Stories are life. Read some, write some, be some.

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow!

10/31/2012 08:58:00

Get your novel on! Is this your year? It might be -- why not give it a shot? You don'need a lot to get started, and then, once you're started, just keep on going.

In case you are wondering what NaNoWriMo is, take a look at their site.

If you like to have a lot of resources, check out this post. It leads to other posts, gives a lot of guidance, in case you like that sort of thing.

But if you don't like a lot of guidance, then you can just start with a character who really, really wants something, but is blocked from getting it. You need to know your character's biggest fear, their inner issue. And what they really, really want needs to be a thing that makes them face that biggest fear and inner issue. And the thing blocking them needs to be substantial.

Now, you can start out with the desire vague, but it needs to become specific -- maybe gradually. And the opposition can be the character's own self, or it can be from outside -- a villain, a force in the ennvironment, society. But the opposition needs to be specific, too. Society might mean the person's job that requires them to put a helpless puppy to death, or their town's expectation that she'll get married since she's pregnant. The environment might mean a horrible hurricane or being becalmed in the tropics during the dog days or trapped in a basement that's filling with floowater.

But the main thing for NaNoWriMo is to get those words down. If you have guidelines like I just gave you, that might be enough. Everyone has an idea what a story is supposed to be like. Just write one. Just do it.

I am still DukTape on NaNoWriMo. You can find info about my future novel, Rose's Place, here.

A sewing machine? You're joking.

09/24/2012 23:16:00

Sewing machines hate me.

I decided this years ago, many many years ago, like in junior high school when I was taking home ec and the machine at home kept snarling up on me, the tension messing up continually, the seams often looking like strings of beads.

Indeed, strings of all sorts snarl up just looking at me, making knots and splitting and losing their ends when they see me coming. I took up knitting when I was 9 to thwart this, but so far, no dice. Still knots and snarls. I have embroidered, made a crewel giraffe (yeah, that's crewel, not cruel, though the thread was cruel at times) and a dragon or two and an awesome purple catfish on burlap. I took up crocheting last year, and made granny squares till I was sick of them. I actually made five blankets last year, one knit, three granny square (two conventional and one Fibonacci sequence designed by my son, Jed) and one crocheted ripple afghan. I keep after stringy-yarny things because I like a challenge.

So I guess maybe that's why I bought a sewing machine last week. I want the challenge again.

Never mind that I want a faster way to mend. Never mind that I want to make some stuff. Never mind that I remember fondly the days when I could get the tops and dresses I wanted by choosing the pattern and the fabric myself instead of relying on the limited choices in stores.

No. I want to wrestle the sewing machine beast. I want to conquer another string thing.

This time, I will triumph.

oneword.com again

05/10/2012 13:41:00

I wrote on the htp://www.oneword.com word of the day again today. I think it turned out well. I wrote:

These things that they do, I can’t understand them. They eat with their fingers, they take food from each others’ plates. I don’t think they know what napkins are for. I just do my best to eat, to have enough peace to digest, but it’s difficult, living with such primitives. Children aren’t what I thought they’d be.

The Path

03/28/2012 09:06:00

The path is long and climbs

Through woods I hate to see.

And yet I go there constantly,

Symptom of who I hate to be.

In slow-motion I walk along

Knowing where the thing will lead.

The walking is more tolerable

Than not walking it would be.

I'm isolated on this path,

Though others have been here.

I search the path for company,

A response that I will never see.

Walking on this path

Provides me time to think.

And yet the sounds of it

Prevent all thought and peace.

I climb this lonely path of mine,

Symptom of who I hate to be.

My dad did this before me,

This familial idiocy.

****************

I wrote this poem from a prompt on pw.org, the Web site of Poets & Writers. I opened a book at random, then chose a word from the page, then did it 9 more times and wrote 10 couplets, each containing one of the words. The book I picked without seeing the title was Migraine, by Oliver Sacks. I am not sure what the poem is about, but my dad and I both get migraines, so that might have been in the back of my mind. Let me know what you think.

Spring fever, old woman version

03/22/2012 13:45:00

Not that I'm old! I'm not very old. But my back and my knees are old, and my get up and go got up and went. Inside, I'm still 17.

But spring is going to come again, I know it by the calendar, and the lengthening of days. I know it by the sunshine that heats up the area by the patio door, even though when I open that door and step outisde to enjoy the sunshine, I still wish for at least a sweater. There was snow on the ground again this morning. But spring will come.

And yesterday I did the thing that I sometimes do in the spring--I ordered seeds. Not as many as I often do, in fits of optimism. Not as many as I did even a few years ago when I first put in the raised beds at my former house. Not that many.

But when I came home from town Tuesday I spotted the cute little fiber cups for starting seeds in the house and I just thought that I wanted to get some things going. Some vegetable things. Some flower things. Some spring things.

