Before airing tonight’s Inspector Lewis mystery, PBS issued the usual disclaimer, something like, This program contains material that some viewers might consider objectionable. Viewer discretion is advised.
Now. Every program contains something potentially objectionable. Objection is a matter of choice. (Why doesn’t the same disclaimer run before afternoon soap operas and tacky prime time reality shows? I choose to object to their content.)
It’s reasonable to warn parents about content they might not want their children to see, I suppose. Some PBS programming does fall into the PG range. Some people might not want their children to see as many murder victims as Robbie Lewis does.At times, I wish a firm hand had turned off the television before I saw the bisected woman in the first episode of The Tunnel.
Portrait of Jane Austen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
But the same disclaimer ran when Masterpiece Theatre presented a series of adaptations of Jane Austen novels. What could be considered objectionable about Jane Austen novels?
Well, anyway, that’s one of the questions bouncing around my brain, taking up space that would be better occupied by more pressing concerns. Anyone who has an answer is welcome to leave a comment.
But first take note: They’re boring is not an answer. It’s not even accurate. Jane Austen is not boring. Attempts to change my mind are futile.
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Now for #ROW80. The past couple of weeks haven’t been conducive to doing anything, productive or not. I didn’t dust, organize, or shred. But the most important item is behind me.
The July 27 Buffet
♫♫♫ Complete the edit the AMW story for its (I hope) last major critique I reversed the tampering, re-edited the story. When Kaye George sent her critique, excellent as usual, she added, “OK, stop fiddling with it, OK?” OK. After the other critiques are in. Next stop, the independent editor.
♪Draft the second half of the story “Texas Boss” and submit to AMW for critique “Brahman Baby” by Lea Maimone is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)I wrote several hundred words in a doctor’s waiting room, then two days later realized that I’ve left no place for the incident that gave me the idea for the story in the first place. I can insert it–I hope. But if I can’t make it work, I’ll have to leave it out, which comes under the heading of Kill Your Darlings. I would prefer not to.
Finish a very rough draft of “Thank You, Mr. Poe”
♪By September 5th, read at least ten of the books on my 20 Books of Summer 2016 list. (The list appears at Writing Wranglers and Warriors.) I finished Isabel Allende’s The Japanese Lover and began Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing
‼Post #ROW80 reports on Sundays and Wednesdays. I’ve already dropped Sundays. This is the Wednesday report, late. The upside: If I’d reported on Wednesday, I’d have had nothing to say about #2.
Visit three new #ROW80 blogs a day
?Take three naps a week I napped. Don’t know when or how often, but I napped. The question: Is it acceptable to count naps I took because I couldn’t stay awake?
Go to bed at by 11:00 p.m. / 9. Cook at least one decent meal for David / 10. Dust the piano. / 11. Get rid of ten things a day / 12. Collect and organize books / 13. Shred
###
Carrying on:
August 7 Buffet
Eat no refined sugar. Eat a minimum of carbohydrates, including starchy vegetables and fruit. (I ate an ungodly amount of sugar over the weekend; had a reason but let things get out of hand; in other words, went crazy). A PET scan is scheduled for Wednesday, and, for the most accurate results, I need to be as sugar-free as possible. Bottom line, I hope I didn’t run up my blood sugar. Shouldn’t have but you never know. Cancer cells like sugar.
Finish critiques of remaining AMW stories and return to writers
Continue drafting the second half of the story “Texas Boss.” Revise enough to submit to AMW for critique
Finish a very rough draft of “Thank You, Mr. Poe”
By September 5th, read at least ten of the books on my 20 Books of Summer 2016 list. (The list appears below.)
Post #ROW80 reports on Sundays and Wednesdays.
Visit three new #ROW80 blogs a day
Take three naps a week
Go to bed at by 11:00 p.m. / 12. Cook at least one decent meal for David / 13. Dust the piano. / 14. Get rid of ten things a day / 15. Collect and organize books / 16. Shred
###
20 Books of Summer Buffet
√A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
My thoughts on Anne Tyler appear here.
√Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
Saw it, liked the cover, bought it. Serendipity.
