Forget Celebrating Strunk & White

April 16 is the 50th anniversary of that little grammar guide, Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, but should writers celebrate?

One writer and professor, Geoffrey K. Pullum, says he won't celebrate in an article published recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Pullum ends his argument by stating, "I've spent too much of my scholarly life studying English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten rules."

Basically, Pullum argues that Strunk and White didn't understand or follow many of the grammatical rules the pair touted. Pullum also notes that some of the original text written by Strunk was later revised by White including additions and deletions that didn't exist in the original nor did those additions or deletions make sense.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed's web site is a subscription-based site, but here is the link to Pullum's article titled, "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice."

And here is an article that doesn't mention the bad quality of the advice but does talk about the anniversary published in Newsday.

And supporting Pullum's more recent article is an article published in 2005, which Pullum applauded, by Jan Freeman titled, "Frankenstrunk."

Touch Typing Typical?

I am a touch typist, which means I can type without looking at the keyboard. It has been years since my typing skills have been timed, but I suspect that I am well over 100 words per minute for typing, and pretty close to that when I compose as well.

I learned to type when I was a freshman in high school. I had one semester of typing, and we were typing on very old, very stiff manual typewriters. It was when writing was loud work (I love my silent computer keyboard, but even my silent version is a bit noisy.) Although I didn't know it then, that class was one of the most valuable classes I took in high school. Being able to type saved me a lot of time in the future. I can't imagine working with a deadline and not being a fast touch typist.

But I wonder if I am the norm among writers? Are most writers touch typists? Or am I strange?

And am I *really* a touch typist? I have the alphabet completely memorized, and I can type words without any hesitation what so ever, but I need to sneak a peak on the those rare occasions when I have to hit keys I don't normally use -- like most of the F keys and some of the less used shift options on the number keys like ^ which is what you get when you hit shift AND the 6 key. Confession: When it comes to touch typing numbers, I prefer the number key pad to the numbers spread out above the letters. Alas, my laptop does not have the number key pad.

And when it comes to all of the variables available on a computer keyboard like the function key and the windows key and the page up, down, etc., I have no idea. I don't use them often, and if I do, I have to look. But keys I use frequently, like the "CTRL, ALT, DELETE" combo, I figure out even though placement tends to vary from keyboard to keyboard.

I know it wasn't that long ago that I read a post by Jenny Crusie that she was buying a keyboard that was completely blank, and I knew as I looked at a picture of the black blank keyboard that I am not that good nor would I ever be that good. I can get by with the keys that I have worn so much that you can no longer see the letter, but I can't go completely blank on a computerized keyboard. I have been using my current laptop since May, and the N key is starting to get stabbing marks on it from my fingernails and the "N" is slowly disappearing. I suspect it will be completely gone sometime this summer.

I know that for me, I have to be a touch typist. I'd never be able to do the writing work that I do without the ability to touch type. But I realize that there is more than one way to be a writer. I've never tried options like the voice to text options, but I've heard good things about them. Plus once, long ago, I used to write by hand and then type things up on a electric typewriter with the aid of a lot of Wite-out and patience. So there are other options to knowing how to touch type.

I once tried to sell my electric typewriter in a yard sale, but my mom bought it. And for a while, I was collecting very old manual typewriters, but they take up a lot of space and are very happy. I now only own one Underwood, which is a very old manual. I've never really typed on it, but I like having it in my office.

And it seems I am not alone in hanging onto old typewriters. NPR promoted the love of typewriters with QWERTY Love. Read it at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100900163

What about you? Are you a touch typist? Do you have a typewriter lurking in your house? Has the computer changed the way you write?

WOW, Twitter and writing

Talk about title stuffing huh, but that's the kind of attention span I have at the moment.
Anyway...
World of Warcraft is eeeebil. With four capital E's. For a start, I'm finding it very difficult not to stand up and scream 'Pwned' at the top of my lungs in creative writing board meetings, and for seconds, I'm trying to find a way to incorporate writing and WOWing. And it' isn't happening.
The thing about World of Warcraft is it's repititon on an ever increasing difficulty slider, but it's more like this buzz tooth scale, cause for a little while, at your new level, you're a 'harder' target for most mobs (non player characters, controlled by the program, that you have to kill). It's a bit like writing really - in some ways at least. You write up the scale, 'level' and then things are easier for a bit, till you tackle the next 'boss'.
Screaming PWNED at your manuscript won't win you points though.

