The good news is, I’m getting some editing done. I’m allowing my imagination to wander and I’m picking up on my character’s vibes; getting their words from their mouths to the page, as well as their actions and their thoughts. Spending some serious concentration on my novel is something I’ve been trying to do for a while, though it’s not likely to last into the weekend. Unfortunately, my ex crapped out on me yet again, so I have the kids. Again.
The bad news is, it seems that all I’ve been able to do for the last couple of days is be creative. So while my right brain takes the lead I haven’t been able to come up with anything to write about on my blog. I’m all kinds of imagination and no real life. It’s a good way to be – I think so anyway.
Still, in a way it’s frustrating. When I’m “in” my novel, I walk around the block on my paper route and I see nothing around me. The absence of photos these past few days (is it weeks already?) is proof. I go into this trance-like state, sometimes even walking right past the houses I’ve been delivering to for two and a half years now, and having to back-track. My family has to say things to me three times before I understand the words. Which is interesting to me, because according to the research I just did, the left brain (that I’m not using very much of these days) is responsible for words, among other things.
I suppose I should be pleased about this. In my experience it’s hard to get to the point I’m at right now, able to use my creative side. When I’m pulled out of it usually, by having someone interrupt me when I’m trying to write, I get so annoyed that it takes me hours to go back, if I can at all.
It must, however, be extremely inconvenient for anyone who tries to interact with me when I’m like this. Wouldn’t you hate living with a writer? I would.
I must check to see if I start off with my left foot to go up and down stairs when I’m right-brained…
After posting about yesterday’s disaster of a day, I thought I’d write a quick update on how my today is going so far.
To start with, I slept in an hour past the time I ignored my first alarm, so I didn’t drag myself out of bed until 6:30 – which is like noon for me. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little. But I’m not beyond saying truthfully that I was exhausted. That meant Alex didn’t get on the bus this morning, because he was still feeding when it came by. The good news is, he was feeling much better. For him it was like yesterday never happened, which makes me want to scream in frustration and cry with joy, simultaneously.
With him off to school, I gathered up my laptop for a trip back to Best Buy, to complain that they didn’t fix my problem. I was told first off, that they didn’t change the battery after all.
Me: But… you told me you did! (This was to the same Geek Squad guy I talked to yesterday.)
Geek Squad Guy: (Looking through a pamphlet.) They didn’t change it because it wasn’t under warranty.
Me: But… I was told when I brought it in that it was.
Geek Squad Guy: Hmmm… (wanders away)
For a full two minutes (2 minutes!) I stood and stewed. Then he came back.
Geek Squad Guy: Your warranty didn’t cover the battery, but I just talked to my manager and I’ll order you another one and replace it for free. Sorry about the confusion.
Me: (Jumping up and down with glee and reaching over the counter to kiss him…) (Okay, not really. I might have smiled a little.) Thanks.
Their extended warranties are a bit pricey, yes. But they’re so worth it. My first laptop proved to be a lemon. They replaced it with a brand new one, two and a half years after I bought it, after three major repairs. Can’t really beat that. The one that replaced it had a problem with the power cord connection (in the machine) so I sent it back with a week left to go on the three year warranty. It came back with that fixed, plus they discovered it needed a new motherboard; it hadn’t broken yet, but was on its last legs. And now that they have a free loaner program, even if I end up with a lemon, I’m never without a computer. I actually HOPE I buy a lemon.
I was walking out of Best Buy at 12:45 today when I got a call from Alex’s school. He was in the office, feeling unwell; would I come and get him. That’s not really a question. Ever. It’s a command. So I threw gently placed my newly repaired laptop in the car and drove over to get him. Best Buy had had my laptop for a week. It was shutting down without warning on battery power when the charge reached 66%. I figured it was a defective battery – they changed both it AND gave it a new hard drive.
Anyhow, I got to the school and was informed that my darling little son was feeling tired and wanted to go home. Yeah, not much of a reason. BUT, one I have no choice but to take seriously. First was the arrhythmia from the weekend, coupled with cold sweats a couple of days ago and then I was informed by the teacher that his lips had gone blue three times last week (thanks for letting me know sooner) and this all adds up in my mind to congestive heart failure. Regardless of the fact that he just went for an echocardiogram last week that showed no new problems, and ignoring the impish look of “I’m faking this” on his dear little face, I decided to take him to the emergency.
