writing

A Camping I Will Go (NaNo style) And Other Tales

annabowling 8 Comments

I’m doing Camp NaNo this year.

I hadn’t planned on it. In fact, I’d planned on not doing it, because NaNo wordcounts give me the heebie-jeebies, and as I told the delightful Shannon Kauderer at today’s Saratoga Romance Writers meeting, tend to leave me in a fetal position under the dining room table, sobbing uncontrollably. Shannon reminded me that I can set my own word count for Camp NaNo, even zero, and that the moral support, which is what I’d liked about NaNo in the first place, was the main point. So, this year, I’m camping. Also, Shannon has mermaidy green curly hair and charm for days, so that may have had something to do with the fact that I am now officially signed up. Not focused on word count; it’s all about the story for me.

ready to work

ready to work

Good thing, that, as Shannon, the regional municipal liason for NaNoWriMo (and camps) was the guest speaker, presenting her workshop on the Snowflake Method of plotting. I’ve taken this before, when Shannon presented at CRRWA, then, as now, with the delightful SueAnn Porter as my companion, so I knew what I was in for, and surely, I’d whip through this, no problem, be all set to charge forward.

Not exactly. The first step, creating a one sentence description of one character’s journey, had me stymied at first. Lots of writing, lots of crossing out, lots of squeezing in teeny tiny words above those crossed out lines, and I finally came up with this:

A disreputable rogue finds the love of a lifetime in the one woman he can never have — his best friend’s mistress. 

Hm not half bad there. Okay, the meeting itself went rather smoothly. I felt right at home in the, warm, welcoming and professional group, and definitely plan on visiting again. I am not only saying that because I won the drawing for these lovely blooms right here:

Free flowers, that's how to welcome visitors.

Free flowers, that’s how to welcome visitors.

It was when SueAnn and I hit the parking lot that things got interesting. Flat tire. SueAnn figured we could limp along to the nearest service station, but reversed her decision and direction and we headed back to the parking lot. There was a quick fix kit in her trunk, which we both gave the old college try, but the green sludge in the squeezy bottle refused to go into the actual tire.

actual green slime

actual green slime

In my family, the words “dripping green slime” are a way of expressing barely contained anger, but there was none of that as SueAnn and I waited for AAA to show and swap flat tire for spare tire, which turned out to be the smaller donut sort. With weather thankfully warm for the day, we waited as only writers can – picking apart bad endings to good movies and TV shows, and fixing them. By the time AAA did show, we had a couple more stops before I could head home and charge straight into writing.

at least we tried

at least we tried

Adventure over? Not a chance. SueAnn wanted to get the real tire fixed and back on, which makes sense as she’s off on another adventure with Mr. Porter after she drops me off at home, so we had a short detour to the place from which her tires originally came.  There, we met an individual SueAnn has asked me to dub “Ridiculously Handsome Tire Guy.” We do not have a picture of Ridiculously Handsome Tire Guy, but SueAnn put him at “Derek Morgan level” (Shemar Moore in Criminal Minds) found herself distracted enough to momentarily forget how to speak English, which she assures me is indeed her native tongue (but sorry, SueAnn, “tire” and “photograph” are not synonyms, no matter that the gent in question seemed to catch her drift even so) and drop her purse. Somewhere out there, she’s sure, a romance novel is missing its cover model.

ridiculously handsome writer's dog

ridiculously handsome writer’s dog

Quick stop by Chez Porter to feed Bailey and make sure he got to :ahem: visit the great outdoors (and pose for a photo op) and then time to brave the traffic to drop me home. What do I do immediately upon arrival? Yep, head for they keyboard. A day spent talking writerly things gets me excited to go home and put all that theory into practice. The more I live with that one line blurb, the more I like it. Should be a fun time at camp this year.

Update: Flowers now exiled to office, as incessant sneezing makes me suspect I may be allergic. Balcony door now open to let in the evening air as I snuggle under a blanket to further explore story doings.

Typing With Wet Claws: Crunching the Numbers Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday. Exhausting week this time, with Uncle sick, but he is feeling much better now. It is still cold outside, even though there are some birds outside the living room window. If I could jump (I do not, because I have special paws) I would be on the window seat all the time, because birds are very, very interesting.  The art across from Anty’s favorite seat at the coffee house has changed. It is now this:

i1035 FW1.1

This week, Anty has been writing a lot. There are the blog posts, here and elsewhere, and she is hard at work on a new book. There is a lot that goes into writing a new book, besides only telling the story. Since Anty writes historical romance, she has to make sure that she has the historical details right, but not in a boring or heavy handed way. The love story is the center and the history has to come second to that, but still provide versimillitude. That is a big human word that means it has to feel right. Anty  has to get enough of the historical flavor to make sure the story fits its time and the people don’t think, talk or behave like modern humans, but still in a way that modern humans can understand and relate to them. Anty usually does have kitties in her books, and I am her consultant. I make sure the kitties are still kitties, because we do not change that much, no matter the time period.

