Book Gnomes Please Help

I think gnomes are little creatures that come in the middle of the night to do things for you right? If so, I need their help.

Currently I am having a mini internal panic attack. When I was a kid I was never any good with math word problems. I still am not good at them. I take a look at the words and I start to think of variables that could change the outcome of the answer. I know the point of these problems is to take the information and be able to put it into a mathematical formula, but I could never get past the story told by these problems. Heck, I wanted to know if the cyclist would finish the race, if that well was ever going to be dug, and is Chris ever going to save enough money and why was he saving it.

Now I am having word problems again. Except this time instead of trying to find the right words I am totally stalling on putting that formulaic problem behind those words. Maybe this makes no sense. But when I wrote the first draft of this novel I just wrote. I didn’t think about character development, emotional responses, imagery, themes or any of that. Every once in awhile it crept in, but it was mostly by accident. I started at Point A and I knew I was going to arrive at Point B approximately 50,000 words later.

I have read through almost half of my rough draft thus far and I feel like I made a seven layer bean dip and forgot layers two, four, and six and now I have to somehow shove them in and make this bean dip still turn out like the picture in the recipe book. Right now I am trying to determine the most efficient way to tackle this problem and my mind is giving me several solutions. None of them are easy. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. But every solution also comes with its own problems.

Bottom line is that I am no good at the technical stuff. When someone tells me to define a character’s want and their goal my mind thinks, “Well, they want their goal, isn’t that one in the same thing?” If I am told to give a synopsis, summary, headlines, sequence of events, of each chapter, I also see that as one thing. Themes and imagery are oftentimes so intertwined I have a problem pulling those apart also. Tell me to give you a one sentence summary of my novel and I have a mental aneurysm.

And this is why I have flailed and failed every time I have attempted to edit one of my manuscripts. I am getting dizzy with this ever changing focus on the background and then on the foreground that I can never get to the heart of any of it.

Rough day. Moving on.

Word Cloud

This is a word cloud done of my novel. Such fun, and as much as I will share of it before editing.

Create one of your own at http://www.wordle.net/

Night of Writing Dangerously

Beside me sat a rotund, aging man whose front teeth had all but rotted away, though his conversation and breath were much fresher than the blackened corn kernels that were all that was left of his front teeth.

The two life partners beside me were equally jolly and lacking in dental hygiene and I begin to wonder if this city doesn’t put fluoride in the water.

In contrast the four young girls across the table look like they are playing hooky from high school. And if it wasn’t Thanksgiving break that observation would be true.

I’m somewhere in between. I have a child, have long left my high school years behind (thank God), but still have all my teeth, even though some may have cancer causing metals drilled into them.

The woman to my right has a patch of dry skin between her eyebrows that sinks down to her nose. Her limp dishwater brown hair in two thin braids hanging down over her shoulders. A calling card that she is no longer a little girl but would like to remain girlish.

The verbose sixteen year old across the table speaks freely about intimate details of her life with exuberant animated gesticulations. She is a recovering Mormon, her grandfather had a seizure, the kids at school think her best friend (who is sitting next to her) is her life partner. She blabs more than I do after the two cocktails and glass of wine I have had.

The two girls sitting next to them make comments and I know they will go back to their hotel room and laugh at the other two girls for being awkward and perhaps saying too much. One of them says something that shows me how little of life she has seen, “I’ve never seen snow before.” I cringe thinking that my four year old son has seen snow, oceans, beaches, and even Disneyland at his tender young age. I wonder if he’ll ever know how much life his father and I try to breathe into him between working ten hour days and collapsing in front of the television every night. I hope when he gets older and compares notes that his childhood will match up to whatever becomes his expectations. Even though by then “do overs” are not an option.

Every person at this table is different than me. And yet we manage to banter about everything except the common thread that has brought us all there together. Writing. We are all writers but we speak nothing of it. We talk of our excitement, our fears, our shortcomings, and our bed times. But somewhere through it all we are talking because we know deep down we all have that similarity.