√The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende
Loved it. Allende tells more than shows and makes it work.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyassi
Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning by Sol Steinmetz
White Heat: The Friendship Between Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple
The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith
Dr. Wortle’s School by Anthony Trollope
Time of Fog and Fire by Rhys Bowen
The Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
Because last night I waltzed up to the watermelon buffet and chose
Complete the edit the AMW story for its (I hope) final major critique
If I’d been taking naps, #1 would be only a memory. But there’s more to do.
Weeks ago, I edited out a couple of sentences but later realized I’d removed a bit of necessary information and created a contradiction. The error would be so difficult to resolve, and the lapse in logic was so subtle and so trivial, and the remaining text flowed so smoothly that I thought about saying, with Walt Whitman,
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself;”
and leave it alone and hope no one would notice.
But someone always notices. Sometime, somewhere, some reader would say, But the character says this is going to happen, and this doesn’t happen, or maybe it does, but whatever happened, she never says another word about it, so it sounds like maybe both things happened, and she should have told us…
So I tried a number of fixes, none of which pleased me, settled on one, and moved on. In a few days, I’ll go back and try again.
Just wo-ahn out
In moving on, I went from editing/revising to tampering. The official word is polishing, but I tampered: with words–thank goodness for thesaurus.com running in the background; with phrases; with sentence structure… Tampered with things better left untouched.
Tampering–especially when you think you’re polishing–is doomed to fail. It usually takes place near the end of a project, when you think everything is perfect, but not quite. So you make one little change, and then another, and another, and soon, part of your brain–the part where judgment lives–shuts off and you go on automatic pilot. You keep on clicking that mouse, cutting, pasting, copying, deleting, inserting…
Do this long enough and you can drain the life out of a story.
I’m most likely to tamper when I’m tired. I was tired last night. I should have watched Acorn TV or read or, better yet, given in and gone to bed at a reasonable hour. But I didn’t. Hyperfocused on the manuscript, I lost track of time and stayed up long after midnight. Then, in a perverse turn of events, I woke today up at 7:00 a.m.
So, as I said at the top of the page, I am tired.
A deadline approaches. I need to finish that story. First, though, I’ll let it rest. Several days. A week. Until I’m sufficiently rested. Until I don’t hate it with every fiber of my being. Until I’m detached enough to distinguish the good from the bad from the ugly.
#ROW80 Update
The July 20 Buffet
The original Buffet was meant to cover 80 days beginning with July 4, not just a few days or a week. Some haven’t been completed. Number 5 is on-going. So nothing changes.
Complete the edit the AMW story for its (I hope) final major critique Tried but didn’t finish, might have created a monster instead. See above, if you haven’t already.
Draft the second half of the story “Texas Boss” and submit to AMW for critique–Nope.
Finish a very rough draft of “Thank You, Mr. Poe”–Nope.
By September 5th, read at least ten of the books on my 20 Books of Summer 2016 list. (The list appears at Writing Wranglers and Warriors.) Still reading Isabel Allende’s The Japanese Lover, 68 pages toBy Mutari (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commonsgo. I used the calculator to figure that out. I didn’t have to. I can still subtract in my head. But I don’t want to think that hard. Sad.
Post #ROW80 reports on Sundays and Wednesdays. It’s Wednesday and I’m posting.
Visit three new #ROW80 blogs a day.–Nope. I don’t know why, but nope.
Take three naps a week.–Nope. And I’m so sorry I didn’t.
###
The July 27 Buffet
They don’t change much. The point of the buffet, per shanjeniah, is to have choices and plenty of them. So I’ll add more watermelon.
Complete the edit the AMW story for its (I hope) final major critique
Draft the second half of the story “Texas Boss” and submit to AMW for critique
Fort Worth Indie Film Festival, 2016 – Family Shorts Block – “The Places You’ll Go”
It appears to be Wednesday–the scheduler from my doctor’s office had to tell me it wasn’t Thursday, but since her call woke me up, I take no responsibility for mixing up the days–and thus time for the #ROW80 report.