Humans, though, are another story. I did not mean to put that pun in there, but i will let it stay. The humans who are in Anty’s stories…how should I put this?  They have problems. Personally, I think that if they  had more kitties, they would have fewer problems, but Anty says humans without problems are not that interesting. I guess she knows best, because she has books out and I do not, but I still think there should be more kitties. I hear there may be dogs in this book. I am not sure how I feel about that.

Yesterday, Anty spent a chunk of time figuring out how old the important humans in her story were. Sometims, Anty gets anxious about certain details. If she gets it wrong, does that mean the book is doomed? Is it too much detail or maybe to little? Is this marketable? Maybe she should write something more on trend (I have to remind her that is a very silly human concern, since trends in books are really about two years old when they hit the shelves, and that is slightly less than one third of my age. I say she should write the story and she says I am right and then she goes back to making clicky sounds on the keyboard and I can take another nap, because i find that sound soothing.)

Where was I? Oh, right, human ages. That involves numbers, and Anty does not like dealing with numbers. She would rather tell stories, but because her stories are historical, that means she is going to have to deal with numbers at some point. Anty likes to have clear boundaries when she writes. That means she needs to know how old her people are, what year it is, and things like that. Vague definitions make her fidgety, and I pick up on that, so really, if she wants a happy kitty, she needs to deal with this. Yesterday, she was on the glowy box, and her friend , Vicki, helped her figure out the ages.

Anty was having problems figuring out who was how old. Vicki is good at noticing when Anty goes into a loop (that means worrying about the same thing over and over again so that no writing gets done.) She suggested Anty look up the average age for first marriage of male heirs of peers during the era in which her story takes place. (Anty had already figured out the year the story has to take place by looking at historical events that impacted her people, so she knew when to look for this.) The answer was late twenties to about thirty. The hero in this book is a second son, so these figures did not apply to him, but it did apply to a secondary character, and Anty knows that the hero is two years older than that character, who is two or three years older than the heroine, so there was a lot of math involved, and talking about that is tiring me out, so I can only imagine what it was like for her.

Anty and Vicki agreed that it all depended on how old Anty wanted the heroine to be (Anty would say it’s not how old she wanted the heroine to be, but how old she is, because that’s the way people show up in her head, and you can’t go around telling people how old they have to be, because that’s not the way that it works. Plus, I think that would be rude.) and they could figure out everybody else’s ages from there. First round of numbers Vicki came up with, Anty shot down because everybody felt too old. So, Vicki asked Anty (Vicki has known Anty and the way Anty writes for a long time, so she is smart about things like this) how old the hero feels. Anty said twenty-seven, which is what Vicki also thought, so that meant the other human male was twenty-five and the heroine twenty-two or twenty-three. This is, some might be surprised to find out, not out of the ordinary for a woman to be that age at that time and not yet married. These are things humans find out when they do research.

Anty is giving me that look again, and I want a snack, so I will wind this up for now. If you did not get to read Anty’s post last week at Buried Under Romance, about how to pay tribute to a favorite author who has gone to Rainbow Bridge, it is here. If you are new to the blog and have not read her posts on remembering BertriceHuman, they are here, here, and here.

That is about it for this week. Until next week, I remain very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Until next week...

Until next week…

Typing With Wet Claws: The Book, Not the Kitty Edition.

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Hello, all. Skye here for another Feline Friday. I know my picture this week is fuzzy, but so am I. This has been a sad week, because Anty had somebody she loved go to Rainbow Bridge. That would be a human, not a kitty, the human who wrote the book for which I am named. My Anty first read that book a long, long time before I was born, but she and my Mama, who also likes that book very much, both agreed that its title fit as a name for the new family addition. The Skye O’Malley in the book was a brave, smart, beautiful female who had many adventures and triumphed over much adversity, to find true love at last. I like to think that fits, but there are some differences, too.

the book, not the kitty

the book, not the kitty

HumanSkye -I will call her that to avoid confusion, and I will still be me- lived a long, long time ago, in a place called Ireland and a lot of other places, like England and Algiers. I do not know where any of those places are. I am seven and was born in Massachusetts. I live in New York now. HumanSkye was both friends and not friends with a very powerful human named Elizabeth Tudor, who Anty tells me actually lived in the really real world. I know there is a difference between really real world people and those who live in writers’ heads like Anty’s characters do. HumanSkye was born in Bertrice Human’s head, but she was inspired by a really real world person named Grace O’Malley.

Writers, I have found, do that quite a lot. They will take something from the really real world and then make it into something else. Sometimes this is a person, like with HumanSkye, and sometimes, it is a place or part of a song or a picture. The writer takes many different things and mixes them together until they become one new thing. This is how books get made. My Anty is working on a book right now, and that  means that she is gathering lots of inspiration.

