Fire and Silk

A little background:

I was put into the hospital for 36 hours in January, so I could get a blood transfusion. Turns out I was incredibly anemic. As in the doctor couldn't believe how anemic and did the test twice. I was given two units of packed cells, which, I believe, is the iron equivalent of a gallon of blood.

And I've been recovering ever since.

Fastforward to today.

My mother is having some work done on her house, including some electrical work. So I asked about the electrician and for her to get his contact information. I have two outlets, separated by only a wall, that burned out with a dramatic *Pop* and need to be replaced. Possibly the wires need replacing, I don't know.

This afternoon, my mother calls and says, "The electrician is here. How about I bring him to your place, so he can get a look at that outlet."

Me? Panic.

"Um, no mom, he can't reach that outlet. I really need to clean."

Mom, bless her soul, reschedules for next week. I've got quite a bit of cleaning to do. Sigh.

You're welcome to comment, but it's probably nothing I haven't already told myself.

Tags: real life

I have a lot of hobbies.

I quilt, knit, write, cook, bead necklaces, make glass beads (with fire!) and now I’m playing around with silk painting. My sister is the same way, though she leans more heavily to the quilting and I to the writing.

During one silk painting workshop, the workshop leader was very taken by the quilters who’d sponsored the workshop. She was used to creating on her own, by herself, but she said she was impressed by what was obviously a “community of creative women”. There are people in that guild who participate in the guild, even though they no longer quilt – for a variety of reasons. But they’re part of the community and so they stay.

LJ is a community, going to conventions connects writers to a larger community, even twitter is a community and I hang out at Forward Motion for Writers (www.fmwriters.com) because of the community. I learn from other members and try to help the newer members when I can.

There’s a cooperative spirit – Let’s do this together! – that I find incredibly compelling. Those of you who’ve known me for awhile may remember that I’m also a potter, or I have been. I made beautiful pots at a charming local cooperative school and it was the community that kept me there for more than a dozen years.

Then things changed. They hired a director and a fund-raiser. I think they even had a governmental lobbyist, but he might have been volunteering his time and connections. It became much more of a school after that. Courses were decided on by how well they sold rather than “Hey, this would be fun to try!”

The people I used to hang out with left and, eventually, I left, too. We can make out own communities, though. Sometimes they outgrow us and sometimes we outgrow them.

Tell me, what sort of creative communities do you belong to?

And it's been HOT. We're in our third heat wave (officially, that's three days or more with temperatures of more than 90F) and stuff has been happening.

I did go away, but not terribly far away. Thrillerfest was held in New York City last week and it was simple for me to get to, so I went. A number 163 bus to the Port Authority and 15 min. walk and I was there.

I attended Craft Fest and Thrillerfest. They had an agent fest, where you pitch your thriller novel to agents, but since I don't have a completed thriller manuscript, I didn't participate in that.

I went to some awesome workshops, some very interesting panel discussions, bought bought books, and met Harlen Coben, R.L.Stein and Ken Follet (!). And I must say, Sophie Littlefield (author of A Bad Day for Sorry) is a gracious, charming person.

I am still processing and transcribing what I learned there and I am quite sure that I will be considering the things I learned in this blog. More to come....

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I teach at a museum, so I get to see all ages of kids, sometimes all in one day. Today, I had a great group of fourth graders and we were talking about vision. Human beings have great eyes, even though we've got lousy ears and noses – Dogs have us all beat to heck on that one. In fact, even if dogs had the brains to read, they don't have the eyes to do the job. Human eyes have special cells in the retina, so that we can see fine detail when we look straight at it. Dogs simply couldn't see the difference between the letters clearly enough to read.

And when I asked, these kids liked to read. Curious, I asked them what they liked to read. Almost everyone liked action stories. (I started taking notes in my head.) In addition to action, the girls liked mystery, some fantasy and some animal books. Almost every boy, though, said they read action and Science Fiction. Huh. I did not expect that.

Fourth grade is what would be called MG, Middle Grade. They're chapter books and the beginnings of genre, but not yet to what we'd call YA or Young Adult. When I was in what teachers now call upper elementary school, I read Nancy Drew and the mystery stories that Phyllis A. Whitney wrote: Mystery on the Isle of Skye and Secret of the Tiger's Eye. And I guess that "My Side of the Mountain" would classify as adventure.