If I were playing by the rules, I would have reported last Sunday, but we’d been out of town all weekend and there was little to say. And since #ROW80 knows I have a life, I play by my rules.
I probably shouldn’t post today. I’m not in the best state of mind. I feel the way many of us do when we did the right thing, and because we did, life went all to you-know-where. But that’s another story. For anyone wanting more information, check the end of the post.
Fort Worth Indie Film Festival, 2016 – Family Shorts Block – “The Interview”
On a brighter note, which I’m sure will be welcome, David’s “Alike and Different” was screened at the Fort Worth Indie Film Festival on Saturday. There was a good turnout, and the audience laughed in all the right places. The one drawback was that two of the other films starred very cute children and thus received an inordinate amount of attention. I’ve advised David to include William and Ernest the Cats in all future videos. Children, no matter how cute, are not as cute as our cats.
Edit the AMW story for its (I hope) last major critique On the way home from Fort Worth, I scribbled on the manuscript. No major changes, the kind that will make a difference, just little changes in wording that will make no difference at all, but that will keep me doing the Should I? Shouldn’t I? dance. Just north of Waco, I put the ms. away to look at when I don’t care.
Draft the second half of the story “Texas Boss” and submit to AMW for critique Nope.
Finish a very rough draft of “Thank You, Mr. Poe,” the story I started last week Nope again.
By September 5th, read at least ten of the books on my 20 Books of Summer 2016 list. I’ve read about half of Isabel Allende’s The Japanese Lover. I’m glad I made the effort to see Allende when she was at BookPeople several months ago. I’m glad I bought the book. At the time, I felt guilty for buying a hardback I don’t have room for when I could have spent less for a Kindle “copy.” But after I read the first few pages, guilt atomized. It’s a delightful book, one that, for maximum enjoyment, must be read from paper. I still don’t know where I will put the book after reading it.
Post #ROW80 reports on Sundays and Wednesdays. I skipped Sunday. See paragraph #2, above.
Visit three new #ROW80 blogs a day. Started this but fell along the wayside.
Take three naps a week.* Not too bad. Napped Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (on the way to Fort Worth; I think that counts), Saturday (practically passed out, so maybe I can’t claim credit), and Sunday (on the way home). Sad but true, I can’t remember what I did Monday or yesterday. But that’s five naps, two more than I set for myself, and four more than I expected to take.
*Start as soon as this has been posted. I did, with a nap.
*****
The July 20 Buffet:
The original Buffet was meant to cover 80 days beginning with July 4, not just a few days or a week. Some haven’t been completed. Number 5 is on-going. So nothing changes.
Complete the edit the AMW story for its (I hope) final major critique
Draft the second half of the story “Texas Boss” and submit to AMW for critique
A Round of Words in 80 Days (#ROW80) is The Writing Challenge That Knows You Have a Life.
To read what other #ROW80 writers are doing, click here.
*****
“Alike and Different”
*****
For the curious: The reason for my nasty state of mind: I flossed out a crown. And had to get it put back in. As I said, you do the right thing, and still…
Edit the AMW story for its last (I hope) critique; Not yet, but tomorrow I’ll get a critique from another partner. It’s better to have everything in before making changes.
Write and schedule the WWW post at least two days before the July 19 deadline; It’s finished, and SIX days before the deadline. I’m going to the doctor to see what’s wrong–I never finish a piece SIX days before the deadline. I’ll continue to change little things, but it’s polished enough to be posted today. So I’m putting this one in the Watermelon Met* column.
Draft the second half of the story “Texas Boss” and turn in to AMW for critique;
Finish a very rough draft of “Thank You, Mr. Poe,” the story I started last week;
Complete the piece for the AMW blog and schedule it to post before midnight tonight. I posted it. Not before midnight. At 3:00 a.m. But I met the AMW deadline, and that’s close enough. Watermelon Met.
Summary: I set out to meet two deadlines and met them. The three remaining tasks aren’t time-sensitive. They carry over. The first, polishing the story for the proposed AMW anthology, must be finished by August 1, so it’s priority.
I’m adding three new goals to the list. Then I’m going to take a nap.