One thing she likes to do is make soundtracks for her stories. That means that she finds a lot of songs she likes, that sound like her characters or what happens to them, and she puts them in order and listens while she writes. Some writers do not like to listen to any music, or any music that has words, but Anty says the words do not bother her, and the lyrics mean something, so they are fine. I like when she plays very soft music. That makes me want to curl into a ball at her feet and take a nap. it is very relaxing when she does that.

Another thing she does is to make Pinterest boards with pictures of people and things that look like her story. I would share those with you, but she says that if she makes the board public, then she does not want to work on the story anymore, so they must stay private until the stories are done. She can put music with pictures on those boards, too, although I do not know how that works. Sometimes, she will stare at pictures and listen to the same song over and over and then she will write a lot. That is part of the writing process, too.

So is watching TV shows that she really, really likes. One of those is Sleepy Hollow. She says she now has an idea for a new colonial book, but it must wait until her current book is finished. She wrote about the season finale, which may or may not also be the series finale, here. It looks like this:

season finale or series finale, what do you think?

season finale or series finale, what do you think?

Anty had two other bits on Heroes and Heartbreakers this week. First, she shared her favorite read of February along with other H&H bloggers here. There are a lot of books in that post. I do not know how many of them contain any cats, though. They should put things like that on the website. More cats would read them then, I think, but nobody asked me.  There are also links to posts Anty wrote before about BertriceHuman’s books in the news roundup here. She will put links up later in another post with all posts where she mentions BertriceHuman, so they are easy to find. Maybe her best read for March will be one of BertriceHuman’s books. Or maybe the new Nick Hornby. She likes his books very much, too. She likes a lot  of books, which is probably a good thing for a writer.

One more thing before I sign off. Any has talked to SueAnn Porter and said that Bailey may be coming here for a posting playdate soon. I think that is very exciting, and also a little bit scary. If you know of any questions you would like to ask a writer’s pet, please let me or Anty know, and maybe we will use it.

Okay one more one more thing. Anty was quoted -twice-  on Peter Andrews’s blog, How to Write Fast, here. Anty first met Mr. Andrews a couple of years ago at the NECRWA conference, and they had a very interesting conversation about writing and reading. She took his workshop on how to write fast and still uses some of what she learned there in her writing now.

Anty needs the computer back, so that is all for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling,
(the kitty, not the book)

Until next week...

Until next week…

Remembering Bertrice Small, Part Two: As a Writer

annabowling 7 Comments

Bertrice Small was the first professional writer I met in person, and long before I knew that writing stories of loves long ago even could be a job, but as soon as I figured it out, I knew that was what I wanted. I never had anything but support from this lovely lady, even when that support took the form of tough love.

The summer I was sixteen, I had the great good fortune to assist Bertrice Small’s assistant, which mostly consisted of answering fan mail, an experience I still cherish to this day.  This up close and personal view of what a working author actually does, besides the making up stories part only cemented my desire to pursue writing. I spent part of every weekday at the desk in the basement, so much that Bertrice joked that I was going to turn into a mushroom, spending all my time in the dark, underground. As I’m sun-sensitive, that was not a hardship, and I found the whole process fascinating. My “job” consisted of typing out responses to every piece of fan mail, already pre-sorted into one of three prepared responses. No email in those days, and so I had to physically type each reply from a template.  There were three of those: one for readers who read the latest book and liked it; one for readers who had read the book and did not like it (very few of those) ; and those who had read their first Bertrice book. There were special flags for letters that required a personal response beyond that, and those had to go back upstairs before I could stuff the envelopes and send them on their way.

I became a fan of her fan mail that summer. The stories in those letters proved beyond the shadow of a doubt the profound connection romance authors and their readers share. I still remember the letter from one reader who wanted to name her daughter Skye, but her husband vetoed the choice and they settled for another heroine-worthy name. Years later, I worked at a nursery school at college where two of the preschool students, sisters, were named Silver and Skye. Skye would have been old enough to have been born after that letter, so I always wondered if perhaps their mom was that reader. I never found out, but it’s possible.

That summer, I also had free run of Bertrice’s research library after hours (apart from the shelf that held what she needed for her current book) and it was kid in a candy store time. I had no idea what I was doing, so pulled books down at random and paged through them, hoping I’d catch the magic.  Knowing that these books I held in my hands had played a part in creating my favorite novels was a thrill and a half. The best part, though, was yet to come.

I had to write. That was a rule. At the end of the summer, Bertrice would read what I had written and give a fair and honest critique. I. Was. Terrified. I wrote what would be termed YA today, even though that wasn’t what I loved to read (big lesson there – “write what you love” is as important as “write what you know”) and there is no agent or editor pitch that will ever be as nerve-wracking or mean as much to me a sitting on that couch in her office. She pulled no punches, and I am glad she did not. She pointed out every plot hole. Every character blunder. Questioned my adjective choices. She told me to get a dictionary and learn how to spell. She told me to say “fuck” or don’t say “fuck” and not to be coy with allusions. She told me I needed to live if I was going to write (that one, I can safely say I have done) and told me I was going to be terrific one day. I left that meeting emotionally bruised and encouraged all at once. I wanted to write after that, even more, and I did.