It’s like we are fishing. Trying to find the right bait of conversation that will bring that fish to the top. But that fish is smart and really doesn’t want to be caught. We can only be left to imagine its colors, its shape, whether or not it would win catch of the day or be thrown back to mature.

As my flight starts to descend back into my familiar territory, back into my day to day mantra of reality, I can only hope that I will bring back some of the spark from these curious people at the table with me and the hundreds more in the room whose greatest wish is to put their words to paper, have someone else read them, and have that someone believe in those words.

Building a world in 30 days

I've been tossing around ideas for Nanowrimo. I really think that I need to complete the trilogy that I started. Problem is I have never felt completely comfortable with the world I created for my characters to explore.

My first novel took place mostly in Seattle and Israel. I spent months researching Israel before Nano started. My scenes ended up great, but the characters needed a lot of work.

Second novel I wrote in first person and had it take place mostly in Paris. I had been to Paris before so I relied heavily on that. I dealt with some issues my characters were going through but I didn't like my depiction of Paris. And I found out I don't like writing in first person so much.

All that and I still have not developed the fantasy portion of my characters lives. The rules that guide their powers and define what should happen.

So, I am going to take the next 30 days to create my world using this little guide I found online. Linky later. Day one is climate. Wish me luck.

Too much. It's all too much.

Too much to go over that is. That is what happens when you neglect your blog for almost a month. I went to Sock Summit and was completely overwhelmed. I know I did not see 75% percent of what the vendors had to offer because I spent too much time wandering around with my mouth hanging open in sheer amazement of the scope of this event. I have never been to a knitting conference, but I can say that I will try my darnedest to be at any future Sock Summits regardless of whether or not I even get any classes.

Here is a cool video someone took with an overview of what was happenin' at Sock Summit:



I had five classes and I enjoyed 2.5 of them. Yarn Harlot and Chrissy Gardiner were the bomb and I would takes any classes from them again in a heart beat. Otherwise I could have spent the rest of my time more wisely in and about Portland and the Marketplace because there was too much awesomeness to possibly pack in four days.

Here is an awesome video of the Guinness attempt which took place on my birthday:



Did I mention that I also had a last minute roommate who was uber-awesome? I think I may be the Washington version of this Michigan native because we had too much in common to list and she was a blast. Only wish I could have been less overwhelmed and hung out with her more.


I completely went head over heels for fiber. I'm addicted. I joined the Blue Moon Sock Club which has already been going on since January. Today I got all my kits, four in total, that I had missed. I am simply aghast at the time and effort not only put into these beautiful yarns, but also in the presentation of the individual kits. Money well spent and I will definitely be a repeat customer.


Also, there is this little thing called Nano that is knocking on my back porch.


Yes, I hear you there Nano. Yes, I will be participating this year. No, I'm not entirely sure what I will be writing, but I will be there. Yes, I will. And to make it official:

Guinness

Guinness World Records that is. Yep. I'm going down in the history of Guinness. In a little over two weeks I will be attending the Sock Summit in Portland. One of the events scheduled to take place is breaking the world record for the most people knitting in one place at the same time for 15 minutes. The previous record was about 276 people. There will be quadruple that amount at the Sock Summit. So cool!

In other news, BB told me this morning he did not want to go to school. I think it had to do with him being shushed during naptime yesterday. He is very prideful and it takes him awhile to recover from being criticized in any way. Hmmm...wonder where he gets that?

Post school exhaustion

BB had a great first day at school.  Although he did come home exhausted. He spaced out on the couch for awhile when he got home. Hey, kind of like what I do when I get home from work. He was excited to go back today, so I'll call that a good sign.

Peanut Pug had his neurology appointment yesterday. His exam was normal, so we're just going to treat this freak seizure thing conservatively. Mostly because we don't have a few extra thousand lying around for an MRI. But he is acting happy and about 90% of the pug we once knew, so all is well.

Have a trial starting next week and I am going to have to majorly buckle down the rest of this week.