I’ll be dropping off the face for a little while. The rejections are piling up and I have to admit they’re getting to me more than I’d like. While I work on a new (better, stronger, faster) query letter that will make the agents fall to my feet in supplication, I will be incommunicado.
To all the striking writers out there, hang tough. Everyone else, try not to write your best posts until I get back.
Six pages written, 1058 words. Well, it’s not thirty, or even twenty. But, I’m giving myself a break because it’s the opening chapter, and those things are tough to write. Anyway, six pages is better than none, which is what I would have had if not for Kate.
Thanks Kate!
Kate has come up with an excellent challenge that I hope will get me on track with the opening chapters of the next book (and will also get me to stop stalking the mailman from window to window as he makes his way to my front stoop with what is undoubtedly just junk mail). She’s proposed we all–write. That’s it. The genius is in the simplicity; twenty pages a day for two weeks straight.
Of course, I’m coming in on this game three days late. I didn’t think I was going to do it at all, but I had a pretty good plotting day yesterday. While the basic ideas I nailed may not keep me going for 220 pages, it’s enough that I can be the little dog chasing the neighborhood cars–I’ll keep up for a while, then just lay down in the road and watch them disappear over the horizon, tail wagging in self-satisfaction.
So, twenty pages a day? Or, if I want to play catch-up, thirty for the next three days, then twenty thereafter? Sure, no problem.
I recently wandered too close to the edge of the earth and fell off. A family member suddenly became ill and I was whisked away to the magical land of Waldorf, Maryland (major claim to fame: the emo-screamo pseudo-punk sensation, Good Charlotte) for several days. I rushed out, sword-in-hand (spare pants still on bed), to rescue my kin from a victimizing demon of a hospital surgeon and then stuck around as she was fixed by a new, human doctor. Now she’s recovering from surgery nicely and I’m home in time to celebrate the first sultry week of fall.
After days of making it my mission to hunt down nurses for IV changes, spare towels and clean bedsheets, and shuttling non-driving family members the twenty mile distance to the hospital and back, it’s safe to say I’m a little out of the writing loop. In my hasty packing, I’d neglected the luxury of changes of clothing, yet somehow remembered to bring along a giant backpack filled with potential work. At one delusional point or another, I had envisioned quiet nap times filled with productivity. Reality, though, ensured I only got to drag around the shoulder-dislocating monstrosity like a lost Sherpa, doing little more with it than opening it to read a few paragraphs of Weird U.S. from time to time.
Tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll be able to jump back in and reacquaint myself with my routine. I’ll also try to provide a more coherent, entertaining entry in the next few days and make my way around to the blogs of my friends, who I have sadly and regretfully neglected.
Madeleine L’Engle has died at age 88. As one of the millions of children who discovered a path into a different world via the Wrinkle she created, I wish her a peaceful, most deserved rest.
Here’s an interesting quiz (taken when I should have been working). I like my results, although anyone familiar with my brief foray into sales as a ‘Diamond Dirt’ retailer in a mall kiosk at age twenty would know I certainly do not possess anything close to a gift of tongues:
“Excuse me, does this stuff work?”
“Well, this plant’s not dead.” Gestures to the limp, scraggly bit of foliage submerged in the aqua-hued gelatinous goo.
“What does it do?”
“Lets you put your houseplants in a clear vase so you can see the colored gel the roots are stuck in.”
“Is it better than dirt?”
Once again eyes the plant that’s psychically screaming for an end to its tortured existence. “Probably not.”
Skill, wisdom, adaptation. Craft, cunning, depending on dignity.
Eleoquent and charismatic both verbally and in writing,
you are clever, witty, inventive and persuasive.
The Magician is the male power of creation, creation by willpower and desire. In that ancient sense, it is the ability to make things so just by speaking them aloud. Reflecting this is the fact that the Magician is represented by Mercury. He represents the gift of tongues, a smooth talker, a salesman. Also clever with the slight of hand and a medicine man – either a real doctor or someone trying to sell you snake oil.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
Thanks again to X, who sent me yet another amusing item to put up here. I just want to know who has ever fried maggots? And why?
These are The Worst Analogies Ever Written in a High School Essay:
They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup.
From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and “Jeopardy” comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.
Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.
He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.”