Twitter is one of those things I'm now discovering is an intregal part of my 'day'. Since I got myself a very shiny G1, it's easier to do social networking basics, like tweet, so my feed has become just as innane, but updated no matter where I am, so it's slightly more random. No Pwning (ok, I'll stop it now), but plenty of silliness abounds. The great thing about the updater I use is it does my facebook and myspace feed - the downside is 'is ' is three outta 140 characters, so I miss it off most of the time, so my Facebook looks kinda wierd.
I'm looking for more people to add to my feed though, so if you're there, feel free to @kaiberie me and I can add you (and you can add me, if you like ;))

Writing on the other hand, unless you include my tweets and WOWage has gone....interestingly. I'm still halfway through my degree, and it's kinda hard to keep focus, to be honest. I'm constantly tired, and headachey, and have been coping with the snow on top of that, but lately, I'm finding that my non creative writing stuff (psychology and crime) is making me write more fiction. Poetry is intermittently sucky, depending on whether I'm focussed enough or not (usually not) and blogging is a complete non starter at the moment.

And that's my round up. Now, I'm curious, as ever. If you had to choose three words to sum up your week, what would they be, why and what slant can you put on them?

And This is Why I Can't be Super-WAHM Every Day...

Or, "This is Why I Can't Stick to a Schedule"

It seems like it never fails: I craft my plan for the day or the week, carefully including all the different aspects of my busy week, then something derails it.

Some days I have monumental plans for being the ultimate writer, a model of efficiency, speeding through first drafts as if there was a fire sale on verbs. Then it happens: the interviewee is out of the office all day despite our scheduled appointment, or the school calls and I have to pick up my daughter, or the dog is sick and I have to haul out the carpet cleaner immediately or we'll have a weird green stain by the back door. (Okay, the last part was TMI maybe.)

Other days, the homemaking side of my life is at the forefront of my plans. I'm going to wash, dry and fold 7 loads of laundry, get $300 worth of groceries for $75, and finally repot that poor, wilting houseplant. Then the washer breaks, or the email dings with a rush assignment or, as is the case today, my favorite couponing site is kaput.

I'm not very flexible, really. Or maybe I'm just stretched so far that even ElastiGirl would snap under similar circumstances. Whenever a monkey-wrench is thrown into my plans, it takes me some time to wrap my head around this new course of events and switch over to a new groove. (<--That paragraph, my dears, is pure genius use of cliches and mixed metaphors. Not to be attempted by mere amateurs! :P )

Not every day is like this, of course. It's just that for every day that being a work-at-home mother seems to be the ideal lifestyle, there's a day when getting up early to shower, dress and commute seems easier.

I know it isn't true, but it's a nice little fantasy that wahm-types occasionally indulge in. It's ironic, then, that when I had an office job, I dreamt that being a writer working from home would be all rose petals and chocolate.

This has been another installment of the ongoing whine that can be heard across the Internet. :) It's not really all that bad - it's just that my $75 might only buy me $75 worth of groceries today.

Work/Life Balance

The problem with having a bunch of Writing Mothers blogging here is that we're all in the same boat as far as work/life balance is concerned. :) The question I always seem to have is which part is life and which part is work? The waters get murky in this respect.

I mean, is laundry work? Yeah, but it's sort of life, too. And NaNo? Which side of the scale does it belong on when you are a writer? What about visits to the school to volunteer in the classroom? Well, I guess that one is life, but it usually happens during work hours.

Blogging?
Networking? (Either via Internet or coffee with writing friends)
Planning and scheduling?
Housework and shopping?
Backing up the hard drive (and/or otherwise fiddling with the computers)?
Reading magazines, newspapers, blogs?
Participating in your country's election process?
Volunteering for a church or other charitable organization?

Are any of those things firmly in one category or the other? I can't tell.

If the measure of "work" is defined by income produced, then I guess I can say I have a little bit of work and a whole lotta life.

That's not a bad deal. :)

Freelance Writing Workshop, Direction and Goals

Today I'll be speaking to a local writer's group about freelance writing. I'm jazzed about the prospect of helping would-be freelancers get started, hopefully help them avoid pitfalls, and basically pay forward all that I've freely received from fellow freelance writers over the years. (I'm thinking of many, many Writing Mothers here!)

One of the points I want to make at the workshop today is to know why you want to freelance. There are many possible (and acceptable) answers. Whatever your answer, it should be YOUR reason.

