Winner, NaNoWriMo, 2012!

Finally, after three failed attempts, I did write 50,000 words in 30 days (well, 29 days to be exact).  It wasn't easy, and a lot of the book is not good.  I have, in fact referred to a good bit of it as "literary pink slime".

But aren't all first drafts?

I'm going to have to pull between 15,000 and 20,000 of those 50,000 words out and replace them with much better words in the near future. And I'm still only about two-thirds done with the novel, so I'm still writing like a fiend.

But I'm finished with paralegal school this week, too, which will free up much time to put toward getting that done.  I'm not touching the pink slime yet, until I finish a first draft that can at least give me a solid idea of the story.

Thanks to all who supported me and cheered me on.  I'm relieved to know that I can actually do it.  For a while, I didn't think it was possible for me.

Giving Thanks

I'm thankful for the end of the National election.  I am thankful for the outcome of it.  I'm thankful things seem to be progressing.  I'm thankful for my job and the people I work with. I'm thankful I've found my niche there.  I'm thankful that, as hard as it can be at time, I get to be in Sylas' and Savannah's lives every day.

I'm very thankful that there has been a cease-fire in the Middle East.  I'm also thankful that things seem to be turning around for the economy.  I'm thankful there's an Occupy movement.  I'm thankful I have a home.  I'm thankful I've got over 25K of my novel written.  I'm thankful I have supportive people who cheer me on.

I'm blessed. I'm fortunate. And I'm thankful.

Love and peace this Thanksgiving.  Please... stay out of the stores.  Stay home with your families and let Walmart, Best Buy and Target employees do the same.

Mahalo.

NaNoWriMo - Update

A little bit behind, but not so much I can't catch up over the holiday long weekend.

Day 16:  20,626 words.  (I should be at around 26,666 by now.)

I wrote 4,013 words yesterday. Wow! Doubt I can do that again today.  I really do have to get some work done at some point.

I made the mistake of actually THINKING about the book today.  Never a good idea on a first draft.  I must remind myself that I am just the writer.  I have no idea what the book is about yet, or where it's going, or what it's trying to tell me.

My job right now is to build a world and people it with interesting characters, and they will tell the story when they're darned good and ready, and not before.

Breathe... in... and out....

P.S. Have you heard? Barack Obama is the President of the United States for the next four years.  Yay!

NaNoWriMo - Update

So far so good.

Day 2, 4,103 words.  According to the NaNoWriMo word count api, if I continue at this rate, I'll be done by November 24.

I have no idea what I'll end up with by the end of this month, but maybe it'll be something worth reading by the end of this year.

Oh, and...

It's my birthday today.

Happy birthday to me.

Five Days Until... shhhhh....

Yes, I'm doing NaNoWriMo again.  Yes, it's my fourth attempt. No, I have never successfully completed 50,000 words.

But this year... I have a feeling...

Wish me luck....

Book Review: The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

J.K. Rowling’s follow-up novel to the Harry Potter series doesn't have a witch, wizard, house elf or centaur in sight. The setting for this book is completely earth-bound. The only garden gnomes you’ll find are of the ceramic variety, sitting on the (mostly) well-manicured lawns in the tiny fictional West Country parish of Pagford. This is where Rowling sets her latest book, which chronicles the pandemonium that ensues when one of its well-placed citizens, Barry Fairbrother, dies suddenly, leaving his parish council seat vacant in the midst of a polarizing boundary dispute that has the townsfolk warring amongst themselves.

The ensuing scramble for Barry’s empty council seat becomes as dirty a campaign as any sprawling metropolis can proffer. Pagford’s citizens have plenty of secrets and dark sides, indiscretions (past and present), family feuds, class warfare, high school bullying and dire domestic circumstances which, thanks to some computer hacking and an ever-present small-town gossip brigade, don’t stay hidden for long.