Edit the AMW story for its (I hope) final major critique
Draft the second half of the story “Texas Boss” and submit to AMW for critique
Finish a very rough draft of “Thank You, Mr. Poe,” the story I started last week
“Oh, Lord Azoth.” Miss Brulzies laid the palm of her soft little hand on his cytanic dargest. “That is just the most impressive, the most cytanic dargest I’ve ever come across.”
Adjusting his eyewire, Lord Azoth said with a flaudant gipple, “You little hoyden. You knew wearing that white ignibrate would jackonet my kreits. And the rose sticking out of your ligara…Ye gads! I cannot restrain myself. Will you glide across the floor with me in a violent mirdango?”
“Yes, yes, yes!” And then, “But do you think we should? Neymald stands by the punch bowl, and his oxene eyes hint he’s already pecanada, and we should not qualt him. You know–you must know–that our mirdango, especially if we perform it violently, will ryot him into committing a skewdad.”
“Phooey on Neymald and his skewdads,” said Lord Azoth. “You are my trompot, you little hoyden, not Neymald’s, and I will mirdango with you as violently as I please. Neymald will just have to uject it.”
And with that, he readjusted his eyewire, shifted his dargest, the one she had called cytanic, and, taking her hand, escorted her to the vucuder.
There, to a melancholy tune played by a wandering wandolin, they executed their violent mirdango.
Neymald, stymied, could do nothing but hang over the punchbowl, very pecanada and now very, very qualted indeed. But his pecanada was so advanced, he couldn’t think of even one decent skewdad.
Able only to stand there and xystoi, “Yirth!” he cried, and sighed. “Now I shall have to challenge Azoth to a zabak. But without a cytanic dargest, I’ll surely lose.” Then, of a sudden, he ideated:There’s more than one way to win a zabak.
He filled a cup and proffered it to the hoyden, her face aglow with the innocence of youth, wending her way toward the punch bowl.
“My dear, what a lovely red ignibrate you are decked out in,” he said. “And is that a dargest you carry, its handletoward my hand?” He bowed. “May I have this mirdango? I promise you—we will be violent. And afterward, perhaps you will allow me to hold your dargest. It is the most cytanic dargest I have ever come across.”
Friday Fictioneers: Write a 100-word story based on the prompt.
PHOTO PROMPT – Copyright – Madison Woods
Screams pierced the air. The woman dropped her trowel and raced across the yard. “What happened?”
Pushing through a ring of children, she lifted the crying child, examined the swelling lip.
A Greek chorus erupted.
“–wasp–”
“–hydrant–”
“—stung–“
“Lisabeth, I told you not to drink from the hydrant.” Then, turning, “She’s four. You’re ten–”
“I was rescuing Kitty from–Mom, I can’t watch her every second.”
“Get the baking soda.”
TLC applied, the woman returned to gardening.
Screams pierced the air. She ran.
“Lisabeth teased Kitty and–“
“Lisabeth, I told you–”
***
Every Wednesday,Rochelle Wisoff-Fields issues theFriday Fictioneerschallenge. She posts a picture prompt and invites readers to write stories of 100 words or fewer and to post them on their blogs the following Friday. This week’s prompt ishere(scroll down the page to see it). Rochelle’s story follows it.
To read more stories by Friday Fictioneers, click on the frog, below.
Friday Fictioneers: Write a 100-word story based on the prompt.
PHOTO PROMPT – Copyright – Georgia Koch
When Derek fell for LucyMae, he immediately introduced her to his wife.
“Look, Mandy.” His tone was reverent; his eyes betokened lust. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”
“Good gosh.” Mandy touched the hull. “Water, water everywhere and all the boards did shrink. Where does the albatross sit?”
“Hydrate her, the boards’ll plump up.”
“They’re rotten. . . . What’s that thingy?”
“It’s a . . . I’ll fix her.”
He switched on pleading puppy eyes.
Sigh. “Okay.” Mandy took his arm. “Let’s go look at that treadle sewing machine I want.”
“You can’t sew.”
“No. But it was love at first sight.”