Knowing what you want to get out of freelance writing helps you make decisions and direct your time and energy. If, for instance, your goal is to change the world with your words, spending hours perusing Craigslist in search of SEO gigs might not get you there. On the other hand, if your primary purpose is to earn an income from writing, that may be time well spent.

There's a poem I love by Ella Wheeler Wilcox that shows how a person's intent can drive his life regardless of circumstances. I have a sneaking suspicion that I've posted this before, but with uncertainty being the word of the day economically, politically and a zillion other ways, this poem offers a little bit of solid comfort.

The Winds

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sails,
And Not the gales,
That tell us the way to go.
Like the winds of the sea are the ways of men;
As they voyage along through life,
'Tis the set of a soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

The *facepalm* week

It's been a *facepalm* week. (swiped from the vernacular of my nine year old who idolises Homer Simpson. Everything is 'doh' or *facepalm*!)
I planned everything out meticulously - even worked out that if I break my tasks into blocks of half an hour, or an hour, I cope better than four hours of working on one project. I actually get MORE done mixing up my day a bit, instead of blitzing through everything in massive chunks.
So there I was, calendar ready. Everything fit. I mean - I even managed to plan stuff around my odd uni hours (my university insists on having classes at 15 minutes past the hour, instead of on the hour).

And then - facepalm moment. I'd done a bragging twitter about it (which I have since removed) and another freind responded in IM - so you even fit your non fiction and fiction writing in? WOW! go you.
*FACEPALM*.

No, no I hadn't. Queue lots of desperate scrambling. I think, by getting up two hours earlier a day, I can be a zombie, and at least be too tired to care that I'm not working on my books, and own projects this week - after all the rearranging I did, other stuff just seems to have seeped into my gaps.

Another facepalm moment - I'm giving a presentation, on a wonderful book, called Beloved, by Toni Morrison, at my uni...wait for it...on my birthday! And not just any birthday, oh no. It's my 30th, and mom is coming down especially. Woooooo.

Anyone else had any facepalm moments this week?
Anyone else wanna share thier twitter id?

The 10,000 rule theory

There's a suggestion circulating, that's been repeated in several formats, but that summarises down to 10,000 hours of writing before we become 'expert'.
So, at 24 hours a day, it takes just over a year and three months to master parenthood after our first child (discounting instinct and natural ability). I would say most parents agree with that idea - I know I still have my doubts about the 'newer' parts of parenting, and my kids are 9 and 7. At eight hours a day, every day, it would take almost three and a half years to become an expert writer. Longer if we're not writing for the eight hours a day.

Focusing onto writers specifically though, Hemingway/Bradbury it takes "1,000,000 words of crap" (Neil Gaiman said once, in a speech in 2005, that Bradbury said it - others have accredited it to Hemingway). If we're writing 10,000 hours to get to our 'expert' status, then we 'only' need to write 100 words an hour for eight hours. 100 words an hour is fairly low, so it got me to thinking about what else we'd need to master as a writer.
This is what I suggest, but I'm interested in hearing what people think on the theory.

• Writing - should take up the lions share of it, but believe it or not, it doesn't. 1000 words a day would burn through 1000 hours. That leaves 9000 hours.
• Before that, plotting, research - I'd say two hours per 1000 words is a generous allowance - and we're up to 3,000 hours.
• Afterwards - editing - another three hours per 1000 words. You can include the redrafting in there, and use some of your 1000 words a day, which would cut it by an hour a day. So that's 2,000 hours, taking us up to 5,000 hours.

That leaves 5,000 hours to master the other stuff writers need to learn. Promotion, networking, querying, effective critical analysis of our writing. Plus we can and SHOULD add reading into there, both fiction, and non fiction. And when you look at it that way, 10,000 hours isn't really all that much.

How about you? Do you agree with the breakdown? Even the most generous estimates on research/plotting is more than I currently undertake, but less than some writers that I know.

The result of all of this - no matter what way you look at it, is that writers have to buckle down and write. We have to continue to work hard at our craft - probably past the 10,000 hours that takes us to our goal.
I'll be doing articles on this over at Dynamic-author, but for the moment, I'm keen to hear what everyone thinks ;) More hours on writing, editing? Less on research and plotting? What's your take?

