Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 72

Eleven years old

The electric company let me know that there was a power outage in my area. Wasn’t that kind of them? Then they let me know when it was scheduled to be fixed. Then they let me know that it was fixed! So supportive, so helpful, such great information.

Seriously, I might have appreciated it if the texts hadn’t come in all before 6:15AM. And/or if I’d had the ringer on my phone turned off, which I often do. As it is, I’m trying to not let it affect my attitude toward the week ahead. Or even toward the day ahead.

So far, I have not made it to yoga a single time in 2016. I would like today to be the day. But between the phone calls and the weather, I haven’t walked the dogs yet and in my current state of health, I probably don’t have the energy to both walk the dogs and go to yoga. I’m caught in the trap of being sick and wanting comfort food and not being able to get healthy because I keep eating comfort food. Alas. It’s a bad trap for me. I can know that I feel crappy because I ate food that I shouldn’t eat but at the same time, I don’t feel well enough to put the effort into eating the way I should.

And while I know that getting back to yoga would be really good for me, today is Zelda’s birthday. Eleven years old! (I know I’m getting the year right, but I admit to a slight possibility that the day is wrong. I know exactly how I could find out for sure, but it would involve moving a bunch of stuff to get at a scrapbook and I am currently too lazy.) Anyway, it seems really unfair to not walk the dog on her birthday. In years past, I would have gotten pizza and ice cream and shared both with her. I’m sort of tempted to do that this year, too — I’m sick anyway, so what difference does it make? — but I am quite sure that Zelda, both long-term and short, would prefer that I had the energy to go for long walks with her. There is nothing she likes better than a really long walk. Even swimming wouldn’t beat it. Unless it was walking and swimming at the beach, which would probably be her ultimate doggie fantasy birthday!

So, okay, decision made. No yoga, dog walking instead. And making healthy eating choices so that maybe I can make it to yoga on Wednesday instead!

Zelda’s a great beach dog. Well-behaved off-leash and loves the water

Writing Joy

Last night, I was trying to sleep but actually lying awake, staring at the ceiling, wishing I hadn’t drunk coffee in the afternoon, when a scene began to scroll before my eyes. Like watching a movie or having a dream, the characters were so vivid, so real, and their conversation so charming. I sat up, turned on the light, pulled my Chromebook over, and scribbled down rough notes about the dialog I’d just imagined. And then I turned the lights off and tried to go to sleep again.

This morning, I was in the shower, washing my hair, when the same characters popped back into my head and started flirting again. I could see them at Maggie’s diner. I could hear the conversation they were having. And I knew exactly what happened next. I barely dried myself off before I was at the computer, typing madly, trying not to drip on the keyboard.

Such a fun, fun, fun feeling. And such a pity that the words and the characters and the scenes are NOT from the book I am working on. ARGH!

The good news (maybe?) is that these characters are clearly in the sequel to the book that I am writing. There’s no way I can reach their story until I make it through Grace’s story, because until Grace and Noah have their happy ending, Noah’s brother will not be visiting Tassamara. And he can not be happy-go-lucky flirting with a random girl in Maggie’s Bistro until he gets there. So back to Grace I go. But oh, inspiration is so delightful.

I don’t know when I’ll get to write this book and I don’t know what its name is and everything about it might change dramatically between now and then, but: Heather Allen is on the run, carrying with her a secret of life-shattering proportions.

Someday I will get to tell her story!

Book review: In the Shadow of Blackbirds

Book Description from Goodreads:

In the Shadow of Blackbirds, by Cat Winters:

In 1918, the world seems on the verge of apocalypse. Americans roam the streets in gauze masks to ward off the deadly Spanish influenza, and the government ships young men to the front lines of a brutal war, creating an atmosphere of fear and confusion. Sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches as desperate mourners flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort, but she herself has never believed in ghosts. During her bleakest moment, however, she’s forced to rethink her entire way of looking at life and death, for her first love—a boy who died in battle—returns in spirit form. But what does he want from her?

Featuring haunting archival early-twentieth-century photographs, this is a tense, romantic story set in a past that is eerily like our own time.

******

I’m never going to write historical fiction. The closest I will ever come is fantasy in a historical setting so that when people tell me all the things I got wrong, I can shrug and say, “Fantasy, remember?”