I chucked the YA and started a historical romance. Heavily patterned after her own books, I will admit, to the point of pastiche, but here’s the thing. I was hungry to write that book. Starving for it. I raced home from first high school and then college classes to pound out new pages every single day. I lived and breathed that hero and heroine. Bertrice said I could call her anytime with writing questions, and I did. No, I could not give my Tudor era English hero a French first  name.  Yes, politics of the time were interesting. She answered a lot of questions about the industry and gave me a lot of homework. She never saw that manuscript, which now lives in a storage unit where it can’t hurt anybody, but being treated, not as a kid on a whim, but as a serious novelist myself, did more to sustain me than anything else during that writing.

Fast forward double digit years, and we were both at the Long Island Romance Writer’s Luncheon. Mentor and aunt at once, Madam Bertrice asked me which editors or agents I had wanted to meet at the event, and charged me to stay put. “I’ll go get them,” she said, and she did. “This is my niece,”
she said. “She’s going to pitch her book.” She told them she always thought my wanting to be a romance writer was a phase, but it obviously wasn’t, so she’d do what she could. The rest was up to me. She did it again at another luncheon, a year or so later. Both times, I got requests for full manuscripts. No sales from those encounters, but valuable input and experience.

I’m sad today that I won’t ever be able to hand her a paper copy of one of my books, but the fact is, my books, both past and future, exist in part because Bertrice Small was a wonderful writer, an encourager, a tough teacher and a lover of the great genre she helped to build.

Remembering Bertrice Small, pt 1: As a Reader

annabowling 16 Comments

I’ve spent some time thinking about how I could encapsulate the influence Bertrice Small has had on me as a reader, writer and human being in general, into one post, and what I came up with was that I couldn’t, so I’m not going to try.  One post is going to be three.

i1035 FW1.1

I read my first Bertrice Small novel, which was also the first Bertrice Small novel, The Kadin, at the tender age of eleven, but I’d known about it long before. Bertrice’s husband, George, and my dad, had been in the army together, one of those friendships that was so close, it was a shock when I figured out they weren’t biologically related. So, it was normal to have grown up with mentions of “Aunt Sunny’s book.” A story fiend from day one, I remember asking a lot of questions about it, most of which were creatively evaded, and I remember being in the local Caldor with my mother, combing the paperback racks on one fateful day when The Kadin was a brand new release from a new author. Could I read it? No, my mom said, I was too young, but I wouldn’t be put off. Something about the cover called to me. I pestered and pestered and pestered her for at least a rough outline of the plot.

At last, my mom bowed to the inevitable and gave in. A sixteenth century Scottish girl got sold into slavery and spent forty years in a harem and then came home because her daughter in law didn’t like her. I remember the words rushing out of my mother’s mouth all in one go, and the way her eyes darted as if looking for a better answer. I also remember the insistent voice in the back of my head that whispered an insistent, “sold!” I stole the book from her nightstand shortly after that, knew, within the very first few pages, that I had found what I wanted to read and write for the rest of my life. Mom caught me reading The Kadin under the bed in the guest bedroom, by flashlight, during a thunderstorm that knocked out the power. She confiscated the book. I stole it back. I also wrote a book report on it. To her credit, my teacher, Mrs. Potter, did not contact my parents and gave me an A. She also took me aside and talked to me about becoming a writer myself someday. Good spotting, Mrs. P.

By the time the second book, Love Wild and Fair, a title which I was and am rapturously in love with, came out, I was still too young, but I did it again. Stole that book, saw exactly why Aunt Sunny was as in love with Bothwell as Catriona was, and I fell as hard for Scotland as I had for Ottoman Turkey in the previous book. It all filled my mind to overflowing. Not the sex scenes at that point, but the history, the drama, the descriptions and relationships, all lush and full and vivid as life. I got caught again, got a lecture from my mother again, got steered again toward more appropriate reading, which fell flat for the reasons above. I also got a stern talking to from Aunt Sunny herself.

By the time her third book, Adora, came out, I received my own autographed copy as a gift, along with a promotional poster. I have no idea where that poster is now (hopefully in storage, where it can be retrieved and displayed) but I still have my much-loved copy of the book, signed, this time, to me. I’ve acquired a few more signed copies since then, by the same and other authors, but none will ever match that thrill of seeing the very first book a favorite author signed with their very own hand.

I remember exactly where I was when I first read the opening pages of Skye O’Malley (the book, not the kitty) and not wanting to get out of the car to follow my father to the yard sale that was apparently more important than me diving into this book. My mother had passed away by that point, and she and Aunt Sunny had agreed, when Adora came out, that I was going to steal the book anyway, so I may as well have my own copies in the future, no matter my age. When I first met Skye, the fictional character, my life changed. Strong, smart, headstrong heroines, who could be adventurous, leaders, survivors, history-makers, beautiful inside and out, make mistakes -even huge ones- and still come out on top? Oh yes, please. Give me that. Teach me how to make that.

