Trudy Myers's Blog, page 37

A Tell of Caution

It’s easy enough to do. But just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should do it. Especially when you are trying to establish yourself as an up-and-coming author.I’m sure most working mothers know what I’m talking about: Spreading yourself too thin. Most working mothers are still expected to do (most, if not all of) the housework, get the groceries, do the cooking, take care of the kids, AND do their job. Even without adding any hobbies to help them stay sane, they are spread mighty thin. It gets to the point where you have to get sick, just to get some time to yourself.Been there, done that.When I took early retirement, I wanted my next ‘career’ to be ‘author’. I had been working at it for years. I had numerous short stories already written and polished, but none had found a home yet. I had a novel ready for submission, one in the polishing stage, and another drafted, besides several started, and many more ‘stewing’ in the back of my mind.But suddenly finding yourself without a job to go to can leave you floundering. Without thinking about it, I dithered through my days watching tv, surfing the net, half-heartedly doing aspects of house cleaning I had never bothered to do before. (BTW, I hate housekeeping. It never gets done!) I signed up for six or a dozen newsletters on writing, and more on ‘promoting your book’. Anything to keep from actually writing, it seemed.I even hired myself out as a free-lance editor. I told myself I needed to do that; I no longer belonged to a writing critique group, and editing would give me a chance to recognize ‘problems’ and try to solve them. Yeah, I can find otherpeople’s problem areas, but I’m not sure I’m any better at finding my own.I started new hobbies, took classes on leatherworking, theatrical makeup and making prosthetics, photoshop and illustrator… you get the idea. I volunteered for a position with Broad Universe (broaduniverse.org). And because I was frustrated with my pace in the writing world, I started my own publishing company. Why not? It seems like everybody else is doing it.Somewhere in there, when I wasn’t paying attention, I got thin. Not physically, although I have lost a few pounds. But in terms of energy, I have none. In terms of organization, that’s pretty sketchy. I start each day with breakfast, doing my Broad Universe chore, and checking through my (main) email account. After that…I have a loooong list of Things To Do. And unfortunately, ‘writing’ is not very high on that list.How can I be an author if I don’t write? Why are all these other things coming before ‘writing’? I’m juggling a multitude of activities, but what I really want isn’t even in the mix.
I think it’s time to snap back and not be so thin.

World Con 2016

Today was the first day of World (SF) Con 2016. The World con moves around from year to year. This year, it’s being held in Kansas City and is called MidAmeriCon 2. (Kansas City held its first World Con – MidAmeriCon – back in the ‘70s.)The cheapest time to buy a membership is right after the vote that determines where the World con will be held TWO years from now. The votes happen at World con, so the members of this year’s convention get to decide what city will host the convention in 2 years. Of course, their choices are limited to those cities who have figured out how and where they would have the convention.Worldcon 2017 will be in Helsinki. We didn’t buy memberships to that one, because we seldom follow the con outside the US. When the worldcon is held somewhere other than North America, there is a North AmeriCon held that year. That location for 2017 will be chosen at this worldcon. We might go to that, depending where it is. The choices are San Jose and New Orleans.World cons last for 5 days. They used to be held over Labor Day weekend, but that made it difficult for parents to attend, because the school year was just beginning. So they have migrated to mid-August. North Americons are typically 4 days long.Worldcons generally have a few thousand people. When they are held in large cities – like LA – they might have 8,000 attendees. So much larger than the 200 attendees at the first, held in New York in 1939.Other conventions are larger; Dragoncon in Atlanta, Nebcon in Omaha are just 2. But worldcons are big enough to be daunting, especially to shy or introverted people. The dealer’s room is large, the art show amazing, the costume contest can be over the top. And the panels! LOTS of panels, on all sorts of subjects. As usual, I find 2-3 panels I want to attend, all at the same time, and probably at opposite ends of the convention center. It can be tough to choose which one I will actually go to.Sooner or later, we run across friends at worldcon. Some are people we know from smaller conventions. Others we only run across at worldcon (or North AmeriCon). In either case, we take some time to chat and catch up.If you’ve never been to a worldcon, a description really can’t do them justice. I suggest you save up your money - tickets can be $250 for 5 days at the door, and the surrounding hotels are high-end brands. If the WorldCon is close enough for you to drive, you could save some money finding a cheaper hotel further away. But you will have to pay to park somewhere near the convention each day. And don’t forget to have money on hand for food; WorldCons provide snacks (chips, veggies, crackers) and soda at certain times of the day, but not anything that could be considered ‘real food.’Despite the expense, they can be fun and informative. However, they are not a comicon, an anime con, or a media con. They are a literary convention. They are aimed mostly at science fiction & fantasy readers. When we walked through the dealer’s room today, we saw 4-5 tables selling t-shirts, and at least twice that many selling books.
So if you don’t read, this probably isn’t the convention for you.