And so I will. I ordered a type of tomato that's supposed to be a short-season grower and very popular in the Northwest, Mountain Magic. I've forgotten now. And some seedless Diva cucumbers. And winter squash of a variety that supposed to be able to germinate in cold mud--we seem to have an abundance of that around here--a squash called Sweet Meat Oregon Homestead. And a zucchini to make me progressively popular, and then unpopular with the neighbors. And a collection of pretty veggies and flowers--chard and nasturtiums and such--to grow in one of the cool bottom-watering containers that my son made for me last year (the ones he made are larger than in the link, made from the big Rubbermaid tubs we used to bring compost material home in). I got Shirley poppy seeds to plant in my yard and to share. I had them in my former yard, and loved them. I'm going to have them here, too. Not sure where I'll put the blue daisies or some of the other stuff I ordered.

I got most of my seeds from Nichols Garden Nursery, from whom my mom bought seeds when I was a kid, and I got three kinds from an ebay seller who has top ratings, called smartseeds, who specializes in novelty seeds.

I didn't buy a whole lot, but more than I can probably keep up with. But who cares? It's part of spring fever, and I am going to do my part, no matter how small it might turn out to be, to make the neighborhood both prettier and more edible.

What did you do about him?

03/14/2012 16:38:00

I've been going to a class called Practice, Practice, Practice at ArtEast in Issaquah, Just for fun, I'm going to post a poetic piece I wrote from a prompt we got in class that only said, "If we ran into each other one day, what would you ask me?" I immediately pictured a couple of high school friends who hadn't talked in years.

* * *

Are you still, did you ever,

Oh how to say it?

What about him? What did you do about him?

Oh, I know it's none of my business, but I was there, too.

I saw him. I loved him.

He was the finest thing I ever saw.

He sang like an angel, he danced like a dream.

He looked at all of us, but you most of all.

I remember when we went to the beach.

Your secret recipe for improving the beans:

Chopped green onions, mustard and brown sugar.

But sand was the main ingredient when he scuffed up to the fire.

Everyone laughed.

You tried to be mad.

But I saw your eyes.

You would have forgiven him anything.

Anything at all.

So did you? Did you have to?

Did he hurt you? Or did he love you?

Or did you give him a chance?

I wonder these things because I loved him, too.

He was the finest thing I ever saw.

So tell me, what did you do about him?

Did you give him a chance to love you or hurt you?

Because a chance to do one is the chance to do either.

What did you do about him?

On the other side of NaNoWriMo

12/28/2011 10:52:00

I made it through NaNoWriMo successfully -- and got what I think will be a pretty god story out of it. Its working title is Piper's Private Writing School. Probably that will be its final title, too. As my two younger children were thinking of participating in it in the beginning, they are featured pretty much as-is as far as personality goes. That will need to change in the final. I may make them a little bit younger, and change their names. I have the story out to a few readers to critique, though it is in first-draft speed demon NaNoWriMo format. Two of them have read it all the way through and given me some good feedback.

I am back to working on Tempo, the 2010 Nanovel. I will need to do some trimming on it. I suspect I have a few soapboxes I need to get down from, trimming of extraneous crap, intensification of viscerality, consequences that need to occur, conflict that needs ratcheting. You know. The usual.

NaNoWriMo 2011 -- day 1!

11/01/2011 12:58:00

Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo 2011! This is the sixth year in a row that I've participated. I also began it in 2003, but I didn't get very far. I don't remember what my story that year was going to be. I do remember the other years.

2006 was an unnamed SF piece where deaf and hard-of-hearing people saved the world from alien domination.

2007 was Her Thirty Percent, a charming love triangle set in a gym where I let the woman keep both lovers.

2008 was Three Knights in Florida, a game-based tale where three facebook friends met in person for the first time and played a tournament of their own devising and faced a hurricane.

2009 was Adjusting the Shade, a family story about a grandfather and granddaughter pair of chiropractors and a ghost.

2010 is Tempo, the one I'm still writing, about a bipolar violinist recovering from the loss of her husband with the help of a psychiatrist who thinks he's a samurai.

This year I have only a rough idea of what I want to do -- it features a delusional main character -- and a beginning I thought was pretty cool. Now that I'm a bit over 1000 words into it, I am not so sure. I am boring myself! This is not a terrible outcome, as it's not an outcome yet. I do plan to do some good writing and fun exploring.

I also plan to continue to work on Tempo, last year's Nanovel, as it is not quite finished. Yes, I won (meaning I got my 50,000 words done) but no, the story wasn't finished. It turned out to be a lot bigger than I had planned on writing. Last night I roughed in some more story skeleton and notes on what I wanted the characters to have happen. I edited over the last couple of days, too, after leaving it mostly alone for a month.

