I’m so frustrated! All morning I put off printing off my manuscript (the older one, not my new NaNoWriMo project) which is 503 pages long. I’ve been going through WordPress themes, delivering newspapers, eating… generally doing everything I could to procrastinate. Finally, I said, ‘That’s it! I’m going to do it!’ (Yes, I talk to myself when I’m alone.)
So I went into the room where the printer is, and got started. Two hundred and fifty pages and I ran out of ink in an almost brand new cartridge. 250 pages! This thing is going to cost me $70 to print… and that’s just a draft!!
Who knew writing could be so bloody expensive?
So, my novelist buddies out there in WordPress land, and anyone else who prints vast amounts of text for whatever reason, do you take care of your own printing needs on your home printer? Or do you take it to a professional?
And either way, how do you afford to write?
Ugh.
Blog post of December 3rd, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out! It’s not too late to join in!
So I was walking across the main road that’s on my paper route when I passed over this for the first time:
There I was, standing in the middle of the road, wondering why they would print the word “Danger” on a manhole cover. It’s in the middle of the road! Cars drive over it all the time! So I took this picture.
Luckily, I got out of the way before a car came.
Blog post of December 2nd, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out! It’s not too late to join in!
In honour of my new friend, Dylan Dailey, I am going to attempt to write a blog post every day in December. It’s not going to be easy, what with Christmas coming and having the family to take care of, but what the heck. If I can make it through NaNoWriMo, why not EvDaDaDec?
Is it a good sign that I want to blow up everyone in my NaNoWriMo novel? I’m thinking a nice gas explosion would come in handy right about now. Unfortunately that would mean killing off the narrator. I doubt that would go over well in most literary circles.
I think the most creative way I’ve written for anyone to die has to be my story of the unluckiest man alive:
In case anyone is interested, and because I promised I’d post it, I thought I’d let you know that the short story I wrote for my course is up on The Community Storyboard.
It’s the story of a man who lives an alternate lifestyle, who is faced with suddenly having to look after his ailing parent.
I received a 26/28 for the unedited version – what you’ll see is the edited version, which I submitted to my professor today for my final mark. Feedback is welcome and appreciated.
I’ve been seriously thinking about how much my own tastes influence my fiction. The other day, my characters were in a restaurant and I purposely made them order something I, personally, wouldn’t eat.
It occurred to me that maybe I’m thinking about this too much – micromanaging my story. But the fact is, they’ve gotta eat. And I find it boring and not really credible that they’d like ALL the same things I do. If for no other reason than every character in every story I ever write always eats the same group of foods, I feel like I have to change it up once in a while.
Is this something you’ve put any thought to? If you’re a vegetarian, do you ever have your characters eating a nice juicy steak?
How else do your characters not reflect your tastes? (Human characters, that is.)
I read once, when my kids were very young, that a baby who laughs when it is startled is a baby who trusts his or her mother. It’s something that I found followed through to their toddler years and beyond. I joked with my kids that I was going to do horrible things with them; cook them and eat them for dinner for instance. They’d laugh, knowing I would never do such a thing, because they trusted me.
There was one instance that I will never forget and I try not to regret for the simple reason that it taught me something.
I was leaving the pool where Alex was, at the time, doing physiotherapy. He wasn’t walking yet at the time, so he must have been less than five years old. I carried him out of the building, loaded with purse, swimming clothes and Alex all in my arms. I remember it was cold. I put him down on the curb in front of the car but to the side where I could see him, so I could wrestle my car keys out of my coat pocket. Had a car come, I was prepared to stand in front of it to prevent him being hurt. I proceeded open the doors and put the bags in. Then I waved goodbye to him and pretended to get into the car, expecting him to laugh. He knew I would never leave him there by myself. But instead of laughing, he smiled at me and waved back.
Whether he didn’t understand the joke or not, the vision of that tiny little boy sitting bundled against the cold, waving goodbye to me with a trusting smile on his beautiful, innocent face, still brings a tear to my eye.
Our children live in the world we construct for them. Whether they are healthy or sick, they can learn to be happy from us as parents because they trust what they see – the example we set. Alex spent the first eight months of his life in the hospital. All he has ever known, from birth, is pain. To this day he wakes up almost every morning with reflux, trying to vomit past an operation he had at six months of age called a fundoplication – basically, a knot was tied in his esophagus to prevent anything coming up. And yet he is the happiest child I’ve ever met. Other people observe this and ask me if he’s ever unhappy. It’s all he’s ever known. He sees me deal with his morning time retching with ease and he is reassured that it’s normal.
One day I know he will find out that it’s not. Will he stop trusting me at that point? I have no idea. It’s for sure that I’ll have the task of assuring him that even if it’s not something everyone experiences, it’s just the way he is, and that’s okay.
The point I’m trying to make I suppose, is that our children are our sponges. They take from us what we show them, and whatever that is, they trust it, because from the very beginning, we are all they know. I hope, for my own part, to preserve that for as long as their personal experiences away from me will allow. And that they will continue to laugh all their lives.
I just typed three words into a new post. I saved it. It counted two words. This post counts twenty eight. There are actually twenty nine. Check it out.
Write what you know; write what you know; yes, yes, okay we get it already. But have you ever wanted to write who you know? Fictionally that is.
When I write, I write characters. Plots in my stories, are secondary. I take, for instance, a scenario, ask ‘what if?’ and off I go. Once I have a character in place, they decide what happens in the circumstance I put them in.
I know a few people very well. Family, friends – I can’t help but know them. The people I don’t know very well, I study. I watch the way their expressions change when they talk about certain topics that they love or which scare them… you get the picture, right?
But there’s that saying again. That rule. Write what you know.
Now say, for instance, I was to write about someone I adore. They probably wouldn’t mind. They’d be able to hold my bestseller up high and say, ‘This is about me!’ and they’d be proud to do it. But what if I wrote about someone who I don’t respect? Or someone whose personality is less than scrupulous? I wouldn’t use their real name, of course. And the story would not be the one they lived in real life. But they’d know. And I’d know that they knew. And then I’d have to wonder; are they planning to do something devious to smite me? After all, they aren’t the most the most pleasant person to deal with in the first place. How far will they go?
Write what you know. I know very little about ‘things,’ but I know a lot about people. About characters and what makes people tick.
Have you ever ‘written’ someone you know, fictionally? How would you feel if someone ‘wrote’ you?