Not Exactly Writing

If you follow me on Facebook, then you know our house has been under renovation for two months. They were supposed to be done this past Sunday, Aug 7. I decided I’d better get busy with the outside work that we didn’tcontract for them to do. Our lawn has lots of deep shade, so we have large swaths where nothing grows. Oh, an occasional weed might stick its head up, but not many. All summer, my husband and I argued whether we could get any grass to grow in these places. One of the workers recently suggested we cover these naked spots with mulch, which we thought was a great idea. So I measured these bare spots to figure out how much mulch we need, including in the front yard. Putting mulch in the one bare spot in front would provide a more ‘uniform’ look as a whole. As I measured, I couldn’t help but notice the terraces where bushes had once lived. “I’ve got to pull these weeds, too! They make the place look so… sloppy.” And that led my eyes to the house foundation, where the paint was cracked and peeling. So the chore of putting down mulch suddenly became the chore of ‘pulling weeds, scraping the foundation, painting the foundation, and putting down mulch.’ And in some areas, I also get to ‘find’ the sidewalk because dirt and grass have grown over the edges. I know a writer who puts out a newsletter every week. And it seems like almost every week, whatever chore she’s done could be compared to writing; whether she weeded her garden, fed the chickens, adopted a dog or played Guitar Hero with her son, it always bore a striking resemblance to writing. So as I’ve been doing this yardwork, I’ve wondered how it would compare to writing, if I were to adopt her perspective. And actually, I think it bears more resemblance to RE-writing. Once I have my rough draft, and I’m ready to make it ‘the best it can be’, I follow similar steps to this yard work. Let me explain: Weeding – Weeds make your garden or lawn look jumbled and keep your eyes from understanding what you are looking at. For me, draft 2 is when I go back and put in every explanation, every adjective and adverb and description I think a reader might need or want. Adding in all these things is different than pulling out weeds, but pulling weeds allows the reader’s eyes and mind to see what you intended for them to envision, and that’s what I’m trying to do with draft 2. Scraping the foundation – Scraping off loose paint lets you get down to a solid surface so that the final result is pleasing to the eye. In draft 3, I look at every word, phrase, sentence and paragraph with one thought in my mind; ‘Do I really need this? If yes, is there any way to shorten it without warping what I’m trying to say?’ Kind of like scraping off the paint that doesn’t want to adhere any more. I’m getting my story down to the basic core – the foundation. Painting & mulching – A coat of paint on a house’s foundation and some mulch can make the whole yard look prettier, cared for and cohesive. I call my 4th draft ‘making it pretty’. I check the grammar and punctuation, my use of pronouns, keep an eye out to make sure I haven’t overused some word or phrase. And finding the sidewalk? I prefer a clean, broad sidewalk, rather than one with dirt and grass covering half of it. In writing, this does not take yet another rewrite; it is incorporated into all my rewriting efforts. I try to find tired clichés (dirt & grass) and replace them with what I hope are new phrases that will get the thought across to the reader (more sidewalk.) No, I won’t say the 9 very hot hours I spent last week doing this yardwork was the same as if I’d spent those 9 hours writing. I will say that if you use some imagination, you can find similarities between them. And, since most of this yardwork is fairly mindless, I did get some thinking done about the next scene I needed to write.