(x-posted to Mamaneedsabookcontract, Spirit-tome and my personal blog)

Conversations with the cat

We adopted a bengal cat about three months ago - with health problems that include sneezing goo worse than a toddler that has a cold and no hanky handy.
Having sat and listened to her though, I've been fairly amused to work out she has her own language - one 'meow' for I'm hungry, usually accompanied by licking, desperate snuggling up, headbutting and begging shamelessly. Unfortunatly, her old owner gave into this, where we're trying to train her that she eats at various times (and she's on a diet) so though I 'understand' that one, I try to ignore it. Mainly because feeding her at 4am is a bad plan.
The other is 'Ouwww' 'Ouwww'. She's insistent and firm when saying this - usually standing by one of the doors, or batting the glass of the back door and stretching up to nearly hip height, claws extended (she's a fairly petite bengal, but really long). We translated this to 'out please!'
And she gets out - she defends her territory, and comes in either looking a bit shame faced, or proud, depending on what happened and how dark it was.
You might wonder what this has to do with writing.
If you've got a muse like mine, you get the 'I'm hungry' behaviour (translated to 'write this piece now/pay attention to me!) - usually at 4am in the morning. 'Ouwww' 'Ouwww' or 'Out please!' for muses is usually just another 'pay attention' though, some people feel that thier muses/characters also encourage them to submit. Again, I know mine does. And just as Kushie refuses to go into the garden when it's raining, ten to one, your muse won't be at her 'best' when conditions aren't right. That said, and also like Kushie, 'muses' also need to be trained into behaving appropriately. If that means training yourself to sit down and just get on and write, then that's a good thing too.

Followers, time keeping and my biggest WAH bugbear

I noticed recently that blogger released this 'nifty' function called 'followers'. I'm wondering how different it is from things like myBloglog, because, to be honest, I'm not so worried about who is reading any of the blogs I work on (though, I, and everyone else at MNABC adore you all, it goes without saying) - but who is commenting, and more importantly, why they aren't. It's nice being able to see how many readers a blog has, but I think that metrics, like statistics, are fairly pointless. I've got a PR6 blog (it used to be PR9, and I...ahem...ignored it for a while) that has thousands of readers daily, and dozens of comments, but I write it simply because I want to). Most importantly of all, I'm always most interested in knowing people are enjoying themselves, but that's another one of those 'goes without sayings'.
The thing I love about social networking, blogging and everything that groups into that 'medium' is that it's always moving forward, which, at the moment I'm not.
I'm in the process of testing out yet more time management tools, now that I've discovered I spend 'oh my god too much!' time on email (it's coming out as my top 'task' at two hours every day!). I've been looking at goals and goal setting, specifically for writers, so I'll have lots of fun observations to share. Sorry, did I say fun, I meant, soul numbingly depressing that I didn't work it all out sooner.
Heather's also already hit on my biggest WAH bugbear. It even comes behind people not taking me seriously - spam.
I hate being 'spamvertised' at by people that should otherwise know better. And it's kinda sad to say, but since joining Haro, as that's an address I only USE for Haro stuff, I am getting spammed. Haro's owner has said that he'll take action though, so I might start forwarding the spam instead of deleting it out of hand.
Given my email is my biggest time drain though, it's really not helping my second goal....

So - anyone else got anything they want to get off their chests? Any bugbears? Disagree that spam is worse than not being taken seriously? Don't care about spam? I'd love to hear from you!

Hippo Barfday MNABC!

Image via Wikipedia How do you feed a blog cake? aha ---->
In all seriousness, Carolyn emailed us a couple of days ago and reminded us about our anniversary. I thought it was next month, which shows how much I was paying attention, huh?

This time last year was a mad rush of slo-mo organisation. The kids were going back to school, my mom was down visiting, I was getting ready for Uni. I was not the happiest or most settled of bunnies on the planet - stressed out to my eyeballs, trying to work out if we could even AFFORD University for me. Working through, desperately, the forms and information everyone wanted to have me send in. Accepting a place at a wonderful Uni (Gloucestershire, Francis Close Hall, which, this year, I'll get some snaps of ;)) and then wondering if I'm really worthy.

I could tell you - month by month - how hard it was - how fun it was - how amazingly validating it was, but instead, I'll let you in on a little secret - I still don't feel worthy. I'm a second year, passed with a 2:1, and am desperate to get back - which isn't for another month.
I've also had other milestones this year. We discovered my youngest has some fairly serious problems with her mental health, which I've been on courses, and support groups to help her with. The prognosis is better than it was when she started up, but we've still got a long way to go. That's OK though, because she's my daughter and I truly believe that we just need to find the 'right' solution for her. Mostly, at the moment, it's lots of cognitive behaviour modification, which is hard work, but seems to be paying off.
We adopted an adorable, if a bit sneezy cat, who has more allergies than I do! She wakes us up every morning by singing (licking, treadling and headbutting too) and goes to sleep at the foot of our bed every night. She's been with me eight weeks and made such a huge difference to my life and my outlook.
Writing wise, I've accepted posts, I've left posts. I've looked at contracts, but haven't signed (many) this year. Mostly, this has been a year of settling into my new world.
And my other half asked me to marry him...