Rowling’s deft ability to draw complete, multidimensional characters, who are neither wholly good nor wholly evil, is legendary from the Potter books (was there ever a more flawed, occasionally feckless hero than Harry Potter?). She continues that tradition here. Every character is perched on the brink of destruction and/or redemption, and the story moves quickly through the events that seem designed to test them all to capacity. She cleverly uses the mundanity of very small town life to set off real problems that real people have every day, that when viewed from the inside, seem bigger than one life can hold. The voices of her characters are true and believable, especially among the teenagers. She doesn’t get overly cute with her descriptions of their world (she is most certainly personally acquainted with the experience of raising a teen), and she manages in the end to avoid an ending that’s pat and definitive. The book begins in media res and ends pretty much the same way, presumably because that’s how life begins and ends.

A satisfying, face-paced read with humor and intelligence, Rowling has proven she can write outside of Hogwarts, with an eye for an older audience.

View all my reviews

They Call It DI-alogue For A Reason

Photo: Associated Press

Once upon a time in America, there used to a bunch of political parties.  Well, not really "a bunch"... Three, maybe... certainly no less than two.  And that was a good thing. Why? Because it led to conversations and back-and-forth and idea exchanges by people who disagreed with each other.  These conversations were referred to in the parlances as "dialogues".  Dialogues are sort of like monologues, except they consist of two speakers, usually speaking in turns (though occasionally, in moments of intense excitement, at the same time).  Dialogues - such as one might have in a debate - challenge both speakers to present cogent, cohesive, non-crazy arguments in order to make their case.

What we're NOT having these days is a dialogue.  We're getting blather, idiocy, self-serving secretly taped conversations between rich people who hate the rest of us who aren't rich from one side, and... well... a whole lot of no talk on the other side.  This is a problem.

When Romney was chosen as the GOP candidate, the main reason for choosing such a lifeless automaton was that he could have the conversation with Obama about the slow growth of the economy.  Now, personally, I don't think the slow growth of the economy is Obama's fault.  I've spent four years watching an obstructionist Congress drag their feet, refuse to pass job creation legislation while it gleefully pursued the stripping of access to healthcare for low-income women, rescinding women's access to contraception and the limiting of abortion rights.  No money. No jobs. No economic growth strategies. And no talk about a plan to do any of those things.

Still, also personally, I would like to know, in detail, just exactly what Obama plans to do over the next four years, should he be elected, to keep the economy on an up-swing and possibly speed up the process.  I have heard his tax plan, and I agree with it. But I'd like to know, should he face another four years of foot-dragging conservatives, how he plans to go through or around them to keep them from hanging us up anymore than they have.  A second term President doesn't have the same restrictions as a first term one does.  Thoughts of reelection are removed and a President can be freer to be less conciliatory, less compromising.

Also, today, the 2000th American soldier was killed in Afghanistan.  And, as has been happening all too frequently, it was one of the Afghan troops we're supposed to be training that did the killing.  Yet another young American has flown home in a flag-draped casket.  So the dialogue we should be having is the one where we get to say maybe we don't want to leave Afghanistan in 2014. Maybe we'd like to go sooner, if you please. That's a discussion I'd really like our President to be having with his opponent - and, by extension, us - right now.

But we're not having that little chat, either. Because the candidates running on the Right are not interested in having that conversation.  They're not interested in having any conversation.  "Elect us first, and all will be revealed."  They don't feel the need to talk, because they don't begin to see that we're a part of this process.  We have a voice and we get a say.  And having two sides arguing is the way we get to see who has the better plan, the better idea. National public opinion fueled the end to the Vietnam War.  It fueled the end to Jim Crow. It gave women the right to vote.

What Republicans want to talk about -- still -- is Obama's foreignness or his "darkness", and how so many Americans (after suffering through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression) are struggling to the point where they need government assistance.  They want to draw attention away from the fact that their current economic plan is IDENTICAL to George W. Bush's (and we saw how well that worked out). They are so adverse to talking about the War that their GOP candidate did not even mention that War or its soldiers in his convention acceptance speech.

But these are dialogues that should be happening, and two sides need to be having them.  The hardest part about losing any kind of reasonable Republican party is that there are no grown-ups on one side to face off against the grown-ups on the other.