I suppose technically this author could say the same thing, because she’s writing a book where ghosts exist. But I was the PITA reader seriously bugged by the details. She has her main character describe as scene as surreal. In 1918? The surrealists didn’t start painting until the 1930s. Before then, the word didn’t exist. She excuses a sneeze as allergies. That term was invented in 1906 in Europe, so pretty unlikely to have been in widespread use in 1918 Portland.

Most troublesome to me was that she paints the flu epidemic in San Diego as being apocalyptic in scope, with corpses lying in the street. A quick internet search reveals that 202 people total died of the flu in San Diego out of over 3000 who fell sick in a city of over 70,000 people. That’s … a somewhat unexciting apocalypse.

I did keep reading, but I definitely never became immersed. Instead, I kept leaving the book and looking up random facts on the internet. I guess that makes it an educational read!

The flu epidemic information was the most bothersome — we now know that the pandemic was incredibly devastating and killed millions of people, but people didn’t know that at the time. The epidemic is historically fascinating (to me) not because of the widespread destruction but because in so many places, people were so innocent — newspapers buried the stories about it, people scoffed at the recommendations to wear masks, and by the time they really started to understand the severity, it was almost over. The second burst of the flu, where most of the deaths occurred, actually only lasted for a couple months. Imagine the AIDS epidemic in ultra high speed. I feel like the flu pandemic is actually a lot more interesting than the stereotype of a pandemic in this story, but the story was really more about spiritualism and photography and WWI, so I’m probably being overly picky.

The story overall — lots of vivid smells and tastes, interesting research and information despite inaccuracies, a classic “not like other girls” heroine, a grim mystery with an ending that I did not see coming, and I finished it despite my regular departures to the internet to question the historical accuracy of the details. (The internet failed to tell me when children began being told to share their toys but I really, truly, seriously doubt whether it was much before the 1950s.)

Read via Overdrive.

Revisions vs Rewrites

So I’m about 15K words into my third version of A Gift of Grace and it’s actually going pretty well. (Please, please, universe, do not let those words jinx me.) But I had confidently told myself when I started this revision on December 17th that as soon I’d rewritten the first few chapters, I’d be able to use lots of material that I’d already written. It would be more of a deep revision than an actual rewrite. Five chapters in, it’s clear that I’m an idiot. Or at least good at lying to myself. Did I really always know it wouldn’t work out that way? If I’d admitted that to myself, I’m not sure I could have started rewriting. I might have been too discouraged. But never yet have I found it easy to re-use text if I start rewriting.

A revision is one thing. I can remember finding a totally frustrating plot hole in the middle of A Gift of Time. (If they’re looking for something, why don’t they just ask Zane to find it, instead of trying to follow a ghost around?) I had to revise to fix it, and it wasn’t particularly easy since I was eliminating a character from a scene, but it was a revision. That chapter still fit snugly in between the chapters on either side. And lots of my other revisions are minor, of course. Tweaking dialogue, smoothing out clunky stuff, eliminating repetitions, watching for over-used words or mannerisms — I’ve got a whole long list of stuff that I do during the revision stage.

But this is not a revision that I’m working on. It’s a rewrite. And the flow of the text is totally changing, so scenes that will be a lot like material that I’ve already written are not close enough to be re-used as they are or even revised heavily. They need to be rewritten.

This is… painful. It’s particularly painful when there’s a part that I really like and I can’t see how to re-use it. This morning I stumbled across one such and it made me laugh. I don’t know how or if I can re-use it — I’m definitely going to try — but just in case I can’t, here it is, saved for posterity. I hope it makes you laugh.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” Olivia said. She’d taken her seat behind the reception desk again. She picked up the paper on the top of her in-box and said brightly, “I’ll just be working away. On, um…” Her brow furrowed. “A purchase order for the quantum teleportation guys. Why do they want us to buy them cats?”

“No cats,” Grace said firmly, snatching the paper away from Olivia. “They’re trying to sneak that one by you because I already said no. I’ll talk to them.” She glanced down at the paper, shaking her head. “Why couldn’t Schrodinger have theorized about goldfish?”

Winter Weather

The weather here has been grey and gloomy — or at least grey and gloomy by my Floridian standards. The other day I was so cold in the house that I put on a sweater and socks, then crawled under the covers, then decided that I was being ridiculous and went to turn on the heat. It was 68 degrees Fahrenheit, aka 20 degrees Celsius, and not exactly cold-cold. But when you’ve adapted to 80 degrees, cold is relative.