Charting Your Progress

There is a white board that sits next to my desk, on it I catalogue my book progress. I'm a very visual person, so I know that I need this kind of motivation. Note the goal of "75K", "Sleep!", and of course "Beer!"

Every time I shut down for the night, I'd write down my word count. Sometimes I'd hide the word count by placing something in front of the lower left hand corner of my screen so that I wouldn't be tempted to look. Because you can bet that every time I paused to think of the right word or phrasing... my eyes would shoot down the left to see how I was doing.

Do you use any incentives or visual signs of progress during a big project?

Powerful Post of the Week

I'm on a group called MomWriters and recently we got into a discussion about women and writing. Fellow MomWriter Kimberlee Jackson wrote this powerful post and agreed to let me post it here.

~~~

I have noticed as humans we want to fit things into categories and label them forevermore as one thing or another; enter the stereotype. While no one has labeled women writers as the archaic "hysterical and emotional" there are plenty of people willing to put us in that category. As we scramble to earn a name in our respective genres I question if we are striving to measure up to those labels? If so, why? Do the comfortable labels fit so well? Do we shrug our shoulders and sigh accepting that womens writing has always been thought of as one way? Maybe so, but I read Virgina Woolf and note she was unwilling that women write like men but that they find there own voice not powered by emotion alone. Here is a passage from "A Room of One's Own":

"One has only to skim those old forgotten novels and listen to the tone of voice in which they are written to divine that the writer was meeting criticism; she was saying this by way of aggression, or that by way of conciliation. She was admitting that she was 'only a woman', or protesting that she was'good as a man'. She met that criticism as her temperament dictated, with docility and diffidence, or with anger and emphasis...She had altered her values in deference to the opinion of others" (121)

So I am of the opinion that as women writers, the struggle is to remain true. This takes guts to convey passion supported by facts rather than a strong emotion. No writing is more powerful. Emotion in writing is appropriate when something emotional is happening but must not be the driving force and power in writing.

Use emotion to fuel your research about a topic you have a healthy passion for and make the reader think. If you have the ability to write in such a way, the worlview of women's writing will change just as the reader's mindset will be changed by the way you write. Using emotion to thresh out the ideas you want to immortalize on paper is part of the writing process.

I believe in pushing the envelope. Am I able to write that way yet? I am learning. Do I fit neatly into one category? I don't know for sure, I guess I ought to find out and go from there. What do I like best about the women writers I've been intorduced to this past semester? Some of their words rattle around in my head and I think on them. The words stay with me. Do their words make me a better person? Not necessarily so but they cause me to think more deeply on the subject they are writing.

We studied Joyce Carol Oats and her writing on family issues made me think. I felt some strong emotional responses but it is not enough to just stop there, she gave me pause to wonder what my idea of family is and how we all differ in our family dynamics. She didn't create a platform that one family was better or worse than another but this was how she knew family to be. Oats didn't tell me what to think, she prompted me to think.

~~~

Thank you Kimberlee!

Who Am I?

Today we have a writer that I'm very familiar with because she's from my country! She's a PWACer, just like me! And an FLXer. (I think she's stalking me!) So, ladies, please put your hands together for Marijke Vroomen-Durning.

Hi, my name is Marijke and I’m – well – that’s the problem. Who am I?

I’ve never been one to suffer from an identity crisis. I’ve always had a spot in the world, however fragile it could be at times. But, sometimes I’m so many people that I begin to wonder who I really am.

The unarguable facts are that I’m a newly minted 47-year-old mother of three (for 21 years and counting) and wife of one (almost 23 years and counting). But I’m also a nurse, a writer, an editor, a quilter, a freelancer, owner of Dee, the greyhound (although Dee may argue that she’s the owner!), sister, daughter, friend, mentor and acquaintance. I’ve participated in groups where I felt I belonged and I’ve been part of groups where I’ve felt like an outsider. There have been times when I’ve felt invisible and other times when I felt like the elephant in the middle of the room. But which one of those is me?