And that makes America and this election process all the poorer for it.

Nothing But A Bright Little Memory

Twenty four years ago tomorrow, my nephew was born, Jett James Dittman.  He was born at 28 weeks gestation, and lived for a little over two weeks.  He was very tiny and red, like a little boiled lobster, and, like his father before him, had tons of thick, black hair grown down over his eyebrows, in what his grandmother referred to as a "Beatles cut".  Both of his parents are gone now, too, so there aren't many of us to memorialize him.

Because he shared a birthday with my neice, Jesse, I don't want to post on their birthday and risk stealing her thunder.  But I think about him sometimes and wonder what he'd be like today.  I hope he got a shiny new life right away, and that wherever that little spirit is, he's somewhere he can see the sunshine.

Peace and love, little Jett. Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Birthday, 19th Amendment!

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated),
Susan B. Anthony

Ninety-two years ago today, on August 26, 1920, the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was officially certified by the US Congress, giving women the right to vote in this country.  It had been forty-eight years since Susan B. Anthony was arrested for illegally voting in the 1872 presidential election.

November of 1920 was the first Presidential election that women were permitted legally to vote.  Women have had the vote for less than one hundred years in this country.  Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Victoria Woodhull, and Frederick Douglass, among others, fought for decades to secure your right to legally cast a ballot that would be counted in all elections which effect your future.

After Anthony's arrest, she gave her now-famous speech before the Court in her own defense, in which she said:

" It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny."

State legislatures around this country are working hard to deny you the rights that others fought valiantly to get you.  They're trying to make it harder, more expensive and a longer, more confusing process for you.  Please don't make it easy for them.  Here's the map of voter ID requirements - click on your state and check any new laws that might impede your right to vote.

Register. Vote. Don't let this country go back to being the bastion of rich white guys.  

Guest Post: Mel Walsh Jones- "There's Always the C-Word."

Today, Mel Walsh Jones shares her insights into the recent silencing of Michigan State Rep. Lisa Brown for daring to use the anatomically correct name for female genitalia.

Michigan State Rep. Lisa Brown gave a speech on Wednesday during a heated debate about an abortion bill. According to both NPR and the New York Daily News, Rep Mike Carlton (R-Nashville) silenced her, calling her word choices inappropriate. By Friday morning, social media was a-buzz. Indignant. Men and women were both outraged. One friend posted there wasn't enough punctuation to contain his outrage.

What the hell is going on here?

"Vagina" is a dirty word? Well, every gynecologist on the planet is in trouble (and if yours isn't in trouble, you should be doctor shopping!). Are there synonyms that you would have preferred Ms. Brown used, Rep. Mike Carlton?

There's the C-word. Chaucer used the C-word, well queynte. It's just a guess on my part, but I think Carlton would have objected more vehemently to that.

Or she could have used the Tw-word, no not twitchel, although that's an appropriate synonym too, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. So, "vagina" is a taboo word-how do we move forward? It seems as though we're moving backward.

Do we add it to the list with other taboo words? Like the N-word that one ballsy writer dared to edit from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn? Can I say ballsy? I mean, that's term that refers to male genitalia. As a woman, I don't find it offensive, Mr. Carlton. And although you stated you wouldn't, I'd say it in mixed company. Ballsy. But editing one of America's greatest writers is a story for another day. Mark Twain used words in mixed company.

Mixed company. Really? There are still things we can't say in mixed company? A woman serves as Secretary of State-Hillary Clinton is the third woman to serve in that position. When I think about them the words brass balls come to mind, and I'll say it in mixed company. Brass balls, brass balls, brass balls! I may not always agree with these women politically, but I am glad they have been out there in the trenches, doing their jobs. I'm glad we have role models to prove that women won't pass out upon hearing anatomically correct language. I declare, Mr. Carlton, we won't get the vapors! I promise.

I can share some words that have no place in our political arenas: censored or worse, what I read at NPR, "Representative silenced on the house floor."