Six (count ’em) 6 hours later, we arrived back home. The EKG they did today showed there were no issues with his heart – neither did the x-ray. However, I must give honourable mention to the people who kept me entertained in the waiting room. The first was a heavily tattooed lady who lost her $1.50 in a vending machine and proceeded to inform a security guard at the top of her lungs, “IT WASN’T JUST A PENNY!” The second, and most impressive by far, was an elderly lady who clearly had no idea where she was, demanded in a tone fit for a Shakespearean Queen to be let out of her cage. Seriously, if that woman wasn’t still an opera singer – and her annunciation! It was out of this world!
Where was I? Oh yes, back at home. I ate my dinner while Alex was hooked up to his feeding pump and then I got my laptop out. New hard drive meant all the crap that comes with a factory-installed OS was present and accounted for, as was the particularly loathed Internet Explorer. So I’m sitting on my couch, miserably getting rid of everything I don’t want and … poof! 66% the laptop shuts down.
I’ll be taking the computer back to Best Buy tomorrow. Hopefully I won’t be taking the kid back to emerg. Still, don’t really know what’s wrong with either of them.
So Alex and I were rolling pennies this morning and I was starting to realize I keep too much. Not only change, which sits on tables, in jars, and in the case of what we were rolling, a four litre juice container (it was heavy), but all the ‘stuff’ I’ve accumulated over the years.
I’m also trying to sell my mother’s condo, which is full of ‘stuff.’ Three bedrooms worth and not really enough room to sort it, so there are boxes on their way, courtesy of my dear friend John and his pick up truck, that will go into my basement to be emptied and sorted. Then I’ll have a garage sale to get rid of said stuff…
…which will probably land me a bunch more change to roll. Does it ever end?
Stress is something everyone feels, if not on occasion, then constantly. Though we’re all different, and there are certain things or combinations of things in our lives which cause it, it has approximately the same effect on us all.
It raises our blood pressure, causes in us either adrenaline or exhaustion, usually one on the heels of the other. It does wondrous things to our bodies – gives us headaches, makes our skin break out in rashes and can give us pain where we didn’t think it was possible to have it.
But. There’s always a but. Stress is invisible. It can’t be counted; it can only be felt. It can only be seen by the ripping out of one’s hair and the stomping about of one’s feet, or the squealing of one’s wheels on dry pavement. Explaining it is near impossible to someone who doesn’t understand how much we’re under.
There are scales for pain: you can see them hanging on hospital walls. But what if there was such a thing as a stress scale? How would it look?
On a scale from one to ten, for myself, one would show a picture of me banging my shin against the foot of my spare bed, that has been out to get me since I inherited said bed with the house I’m living in.
Three would be the bed plus dropping everything I touch in the space of fifteen minutes. I have days like that.
Five might be getting in the car and turning the key to a click instead of the firing of pistons when I have an appointment to get to.
Seven to eight is being interrupted ten minutes after I sit down to write, and I just have my head in whatever I’m trying to concentrate on… eight being the fifth time in as many minutes.
But ten? Ten is having my son tell me he’s tired and putting my ear to his chest to find that his heart is in arrhythmia, going 90 beats per minute for a few beats, and then down to 30 for a few and back again. Adds up to a decent 60bpm, but there’s still the question, do I take him to the hospital or not? I’m alone with two kids, neither of whom can be left alone. This is where my stress level was two nights ago.
And so I thought, maybe I should make up a scale for my family so they know when not to push my buttons. Because no one wants to get in the line of fire when I’m reaching five, let alone ten.
What do you think – not for me, but for yourself? Might a stress scale lessen the number of stress-induced conflicts in your home? Something to consider, I think.
My day started with a nightmare and a strange noise at 1:30am. The dream terrified me, the noise that I woke up to paralysed me for about five minutes. It sounded similar to my tormentor, Giggling Bob, only closer: Giggling Bob is in a box on the opposite side of the house to my bedroom. Other than not being quite the same noise, it wasn’t Bob’s usual time of 3:14. The conclusion can only be that Bob has invited a friend into the house.
So after five terror-stricken minutes, I picked up my cell phone and called my best friend John, who luckily is working nights this weekend. I wouldn’t have called him otherwise, knowing how precious sleep is. Being the nice guy he is, he talked me down from my panic to the level where I was able to put on pants and get up to check that all the doors were locked. They weren’t – the garage door was open. But after a quick trip around the house to make sure the kids and I were alone (with John still on the line) I went back to bed and, after a full hour of being on the phone, went back to sleep.
To properly explain the next part of my story, I must back up a bit. Last week I scratched the roof of my mouth. It’s been so resistant to healing, and so painful, that I decided to fast today to give it a break. Knowing that the kids would be going with their dad tonight, I wasn’t worried about being hungry well into the evening – I could go to bed early. I’m exhausted anyway from my adventure of the wee hours of the morning. Two proverbial birds with one stone and all that.