Anyway, as a result of the weather and the post-holiday blues, I’ve been taking a lot of long, hot baths. The animal that is living in my walls is definitely living under the floor of the bathroom. I don’t know whether it likes the baths — possibly the warmth seeps through and is pleasant? or possibly the damp seeps through and is not pleasant? — but either way, the creature is noisy when I’m in the tub. That’s why I didn’t say they were long, hot, relaxing baths, although my sister/nephew gave me some excellent bubble bath for Christmas. (Sister/nephew because when I was excited about my bubble bath, my sister admitted she’d sent her almost 21-year-old out to do the shopping, because she hasn’t been well. I was very pleased with my nephew’s taste.) So baths plus bubbles great, baths plus creature not so great, works out to a bath draw, I guess.

Along with my bubble baths, I’ve been going for some comfort reading: Agatha Christie. I’ve read The Murder on the Links, an early Hercule Poirot; The Man in the Brown Suit; The Clocks, which is a late Hercule Poirot; and another one whose name I can’t remember, but which was just barely a Poirot. I’ll have to try to hunt it down again. Ah, Cat Among the Pigeons. Late Poirot, #32, according to Goodreads.

Decades ago, I think I’d read all of the books Agatha Christie had written, but maybe not. Maybe I’d just read all of the ones that my library had, or that came into the used bookstore where I worked, because they haven’t all felt familiar. I was sure I knew Murder on the Links, but it was not at all what I expected. They’re fun to read, though, because they take place in such a different world. At this point, I — hmm, I wanted to say that it was almost like reading science fiction, set on another planet, but I suppose it’s really more like reading historical novels. Except not at all. The world-building feels like science fiction world-building, sketchy and interesting, different technologies, curious costumes, but all taken for granted.

In The Murder on the Links, Poirot scoffs at the detective collecting cigarette butts and rolling papers and *spoiler* …

,,,they turn out to be planted by the culprits. It felt very much like Agatha Christie waving a fist at the boring future in store for mystery stories when DNA evidence and hair strands became everything.

But they’ve been entertaining reading. Agatha Christie was not shy about using adverbs or repetitious language or boring language or character types or cliches and none of that matters. The racism & sexism matter a bit more — some of the romantic cliches are uncomfortable and when she starts talking about “the natives,” even though she’s not dogmatically political, it’s clear that she’s very much a product of her imperialist culture. But it would be unreasonable to expect anything different. And meanwhile, she tells a good story. I’ve been trying to figure out what I can learn about plotting from her and frankly, it sort of feels like her solution, when stuck, is to have another murder. But maybe all those murders were planned out from the very beginning. I should look for some information about how she plotted. At any rate, her solution is probably not going to work for me, since my stories are not exactly heavy with murders.

I think, if anything, Ghosts was me trying to write a romance and figuring out that maybe romance isn’t really my genre. Thought was me trying to write a thriller and figuring out that maybe thrillers won’t be my genre, either. Time was me trying to write a mystery and figuring out that maybe mysteries aren’t my genre. A Lonely Magic is me writing a fantasy and discovering that yep, I can write a fantasy. Such a pity that I can’t sell a fantasy, ha. But Grace is me trying to write a mystery with thriller elements, deciding it isn’t meant to be a mystery, deciding to write a suspenseful romance, deciding it isn’t meant to be a romance, and now deciding to just write a ghost story. I wrote a line yesterday — end of my new third chapter, probably at about 100,000 words written on this project since the beginning and in the new version, maybe 10,000 words in:

“Isn’t it obvious?” Rose turned in a circle, eying all the ghosts that filled the room, from the bobbing lights to the transparent singing lady and the solid others. “It’s time to move on.”

And thought, oh, look, there’s my plot. Damn it. It took me 100,000 words to figure it out.

Anyway, I think I intended to write more about Agatha Christie, but I have a dog being yearning at me, almost reaching the stage of putting her head on the keyboard — she inches her nose closer every sentence or so — aha, and she just reached it, there is a wet doggie muzzle on the a and s keys. Oh, and now she’s started trembling which she knows I hate. I don’t know if she does it deliberately or not, but it so worries me. So yes, maybe more commentary on Agatha Christie later, but right now, I have to go walk some dogs.

Resolutions

My list of things to do feels terrifyingly long and filled with the sort of annoying stuff that could take forever or could not.