***
Every Wednesday,Rochelle Wisoff-Fields issues theFriday Fictioneerschallenge. She posts a picture prompt and invites readers to write stories of 100 words or fewer and to post them on their blogs the following Friday. This week’s prompt ishere(scroll down the page to see it). Rochelle’s story follows it.
To see more stories by Friday Fictioneers, click on the frog, below.
(Friday is the official post date, but Thursday is fine, too. :-))
“Today, celebrate three songs that are significant to you. For your twist, write for fifteen minutes without stopping — and build a writing habit.”
Oh, all right, might as well stop complaining about these Do-Not-Edit twists. Nobody’s listening.
Fifteen Minutes:
I can’t think of three songs that are significant to me. I can think of the four that were played/sung at my wedding; they’re significant, I suppose. But I’ve written about them elsewhere. What’s significant is that I chose two and the groom chose two, and our choices differed so widely.
My hand stopped. This is hard to do on a computer: it’s too easy to go back and fix things, choose another word. Even when you’re trying not to. Cursive is easier.
Anyway, David supplied recordings of “A-You’re Adorable” and “La Vie en Rose” (Jo Stafford). We opened with the Adorable song, and that set the tone for the entire day. Emily Post ran up the aisle and out the door in disbelief. But the guests visibly relaxed, and that was a good thing. No tension, no worries. Even the bride had a good time. After she saw the caterer’s van parked in front of the fellowship hall.
My songs were “Simple Gifts” and “The Prayer Perfect.” My gift to myself was a trained soprano to sing them.
***
Saturday morning I’ll spend two hours writing as Natalie Goldberg prescribes. David and I belong to a practice group called 15 Minutes of Fame. We write/read/write/read, etc. We’ve done it for years–I met him in another practice group–and I enjoy it. But we don’t publish our work. Well, we do, if we want, on our blog, but we clean them up a bit first.
And I never write on computer in practice. Cursive is faster. If schools stop teaching cursive, how will students ever be able to scrawl a note? Or write in a margin? Or practice writing their names in different styles? Educators need to think.
Only Day 2, and I’m already tempted to drop out of Writing 101.
Yesterday I had all day. I started early, ignored the instructions and wrote what and how I wanted, and took my time doing it. Fine.
Today I had both morning and afternoon meetings, and now I’m as tired as I was when I had an eight-to-five job. In addition, I don’t like the topic. There’s no place I want to beam up to right now except bed. I’m trying to get my sleep patterns straightened out, and I can’t do that if I stay up writing.
Furthermore–and this the heart of the matter–I don’t like doing descriptive writing. I’m not good at it. When reading, I often skim or skip. I miss a lot of great prose, I know, but I prefer to get on to what the characters are doing. A professor remarked that Hemingway‘s description of the scenery during a drive through the Pyrenees in The Sun Also Rises was some of the finest writing in the English language. We had just read the novel. I tried to look as if I agreed about the quality of the description I hadn’t noticed.
Now that I’ve expressed my discontent with the topic, I’ll move on to a place I memorized:
My great-grandmother’s house two blocks from the house where I grew up. After you cross FM 20, the street angles off toward the left, and the one house and the foliage between hid Grandmama’s house from ours. The houses weren’t far apart, but when you crossed the two-lane road we called “the highway,” and the street made that little jog you felt like you were in a different part of town altogether.
My great-grandmother died three years before I was born. When I was a child I called it “Aunt Ethel’s house” for the great-aunt who lived there. When my uncle inherited it, it became “Donald’s house.” My father, who, with his four brothers, had lived there as a child, after his mother died called it simply “the house.” “I’m going up to the house,” he would say. No one ever asked him to explain.
It sat on the corner a block from Main Street, a white frame house with a big front porch. At each end a door led to a bedroom; the door to the living room was in the middle. Queen’s crown growing up the brick supports (pillars and columns sound too grand) and provided shade in summer and sometimes a measure of privacy. Inside there was no privacy at all: there were lots of windows, and most rooms had french doors. That they had sheers was little comfort. When we spent the night there once, my mother commented it was like living in a fish bowl. Surrounded by trees, it was hot in summer. On winter nights, when propane space heaters were turned off, it was absolutely freezing.