I have two questions for you Flist:

1) What books did you read as a kid? What do you still remember?

2) What books are out there now for kids? Any you could recommend?

The problem: In some scenes, the secondary or supporting characters become generic. Any of the secondary characters could be support in this scene. How do I differentiate them?

My Solution: came about because one of the supporting characters wore a t-shirt to a picnic. It said "World Docs – Saving the World, One Patient at a Time". I realized that this was the perfect motto for this character and his motivation.

What if every character had a motto, t-shirt or not? That could be a way to distill the character to a phrase – just to remind me who I'm writing and give them a little definition.

So, here's the list of my characters' mottos:

Lani (MC) – I've got to stop people from dieing

Tomas Santos (Dr. and Love Interest): Saving the World, One Patient at a Time

Col. McKittrick – Get it Done

Scotty – Let's Go!

Jerry – How Does This Work?

Walter – In My Day…

Col. Davidson – Let Me Tell You About…

Josie – How are you doing?

Carson – Mine to Protect

Daniel – There more in the world than you've ever dreamed of – and I've turned my back on that part. Don't ask.

Not all of them are t-shirt worthy, but they distill the character and sometimes his/her motivation down to something fairly easy to remember. Scotty is action-oriented. Jerry is an engineer. Etc.

So far, it's working pretty well.

Sjaejones is of the opinion that even lousy photographs look better in black and white. Now, that might be true if the problem is focus, or some noise in the background. I tried several photos in greyscale and if the photo wasn't composed properly, B&W didn't save it.

Sometimes though, the subject is rendered more interesting without the colors to distract. Here's one that I'm pretty happy with:




Have a great Holiday to those in the States - a good Monday to all.

ETA: This is sjaejones' website: http://sjaejones.tumblr.com/post/648485131/im-convinced-all-photographs-look-better-in-black

It is Wednesday, isn't it?

Sorry - got sideswiped by some free food that had to be cooked yesterday, so forgot to post. Here ya go, a day late:

There is a certain day-dreaming quality to writing. We get stuck, we distract ourselves and we daydream about the characters. Our subconscious is working out who our villain is while we're driving. We're rehearsing dialogue in our minds while loading the dishwasher.

Lilith Saintcrow talks about this as "A State of Focused Wonder" here: http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/journal/2010/01/a-state-of-focused-wonder/

This back-brain daydreaming is how I get to know my characters and their story. Some of my daydreams make it into scenes, most of them don't. But all of them help me to get to know my characters.

I'll sometimes free-write information about a character, sometimes it comes in a brainstorming session with fellow writers (thanks Meg!) and sometimes it happens while I'm driving to work.

Below is what I wrote after a brainstorming session for a new character in my current WiP:

Name: Walter Lang, early 50's

Career Army – Chief Warrant Officer and part of the RRT team

Archetype of the Mentor – Dumbledore or Gandalf – Walter's helped Lani, but just before they go on their first disaster, he tells her that he's retiring. She'll need to lead the team herself.

Married, his wife is Mary Alice. She's getting him to quit smoking. She's a small thing, and fierce.

Walter is uncomfortable around brass (officers), but he likes Scotty and Jerry – they're mechanics and geeks, too. But Tomas and McKittrick make him twitchy. Lani is okay because she's a civilian.

Walter is a Loggy - a logistics specialist. If you want something done, talk to Walter. The flip side is that if Walter doesn't want it done, it isn't done.

He wants to see Lani succeed. He wants to retire. He wants to pass along the torch.

And here's the bit of scene that came out of that:

The main office where we work is a hive of activity. We really don't have one office to ourselves; it's more like we've got a corner of a huge base office over by Colonel McKittrick's office. We call it the Pen. I think it's something like the bullpen. Everything around here is some kind of baseball metaphor.

There are times that it feels more like a federal pen than a bullpen; getting from one end to the other can be like navigating traffic in Indianapolis. Without traffic lights.

It was the normal chaos, with ensigns and lieutenants delivering papers and reports to the mucky-mucks. I don't think I heard anything, maybe I saw something. Over by the main entrance – the door to the outside – a tall man with white hair just stood there, looking around. At first, I didn't recognize him. I guess context does matter. It was Walter Lang and he was definitely out of his element. He had something clutched in his hand, held close to his body, and he looked about as lost as someone six foot four could look. He looked like he needed rescuing.


How do you get to know your characters?