One Problem

After being retired for 6 years, I have found a problem with it. At first I thought it was just a glitch, something that would wear off once I got used to being at home every day, not racing off to work 5 days a week. It’s not quite as simple as that.
I can’t keep track of what day it is.
When I was working, it was easy to remember if it was Back-to-Work-Monday, Too-Long-Tuesday, Hump-Day-Wednesday, Terrible-Thursday, Finally-Friday, Errand-Running-Saturday or Sad-Sunday. Not so easy when all the days are pretty much the same. They all start blending into each other.
I used to keep a calendar on my office wall. It came down and got packed away, of course.
I do have a To Do list, along with what date I’m supposed to do each item. It’s a document on my computer, and my computer will tell me what the date is, if I just look in the bottom right corner of the screen.
That doesn’t seem to be enough. For example, I was so busy trying to figure out how much mulch we needed for our landscaping project that I neglected to consult that list. It wasn’t until I opened up the list this morning and was crossing off some things I had managed to do yesterday that I realized I had forgotten to write, edit and post this week’s blog!
Forty lashes with a wet noodle!

I obviously need a calendar and not just a date. I just haven’t figured out where to put it that wouldn’t mess up this new paint job. Guess I’ll have to add it to my To Do list.

Life In the Way

There’s a phrase I’ve used a few times during my life: “Life got in the way…” I don’t know where I got it, but I use it to indicate that I had a goal for myself that I really wanted to achieve, but for whatever reason, I didn’t accomplish it.I don’t mean that I didn’t get the dishes washed last night because ‘life got in the way’. No, that was because something good was on tv. It applies to those really big goals, like getting my BS in math. I haven’t accomplished that (yet) because other (life) things kept distracting me. Things like marriage, divorce, marriage, having kids, raising kids…There’s another phrase I’ve used about my life, and I’ve seen other authors use it for their characters; “My life resembles a soap opera.”In a way, these phrases are similar. They both indicate that your life goals have gotten off-track. “Life got in the way” might mean you made a decision to take a slightly different road than you had thought, and it is (or was) taking you longer to get back on course than you anticipated. Or you may have gotten swept away by your emotions and then had trouble steering your way back. A soap opera implies that just after you make a choice, things start working out, and you anticipate happiness, something hits the fan to send your emotions in a tailspin and nothing is under your control.Neither of these phrases indicates a happy, carefree life we all dream about. But think about your favorite book’s plot. Does one of these phrases – or both – apply to the life of the main character?In John’s next book, his main character was a member of an elite fighting squad. He had trained hard for that, and he had achieved a bit of rank. But now, several years after his last assignment (which he can’t remember, not even How Things Went Wrong), his boss for his office job has ordered him to take a vacation. He decides on a space cruise, an entire month of wandering around the universe, enjoying a new and different experience at each port of call. It promises to be truly relaxing. But things happen. Little things at first; an accidental bump at the wrong time, the feeling that someone is watching him. And things keep happening, getting bigger and more threatening, keeping his frayed nerves at the snapping point.I did the same thing in my fantasy, Cali. Things keep happening to Cali that shatter her piece of mind and leave her feeling unprepared to be on the journey she is on. She hasn’t finished her training, doesn’t know how the world outside her tribe works, and now most of her spells have been stolen from her, so how can she possibly succeed? It is only when she starts to make her own decisions that she finally reaches the end of her search.So I guess, art imitates life. However, art tends to stick to the exciting bits; the problems, the attempts, the combat and strife. Plans that don’t work, plans that do work but have unintended consequences.Life might have their counterparts to that (although the death of an entire planet might not lie in the balance), but it also has bits that art would only imply, not drag the audience through. Like six weeks of utter, mind-numbing boredom of living in one room while the rest of the house is renovated.Okay, I think I might be ready for just a little bit of excitement now, okay, life? Maybe I could win the lottery? Or we could sell the house in one day, so we could get on with the next step… buying our next house?
There’s another phrase about life that comes to mind right about now: Be careful what you wish for.