While my father called it “the house,” my mother called it “Grand Central Station.” Two of Grandmama’s sons lived across the street. Their children and grandchildren were in and out all day. Some walked in through the front door, stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water, and walked out the back without saying Hello. (I always said Hello.) When there was a funeral, four generations met there for lunch, sitting in the dining room, spilling out onto the front porch and the back yard. Those who lived there gathered there in the evenings. Mother offended my father early in their marriage by saying she’d rather stay home and listen to Jack Benny on the radio.
By the time I was out of high school, things had changed. For the first time, I knocked on the door before walking in. The house was no longer a gathering place. Later, it passed out of the family, and none of us went there at all.
Several years ago, I was invited back. An estate sale had been scheduled, and the auctioneer, knowing that many things there had been in my family for years, allowed me to come in for a pre-sale sale. I bought an old china cheese keeper that my mother had coveted, and some demitasse spoons from what had probably been Grandmama’s first set of flatware, and a place setting of the flatware used daily when I was a child, entirely utilitarian and, in my opinion, about the ugliest pattern imaginable.
It was strange being back after all those years. I remembered huge bedrooms, huge living room and dining room . . . Everything had shrunk. Except the porch. There was still room for several card tables of domino-playing ladies on summer afternoons.
For years, I felt as if that house belonged as much to me as to the great-aunts and the uncle who lived there. When it passed into new hands, I was sad. But it was a house. People had made it special.
The house was sold. My memories were not.
*****
Recently, the house was sold again, this time to a friend. I’m pleased to know it’s in good hands.
That’s what I said when I received my M.A. No more school. I’d learned enough. More to the point, I’d stayed up for thirty-six hours at a stretch drafting and typing reams of literary criticism too many times. I’d tired of having to take off the weight (peanut butter) that appeared with each paper. The Idylls of the King alone added five pounds.
Six years later, after receiving library certification, I said the same thing. Enough.
Several years ago, I tried posting every day for a year from January 1 but fell out around March. It was fun but exhausting–sometimes Emily Dickinson had to step in for a guest post–and I had no energy to write anything else. I don’t write fast. I revise and edit as I go. (Please don’t bother telling me I shouldn’t.) I suffer; how I suffer.
But last night I saw the word challenge, which is the emotional equivalent of chocolate, and my resistance is low, so I cratered and registered. It’s just one month with weekends off, so perhaps I will last it out. The catch is that WP provides a topic and a twist.
Today’s topic, or goal, is to unlock the mind: free write for twenty minutes. Follow Natalie Goldberg and access the pure thoughts and ideas of your wild mind.
Today’s twist is to post the free write. It doesn’t matter, says WP, if what you write is incomplete, or nonsense, or not worthy of the “Publish” button.
Yes, it does.
I respect Natalie Goldberg, but I’m not about to put my wild mind out for the public to view. I will display irony and self-deprecating humor, keep my tongue lodged in my cheek, and present myself as flippant, superficial, frivolous, shallow, and self-absorbed.* My thoughts, which are seldom pure and never simple, thank you Oscar Wilde, plumb a depth those who read my blog and listen to me talk cannot imagine. And I don’t share.
That’s one reason I’ve cut down on Facebooking: It’s too easy to record what I think.
This free write has gone on for an hour and will go on until the manager of the book store tells me my car is about to be towed for violating the three-hour limit on parking if I don’t make myself stop.
You write because you have an idea in your mind that feels so genuine, so important, so true. And yet, by the time this idea passes through the different filters of your mind, and into your hand, and onto the page or computer screen — it becomes distorted, and it’s been diminished. The writing you end up with is an approximation, if you’re lucky, of whatever it was you really wanted to say.
Irish Murdoch expressed a similar idea in fewer words: Every novel is the wreck of a perfect idea.
What jumps out at me is this: Most of life is a wreck of a perfect idea. And we publish it anyway.
There: I’ve accessed a pure thought and idea of my wild mind.
