grad school. I’ve learned so much and it’s just a drop in the bucket. But it’s really opened my eyes to how much room there is for improvement and whet my desire to learn more about my craft. It’s opened my mind and, as a result, I think the work has improved.
I have started three other books and abandoned them because something was missing. That might not seem like an accomplishment to you, but I consider it one that I recognized something was missing and didn’t continue to waste my time on them.
I finished the first draft of HiS. Despite my general funk about this, it was still a significant accomplishment. The first book that I have plotted out and written from beginning to end with very little revision along the way.
I learned about story structure and embraced it. This was my big lightbulb for the year. It was all the things that I wasn’t understanding, that wasn’t working right in terms of plotting. I cannot say enough positive things about this series over at Storyfix.com.
I’ve learned about and struggled with character arc. This continues to be a weak spot for me. I had the perhaps obvious thought that what I need to remember is that these characters when the story begins are NOT CAPABLE of doing what needs to be done. And therein lies the point of the character arc. It’s the thing they need to learn, how they need to change to BE the person who can do what needs to be done. Which I get from an academic standpoint, but I still am not great at executing.
And perhaps the biggest lesson of all, over the last three years, I have learned to listen to the work. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on writer’s block–whether it exists or not, what it means. What it has almost invariably meant for me is that I’ve done something wrong. I’ve stopped listening to the work. It’s meant that I’ve done something like forget a character arc, mucked up the story structure (this would be why I am cranky this morning–I realized this about the novella last night), not been authentic to a character’s voice or motivation, or I’m just flat going in the wrong direction. 99% of the time, writer’s block, for me, is a sign that I need to stop and re-evaluate either the scene or the story as a whole. The other 1% is life interfering and taking up all my brain space.
So if I can offer once piece of advice, apart from the usual practice, practice and read a lot, it would be to listen to the work. If you’ve stagnated, chances are it’s your gut telling you you’ve done something wrong.
Thanks for sticking with me, folks.
Over at All The Worlds Our Page, Kristen is talking about how love scenes (or at the very least kissing scenes–depending on your genre) are a really great way to get to know your characters on the front end of a book. And she’s right–there is very little that’s more illustrutive about the personality of a person and their relationship ship with someone else than when they are exposed, emotionally, physically, and spiritually (yeah, I said it) during the act of love making. It even says a lot if it’s NOT lovemaking and is more a quick and dirty [insert that word I probably shouldn't say on the internet]. All of it tells you something about your characters. The post is a good read, so take a minute and go check it out.
Back? Okay, great. So Kristen, as well as Jen Hendren, are both friends of mine from Mission:Accountability. And they are both self-proclaimed chunksters. As opposed to the eternal Pantser vs. Plotter debate, this is an issue of Linear vs. Writing in chunks in no particular order. Being a staunchly linear writer myself even during my pantsing days, the whole idea of writing an entire novel in chunks that are not in chronological order seems like utter lunacy. Totally does not compute. If a scene for later in the story occurs to me, I’ll usually take notes so I don’t forget it, and come back to it later when it’s “time”. But clearly this is a viable method of writing for some people. Having read full length works from both Kristen and Jen, it definitely works for them.
In any event, Kristen’s post this morning set off a little lightbulb about, maybe, why or how this chunkster thing works.
Let’s take a moment to talk about logic. There are, in general, two types of logic: inductive vs. deductive.
Inductive reasoning is what is sometimes referred to as “bottom up” logic. As you can see from the illustration over here, with inductive reasoning you begin with specific observations of facts, examples, and so forth, and as you think your way through the problem or whatever, you narrow those facts into the Main Points. From those main points you draw a conclusion. Think of it as narrowing focus. Going from specific observation to general theories
This is the method often used to develop scientific theories.
Deductive reasoning works the other way, going from the more general to the more specific. This is sometimes called the “top down” approach. From a science standpoint, you begin with a theory about something, which you then focus on more specific hypotheses that can be tested. Then that’s narrowed down even more when you collect observations or data that will allow us to either confirm or disprove our original theory.
So how does this apply to the Linear/Chunkster issue?
I think it’s a good analogy for how each of us approaches plotting. Linear plotters start at the beginning, where they have general knowledge of characters that gradually moves toward more specific and intimate detail as the story progresses. They often get to know characters in the same way the reader does–as the story unfolds. So it might be suggested that linear writers are Deductive Plotters.
Chunksters work the other way. The particular scenes that they hop around writing tend to be pivotal. They are the specifics, the details that really illustrate something about their characters. And they progress from these pivotal scenes toward a broader overall plot. So I’d say that they practice Inductive Plotting. That actually makes some sense to me–particularly for character driven plots (at which both Jen and Kristen excel).
So inquiring minds want to know. Are you a linear writer or a chunkster? Do you use inductive or deductive plotting?
And if you haven’t already, please hop over to Pots and Plots and check out the AMAZING new design layout created for me by Christine of CHYAssociates.
I conceived of this novella sometime during the summer when I was in the thick of writing HiS. I made my notes, plotted it out, and let it sit. I actually started working on it maybe a month ago, and I’m pleased with the progress I’ve made. I even came up with a blurb for it:
When her father is captured by military scientists, firecaster Embry Hollister will do anything, break any rule to free him. Unable to complete her mission alone, she turns to the only Shadow Walker who can help her—her father’s protégé and foster son, Gage Dempsey, whose memory was wiped years ago. Embry and Gage must fight the clock—and their undeniable attraction—praying that his skills return in time to infiltrate a secret military base and rescue the man they both call father.
So now, I need a title. Since my skills in this area generally reek of suckitude, I’m calling for your help! Possible titles that occurred to me are Shadows of the Past and Fire and Shadows. Seriously, what is it about me and ____ & _____ names for stuff? Shadow and Fang. Pots and Plots. Anyway, neither of these options particularly thrill me. Have you got something better?
Central concepts: fire, shadow, memory, being caught between two worlds
A few notes: Shadow Walkers are essentially the Special Ops group of my paranormal world. Embry is an agent for the Investigative and Enforcement Division (the FBI type group of the paranormal world). She’s going rogue to rescue her dad.
If you happen to offer up something I love, you will receive my undying gratitude, mention in the acknowledgements, and the book of your choice from Amazon (up to $10). Yes, the book offer is totally a bribe. But seriously! I used up my one good title for the decade on the YA I haven’t even written yet.
So roll in those suggestions!