Can you hear the scratching of a record needle? Of course you can. My ex texted me to say he wasn’t coming.
In the meantime, I had a doctor’s appointment for my shoulder (which has been hurting since January) so I thought, why not ask him to take his handy-dandy light thingie and shine it in my mouth to see what’s wrong in there. One prescription later, I’m now the proud owner of something I didn’t know existed – steroid-laced dental paste.
Dry your palette with a paper towel, the pharmacist said, (eww) and then put the paste on your thumb and spread it on the roof of your mouth. But don’t try to rub it in. It has to stay there. Just a layer of paste for at least half an hour. And don’t lick it.
….
Do you have any idea what happens to your mouth when you can’t allow your tongue to touch the roof, and you’re thinking about it? You drool. Try to swallow without touching your tongue to your palette. Go ahead. Do it now.
See what I mean? Now sit like that for half an hour.
Now it’s 10:40pm on the same day I woke up terrified. I’m exhausted, waiting for Alex’s feeding pump to finish doing its thing, I’m starving, I’m drooling, and I still haven’t figured out if I have yet another possessed toy in the house to terrorize me in the middle of the night.
If I do find the toy though… it’s going home in my ex’s trunk the next time he picks up the kids. WITH Giggling Bob.
Vocabulary is a topic that is close to my heart. From a very early age, speech and its nuances have been a major point of interest: although I was born and have lived in Canada my entire life, I was (I used to say) born with a British accent. My parents came to Canada eight years before my birth with their best friends another couple with whom they chose to emigrate from London. I was taught to speak by the four of them, and so even when I started school I sounded like I’d just gotten off the boat. I was teased relentlessly. To this day I retain some of my accent.
Through my school years, I paid particular attention to the English language. Grammar, even in speech, is a big deal for me. You won’t catch me saying ‘anyways’ or ‘ain’t’ unless I mean to, and never shall a double negative be uttered when I mean ‘no.’ And so the problem I encounter when writing dialogue is having to pay attention not only to what my characters say, but also to how they speak. Speech patterns vary from background to background, depend on education (sometimes) as well as geography, not only taking into consideration the setting of the story but where their parents lived even before they were born.
It dawned on me while I listened to a cashier in a store that though we come from the same province, ‘she don’t care what her grammar’s like.’ And I have no example of this in my novel. Vocabulary isn’t just the use of big or small words. It’s not even just about accents. Grammar is a huge part of who we all are.
You’re lining up to cash out at the grocery store. There’s a guy in his mid-twenties behind you and a woman in front of you. The woman is arguing with a child who wants a chocolate bar. You think to yourself, just buy it and shut the kid up. The guy behind you says as much under his breath but loud enough for you to hear. Which one of these people do you relate to? If you actually thought, just buy it… then it’s the guy behind you. On the surface you are in cahoots. But if you’re a parent, you probably thought, that poor woman, and chances are you relate to her on a deeper level. Why? Because you probably share experiences.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the things which connect us as human beings are that which we relate to when we read a book. The more we can relate, and get into the mind of the protagonist or even the antagonist, the more we’ll enjoy the novel.
Back to my scenario at the beginning. Assuming you’re a parent, you can probably understand on some level what it’s like to have a child who, at one time or another, acted out. Yes, there are people out there with perfectly behaved children in public. Perhaps they only go out on days that the sun shines. I have no idea. But not to belabor the point, let’s go instead to the guy standing behind you. If you agreed with him then you can relate, but only to a point. His situation and his attitude aren’t as obvious as the harried mother’s. But that doesn’t mean you can’t write a book he’d be interested in reading. It probably wouldn’t have children in it. Then again, the mother’s ideal novel probably wouldn’t either. She’s looking for an escape.
So is the solution to never put kids into your novels? Maybe. Or maybe you just need to think about who is going to relate to your characters–their lives and their emotions–to find your target audience.
There’s a contest going on at a local radio station at the moment to promote the concert and to give away tickets for the band Wheatus. You might remember them – they sang the song “Teenage Dirtbag.”
(great video)
To win the tickets you must write about your own experience with a dirtbag and send your story in to the station. This got me to thinking (as things do) about how one doesn’t really need to resort to watching “Criminal Minds” to find a villain for their story. Most of us, if not all, know people in real life who would make perfect villains. All that’s required is to amp up their faults either a little or a lot.
Take the jock in the video, for instance. He pisses off his girlfriend when he throws something at the nerd. Bullies like this are everywhere – not just at school.