No Deadlines

I honestly don’t know which is worse:A.   Having gobs and gobs of chores to do, all of them inter-related and requiring research and learning, with deadlines for some stuff, and the entire day, nearly every day, to work on these chores.B.   Having limited chores to work on, because everything is packed away except for four flashdrives and a laptop with limited capacity; no deadlines; and the ability to go to a place and use theircomputer with a nice big screen (or two!) for a whopping 3 to 4 hours a day.
A is what I had before my husband decided to retire. It was mind-numbing. Every morning I would stare at that long list of chores and wonder, ‘Which one should I work on? Is there one that seems shorter, so I can feel like I’m making progress?’ (Inevitably, that short chore would turn out to be HUGE!) ‘Can I break this big chore into smaller pieces? So far, I’ve done research on X, L, and S, and now look, they all come together in this big knot, along with 6 other things I haven’t even begun to research!’ Over-whelming. Enough of that, and your mind truly goes numb. It ceases to function.B is what I have now, as we wait for repairs and renovations to get done on our house. If you follow me on facebook, you know that we’ve been ‘living’ in one room for a month. To attempt to stay sane, we go out each morning to use those wonderful computers until lunchtime, then go home to check in with the workers. (At least they’ve mostly stopped finding more water-damage problems that need to be fixed. Now, if the carpet would just arrive…!) After lunch, we go to the gym for a couple hours, ending with 20 minutes in a massage chair before we go home to spend the evening watching tv, probably reruns from Netflix. With everything we need to survive until the house is sold scrunched into that one room with us, there is only a path through the room, really. Only one of us can get up and move about at any one time, and unless they wander outside that room, they are probably blocking the other person’s view of the tv.B is also mind-numbing. I start the day eager and happy to be working on a REAL computer, grit my teeth and put my body through its paces in the name of health, and then settle down to do… absolutely nothing.
Hey, something for me to research tomorrow! CPR for numbed brains! You know, for when we finally do get to settle into a new house and I start having deadlines again.

Rumors of My Death…

 …if you’ve heard any, have been premature and greatly exaggerated. I am alive, and (relatively) well, but life has been… complicated.
It all started getting messed up when my husband came home one day and said, “I’m going to retire.” Well, yes, eventually I expected he would, possibly even this year, so I didn’t think it was anything to worry about, because his 62ndbirthday was still 5 months away. And then, a few days later, he added, “I can apply for social security 3 months before I turn 62. Let’s get the house ready to go on the market.”
In a nutshell, that pretty much turned our world upside down.
We knew we had to remove a lot of the personal stuff from our home, so we packed our book collection, our art collection, our video collection… We hired some young helpers to put these heavy boxes in our storage unit. He packed up everything in his office except his computer. I packed or threw out a lot of stuff from my office until I ran out of time.
We had a vacation scheduled for most of May. The paperwork for retiring was signed, and the day husband flew down to Orlando for that vacation was his last day of work. We spent a couple days in the parks and visiting friends while he tried to get his head around his new status. We checked out a few houses that were for sale while we were down there, and started the process of getting pre-approved for a mortgage.
And then… that infamous ‘hurry up and wait’ segment settled in. For the past 3 weeks (and probably for at least another week), the 2 of us have been living in 1 room while all the rest of the house gets fixed up and painted. While we are in that room, the only computer we have access to is the laptop we had in Florida, which I perch on a folding chair while I sit in an easy chair. Is it any wonder my neck, shoulders and back almost constantly ache?
It doesn’t help that I was surprised by a rush editing job just before leaving Florida; the 4th manuscript in a 5-book series. I got that one done and back to the publisher, but I’m wondering when #5 will appear in my mailbox.
At first, we spent a lot of time in that room, watching various tv shows. By now, we have opted to spend our mornings at dospace (If you live in Omaha and haven’t checked out dospace at 72nd & Dodge, you should – dospace.com); several afternoons of the week we go to the gym and work out; and at least once a week, we go see a movie – or 3.
Being confined to 1 room is mind-numbing. Most of the time, I just can’t concentrate. Oh, and if you are waiting impatiently for me to add another episode to MacOnFireball.blogspot.com, don’t hold your breath. I will get back to it, but guess what? The notebook holding the original story got packed when I wasn’t looking. Actually, I found the notebook, but the 10-20 pages I had out, next to my desk-top computer, to be typed in and tweaked… also got packed, and has proven to be elusive.

