Blog Archive – Page 9

Thursday December 31, 2015Life, Theater, WritingLeave a comment

1 = Book Published (10 Cheeky Monkeys)

2 = Baby Showers Attended

3 = Out of State Trips

4 = Visits to Disneyland

5 = Puggle ER Visits (Here’s to hoping they got this out of their systems!)

6 = New Year’s Resolutions Kept (Better than I thought I would do!)

7 = Movies Seen in a Movie Theater (5 of the 7 at El Capitan.)

8 = Query Letters Sent for My Novel

19 = Book Clubs

52 = Plays I Saw

71 = New Blog Posts on My Website

450 = Pages in My Novel

1,050 = Most Website Views in One Day

14,000 = Total Website Views

Happy New Year’s Eve and here’s to 365 days of success, happiness and laughter in 2016! You read this blog as the Count didn’t you? 😉

Tuesday December 22, 2015WritingLeave a comment

I have been getting quite a few questions since my announcement that I finished writing my novel, and figured I would share the answers here. The novel, In a Time Never Known, is historical fiction based during the American Civil War. My two main characters are female spies for the Union, however they are both married to Confederate officers. Without further ado, here are the questions I’ve been asked.

Q – How long is the book?

A – 113,000ish words which breaks down into 450ish pages, broken into 50 chapters.

Q – Was this part of NaNoWriMo?

A – Nope.

Q – Where did the story idea come from?

A – I was in Richmond, VA visiting a friend and we were out one day doing the obligatory touristy stuff, which meant we took a tour of the White House of the Confederacy. In the gift shop, I found this tiny little 48 page pamphlet about female spies in the Civil War. I was fascinated, so I bought it, took it home and promptly forgot that I had it. However, the seed had been planted. My brain started to formulate a story, and about a year later, I dug out that pamphlet and began my research.

Q – How long did it take you to do the research, and what were your sources?

A – There is no way that I can come up with a quantitative number for that, I spent too much time over too many years to count. I did research before I started writing and while I was writing all the way up to and through the final rewrite. For the research, I read books both fiction and non-fiction. I watched several multi-part documentaries – my favorite by far was by Ken Burns and I also bought and read the companion book that goes along with it. I also did significant amounts of research on the internet. Before you ask, not Wikipedia. NEVER Wikipedia.

Q – How did you stay organized?

A – Copious amounts of notes and spreadsheets, baby! As I had multiple things that I was keeping track of at any given point in time, I created a spreadsheet and would alter the parameters of it depending on where I was in the process, or what I needed to focus on. This is the last incarnation that I used. Yes, it is color coded.

Q – How long did it take to write the novel? Did you work chronologically?

A – From when I started writing the book, five years. However, only the last year and a half of that was focused work. Before that I would work on a chapter, then ignore it for a couple of months, then work on another chapter then ignore it, etc. And no, I did not work chronologically. I wrote the last chapter of the book, before I tackled the first chapter. My style was more Memento-esque.

Q – How many editors did you have?

A – I haven’t yet had a full grammatical edit done, but I had the help of around ten people for content edits.

If I missed yours, please feel free to ask!

Tuesday December 08, 2015WritingLeave a comment

I find that I get asked on a fairly regular basis to read and comment on people’s work. Both from people I know, and people I’ve never heard of before. To be completely honest, every time someone asks me, I cringe. Not because I don’t like helping people, or I think I’m above that or something. I feel honored that people think highly enough of my writing to want my opinion on their own. That’s a nice little stroke to my ego every time it happens. I cringe because nine times out of ten, it is not a pleasant experience for me. I feel that a large part of this is due to the fact that people don’t understand that there is an etiquette that should be followed.

1. Don’t hand me your rough draft. Don’t hand me your first or second draft either. In fact, I better be pretty far down the list of people you’ve asked to read and critique your work. If I got to present one of my recipes to a chef, you can be damn sure it wouldn’t be the first time I’d made the dish. Same concept.

2. You might have an absolutely amazing and fantastic idea, but don’t assume I want to collaborate with you. I have my own projects and enough ideas written on pieces of paper to fill a shoe box. Chances are pretty good that I’ll want to work on those, before your idea.

3. Do your own research. Writers have their areas of expertise. If you are writing within that area, make sure your research is accurate. I’m not here to act as your fact check, that’s what Google is for.