I love being a mother but, I’ve never lived through my children. Some mothers become the super-mother and everything they do and think is about their children. I’ve never been able to do that. I always thought I was a bit on the selfish side because, I couldn’t do that. I am their mother, but a mother is not who I am. Does that make sense? I would take a bullet for my kids and I can’t imagine life without them. I feel for them and every hurt they have, it seems that I feel it 100 times over. I take such pride in their accomplishments, I think I’ll burst sometimes, and I quietly mourn their disappointments. But being a mother wasn’t and isn’t my meaning in life. At least, not that I know of.

With my oldest living on his own now, my middle one in university and my “baby” graduating from high school next month, my life is shifting from mom of children to mom of adults. It’s a very different way of thinking and it takes a different mindset. My role as mother is no longer the primary thing in my life. While they may need me from time to time to help them, they don’t need me. My job is pretty well done.

So, am I to identify more as a wife? No – I love my husband, but I don’t identify myself as a wife. Am I a nurse? For years, that is how I identified myself – I felt like being a nurse went to my very core because of my knowledge and because of my experience. But, I haven’t worked clinically in over a year now and only sporadically before that for several years, so can I/should I say I’m a nurse?

Am I a writer? Now that’s the one that gives me pause. Am I a writer? I think about writing all the time. I dream about it sometimes. I see things that need to be written; I hear stories that need to be told. I sit in front of the computer and start to write – and the words just flow, as they are doing now.

I read a good piece of writing and I get it. I get how the person made the words flow and helped me feel what he wanted me to feel. I read bad writing and cringe, because there are so many good writers out here in the real world.

Some writers see their work as just that – work. But that’s how I saw nursing. It was a job; sometimes I did it better than other times; I could be mediocre, and I could be really good. But writing, my writing. All I want to do is write. So, maybe I’ve finally discovered who it is that I am.

I am Marijke, mother of three adult children, wife of one, I used to be a nurse, and now I’m a writer.

And I like to think that I’m a pretty good one.

Marijke (which is pronounced muh-RYE-kah/keh) lives in Montreal, Canada and has taken her nursing background to carve a spot in the health writing world. She has started writing about other things, such as quilting. She writes for several blogs but the two she loves to work on most are Help My Hurt, a blog about pain and living with pain, and her newest one, Womb Within, a blog about the health and issues in pregnancy.

Things You Need to Get Things Done

If you've been a writer and a mother for any length of time, you know that there are things that you need or lean on that give you just a couple minutes of space so you can get your work done. TV is a popular choice, but of course, we could let our kids veg out for hours on that. Video games, too.

I admit that I’ve let my son play those in excess. But he goes through bursts where he would really play them all day long… and then he doesn’t touch them for a month. I think the binge playing isn’t doing too much damage! At least I hope note… I heard a rumour that his dad lets him play a few more adult games. We stick to Star Wars or Spiderman…

So here’s my ‘set up’ for maximum writing efficiency:

1) A great neighbourhood where you can kick your kid outside and let him play with neighbourhood kids. We actually pay more rent than our place is worth because there are at least five other townhouses in our complex where we know M can go play and the same number of friends who will come over and entertain him, and sometimes even his little sister.

2) A backyard, no matter how small. Ours is about 20 feet by 20 feet, fenced. It’s not huge by any means. But we put up a little gazebo so there’s mostly shade. My office (slash the living room and the kids’ playroom) is connected to the backyard via big patio doors, so the kids are in the backyard, but also just feet away. It’s like another room… yesterday we put out the outside chairs and moved the play bench outside… all things that had been taking up space in my office/living/play room all winter. The picture to the right is E, reading to herself in the backyard with her bear. I took this photo from my desk chair. No telephoto lens. ;0)

3) Good weather. Boy, Mother Nature and I have had our go-rounds. Waking up on the morning of a deadline when you were SO counting on good weather but instead it’s raining and your kids are inside, staring mournfully outside and wishing that they could go play. With the gazebo tent they can go out in a drizzle, but every once in a great while there’s this torrential downpour and it’s freezing butt cold and no one wants to venture outside at all.

What about you? Do you have something that helps you get writing done? A trick, a crutch, a technique?

Hit me with your best shot

Image via Wikipedia
Have you ever been in a position where you've gotten to exactly the point where you can take NO MORE.
No, seriously. One more assignment, problem, project...email and my head is going to explode.
I took the rather drastic action of 'restarting' all of my time management projects.
I bought myself a new piece of software, and I've found that I am actually now 'winning' the war on my email.
It did, of course, also help that I relented and enabled spamassassin on my server, but by and large, I am actually managing to work and write emails in between, instead of emails, and sandwiching work in the spare couple of seconds between it and the next PING.
I've just started a daily blog on how time management works, given I'm suddenly finding I actually have TIME (OMG, does this mean I can't procrastinate and have to finish my books!?) but I was wondering what valuable and important time management, stretching, or downright saving tips you've got.