Eventually, the work on the house will be done. Eventually, our Omaha house will sell. Eventually, we will buy a new house in central Florida (we’ve been told it takes a minimum of 6 weeks from bid acceptance to document signing/closing) and can get the household belongings shipped down there. But right now, as the days grind by at a snail’s pace, ‘eventually’ seems a terribly long time from now.

Political Mess

Earlier this month, I did something I had never done before. In fact, it was something I didn’t think you could do in Nebraska, but since I did it, I obviously was wrong about that. I did have to make a change - one I thought I would never do - in order to accomplish it, but that turned out to be simple to do. And I knew there was no way I would vote Republican this year, so I went ahead and changed my affiliation from Independent to Democratic.I attended a caucus.I’d heard about caucuses in Iowa, but I thought Nebraska had primaries. Turns out the Republicans have a primary; the Democrats have a caucus. I don’t know when they started that.Since this was my first time, I don’t know if this was a ‘typical’ caucus or not, but it was a mess!First, it was held in the auditorium of an elementary school. Bad choice. Obviously, there was not enough parking at an elementaryschool for the number of people who showed up. We got there half an hour before it started, and had to park on the street 3 blocks away. Why not a high school auditorium or a movie theater? Either of those would have had more parking, and the theater might have had enoughparking.Second, the auditorium had 3 sections of seating. Bernie supporters sat in one section, Hillary supporters in another, and the Undecided in the middle. But there were so many people there who were Not Undecided, they eventually had to open the middle section up for everyone. And still, one candidate had supporters standing up, lining the wall and closing the aisle between sections. Good thing no fire marshal checked in; I’m pretty sure he would have shut it down. That room was holding WAY over its fire code limit! They should have had a larger place, with far more parking.Third, we had to decide who was going to ‘run’ the caucus. What a waste of time! There was only one guy nominated! I don’t know who nominated him, but I figured he had done this before, so he knew what needed to be done.He may have known what to do, but he didn’tknow how to use the microphone. Or he chose not to use it correctly. I was seated near the back, and 95% of the time, people were yelling, “Louder!” or “Use the mic!” He never seemed to do it correctly - so that we could hear him - for more than one sentence, if that long.And then we ‘voted’, group by group. What a farce! Each supporter had to hold up their hand until their ‘leader’ pointed to them, and then they said the next number and put their hand down. If they didn’t yell their number, the rest of the group got restless, wondering what the number was now, and how much longer did they have to hold their arm in the air?The result of this straw poll was announced. The Bernie and Hillary groups were deemed ‘viable’, the Undecided group was not, so the Undecided people had to choose which group they would join. Supporters of the 2 candidates were allowed a certain amount of time to talk to them. The rest of us chaffed at how long this caucus was taking.Then another ‘vote’, just like before, and the results tallied. Then the mail-in votes were added. What? One was allowed to mail in their vote and not have to sit through all this? Why didn’t anyone tell the rest of us?Eventually, a ‘winner’ was declared, and we were allowed to file out. We wasted 2-3 hours that morning. I much prefer a primary, which takes 5-10 minutes of a person’s time. Maybe longer, if there’s a line. But this caucus had a long line, and could not start until everybody was in, which was at least 20 minutes after the announced start time.There were a large number of young people in attendance. I hope this experience didn’t spoil their enthusiasm for participating in the process. (I’m a cranky old woman, so I tend to complain a lot.) 99% of the people - young and not-so-young - were well behaved, despite our frustration levels.
But please, Democratic Party, if you insist on caucuses, find a venue big enough, with plenty of parking. Nominate someone to run the caucus who knows how to use a microphone. And find some way to make the process faster!