4. Janet Jackson said it best – What have you done for me lately? Chances are, if I don’t know you, not even in the ‘we interact on social media’ sense, and you send me a request to look at your work, I’m not going to. This does not make me selfish. I am busy with my own life and my own work. If you want my advice, make yourself known to me. Comment on a blog post, share my tweets. Do something to show me that you are looking for a mutually beneficial relationship.

5. Keep genre in mind. If you look on Goodreads at the books I read you will notice a distinct lack or horror, poetry, sci-fi, etc. That’s because I don’t like them. Therefore, I am the last person you want critiquing your work in one of those genres. Unless your piece is better than freshly baked bread, I’m not going to like it.

6. Keep length in mind. If I am truly doing an in depth critique of a piece, it can take me over half an hour to get through five pages. Your twenty page short story will take me at least two hours. If you’re not going to take the notes I give into consideration, don’t waste my time.

7. Understand that there is a difference between a pat on the back for doing a good job, and a critique. Know which one you want. And if you’re asking me, keep in mind that I was a theater critic for four years. I don’t pull my punches. If it sucks, I’ll tell you.

8. Don’t reply to one of my notes/comments/questions with, “But my teacher said . . .” Unless your teacher is someone like Stephen King, I couldn’t care less what your teacher said, and if what they said is so profound, why are you asking me.

9. Don’t get defensive or try to explain yourself. Critiques are not meant as comments on you as a person, they are meant as comments on that particular piece of work and meant to help you improve it. That’s great that you were trying to depict despair through your use of cool colors and dreary settings, it doesn’t come through in the text. Don’t explain it to me, explain it in your piece.

10. Remember that there is no end-all authority on writing or storytelling. Every critique you get is someone’s opinion, and as such you are free to do with it as you please. Take what is useful and toss out what doesn’t fit your story. However, always, always say THANK YOU to the person. Whether you find their notes helpful or not, they spent quality time on your piece in an effort to help you. I have lost track of how many people failed to say a simple thank you. Don’t be that person.

Those are my top ten. Other writers, what are yours?

Thursday December 03, 2015Live and LearnView all 5 comments

In terms of housekeeping, I am not going to win any awards any time soon. Okay, I could probably win “Most Dust Accumulated on a Ceiling Fan” or “Biggest Hair Ball From Under a Bed.” Seriously, who has time to dust ceiling fans and vacuum under beds on a regular basis? Obviously not me. Okay, I have time, but I would rather spend that time doing anything else, wouldn’t you? The problem is, I really enjoy living in a sparkly clean, organized house. Like, reeeealy enjoy it. It makes my little Type-A heart happy. Therefore, I constantly have things on my to-do list like “Deep-Clean Living Room” and “Clean Dust Off Ceiling Fan.” I don’t actually do any of these things. Instead I dutifully move them to another day on my list and promise that on that day I will actually do the cleaning.

Well thanks to my live-in goats, who parade around as puggles, I made a lot of headway into deep-cleaning my kitchen. It was either that, or live with the permanent smell of curry and vodka, so I spent Monday night scrubbing my kitchen. Over the past two days I’ve noticed that I’ve been keeping the kitchen clean, and even cleaning something extra every night. Not to mention, I really love the way it looks now. My living room, on the other hand makes me cringe and I don’t even know where to begin. That’s when I decided to change up my tactics. I am abandoning Operation Clean All the Things and taking up Operation Clean One Thing!

Instead of stressing about cleaning my entire apartment, I am only going to focus on cleaning my kitchen. Organizing my kitchen. Making it pretty. That’s it, only the kitchen. This makes me happy. I love nit-picking and improving things, and I’m going to get done all of things that I’ve wanted to do for so long. Then once those are done, I’m going to get bored with the kitchen. I know this will happen, because you can only tweak a space for so long before you run out of things that need done. Now this my friends, is the pivotal moment. When I get bored with the kitchen, I will then move on to another room, and thus systematically work my way through the entire apartment.

This is the plan. Operation Clean One Thing! Do I have high hopes of this working? About the same as a T-Rex has of clapping his hands. Odds are I will finish that, give up on the rest of the apartment and just start spending all of my time in the kitchen. I’m gonna try this plan anyway, cause you gotta start somewhere man. Who knows, if I start now, I might be able to work up enough momentum to join in on that whole spring cleaning craze . . . maybe.