I soaked it up like a sponge, and was unspeakably thankful to have someone as knowledegable as the author herself to help me counter my father’s argument that romance was “all soft porn” with facts and definitions. Her recommendations of other amazing books in the genre – The Outlaw Hearts by Rebecca Brandewyne and The Spanish Rose by Shirlee Busbee stand out, and, boy, was she right. She recommended other authors I might like if I liked her: Cynthia Wright, Virginia Henley, Morgan Llewellyn, and a man named Jennifer (Wilde, aka Tom E. Huff.)

Bertrice Small opened a whole new world for me, one where love stories were worthy of history, and in some cases, sprang directly from it. For a kid who had honestly thought that the only options for me were hard science fiction and mystery, neither of which caught spark with me, no matter how hard I tried, it was a revelation. In historical romance, I found my reader heart set free, and I knew, deep down in the marrow of my bones, that this was what I was meant to write, as well. I will always, always be thankful to Bertrice Small for that.

Color With All The Crayons

annabowling 2 Comments

OnBeyondFanfic

I’d rather pour myself into a world I love and understand
than make something up out of nothing.
–Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

This past Saturday, I took a leap. I presented a workshop on using the media we already love to create original fiction. I’ve taught this before, in a previous iteration, From Fan Fiction to Fantastic Fiction, usually as a month-long online workshop, and the one time I presented in person to another chapter. a couple of years back, I’d tried to fit the entire course into an hour. Hint: that’s not really possible. It was fun, that first presentation, because I love, love, love speaking in front of a group, especially about a topic that means a lot to me. So much fun, in fact, that I didn’t hesitate when the opportunity came up to do it again, and as long as I was doing so, why not take it one step up and gear things toward writers who already know how to write original fiction?

Not that writers of fan fiction don’t. Far from it. As I say in that class, if you’ve watched a favorite show or movie and thought “that was great, but it would be better if…” then  yes, you can come up with original ideas. From Fan Fiction to Fantastic Fiction is geared toward writers interested in moving from fan fiction to original work, and I love teaching it. I hope to teach it a lot more. Hearing students talk about loving their stories so much and being so determined to get them down that they would dismantle an entire desktop computer system, pack it into the back of their car and drive over a hundred miles to put the whole thing back together and spend the weekend writing with their collaborator, that’s a shot of adrenaline right there. Some of my previous students had asked if there was a second level to this course, some chance to do something with the tools they gained in our time together.

Until now, there wasn’t. It’s still under construction, but once that seed was planted, like the seed of a story, I couldn’t ignore it, and so, when the opportunity to present to my local chapter came up, I took it. What I found was a learning experience for me. Talking to a group that included Golden Heart winners and a RITA nominee, where several members have impressive backlists and the rest are on their way, has a different feel to it, and that’s exciting. When I gave exercises to do during the presentation, pens moved like lightning. I hated to make all that writing stop, but the results were worth it.

I loved that one member asked if they could combine characters from different sources, and another asked if they could use one canon and one original character. My answers were yes and yes. Another asked if these techniques could be used to reverse engineer an original character who wasn’t quite gelling. Yes, again. If a character isn’t coming together, have a look at characters who are like them and see if anything clicks. After the presentation, we had a lively and fascinating discussion on how the media we love inspires the story worlds we build for ourselves, and the exclamations of surprise when members found other members shared some of the same favorite media were a delight.

Today’s quote comes from the fabulous Rainbow Rowell, of whom I am a fangirl, after reading her novel, Fangirl, (and her upcoming novel, Carry On, is the fan fiction her heroine, Cath, wrote about the characters in the fictional Simon Snow fandom in Fangirl. How’s that for meta?) and jumped out at me from the start. Thing is, we can know our own original story worlds and characters that well. It’s not making something out of nothing, because it’s making something out of everything we’ve ever been, seen, done, heard, tasted, smelled, thought, dreamed, feared, wondered, suspected, etc, etc, etc, all blended in a way that is unique to the individual, and I find that fascinating.

The crayons in today’s picture, a rainbow in themselves, were on one of the tables when I arrived, and yes, I did have to play with them in my all purpose notebook. It’s like blood in the water to a shark or waving a red flag at a bull. I see the crayons, I color with the crayons, and I do notice if they are Crayola or not. Kind of like getting into a fandom. There’s looking at what’s already there, and then there’s taking something from it and making it mine.

Comfort Food

annabowling 6 Comments

Some days start out with a four page to-do list and end up with comfort food.

This is one of those days. Two dear friends have beloved mothers in the hospital, at the same time, in different states, and I can’t be with either of them, though I’d love to be with both.  One expects to get her mom settled back into her own home by the end of the week, and the other, oh, my heart aches. I don’t even want to type it.