Mr. Carlton, references to human anatomy are not offensive. They just are. Words are necessary for clear communication. How else would you have us talk? Oh, that's right, you have silenced the ballsy woman who dared to mention body parts. I must say, and it's beyond the reach of the Michigan House to silence me, that "vagina" is a perfectly acceptable word. You may have silenced one woman, but her silence, at least through the vehicle of social media, has given voice to millions.

I think twitchel is catchy, I wonder why it went out of fashion. I mean, other than the fact that it's not anatomically correct language.

PostScript from Mel Walsh Jones: Please note this piece is being posted here after having been declined by a paying outlet, twice, because its contents were not considered "timely." Please share this post, reblog it, tweet it, like it on Facebook. The silencing of voices of opposition is always timely. Please link back to http://melwalshjones.wordpress.com

Timeline

Sometime on May 3rd, while I was in a very long rehearsal for GODSPELL, the show I just closed, singing about blessin' the Lord, my soul, my cousin, Elizabeth, was getting diagnosed with a brain aneurism. According to what I learned later, all didn't seem initially lost -- Elizabeth was a very strong, healthy woman in every other way.  They sent her into surgery with assurances to her family that she stood every chance of the best possible outcome.  A few hours after she came out of surgery, though, her brain began to swell, and she was declared dead late on Monday, May 7.

Catherine and Elizabeth
Mother of the bride
2011

I knew nothing of this, of course, because I was out of pocket, in Godspelland.  It wasn't until my sister texted me Tuesday afternoon that I realized I needed to log on to Facebook.  I felt gutted, though it's hard to say exactly why.  She was my cousin, of course. We'd spent time together during summer trips to Texas when we were kids.  But I hadn't seen Elizabeth since I was fourteen and she was nine.  Our only contact was checking in occasionally on Facebook and "liking" each others photos and statuses.  Our lives were distant - hers in Texarkana, Texas, mine in L.A.  Our jobs and aspirations and families had evolved so differently. She was married to her husband, Mike, for something like 25 years.  My husband and I divorced after four, and I remain single.  She was a dedicated teacher. I am a writer and performer, who still has a "day job". 

In some ways our lives were similar. We both gave birth to daughters in 1988, both of whom are blonde and gorgeous and a singular source of joy in our lives.  And she named her daughter Catherine -- a choice to which we here at the Chron cannot possibly object. And, in the end, neither of us ventured too far past our hometowns.  Mine is bigger and weirder than hers, but it doesn't matter much. When it's where you're born and you grow up, where your family and the people that you love remain, there's little difference between Los Angeles and Texarkana.

Mike with Elizabeth
at their daughter's wedding
2011

I wish I knew Elizabeth better as an adult. I wish I knew her husband and her daughter.  I'm sorry we never had any more meaningful interaction in the past several decades, outside of making each other laugh on Facebook from time to time.  It makes me mad at... who?  Myself? The universe? God?  Oh, hell... anger now is a pointless waste of time.  Not that it's not a natural reaction, mind you.  Her sister, Julia, thought seriously about entitling her eulogy, "This F**king Sucks!", a sentiment I soundly supported.  (Note: The final draft of said eulogy is much warmer and more church-appropriate.)

Sara and Elizabeth:
Mother and daughter

And time is really the issue here. That someone so vital and alive and healthy could be here one minute, and then gone the next is a crack over the head with one's own mortality.  When I think of how much time I have wasted thinking ill of myself, talking mean about myself, all the time I spent cursing my thighs and refusing to attend swim parties and beach bbq's because I was worried about what people would think of me, it makes me want to slap my own self on the hand with ruler.  What a waste! What a sheer luxury! What an audacious, spendthrift squandering of daylight! I don't know how much longer I'm going to get to go to swim parties and beaches. I don't know if I'll have the chance to learn to ski this next winter.  If I'm upright, and there's snow on the ground at Snow Summit come December, I promise you, I will ski at least once in 2012.  I may not like it, but I'm trying it.