Tuesday December 01, 2015LifeLeave a comment

I am a bit of a Shakespeare nut. Okay, I’m a huge Shakespeare nut. If it is related to the Bard, I’m in. I’ve seen the entire canon performed live with the exception of three plays, and I have a ticket to cross one of those off my list next year. So yesterday when I heard that for one night only there would be a showing of Kenneth Branaugh’s “Winter’s Tale,” starring Judi Dench at a local movie theater I was ecstatic! SIGN ME UP!!! Minor problem though, my car was in the shop. That was not going to get me down. I convinced a friend to go with me, and she said that she could drive. Golden! Checked online, still plenty of tickets. I could not wait for my workday to be over to go geek-out watching Shakespeare for three hours. Best. Day. Ever. Until I got home from work to discover this.

My darling dogs decided to throw themselves a little party while I was at work. What you’re seeing there is the carnage leftover for me to clean up. On top of clearing several rolls of paper towels and half a dozen cans off a shelf, they also got into and ate three jars of curry sauce, a can of olives and pulled two half-empty bottles of vodka out of a drawer (apparently they can open drawers now) and spilled/drank them. Mind you, all of these items have been on that shelf for months and they have never shown the slightest bit of interest in them, and the only thing on that shelf were cans and jars, so nothing that should have been tempting or accessible to them. Regardless, they got it into their little heads that yesterday was the day to get into everything!

It goes without saying, but I did not make it to “Winter’s Tale” last night. Instead I spent the evening scrubbing my kitchen and then my curry covered dogs while waiting the whole time for some sort of demonic curry-fueled fury to be unleashed out of one end or the other. As you can imagine, I was pissed. In fact, after ascertaining that despite the broken glass all over the kitchen, neither dog was injured, anger won out over concern completely. Therefore, in an attempt to not murder my dogs, I am choosing to find the bright side. So here are the top five good things about last night.

I had pumpkin puree in the house and neighbors gave me some Pepto Bismol and white bread, so I didn’t have to walk to the store to pick some up.
I never got around to cleaning my kitchen over the weekend, so at least they didn’t dirty up a freshly cleaned kitchen. And as a bonus, my kitchen is now the cleanest it has ever been!
I also have clean puggles now. Everyone likes a clean puggle.
I had not pre-purchased my ticket for “Winter’s Tale” so at least I didn’t waste any money.
Despite all logical sense my goats, er dogs appear to be perfectly fine.

I am slightly less pissed this morning, but choosing to focus on the positive. Frickin dogs!

Tuesday November 24, 2015Live and LearnLeave a comment

I got an email this morning from someone that used to be a large part of life. However, over the years, this person has faded into the periphery. This was done consciously on my part for mental health reasons, and reading through the email this morning I was reminded why I made this decision. No matter what I do, this person assumes the worst of me. To my knowledge, I have never done anything to warrant this thinking, yet it pervades. It not only pervades with this person, but they also do their best to swing other people over to their way of thinking. It is always assumed that I am acting out of selfishness or ingratitude or have some sort of devious ulterior motives at play. Or maybe they think I’m being passive aggressive, which is laughable. The majority of people who know me would describe me as just plain aggressive, or blunt. I don’t think the word passive would appear anywhere near the top fifty words used to describe me. That’s not how I roll. Yet, it is how this person perceives me, which begs the question do they even know me at all?

In all honesty, I think the answer is yes, but with a caveat. That caveat being, that everything they know about me is filtered through the negative lens that they view the world with. And that I will never understand. How exhausting must it be to go through life expecting the worst from everyone you encounter? I can’t imagine. Even people who have let me down in the past, or repeatedly flaked on me, I still give them the benefit of the doubt. I’m not completely naïve and I adjust my expectations so that if they let me down again it won’t take me by surprise, but I don’t write them off completely. I don’t automatically assume that they will be a flake forever and always. Maybe that person was having a bad day, week, or month. Maybe they have worked to improve on their weaknesses. Short of psychopaths, murderers and rapists, people deserve to be treated as a worthwhile person regardless of, or in spite of, what they may have done in the past. Especially if they don’t even know of anything they ever did wrong to the other person. Because guess what, if you believe that someone has slighted you, but you’ve never addressed that with them, then that bad is on you, not them. People can’t apologize or make amends for slights that they don’t know exist.

At any rate, it is abundantly clear, looking at the current people that I have surrounded myself with, why I am happier now then I have ever been in my life. It is amazing what a difference it makes to be surrounded by people who expect good things from you, and think positive thoughts about you. It was a difficult decision to cut this particular person out of my life, but after this morning’s email, I see that it was well worth it. During this week of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the positive people that I have in my life.