I bet a couple of you are wondering what the tiger in the picture has to do with all of this? Well - one, its a fabulous photo - but two:
When you give yourself room to stretch or extend - life can hit you with its best shot, and you should be able to go 'and there's time to take care of that HERE' without breaking a sweat. We might all be mothers, and we might all be really busy, being full time *other stuff*, parents, carers, partners and everything else that we do, but it doesn't mean, necessarily that it has to take all of our time to do it. It doesn't mean that just because we're engaging in superhuman feats of time corralling and management that we're not capable of doing it in a way that gives us our own little pockets of time.
Now...if only I could learn to say 'No, I can't, sorry' more often....

Edits... I love the pain....

This week I received the first edits back on my first book. It's exciting. It's thrilling... and yes, it's a little painful. But it's a good hurt.

I've always said that I think I have the thickest writer skin on the planet. Go ahead, kill my darlings.

Of course there's always the thought that I like a good editor because a good editor makes ME look better. And yet, it never seems to be the other way around. You don't hear anyone saying "hey, that writer made that editor look really good!"

Now, this is only the first bit of the manuscript. I had a great phone conversation with one of the senior editors about how to handle the edits... and I'm so psyched to get started!

I think the best part is that between submission and getting the edits back I had a feeling about something. Not necessarily something I'd done wrong. Ok, yeah, something I'd done wrong... and that was the main concern. I've been thinking about how to make it better, now I can.

The one in which I confess my addictions...

As a writer, do you still read? If you do, has being a writer changed how you read? Is it still a pleasure, or is it work? What do you read?

As wonderful a theme this is, I blushed, looked at the floor, and metaphorically muttered something about addiction when I spotted this one.


I spend around £100 on books every few months. I save and save, and then go out to Waterstones, or similar, or onto Amazon.co.uk, and buy books. Mainly fiction, but I also buy non fiction on things like writing, self help and the current projects I have in mind (I start THEM with dummies manuals, cause I'm not the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to certain things).
I've got an excuse though, like every good 'junkie'.

I'm SUPPOSED to spend a small fortune, yearly, on books anyway, because its part of the requirements for being a student. Be a student, get the text books, cause though ALL the campus libraries are amazingly good, when there's 20 of us on a course, all wanting the same book, it can cause some interesting issues. So, to save those issues, I buy the core reading list without question or objection. And if we don't use them, that's OK, because I still read them.
Beyond the core reading list, I'm currently 'using' Uni as an excuse to extend my reading habits. I've spent the last five years reading a very narrow range of books, and only when my favorite authors (Terry Pratchett, Ian Rankin, Alistair Reynolds) and my favorite serials produce more books. I'll occasionally stray into other territories, but feel a bit like I'm scurrying back to comfort, so I rarely did that before Uni.
Last night though, after buying it on Friday and starting it on Saturday morning (and reading about an hour a day), I finished 'the Kite Runner'. It was fairly cool, but I'm beginning to see a pattern in 'literary work' that I don't like. And I'm glad that's not my chosen genre, for the moment.

One of the things I had to learn was not to pick. Instead I give myself the equivalent of mental indigestion by 'devouring' books whole. Reading them as if I didn't care about sentence structure, grammar, clever hooks, absorbing language...eating them like I wasn't a writer, and was simply reading them for the joy of reading.
How does that give me mental indigestion though?
The problem with devouring books whole is that if there is a huge error, your brain might try to fix it. MY brain does this on a regular basis, redesigning TV show plots when I could have 'done better' - rewriting whole book chapters for my own amusement. Consider it an antacid of sorts.
My prose lecturer took my antacids away. All I'm to do now is read. I can write, of course, but not 'rewrite' while I'm reading.
And so, when I read god awful books (which is also part of the learning process), I give myself a headache - or I get angry, up tight, agitated. My brain fills with bile, because its really annoying to see awful books come out. (I should pro ably say at this point that the Kite Runner isn't an awful book). It annoys me that writers are allowed to publish trash when there are amazing writers with brilliant stories still struggling to be discovered. It gives me 'mental indigestion'.