Example: I’ve been hearing weird noises, which at first I attributed to the dogs, or visitors, but yesterday all visitors were gone, the dogs were with me, and I still heard weird noises. I’m thinking animal(s) living in my walls, and probably not mice. It’s not little skittering noises, but banging and thuds. So somehow I need to find out what’s visiting me and get rid of it. Could be a big job, could be a little job.

Second example: I took down the Christmas tree but I haven’t put away the ornaments. I left them all piled on the window seat and the chairs and the floor. So they need to get put away, but I have no idea how long it will take and it probably depends on how carefully I put them away.

Third example: writing a book. Oh, wait, I know that one’s a big job. Bigger than it should be because I started over again right before Christmas and am back on Chapter 3. Bad me. I’m not throwing everything out, though, just… well, just a lot of it. I am so appalling impractical as a writer. So adding a fourth huge job, find a real job that pays me money so that I can continue to be impractical when it comes to writing, without letting the dogs starve. Well, or me starve either, but I fell in love with CostCo’s dark chocolate sea salt caramels in December and it was not good for me. I’ve got some room to go before I’m starving.

Meanwhile, though, my entire face hurts because my jaw has locked up. I’ve had Temperomandibular joint problems since I was a teenager — and ugh, that wikipedia link is depressing. This is the worst pain I’ve had from it since I was seventeen and I’ll probably be headed to the doctor later this week, when I’m sure my new health insurance is active. But maybe not since wikipedia tells me that there aren’t really any effective treatments, other than what I’ve been working on myself already — trying to relax and lower my stress level.

Ha, and I just realized that I’m missing yoga because I got distracted by that long wikipedia post and my phone’s in my purse so the alarm didn’t remind me that it was time to go. How’s that for irony? R would point out that I’m misusing the term, or rather using it in today’s conventional (yet non-dictionary approved) meaning of an unfortunate coincidence. So yeah, it’s an unfortunate coincidence that I was too busy thinking about feeling stressed and reading about the physical consequences of said stress to make it to my life’s best de-stressor. Alas.

But that brings me back to my resolution: to take one thing at a time. How’s that for a nice straightforward resolution? And the current next thing will be to finish this blog post and go find some breakfast that doesn’t require chewing.

Goodbye 2015 and Hello 2016

The last swimming day of 2015 turned out to be New Year’s Eve. My brother and his family were here for my father’s 75th birthday party and as far as they were concerned, 80 degree weather is acceptable swimming weather. They were right. I swam, too, and it was reasonably nice. A little on the cold side, but refreshing cold, not horrifying.

I thought about trying to make today be the first swimming day of 2016 — I could have, it was again nice enough — but I didn’t. Swimming fit right in to yesterday’s fun chaos of kids and barking dogs and adults having conversations around interruptions, but today was the solitary quiet of needles dropping off the Christmas tree as I pulled off the ornaments. Not swimming weather mentally, even though it was just as warm as it was yesterday.

Yesterday I made fruit salad — cantaloupe, watermelon, pineapple, strawberries & blueberries — and a maple cream cheese French toast casserole for a family brunch. On Christmas Eve, I did appetizers and desserts for family and friends. With Thanksgiving, that makes three occasions recently that I’ve cooked for ten plus. My conclusion is that I don’t mind the cooking, but the clean-up is seriously tedious. I used paper plates on Christmas Eve and even with paper plates, lots of cooking and eating makes lots of mess. But it was nice to have people here, of course.

Hmm, everything I write today is coming out a little blue. I guess I’m not quite ready to barrel ahead into the new year — I apparently need a little longer to recover from the holidays. But I wish you all a Happy New Year! May 2016 bring adventures and joy!

The Longest Night

On Saturday, I decided I should hang Christmas lights. I don’t get serious about them — I am not one of those people with decorations on the roof and lit-up lawn displays of Santa and all his reindeer — but I do have a few strings of blue and white danging icicles that stretch across the front of the house. I also have incredible scratchy hedges that protect the front of the house from people wanting to do stupid things like paint or hang lights. But I dragged out the ladder and the step-stool and the lights and tried to find the nails that we put up last year.

Hanging lights is one of those chores that reminds me how my life has not turned out the way I expected it to. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, I don’t even think about being single. Solitude doesn’t feel “alone” to me, it feels normal. But hanging lights and putting air in the car’s tires makes me bizarrely resentful. Where is the partner who is supposed to be taking care of these chores? How come he never showed up? This year, I tried to convince R to help me but he was so passive-aggressively hostile to the idea, in the way that only a teenager can be, that I gave up on him. But I grumbled as I hung the lights. An extra ten inches of height and another pair of hands would have made it so much easier.