Thursday November 12, 2015WritingLeave a comment

It occurs to me, that I have been sorely neglecting my blog as of late. Thankfully, it is not because of the subject matter of my last blog. I am actually doing better on that front. Still not great, but better. Baby steps.

It is because, I set myself a challenge. Instead of finishing up the rewrites on my novel by mid-December, I decided that I wanted to have it done before Thanksgiving. Which means I am tackling twice as many chapters every day than originally planned. Which is daunting, but has been unexpectedly exhilarating. Diving in head first, no holds barred, down and dirty, and every other cliche you can think of for getting shit done no matter what it takes. Apparently what it takes is pushing everything else to the back burner, including my blog. But never fear, I will be back. I just have to see this baby put to bed first.

Tuesday November 03, 2015Depression, Life, LossView all 2 comments

Since I started blogging I have devoted more than a handful of blogs to mental illness. I’ve been clinically depressed since I was 11 so I have plenty of firsthand experience to bring to the table. It is also through that experience that I whole heartedly believe that the stigma that surrounds mental illness has to go. It’s misleading and detrimental. I have a chemical imbalance, I treat it and I feel no shame about that. I’m perfectly comfortable taking about depression and answering people’s questions.

But lately I have been feeling ashamed. Not about my depression, but about something else. My grandmother was a nurse during WWII and during the Battle of the Bulge she cut her hand. It wasn’t a big deal. She wrapped a bandage around it and kept on working. However, because she was injured while deployed in a war zone, she was awarded the Purple Heart. She hated that medal so much, she gave it away at her first opportunity. The reason, she thought that it was absolutely asinine that she had been given the same award as boys she sent home with missing limbs. With burns over 50 percent of their bodies. In other words, her cut hand warranted the same award as a grievously injured soldier. She was ashamed of it.

I guess this apple didn’t fall far from that tree, because my shame has been coming from very much the same source. I’ve been struggling all year, but it was only recently that a doctor put two and two together and diagnosed me with PTSD. My first reaction was that was ridiculous. I’ve never been to war, I’ve never been in a life threatening situation, so how in the world could I possibly have PTSD? In my mind, I hadn’t been through enough to warrant that diagnosis. I felt ashamed that I had usurped the condition of Veterans and survivors. I felt like a fake.

So I got a second opinion and the same diagnosis. That’s when I started to look at my symptoms and had to admit to myself that despite the lack of something horrifically traumatic in my life recently, I have PTSD. The horrible anxiety and weekly if not daily panic attacks should have been a clue. The crippling nightmares that I wake up from thrashing and crying, should have been a clue. The insanely vivid and realistic dreams that I can’t escape from and wake up in the morning sore from tensing my muscles all night, should have been a clue. The constant debilitating exhaustion, yet fear of falling asleep should have been a clue. The waves of feeling like an empty broken shell that hit me out of nowhere, should have been a clue.

But I felt ashamed that I was breaking down like this because of the death of my aunt. That didn’t seem like a good enough reason. People experience death all the time. Yes, it was tragic and it was sudden, but I got to say goodbye. I got to give her one last hug and tell her that I love her, will always love her. That’s more than I got with any other family member I’ve lost. And that my friends, is where my trauma comes from. Amongst other things, between the ages of eight and twenty, I lost seven family members. The seventh being my mother. Needless to say the majority of the emotions associated with all of that loss was buried instead of dealt with. So when my aunt died, the dam broke and in essence so did I.

I am not a veteran and I have never been in a war zone, but I have PTSD. They say the first step to recovery is admitting what’s wrong. So I admit it, and I’m not going to feel ashamed about it anymore.

Tuesday October 27, 2015Live and LearnLeave a comment

I have a confession to make. Every time that I hear about someone going on a diet and whining about it being soooo hard, and cheating constantly and then eventually giving up, I judge them. I totally judge them, and I feel justified in this because let’s face it, I have spent almost my entire life on a diet. An extreme diet. Yet I don’t complain, I don’t whine, in fact my friends tend to make a bigger deal about it then I do. So if I can handle an extreme diet all day, every day FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, then I feel that people can stick to a weight loss diet for a couple of weeks without complaining or cheating. I would now like to take the time to apologize to every woman I have ever Judgey McJudgersoned in my head.