Real Life Romance Hero was  home today, both of us drained and cranky and concerned for our friends. We made grilled cheese and tomato soup and hung out in the kitchen, discussing food and film and baking lemon poppyseed quickbread. He advocated greasing the pan when the directions didn’t call for it, and dumping the excess butter in the batter, both of which ended up happening. Dinner will be Chinese delivery or meatloaf and his homemade mashed potatoes (that would be Real Life Romance Hero’s mashed potatoes. I don’t know if Meat Loaf makes mashed potatoes or not, but if he does, that would be fitting.)

Prior to the comfort food, I shoveled the walk, for the third time in twenty four hours, and, also for the second time in twenty four hours, hauled a load to the laundromat. Not my first choice of activities after said shoveling, but A) it’s February, B) we live in Upstate New York, and C) I was out of socks and long sleeved shirts. So, laundry had to happen.

Today's workplace

Today’s workplace

The smaller pad, next to the Diet Coke can, ended up with a four-page to-do list, which I informed Real Life Romance Hero about upon my return. I told him also that Plan B was to say “forget all that and watch movies.”  Because sometimes, we have to. Our bodies are tired. Our heads are full. Our hearts are heavy. This is one of those days, and I do have Revolutionary Road, which I know darned well is going to be gorgeous and tragic all at once, waiting for me. I haven’t cracked it open yet, because that’s the way the day has gone.

That four page to-do list? There are going to be a lot of arrows on it. Arrows, in my lists, mean carry over to the next day. Because there will be one. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my time on this planet, it is that. Carrying things over from one to-do list to another doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is the way I accepted that today. Okay, not going to get All The Things checked off today, but did have a good hangout in the kitchen with Real Life Romance Hero, got to warn him not to touch the food until I’d photographed it, and had a much-needed break where we got to discuss Things That Are Important (friends’ mums, what both of us are doing with work these days, how the deep freeze outside affects our plans for the week) and Things That Are Not (current movies neither of us want to see, things we each read on the interwebs, how to share a single order of silver dollar pancakes and what side dishes there should be with that.)

We’re in a lull now, him doing dishes in the kitchen, and me under an afghan in the comfy chair, Spotify open and tuned to one of my story playlists, inspiration picture open in another window. We’re both waiting for the quick bread to cool (he calls it “a dirty tease” that there is an in-pan cooling period and an out-of-pan cooling period.) He’s puttering and I’m…writing.

It strikes me funny that, when not so long ago, trying to write meant me smashing my head against a brick wall for hours at a time, and now, when I’ve given myself permission to take a day off, I’m diving into my fictive world because that really is where I want to be, when I can be anywhere. To have the WIP be the place to go for comfort and rest, that’s a pretty good thing. I will take that, and gladly.

i1035 FW1.1

View from the laundromat

Typing With Wet Claws: Overscheduled Edition

annabowling Leave a comment

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday.

First of all, thank you to those who  come back every week to read my blog. That is very encouraging to a kitty, and to Anty as well.

This has been a busy week for Anty, so if she has not gotten back to anybody, it is not personal. She has been on the glowy box a lot. I wanted to put a picture of Anty’s planning board up here, but she said it was not okay, because her notes were readable and she is not done with the book yet. Sorry.  Instead, I can share a picture of her box of Post-It notes that she uses for planning. The best part about her using Post-its on her planning board is that I get to play with her mistakes.

Anty and I both love to play with these...

Anty and I both love to play with these…

Anty really really likes planning and making lists, so she does not mind that much.  She asked me not to talk about the time she tried to get up from the computer and forgot she had her headphones on and it yanked her back down like a dog at the end of its leash. Whoops. Sorry. Can that be our secret?

What is not a secret is that Anty got to write about two of her favorite TV relationships (ohhh, that’s where the ships come in. I get it now. Humans are clever.)

She got to write about Sleepy Hollow here, and it looks like this:

Then she got to write about The Mindy Project here, and it looks like this:

Dandy

I think both shows need more cats. Or any cats. I would also accept birds, mice and fish. Sleepy Hollow has a horse sometimes, but that is not the same. I do not know any horses, so it kind of freaks me out. Anty would say everything freaks me out, and she is right about that. I still think there should be more cats.

Tomorrow, tomorrow...

Tomorrow, tomorrow…

Tomorrow, Anty goes to CR-RWA to present her workshop, On Beyond Fanfic. She is excited and nervous, especially since our printer says it is jammed, but both Anty and Mama say it is not jammed and there is not any paper in it. Anty and Mama will see if the big paper store can help them get those papers printed. I call dibs on playing with any mistakes from that. Somebody will have to tear the big papers into smaller papers, though, because I am scared of big papers. I like them bite-sized.