And speaking of leaving things alone! I have stopped playing Dragons of Atlantis! It was a big deal to me, to be able to do taht, as the game had me thoroughly sucked in. It was fun, and social, but I tend to be rather obvsessive and get all absorbed in games and don't get anything else done. I've always been that way, though before computers came into my life it was reading or writing that I usually got absorbed in.

So. My story this year will be fun, eventually, even if I have to tweak the concept a few more times. Or even a lot more times.

See you on the other side!

What I've really been doing

09/29/2011 12:19:00

I might as well admit it.

What I've really been doing for the last year is playing Dragons of Atlantis on facebook.

Naturally, I'm still doing other things, too, but I've been playing Dragons of Atlantis a whole lot.

It's a fun game created by Wonderhill, which has been acquired by Kabam, the people who also made Kingdoms of Camelot and Edgeworld. There are people to talk to, a city and outposts and an army to build--which includes several kinds of dragons and mythical beasties--alliances to join or to oppose.

The graphics are great, though it has no animation other than outpost fires and moving dragons in your city and outposts. They move around, and they look like crap when they're injured. I was happy when fires were added to the map. It's so pretty when you light up an opponent's outpost. This is often referred to in world chat as a barbecue, and people will be asking if anyone has marshmallows (though most of them misspell it "marshmellows," to my annoyance). The fires don't seem as pretty when they are in your own outpost. Peculiar.

Dragons of Atlantis is an MMORPG, and very successful, too, so I'm not the only person who's hopelessly hooked on it. Some people are hooked a lot worse than I am. I still manage to eat once in a while and see real humans from time to time, and I don't spend a lot of money on the game. (You don't have to spend any money at all to play it, but you can.) Some people spend hundreds, and their humongous armies reflect that. There are always things to do in this game, and there are always a lot of other people online playing it. Of course if they're not online, you can always go and visit and plunder their cities.

Unless they're in an alliance that is friendly with your alliance.

Did I mention alliances? There's chat, world chat and alliance chat. Because it's glitchy and because you can only chat with your specific alliance members in it (as opposed to, say, Noble Fools II and III as well as your own Noble Fools) and can't monitor world chat at the same time, no one ever uses alliance chat anymore, they just make facebook groups and chat in them instead.

Which means that people know each others' names and then they get to be friends in real life. Almost. Sort of. Some of the time.

When you start out in the game, you have to choose a name. Do it carefully, as it'll cost a lot to change it later. The game *is* free to play, but some things you can only get by buying rubies, the game currency. Choosing a name is difficult now that so many people are playing it, as a lot of great names have already been taken. I have taken a couple of them myself, as I play in several realms.

Each realm (server) is a unique game world even though the map looks exactly the same. You can have built up a fantastic city in some realm, and have millions upon millions of resources, but if you begin to play in a new realm--and they are adding more of them all the time--then you have to start all over.

Ok. So you start playing by building your city. If you follow the little quests that are given to you, then that's one way to build. There are others. You really don't need to do everything the quests suggest. Like a theater to keep your happiness up? Once you have enough gold rolling in from theft you don't need your people to be happy, as you won't need to tax them, which is the only thing that makes them unhappy. Silly people don't care if you draft their asses into your armies, and you need to do that on a regular basis.

The critical thing to remember when you are building is that this is a war game. So make sure you have room for lots of garrisons in your city and lots of training camps in your outposts.

If you want to read how to do the game, then go to the Dragonomicon. It's a good guide to all things Dragons of Atlantis.

Game on.

Work to goals in less than thirty seconds

06/14/2011 08:00:00

#trust30

Remember this? I wrote a little bit the first two days of the challenge that's supposedly based on Ralph Waldo Emerson's book, Self Reliance.

I have not liked the prompts, so I haven't been writing to them. They aren't Emersonian enough for me. Each author has a quote from the book, then they go off on their own tangent from there. A lot of them talk aobut goals, a modern popular concept.

Today's prompt is this:

"One Thing by Colin Wright

Do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take a moment, step back from your concerns, and focus on one thing: You have one life to achieve everything you’ve ever wanted. Sounds simple, but when you really focus on it, let it seep into your consciousness, you realize you only have about 100 years to get every single thing you’ve ever wanted to do. No second chances. This is your only shot. Suddenly, this means you should have started yesterday. No more waiting for permission or resources to start. Today is the day you make the rest of your life happen. Write down one thing you’ve always wanted to do and how you will achieve that goal. Don’t be afraid to be very specific in how you’ll achieve it: once you start achieving, your goals will get bigger and your capability to meet them will grow.

(Author: Colin Wright)"

It goes from work to goals in less than thirty seconds.

Buzz words, be gone.