Well. It’s been drummed into me that an essay must have a conclusion. The previous paragraph, although an abrupt ending, is close enough. I’ll leave this and work for a while on the *I#%+)(^! rough draft of the novel, which is what I’ve been avoiding for the past three-plus hours.
Thanks, WP, for supporting procrastination.
*****
*I am self-absorbed.
Note: This place isn’t busy and the manager hasn’t said anything, so I assume my car is where I left it.
Note: With all respect to Mr. Hosseini, who writes beautiful books, I had no idea to express when I began writing this. I wrote it because WP told me to.
Monday: Late entrance into ROW80; post took two days to complete; goals set, not attempted.
Tuesday: Type type type type type type type type type type…316 words.
Wednesday: Type type type type type type type type type type…323 words.
Thursday: Type…type…44 words; one word was XXX.
Friday: Type type type type type type type type type type type type type type type type type type…551 words.
Saturday…Type…Play Poppit…type…Check email…type…type…Check Facebook…type…type…type…Play Poppit…Play Poppit…type…type…type…Check email…Check Facebook…Check email…Play Poppit…Check Glassboard…Play Poppit…type…, and so on…505 words.
Total: 1739 words / 5 days = 347.8 words per day
That’s not exactly what I set out to do–an average of 347.8 words per day isn’t the same as minimum of 300 words a day–but I’m not complaining. Having put in the promised five days and produced the promised 1500 words, I owe myself no more words until Tuesday.
Tomorrow, however, I owe Travis County an afternoon of jury duty. This is my third summons in four years. I don’t complain about that, either, though the summonses are beginning to seem redundant.
I do complain about being called down to the courthouse, where there is practically no parking, on a blazing summer day, when walking to the bus stop would turn me into an ambulatory puddle of sweat.
The first time, I took a taxi. The second time, David was on holiday and drove me. Tomorrow, he’s going to pick me up and drive me downtown on his lunch hour. He’s very kind and is also probably tired of hearing how standing outside waiting for a taxi–I don’t trust the cabbies to negotiate a certain turn–renders me a stationary puddle.
Anything more on this topic is premature. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll gather material for future posts or future fiction. But my goal is to end the day with nothing more remarkable than the weather to write about. I’ve served on juries before. Deciding the dispensation of other people’s lives and treasure, though a civic responsibility, is not something I relish.
***
To see what other ROW80 writers have to say, click here.
3) write a daily blog post, and if that becomes too difficult, reduce to three posts per week;
4) participate in at least one A Round of Words in 80 Days challenge, which is no problem for anyone who sets out suggestions and then blogs at least once a week;
5) fix up an office in the spare room;
6) go to bed before midnight so the rest of this list has a chance of being done;
7) keep a timesheet;
8) trim this list to #s 1, 2, and 5 if necessary; do some calculations and acknowledge that #s 1-6 won’t be a burden if the person doing them just gets up and DOES them.
Amen.
***
For the first week of A Round of Words for 80 Days, I’ll focus on Suggestion #2.
Promotional photo of Tallulah Bankhead. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I owe A Round of Words in 80 Days (ROW80) another Wednesday check-in. Fortunately, I finally have something significant to report.
My original goals were to sleep (get to bed before midnight, I believe); eat well (get off the white stuff, processed foods, added salt, sweeteners); and show up at critique meetings with something to be critiqued (in other words, write).
Before I discuss progress, I’ll note that Austin Mystery Writers (AMW) is alive and well. Several members have been on hiatus, dealing with other projects (such as work), another can’t attend regularly (again, work), and this week our Grand Pooh-Bah moved a hundred miles to the north. Only two non-Pooh Bahs remained to stay the course, and we considered four eyes insufficient to ferret out the flaws in our respective manuscripts.
Last night, however, concern vanished. Two new members joined us, a third has promised to drop in next week, and two others have listed themselves as maybes.
American writer Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Being in a critique has been a good experience for me. In addition to ideas and advice, I’ve received encouragement and support for my writing and for my personal life. My partners have helped me over some rough spots in the past couple of years.