Because of medical conditions, and food intolerances I have had food restrictions since I was eight. The big blow came at 24 when I found out that I have Celiac disease, which meant goodbye for good to all gluten. Since then, my list of foods to avoid has stayed mostly the same. Occasionally something new gets added when I try a new food for the first time, but for the most part it has now become second nature. That is until about two months ago, when I found out that I have a pretty severe sulfite intolerance. The severity will probably lesson as it gets out of my system, but it’s around to stay. This diagnosis was met with very much the same reaction as my diagnosis to Celiac disease – Fuck!!!

Yet one more thing that wipes out a HUGE chunk of foods that I can no longer eat. Not to mention wine. No more wine for me. No more hard cider. Really no more alcohol at all with the exception of gluten free vodka. But I can’t mix it with fruit juice because, with the exception of freshly pressed, most fruit juice has sulfites. Joyous! After a couple of days of serious moping, I put on my big girl panties and set about figuring out what I had left to eat. After about a week of cutting out sulfites I felt immensely better. Whenever I would accidentally eat some, there’s always a pretty significant trial and error period with these things, I would feel it immediately. The reaction would hit me fast and hard and wipe me out for at least an hour. Needless to say, the fallout should be plenty to discourage any intentional cheating.

Despite this, over the weekend I cheated, and quite frankly I’m planning on cheating again this evening. Not hugely, but I did put wine and garlic into the red sauce I made for tonight’s lasagna, and both of those definitely fall onto the no-no list. But, I’m sorry, while you can make red sauce without wine, you can’t without garlic. It just doesn’t taste right! So, if I have immediate repercussions from cheating and yet I can’t stop myself, how in the hell is somebody who has no repercussions supposed to stay perfectly on course with their diet? Really I’m starting to believe that diets were made to be broken. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. And for those who are now concerned, I promise that the only Chianti I will have tonight will be in the lasagna, and not in a glass . . . at least that’s the intention . . .

Tuesday October 20, 2015Live and Learn, WritingLeave a comment

Over the years I have grown accustomed to receiving critical feedback. In my BFA program for acting in college it was a part of everyday life. Getting my degree in video production was the same way. If you are in the arts, people are going to comment on the art that you make. Some of them have no idea what they’re talking about. Some of them have loads of expertise and you respect their opinion greatly. Regardless of how you feel about the person, you’re going to hear their thoughts. So the sooner you can adjust your thinking, and learn that negative comments and constructive criticism are not personal attacks, the happier you will be.

I pride myself on the fact that I have learned to do this. In fact, I relish constructive criticism because it helps me to improve my work. I seek it out, and specifically ask people to tell me what they don’t like. Mind you, I’m selective about who I ask. I’ve learned that criticism from people you respect is much more palatable than from people you don’t respect. That being said, I am quite accustomed to reading or hearing note after note about the flaws in my work. The notes are usually preceded by a complimentary message, but once I’m into the thick of it; it’s criticism the whole way. That is what I’m used to, and I’m perfectly okay with it.

I actually prefer it to the methodology I learned in college, which said that you needed to precede every negative with a positive, and if at all possible, bookend it with another positive. That’s great in theory, but in practice you spend a lot of time listening to half-hearted, pseudo-positive comments that are only said because the person is forced to say them. Ain’t nobody got time for that! Cut to the chase, give me the meat, and let’s move on with our day. The people I go to for critiques know this, and they are great at giving it to me straight. I love it!

So when I pulled up some notes from a new reader and discovered that just about every other comment was positive, I was taken aback. Not just positive as in, “I love it!” But positive in a specific way. Things like “this section is powerful,” or “I can totally see a teenage girl thinking this.” Comments for the nails that were hit square on the head, as well as the ones that went in crooked and need to be fixed. Both the good and the bad were constructive in their own way. In all honesty, I was impressed because I’ve never really thought about positive comments being constructive, but these were. They drew attention to where I had done it right, and why it was right. So in the places where I had done it wrong, (for lack of a better word and to keep my comparison tidy) I now know where to go for examples to help make it right, especially since several of them correlated to a positive note.

Okay, this doesn’t really have anything to do with my blog. But it made me laugh so hard I spit coffee, so I had to share.

I was also impressed because I know that when I’m approaching a work critically it is hard for me to focus on or catch the good things, because I’m so fixated on culling out the bad. The fact that she was able to deliver both positive and negative insight at the same time is impressive! Because her critical comments were most definitely helpful and pointed out discrepancies that need to be addressed. She did both. At the same time. Consider my mind blown.

Needless to say, I have a new skill to work on. I would love to be able to constructively point out the good and the bad in a piece as gracefully as this reader did. Is anybody else good at that too? How did you develop the habit?