Speaking of bite-sized,  (Anty calls that a transition; see, I am learning) Anty only minutes ago sent in her contribution to the 31 Days & 31 Ways to Jumpstart Your Life program. Do you want to know how making something out of nothing can help to make life better? Anty, Eryka and friends can help with that, and it does not cost anything. Even I like that price (money better spent on cat food, right?) You can read more about this program and find out how you can join here. If you do, let Anty (or me) know, because she would love to see some friendly virtual faces.

only for that one counter, really

only for that one counter, really

Now, for those who asked about this sign, Anty asked the barista, a very nice human named Rachel, and Rachel said the sign only means for that one counter. It is meant to be a waiting area for humans who are ordering their food and drinks to go. If other humans park there with laptops, that takes up that space. There are lots of other comfy spaces to settle. She did not say anything about Anty sitting there with a notebook, so Anty guesses that is still okay. The sign does not say “no notebooks.” Anty would not go to a place that said “no notebooks.”  Trust me, I know  her.

That about covers it for this week. Anty still has her post for Buried Under Romance to write and some pictures to take, so I have to give the computer back. Until next week, I remain, very truly yours,

Skye O’Malley Hart-Bowling
(the kitty, not the book)

Until next week...

Until next week…

Duluth, Part Three

annabowling 2 Comments

You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

–Eleanor Roosevelt

Here, on this lovely not-currently-snowing day, we bring the Duluth trilogy to a close. In case you missed them, part one is here, and part two, here. These all came about in the throes of writerly angst, when getting anything, even an incoherent brain dump, on the page felt like an insurmountable task. Obviously, that wasn’t permanent, but boy, did it feel like it at the time.

Duluth, pt 3

Since a writer’s work is, literally, all in their head, (and yes, I know I’ve drifted from the original topic of this post, but I don’t care; I’ll bring it back around) the upside is that there will be far fewer needles and surgical procedures involved in the writer’s recuperation, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less exhausting, aggravating and even painful. It’s neccessary, though, because writing isn’t something one can turn off. If you are, you are, and if you aren’t, you aren’t. While it is possible to be a writer who doesn’t write, as in someone who is genetically predisposed/hardwired/whatever term you’d care to use, who does not choose to exercise that ability, they aren’t the easiest people to live with and trust me, they’re not having a good time. It’s like trying not to breathe.

There’s the want. There’s the need. The how, however, that’s a different story, pun intended. Trust me, it’s easier to maintain a full creative well than to refill it. Ever try to fill an empty swimming pool using your kitchen tap? Whether it’s hooking up the garden hose so that one end is in the sink and the other in the deep end, or carrying buckets with or without the help of family members. it’s going to take a while. A long while. By that time, it’ll be too cold to swim, so what’s the point? Nope, better to call one of those trucks from the pool company and have them all dump it in at once. That, for the writer, is reading. A lot. In genre, out of genre. Books. Magazines. Backs of cereal boxes. Posters on the coffee house wall. Junk mail. Actual paper letters (really, send a writer one of these and they will love you even more.) Ebooks. Forum posts. Graphic novels. Library books. Closed captioning on movies and tv shows. Read read read read read read read until it’s not possible to hold any more.

Like with the pool illustration, if the creative well is empty, it may take a LOT of reading, a lot of taking in story in all its forms (movies, tv, plays, dance, computer games with a storyline or character development, etc.) It gushes in and in and in and in and in and in….that’s our transfusion. Next comes the physical therapy. Writing. Actual writing. I’m not going to say words on the page, because that phrase, I am pretty sure, was the piano that dropped on me, personally. Or maybe the pigeon that pooped in my eye when I looked up to see if the piano bench was going to fall, too.

At any rate, this stage of recovery means that there has to be actual writing. Meaning stuff in the writer’s head has to go someplace where it is possible, at least in theory, for somebody else to see it. Whether or not they actually do is not that important at this stage. For those who have a hypercritical gremlin in their head, jumping up and down and screaming “yes, it is!” it is okay to smack that gremlin with a copy of Outlander. If our writer had been in a physical car accident, do we expect them to crawl out of the wreckage and run a marathon? I’m thinking not.

What happens at this stage is spewing out everything that’s in the writer’s head, because even while the well is filling with good stuff, the bad stuff still has to come out. I’d say expressing pus, but that’s gross, but I also am taking advantage of this time to smack my hypercritical gremlins, so yes, it is at times like expressing pus. Bad stuff out so there’s room for the good stuff to come in.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, things will begin to balance. The writer will get back in touch with why they accepted the invitation of all these people who live inside the writer’s head. The type of story, the type of character. They will get their voice back. They will fill notebooks and flash drives and whatever other method of storing data modern technology comes up with in the time between writing this and someone else reading it. Some of it is going to be venting. Okay, a lot of it is going to be venting. it’s going to be rough and confusing and attract hypercritical gremlins like blood in the water attracts sharks. Keep going. Because at some point, the balance will be reached. (Yes, that is passive phrasing, and no, I do not care, because hypercritical gremlins get my boot in their butt at this stage of the game.)