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
(Original post can be seen here)
Minister the cat has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a thickening of the heart muscle. He also has a bit of valve leakage, which is what caused the heart murmur. He’s been given the human beta-blocker, Atenolol. His first dose was this morning and it prompted him to throw up for five hours. I’m now waiting for the cardiologist to call me back, because this prescription is clearly not a good match.
I didn’t know until I went to his website this morning that the doctor is the heart specialist for the animals at the National Zoo. Pretty impressive. And even with his exotic credentials, he was down-to-earth and treated Mini like he was the most important patient he’s ever seen. He was even good with me, which is rare for a lot of vets–many focus so much on the animals that their people skills tend to go south.
What kills me about all of this is Minister’s unflappability. I drove him two hours for this appointment, pinned him down for twenty minutes as he had a sonogram, and then drove him two more hours to bring him home. When I finally let him out of the carrier, he ran out, went maybe five feet, and then circled back to stand up and put his paws on my leg like he does when he’s happy to see me. The week before, he’d had an ear infection and I had to jam gunk in his ears for ten days. Still, he didn’t get mad at me. Last night I gave him a bath to wash off the residual gunk from the medication that had crusted in the fur around his ears. Not only did he tolerate that, he sprawled on the floor and let me dry him with a hair dryer. And this morning, I jammed a pill all the way down his throat, and he swallowed it and then came back to sit on my lap like nothing happened. With our old cat, Elwood, it was a fight every single day to medicate him. Then, here’s this one who could care less what I’m doing to him. He’s probably the best tempered cat I’ve ever seen, and it makes me mad that he has to deal with this the rest of his life.
Anyway, the vet seems to think we’ve caught this problem early enough that with continual medication he should live for many years. And who am I to argue with the guy who treats the Capitol’s collection of lions?
There’s still no word on the literary agent, either. I was hoping this weekend would be the magic one, the one where the caller ID displayed the New York area code, but apparently not. Now I’m wondering if she ever got the submission at all. There’s no logical reason why she wouldn’t, but paranoia is a wonderful thing. At any rate, I think I’ll start getting together a bunch of new query letters this week. If I don’t hear from her by the end of the weekend (which is the official end of the ‘one to two months’ time for a response stated on their website) I’ll start sending off multiple submissions to the next round of lucky victims.
Remember when I said I was eager to move on to this stage? I take it back.
I’m back at the beginning, sitting here with an empty Word document, a pile of half-baked ideas scribbled on notepads and index cards, and an empty mind. I thought that after having written one book it would be easy to start the next. I was wrong. The truth is, the last time I started a novel was three years ago, and it was in a very structured, guided environment. This time it’s just me, my computer, and the seeming swirling abyss that is my mind.
Plotting. It’s an exciting, yet painful process for me. Actually, it’s also painful for anyone who comes within a ten-foot radius of me while I’m doing it. I have a tendency to stop in mid-thought and say to whoever is in my line of fire, “What if…?” and then proceed to rant for up to fifteen full minutes. The What If game nearly drove The Architect to madness the last time I started a novel. This time seems as if it will be no different. I think it’s crucial for me to have a living, breathing backboard to bounce my ideas off of–even if I get only a confused stare as a response. There’s something about vocalizing ideas to prove how good–or, as is most often the case when I’m brainstorming, how utterly stupid–they are.
Since I’m so befuddled by this process, my next step should logically be to review my notes from the workshop that helped generate Resonance and see what it was we did first. The process obviously worked for me, so there’s no reason for the result to be any different, now. Maybe it will be the kick in the pants I seem to be so desperately needing.
I still find it odd that I can’t remember what we did in that class. As I said, it was three years ago, but at the time the information seemed monumental enough that I felt I’d never forget it. Then again, I once felt that way about cursive. Ask me to make a ‘Z’ in cursive now and you’ll get one of those blank looks I’m so fond of generating on the faces of others. I suppose new information has driven out the old, or at least forced it to retreat into a dusty filing cabinet somewhere deep inside my brain and thrown away the key.
Today is Lughnasadh, the harvest festival of the Celtic god, Lugh. He’s the patron god of all crafts, including poetry and writing. He’s the one to petition for advancement of one’s skills, to beseech for inspiration in one’s craft. So, despite my sluggishness of thought, I guess it makes today a pretty good day to be starting over.
Hell and Wheels 