True story: A couple of years ago, my mother was in the parking lot of the local mall when she grazed another car going around a corner. She was supposed to meet up with me inside the mall that day, and she didn’t know what to do, so she came to find me. Someone, meanwhile, witnessed the accident and wrote two notes; one they left on my mom’s windshield and the other on the windshield of the person she hit. I don’t remember exactly how it went down, but I contacted the owner of the damaged car. Luckily, I didn’t let my mother deal with the asshole.
He told me he wouldn’t put in a police report if I would agree to pay for his repairs. I said fine – it wasn’t much damage. He was going to get it fixed right away. When it was done, he called me to say it would be $300. This is how it went from there:
Me: Okay just send me the receipt for the repair.
Him: No.
Me: I’m not giving you any money unless I see the bill.
Him: Don’t you trust me?
Me: (thinking, no I don’t) It’s not that I don’t trust you, I just want it for my records.
Him: What do you need the receipt for – are you a bookkeeper or something?
Me: Yes I am.
Him: Well maybe I’ll just call the police. You don’t want this to go on your mom’s record, do you?
Me: Not really, but I still want the receipt.
Him: (getting angry) Look, I’m giving you a deal here. You should be paying me more than $300 for my inconvenience. I had to go without my car for two days. Doesn’t my time mean anything to you?
Me: No.
I hung up on him and took my mother to the police station to report the accident. Her insurance paid for her damage and his paid for his. And that was that.
Classic bully. What a villain he would make.
Have you crossed paths with a villain? Please share your experience in the comments!
I sit here writing this in a state of exhaustion. If you’re a parent, I’m sure you’ve been here. Up since 4am with a child who can’t see the merit of sleeping when tired, but can only scream and cry, I’m just about ready to do the same. Most of us go through a stage when this occurs on a daily (or nightly basis) but even when that less-than-delightful slice of life is over, it can come back with a vengeance during the holidays.
But they’re supposed to be fun, aren’t they? Relatives come to visit, or we go to visit them; everyone has an extra day off work or school or daycare; there’s great food to be eaten; there’s excitement in the air because everything is different! So what’s the problem?
First, many kids can’t handle the excitement. The pressure to be good for Santa, or in this weekend’s case, the Easter bunny can be overwhelming. They don’t know what to do with their energy when all the adults are telling them to please be quiet, and at the same time ignoring them because they haven’t seen Aunt Agnes and Uncle Ralph in ages. Between that and the preparations or the traveling, the kids will start to be annoying because it’s their only way to get the attention they want. The result: anxiety all around.
Second, schedules go down the tubes. When everyone is going about their daily routine, whether it be the weekday one or the weekend one, kids know what to expect and when to expect it. The holidays present an exception to just about everything. For a small child, even the fact that he or she isn’t being served spaghetti as usual on a Saturday evening can be a cause for a little extra glee.
How to combat this depends on the child. With my two who weren’t afraid of Santa and the Easter bunny – or even the tooth fairy – schedule was essential. It was all different, yes, but by letting them know what to expect ahead of time, for instance when people would arrive, what we’re having to eat, when we’re leaving and getting home etc., they could at least anticipate how they needed to behave and when. This way I was able to spend time with them when I wasn’t busy, and they knew that then was the time to have my undivided attention. Allowing them to help out with the preparations was always a good way to spend time with them and still get something done, as long as I allowed for the extra time it would take.
Allowing them to have a say in the decision making as well, was a great way to get through the day. It gave them a sense of control, even though the choices I asked them to make were unessential to what I had planned. For instance: we’re leaving at noon – do you want to wear this coat or that one? This is something I’ve carried through to every day life, and I find it amazingly helpful in getting anywhere. Or in the case of preparation, I would ask them where they wanted the decorations placed. Thanking them for their good decisions also aided in making them feel as though they were being well behaved, taking some of the pressure off and with it the anxiety of being good enough to receive their gifts. This is something I personally disagree with, by the way; I won’t deny them the treasures of the holidays. Rather, I will take away the extras they receive during non-holiday events, such as a favourite activity.
So you get through your day and it’s the night before. Excitement is at an all time high at bedtime because a special visitor is coming while they sleep, to leave gifts. You put them to bed praying that they won’t get up and catch you doing the deed. It’s even worse if the anxiety includes fear of the “beloved” character who is shoved down their throats sometimes month in advance of this one highly stressful night. What happens then? Right. I’ve been awake since 4am.
And so we go back to Alex’s fear of the dreaded bunny etc., and that’s the one I haven’t figured out what to do with. Alex’s anxiety isn’t, I’m sure, unique to only him. It keeps him awake at night, which is something even we adults can relate to.
I’d love to hear any suggestions you have in the comments. For the rest, I hope you can take something from this: I hope it helps.
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