There are, to be honest, very few authors I respect enough not to rewrite stuff, or tweak it as I'm reading. I think that's what makes me a writer in the first place, I'm always on the look out for the 'best' way to tell a story - the 'better' way to express something - the 'right' words for that wrong occasion. And while I'm addicted to books, I'm more addicted to the craft of making books better. I love editing, even when the book is a 'literary' masterpiece. Or when its pulp fun. Just so long as I can see a way to tell the same story, in a different (and hopefully better) way, I'm fulfilling that need too.
See, I'm an addict. I'm addicted to writing - to language - to stories. I think my bank balance would prove it too ;)

It starts with...blood up the walls? Really?

I've been writing since I was four. Mom, somewhere in her attic, I suspect, has the little book I made, bound with wool, illustrated about as well as I can illustrate now, written in about four shades of crayon.
Heather emailed us and asked how we started - and when I got the email, I was midway between my hometown and my own home - we were travelling, 6 hours in a car, so I had plenty of time to think about how I 'start'. And I took some notes, I wrote some snippets. But I couldn’t really boil down to the root of where I ‘start’ my stories.
Five hours later, I still didn't have an answer, so I thought about it some more. And some more. Till I went to bed.
At which point, Elliot, my main protagonist "woke me up". And asked me why I'm ignoring the obvious.

And that's how it all starts - one of my characters wakes me up, and I have a conversation with them. I actually bicker with them, which is the funniest bit – my partner has told me that I argue with thin air, and have some really funny conversations about ballistic reports, and ongoing murder investigations – about the science of how my anti-matter drive works, or some interesting fact about magic. About the blood splatter pattern all over our bedroom wall, and what that can tell Elliot about the crime he's investigating.
It really bothered me for a while, but I found out that there's actually a medical explanation for it.
(Pay attention, here comes the science part ;))

Hypnagogic and Hypnapompic hallucinations occur as just as you go into or come out of REM sleep. Its usually fairly uncommon, as far as I've understood so far anyway, to have both - but I do, alongside bipolar disorder. They aren't considered 'sleep disorders' per se, but I'd say that people with the level of issues that I have probably feel like they are, to be honest. But, just like my bipolar diagnosis, I try to take the best from it.
I see everything from blood, to my characters, to things climbing on my bedside table, and more. It would probably be very funny if it weren’t for the fact that it really wrecks my ability to sleep properly.

There is an upside to this – I get some really GREAT material for my stories from these conversations and five minute flashes of visions. I keep a Dictaphone by my bed, and I tape it too.

Possibly slightly off the topic of the question, but I guess everything starts for me, just before I go to sleep, in my dreams or just as I wake up. How about you?

(oh, if you're interested in learning more about Elliot, please check out my newest site, DarknessPD - there's really not much there at the moment, but I'm putting up more every day, to support the NEW BOOK! WOOOOHOOO!!!!)

Me, Myself and I (Barriers)

Writing out in the deep end where my toes no longer feel the gritty sand on the bottom. The very tips of them occasionally catching a tenuous grasp before the waves of life come crashing over my head. At times riding the waves high in the thrill of just writing. Other moments allowing the waves to suck me under the surf... to wallow down with the dark things...the Not Good Enoughs.

I could blame the dog, who is small and inclined to chew everything from my favorite pair of sandals to laptop power cords. The dog, who needs to be taken out every half hour, only to return back inside and use my hardwood floor as a toilet. The dog, who reminds me of the toddler phase and why I'm done having babies.

Or maybe the munchkins, there are four. That's a good enough excuse, right? The munchkins with Science Fair projects times two, one of which involves the growth of mold in baby food jars on my bathroom counter. The Ethiopia project which required paper mache mask making and Ethiopian hut making out of pine straw with the help of a glue gun. After which my fingertips looked like someone had held them to a hot stove.

There is the housework. The laundry pile that never seems to get smaller. The sink that magically refills with dishes. The dentist. The doctor. The butcher. The baker. The birthday cake maker. Ok, I'm exaggerating just a bit, but you get the point.

But the truth is, it's really none of these. But rather me. My own barrier to my own success. To often frustrated, pulling back from it. Half heartedly writing, pursuing markets, working on editing the book (which really might kill me). So scared to fail, more scared to succeed.

But somehow despite myself, I can't stay away. I have to climb back up the cliff, sometimes slowly, sometimes sprinting to the very tip top. Plunging back in, feet first, right into the deep end. Where it's quite possible I might drown but it's also very likely I'll float right to the top.