I’ve also learned a lot. Since we’ve been together, one partner has published a novel and has more in line for publication. Two others have completed manuscripts. While in one sense I’ve been stalled–scrambling down bunny trails, trying to get my plot under control–I’ve learned about the business of writing.
As to my own WIP: Pieces continue to fall into place. Listening to a presentation at the Austin Sisters in Crime meeting last Sunday, I had a brainstorm–a detail that would make a central character’s motivation much more credible. I flipped to the next page in my notebook and scribbled it down. I’ve also had another idea about reframing the novel to update it a bit. When I realized that Molly hadn’t once, in nearly three hundred pages, gone online, I pulled out Chapter One and inserted Internet.
Today I retyped Chapter One. The experts say not to do that–especially considering the number of times I’ve rewritten it, trying to get the foundation right–but I’m not revising so much as remembering. It’s been through many incarnations, and typing requires me to read more closely than I would if only my eyes were involved. I’ll continue this process for three or four more chapters, inserting new segments where appropriate (I hope!). Projected changes add originality. They give Audrey Ann, a minor character, more opportunity for mischief-making. Audrey Ann is a hoot, and I look forward to spending more time with her.
(One of my critique partners suggested Audrey Ann would make a good victim, but she’s too much fun to kill. Very much like my first intended victim, whom I couldn’t bring myself to knock off. If this becomes a trend, I’m in big trouble.)
I’ve added a progress meter to the sidebar on the left. Five percent represents progress on the current draft–in other words, what I retyped today. I’ve been working on this project, and talking and writing about it, for a long time. I don’t want to give the impression that I’ve eked out just four thousand words.
Now, as to my plan for eating real food: Sometimes I have and sometimes I haven’t. I have, however, dropped nineteen pounds since the first of the year, so I claim at least modified success.
(Who am I trying to kid? I rock.)
Regarding sleep: It’s after 1:00 a.m. No excuses.
One last thing about Austin Mystery Writers: When the other left-behind critique partner mentioned we might need to put several of the coffee shop’s tables together to handle the potentially large turnout, it occurred to me that if we works things right, AMW could become the Austin equivalent of the Algonquin Hotel’s Round Table. A heady thought. Critique partner said I could be Dorothy Parker. She wants to be Tallulah Bankhead. I wish I could be the glamorous one, but with my evil tongue, Dorothy P. is right down my alley. More’s the pity. I’ll try to be nice.
I’ve been working on Molly but haven’t been averaging the 1667 words per day required to reach the target by the end of November.
According to the NaNo stats page, at my current rate, I’ll reach 50,000 words on September 28, 2015.
But there is hope—if I write 2,753 words each and every day for the rest of the month.
Is it possible to write 2,753 words in one day? Of course. Call it a blog post and I’ll write twice that.
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Sick of staring at Times New Roman, I switched to Accord SF.
Now MS Word 2007 asserts it independence by saving Accord SF in italics. The italics icon on the toolbar, however, isn’t highlighted, and no amount of clicking or unclicking it affects the text. Nothing affects the text. It’s in italics and it’s going to stay that way.
I think the dysfunction is related to repeated crashing of blog documents several weeks ago. I saved in Accord SF but after each crash reopened to italicized Accord SF. Why italics have leaked over into text documents, I cannot say.
If anyone can shed light on this case, please feel free. In the interim, and probably forever, I’ll be using Open Office, which I like better anyway.
Except for blog posts. I don’t have time or patience to read the OO instructions. And Word blog format is on its best behavior.
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They say the secret to winning NaNoWriMo is Never Delete.
That’s not my way. I revise as I go. Like this:
Word word word word word word word Delete delete delete Different word different word different word Word word Delete Different word…
It’s slow, but my OCD feels comfortable with it.
NaNo, however, despises it.
NaNo likes something like the following:
Word word word word Wrong word Right word Word word word word Wrong word Wrong word Wrong word Right word Right word Wrong word…
Which just drives me up the wall.
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I saved. Word crashed. I reopened to italics.
What it will look like when it’s published to WordPress I won’t try to predict.
Just once, I would like to live through a day in which I don’t have to eat my words, my hat, or a large portion of crow.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyassi
M. K. Waller 