Up and down the steps. Up and down and up and down and up and down and then one day, without thinking about it, without planning to, without advance approval of the physical therapist, the writer takes the stairs instead of the ramp back to their room (or more likely, the vending machine on the third floor because that’s the one that has pub fries and gummi bears) – well looky there, stairs. Bunches of them. Climbed up and climbed down and the world did not end. Time to go back home and get back to business. And find directions to Duluth.

Duluth, Part Two

annabowling 3 Comments

Mostly, you probably need to go deeper. Deeper, deeper, deeper. You should know everything there is to know about your characters and your settings.
–Barbara Samuel

I had a post all planned out for yesterday, but a deluge of the white stuff wiped that all out, so instead, hopping in the wayback machine to continue my Duluth post:

Sometimes, a girl (or guy) has to read. For girls (and guys) who write, that goes double. Not that it’s less important for those who read for pleasure only, because it’s certainly up there on the list of crucial things for maintaining life, along with breathing, food, water, rest, shelter, all that stuff. It should be noted that a decent bookstore or coffee shop should have all of the above, which is why I recommend visiting both as often as possible, but I digress.

The importance of reading for the writer goes double because it serves a double purpose. For most readers, reading is a break from everyday life. I say break, not escape, because when I close the covers of a book or power down my reader, the bills are still due, health isssues are still there, somebody still doesn’t get along with somebody, etc. I have to go back to what others may call “real life” but it’s with the knowledge that I carry some of the story I have read with me, and I can go back to it, or the  next one, in the near future. It carries me through.  True enough for all readers, but for those who write, we need to gorge, because we’re going to spew it all back out.

Seen those bumper stickers that say “no farms, no food?” We saw a good deal of them in the town where we used to live, as we were close to farm country, and it’s true. In the same way, “no books, no writers” could apply. Before any of you say it’s not the same, or ask if it shouldn’t be the other way around – “no writers, no books” – let’s put that aside for the time being.

Remember, whether you are reader or writer, that first book that invited you in. I say invited rather than sucked, because, unless there was a gun to your head or a rabid gorilla smacking his fist standing behind you, you had the option of putting the book down…but you didn’t want to. Staying with that book was an act of will. The rest of the world was going to have to wait, because what was in that story was more important.

Writers have to be, consistently, at that place where we can generate stories we hope will have that effect on people. While there are times when writers do the “just one more chapter and then I’ll stop” thing when at the keyboards (and we all want to be at that phase most of the time, I’m pretty sure) there are other times when we need to take in before we can put out.

Life, for anyone, can be exhausting. Things are going to happen. Natural disasters, injuries, illnesses, a sudden diagnosis when a loved one goes to see a doctor for something and then it turns out to be something else, which affects the entire family in ways nobody ever expected. New friends come. Old ones go. Sometimes, they come back, but it’s different than it was before. Work is crazy. Work is gone. Annoying situations grow to a point where they become unbearable and then every fiber of one’s being, every hour of every day, is focused with pinpoint accuracy on that one detail because nothing else can happen until that particular monster is penned and dispatched to the great beyond.

Now, do all of the above, in one year, and then put out a book, damnit. Preferably more than one. Oh, and be happy about it. Yeah, right. If it worked that way, cupcake, I would hop on my sparkly pink, winged unicorn and gallop through the clouds to Mount Olympus where I could have tea with Scarlett O’Hara, Darth Vader and the entire cast of Lost. (by which I mean the characters, not the actors) It doesn’t. Think of a series of life disruptions all happening basically at once like a car versus pedestrian car crash.

There the writer is, minding his/her own darm business, walking along and having mental conversations with imaginary people, when WHAM! Hit from behind. Get up. What happened? WHAM! Hit from the front. Well, okay, maybe I can get out of…WHAM! Sideswiped. Wham! Wham! Whamwhamwhamwhamwham! Before you know it, it’s a ten car pileup, and then, for no apparent reason, a piano drops on top of the writer like it’s a Looney Tunes cartoon.

We’re going to have some bruises here. Some blood loss. Some broken bones. Unless medical science has made dramatic advances in the last five minutes, we do have the technology and we can rebuild him/her, but not in an instant. Nope, it’s going to need a transfusion and bandages and some surgery most likely, and after that, after alllllll of that, we start the physical therapy. Not anyone’s idea of fun (except for masochists, and for them, hey, let them have their moment) but neccessary if the writer is ever going to get out of that bed and back to the land of the living.

Think of it as climbing up and down those same three steps in the physical therapy room. They don’t look like they’re going anywhere at first sight. In fact, they can be easily picked up and stashed in a cabinet at the end of the day, and by the tiniest of nurses, too. But up and down them a zillion times a day for however many days, and know what happens? Our writer is finally cleared to go home, the medical staff confident that he/she can traverse the three steps onto the front porch, and more than that, the thirteen steps that connect downstairs to upstairs. Time for a return to business as usual.

To be continued…

 

Obligatory snow picture

Obligatory snow picture