Learning New Tricks 1

Remember that old saying, “Old dogs can’t learn new tricks?” Now that science says older people should be learning new things in order to keep their mind sharp, this ‘old dog’ is determined to learn new tricks. Even if I’m not a ‘spring chicken’ anymore.Happily, there are plenty of opportunities to learn new things, ranging from free to costing quite a lot. FREE - Tandy Leather offers free lessons in working with leather, from beginning to advanced. Generally, these lessons are offered on Saturdays for 5-6 weeks. I am in the middle of my 3rd class with them, learning to lace and sew leather projects. Usually, I come out of these sessions with 1 (maybe 2) projects done, but there are a lot of different lacing techniques to learn, so I am keeping my projects small and otherwise unadorned (no carving or stamping), and I am finishing one project a week.A couple months ago, I discovered dospace, located in Omaha at 72 & Dodge. They offer crash courses in various computer programs. Afterwards, you can go in at any time (that they’re open) and use one of their (many) computers to practice and do projects in that program, so you don’t actually have to run out and buy it. I’ve taken 3 classes from them, and try to get there for a couple hours each week to practice on the programs we don’t have.YouTube offers lots of instructive videos. We’ve watched many on using particular types of materials for specific pieces of costumes or props, and more on makeup techniques.Company websites sometimes have instructional videos to show you how to use their products. Smoothon, for instance, will show you how to make molds, and how to use those molds to cast items in resin. Hubby really enjoys doing that, and that’s how he learned the method.Television is a relatively ancient method of learning, but still an active teacher. I think the best (easiest) to learn from tv are cooking and sewing. There are other opportunities, such as doing a mosaic tabletop with pieces of broken china or tiny glass tiles, but too often, you get 1 or 2 10-15 second shots of some of the steps in doing that, with verbal instructions for the entire process delivered at 90 miles per hour. That has never been enough ‘learning’ for me to actually try it, although it is for other people.Of course, you might get a book from the local library to teach you how to do whatever you have a hankering to learn.
Hmmm. I’m running out of room, and I haven’t even gotten to some of the learning opportunities that cost money. And actually, I intended to write about the different ways people learn, but I’ve wandered quite a ways from that topic. Okay, then, this is Part 1 of “Learning New Tricks”. Stay tuned for future parts, one of which may or may not show up next week. It all depends on if I find some other fascinating subject to talk about before then.

The Eyes Have It

Eyes are complicated, right? You’ve got the ball full of fluid, with a pupil and an iris in the front and photoreceptors in the back, which feed information into the optic nerve and send it to the brain.In very simple terms, I have just described human eyes. Or the eyes of a wolf, bird, or any other vertebrate on Earth. Are there any other kinds of eyes?You bet. However, there are a surprisingly few types of eyes, given the variety of animal life on our planet.Eyes started on Earth as very simple organs, and those super-simple organs are still around today. They consist of a few photoreceptor cells connected to an optic nerve. This allows that creature to know the difference between light and shadow, although they don’t know from which direction the light is coming from. And that allows the creature to regulate circadian rhythms and respond to shadows. That is the eye found in an earthworm, sea urchin larva, sea star larva... The earthworm, for example, doesn’t want to bake in hot sunlight, so if its eyes say it’s bright, it will wriggle around until it senses shade.The next step in the development of eyes was that the photoreceptor cells were joined by pigmented cells, which allowed this creature to tell the direction of the light. These creatures - like the box jellyfish larva - could now determine which direction to move to get out of the sunlight (or into it) and could respond if a predator’s shadow moved across them.The third step was actually a split. Not of the eyes, of the types of eyes that evolved, but this step in both types is called Low-Resolution Vision. Some animals developed a ‘cupped’ eye; an eyeball with photoreceptors lining all but the front opening. Other creatures developed compound eyes. Having Low-resolution vision meant the creatures could detect their own motion, avoid objects and find preferred habitats because they saw crude images of objects in the world around them.Both types of eyes took one more evolutionary step - to High-Resolution Vision - by adding a lens, cornea and iris at the front of each eye to focus the light. With this higher resolution, a creature is able to identify their mate, a co-worker, an approaching predator or something they could eat.Humans have High-Resolution cupped eyes. They might not stay ‘high-resolution’, and some just don’t work at all, but as a species, that is the type of eye we have. Of course, our high-resolution vision can’t really be compared to the high-resolution vision of eagles. But then, we don’t rely on seeing prey from miles away to keep our belly full.Eyes are there to fill a need for the owner. If the creature only needs to know if it’s in sun or shadow, then that’s all the eyes will tell it. That species has no need for eyes any more complex than that.
I don’t know about you, but I’m thankful my eyes are so complex.