The Patterson sisters:
Rachel, Elizabeth, Julia
@ The Kennedy Center, NYC, 2011

It's tempting to think that Elizabeth's death is "unfair" or that she was "cheated".  The sickening part of being a mortal human being is that, eventually you're going to die, and inevitably something interesting and "must-see" will happen shortly thereafter. Maybe Elizabeth got cheated out of the end of her life, and maybe not.  I'm not smart enough to know how these things are determined in the vast workings of the heavens and the universe. Elizabeth had a little over 49 years, which isn't long in the grand scheme of things, but she managed to get a lot accomplished, it seems.Wall posts on her Facebook page are still popping up from former students she taught years ago, that have moved on and graduated, who leave messages of love and appreciation.

She touched many, many people.  She has left holes in the hearts of many.  But maybe her life was exactly as long as it was supposed to be.  It seems she filled the brief time she had here admirably -- touching other people, making them laugh, teaching them, inspiring them, amusing them. She used her time well. She didn't waste it not going to swimming because she didn't like the way she looked in a bathing suit. (Though, in the interest of full disclosure, it should be duly noted that, much to the annoyance of the generally wide-hipped, round-fannied women, like me, in our family,  Elizabeth looked pretty damn good in a bathing suit, the saucy vixen.)

I'm going to fill my time better. I'm going to be less critical of myself and others. I'm going to love more and judge less.  And I'm going to the beach this summer, and I don't care who is looking.  In fact, I've been invited to a swim/jacuzzi/bbq party this Saturday. I'm going. And I'm getting in the jacuzzi.  And this winter, I'm learning to ski.  I'm not wasting a single precious moment of whatever I have left of this life in anything that isn't rooted in love and/or good feelings.  Because life is too short. Often even shorter than we think is.  And any opportunity squandered on thinking about yourself (particularly the thigh part of yourself) rather than others is a pitiful usage of a precious commodity.

Elizabeth taught me that.

Elizabeth Patterson Ingram
March 24, 1963 - May 7, 2012

Imperative

Found this from another, long-since forgotten blog, and really, really liked it, so I thought I'd share.  I was doing a lot of writing exercises at the time, and this one was one of the few that worked out well enough for public consumption. The exercises can be found in Brian Kiteley's book, The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Exercises that Transform Your Writing. I highly recommend it.

In Kiteley second exercise, called The Imperative, he instructs the writer to write a 400-word min. story fragment in only imperative sentences, instructing the reader to accomplish a task.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIFESAVING TECHNIQUES

Pack and go.

Do not wait until you have nothing of you left to take. Take your books, yes. And take your clothes. Box them up and seal them tight with thick, USPS-approved cellophane tape, label them carefully, and put them in the back of your car. Do not let him know you are going. Do not say good-bye.

Just pack and go.

Leave before he can try and talk you out of it. Get out before he has the chance to convince you that you will die without him. Do not give him one more chance to tell you that no one but him could ever love you, and that you are worthless and useless. Make haste and depart before he can describe yet again how easy it would be for him to kill you in your sleep, and then hide your body where no one would ever find it.

Pack a smaller bag for your little one, full of his or her most precious possessions. Do not leave your little one behind so that he has the opportunity to tell him or her that you left because you did not love the child, rather than because you had long ago ceased loving the father. Do not let him poison the child as he has tried to poison the mother.

Pack and go, before he has one more opportunity to let you know that he does not today, nor did he ever really love you. Pack and go before he can find other little ways to kill your soul or fragment your self with his unloving of you. Pack and go before you can be shocked again at the realization that he never knew who you were, and that he really didn’t care, as long as you were fertile and young and could give him the children that he wanted.

Pack and go while you still have the tiniest morsel of you to seed and grow back into the woman you were, the woman you were meant to be, before the unloving and the unknowing and the uncaring of you, of this life you have now. Take your boxes and your bags and and your little one and anything else you can carry and, as quickly and quietly as possible, avoiding panic and mayhem, find your way to the nearest exit, before you lose all sense of direction, all sense of yourself and of your purpose on this earth.

Do it, now.

Find your real life.

Just pack.

Then, go.