And then I kicked a hole in my wall.

I was trying to balance on the edge of the window to reach a spot that I couldn’t get to on the ladder because a dying tree is in the way. I feel guilty about the stupid tree because the lawn people write me notes telling me that I need to treat the trees because they are sick. The notes are nice notes, they point out that trees are expensive and that treating the trees is cheaper than replacing the trees, but I can’t afford to treat the trees and so I ignore the notes. And I ignore the tree. But when it’s in my face while I try to get a ladder past it in order to hang Christmas lights, it’s tough not to notice the yellowing leaves, the brown spots, and the white spots that are probably hatching bugs.

I was doing a good job of not noticing the tree, though, or at least of only thinking of it as an inconvenience, as I tried to squeeze past it to reach the corner of the house, so I could hang the lights. But it meant that I was balancing precariously on a very tiny ledge of brick. When I leaned too far, I… I don’t even know what happened. I am trying to picture it now, but mostly, I think my foot hit something that should have been solid and it wasn’t. The wood just crumbled away at the pressure. It wasn’t really the kick that did the deed — the wood was waiting to go.

After that, my interest in hanging lights declined to nil. I draped them across the other corner and let them hang. It is the most half-baked light hanging job ever. If light displays were graded, I’d get points for showing up, but a C for effort and a D- for execution.

But yesterday I went to church. I think I was thinking that if I can’t find the holiday spirit with lights, maybe the music of my childhood would do? It didn’t — largely because the music was not the music of my childhood. Even the offering song wasn’t the same. But the church is having a service today, this evening, a longest night service. The minister introduced it as a service for people who find the holidays hard, a moment to remember those we’ve lost and a time for quiet meditation. I’m not sure if I’ll go — I missed yoga all last week because I’ve been sick, so I’d like to get some exercise today — but I love the concept.

On this, the longest night, I remember my grandparents. I remember my mother. I remember the friends I’ve lost. I reflect on my worries — houses and trees, money and health — acknowledge them, and let them go. I think about my loved ones, with problems that I cannot control or fix, and I remind myself that those problems are not in my hands.

On the longest night, I remember that dawn will come, and that tomorrow, the night will be shorter.

Yin and Yang

Z’s attitude to B has been, from Day One, an appropriately regal, “You are invisible to me.” This is infinitely superior to her attitude toward M, which was a wary, “You might be dangerous. Do I need to defend my person from you?”

The latter led her into some very painful behavior. Painful to both of us — breaking up dog fights is not fun and has generally involved damage to my person, except for the one time where I scooped Zelda up and threw her into the pool. I read something about Jack Russell terriers once that said you should never own two of them, because if they fight, they will fight to the death — they are incapable of giving up. M had every advantage over Z but when Z decided she needed to fight, she would not let go, and M, quite sensibly, defended herself. Anyway, I think that book was probably silly — plenty of people own two JRTs without trouble, but Z has a stubbornness and a focus that is innate. She would have been good at catching rats, I suspect. Put her on the job and away she goes.

Her job, however, at least as she sees it, is me, the care and keeping of. Her focus is on reading my mind, delivering her interpretation of my wishes, keeping me safe. B has just been a peripheral creature, innocuous, not threatening, not interesting. Lately, however, I’ve been leaving the house a lot more often than I used to, and leaving the two of them home alone. Gradually, slowly, tentatively… well, you can see the photo. R called them Yin and Yang. I call them adorable.

Sick, sick, sick

R arrived home from school, trailing germs like perfume. Although, actually, I don’t suppose I had a long enough incubation period to catch whatever he’s got, so possibly R arrived home just in time to have to listen (unsympathetically) to me whine about the cold that’s hit me.

He has apparently been sick since the beginning of November, unable to kick a cold or possibly coming down with one cold after another, so he’s quite brisk about suggesting drugs and keeping his distance. He did, however, go off to Panera to buy me a bowl of autumn squash soup, so I’m not complaining. It’s nice to have him here, even though I barely made it out of bed yesterday and so far have done little better today.

And I thought I had the energy to write a blog post, but finding that link used it all up. I have to go take a nap now. Ugh, I hate being sick.