Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 90

The Write Push

A local friend of mine, Lynda Haviland, and I have been casually talking for months about how we can encourage one another to write.

Like me, she’s written and self-published two novels, and–also like me–has gotten a little stuck on her third. I wonder if the third is tough for everyone? I’ve definitely had moments of thinking that perhaps Ghosts was really just the only story I had to tell. Sometimes it feels as if everything I learned about writing from my first two books gets in the way of my story-telling now.

At any rate, I had the idea a few weeks ago that we should start a blog for the two of us where we could post daily writing updates. A way of staying honest about our goals and how we were meeting them (and/or not meeting them). I’ve been blogging there daily for a couple of weeks now and yesterday finally set my goal: to finish A Gift of Time by the end of October.

I think word count posts are pretty boring unless you’re a writer. But if you are a writer and are interested in process posts, then we’re at The Write Push. Feel free to wander over and say hi!

Yoga

I am wearing actual workout clothes, for possibly the first time in my life since I finished my last college PE class with relief.

Both dogs are mystified by this.

But in ten minutes, I’m headed to a yoga class at the Y, so I’m dressed for the occasion. I’ve been wearing capris and tank tops when we go to yoga, but I decided last weekend that maybe I really ought to have better clothing options. It doesn’t make me feel athletic, however, just kind of silly. And maybe a little fat.

I really like yoga, though. I think that’s the only time I’ve ever said that about a form of exercise, but yoga feels good. Whenever I get lost with the poses, I just breathe for a while. Twice, tears have started flowing, for no real reason, except that I’m being in the moment and when I’m in the moment, I discover that a deep well of sadness is brimming up inside of me.

That sounds as if it ought to be unpleasant, but it’s not.

Yoga — recommended.

Pacific Rim and Puzzling Rewrites (not in that order)

Puzzle though I might, I cannot figure out how to make my climax work. I discovered a huge plot-hole a few weeks ago, and spent a fair amount of time patching it, but honestly, it’s the kind of plot-hole that will destroy your story’s suspension. A little too much shock absorption! (Ha, I amuse myself.)

Ahem, anyway, I figured out today that I could fix it the same way I fixed an earlier plot-hole, and it would be much better, much stronger. Less like a patch of asphalt and more like repaving. But unfortunately, it means re-writing at least two chapters. *sigh* And I think I need to do those rewrites before doing much more, because the story will make more sense if I’ve got those done. So today I’m debating going back and revising or just plowing forward, knowing that changes to what I’ve already written will be happening later. Decisions, decisions.

On a random other note, I saw Pacific Rim today. R hated it when he saw it, said it was totally stupid, but I actually sort of loved it. I’d call it gloriously hokey, truly an old-fashioned Godzilla movie, complete with mad scientists and ridiculous technology and plots that make absolutely no sense. But a spectacular old-fashioned Godzilla movie, merged with awe-inspiring special effects. I laughed quite a lot and couldn’t take it seriously. It definitely had problems, first of which is that it was many movies merged in one; the story of the brave Australian, marching off to certain doom with a tear in his eye for the family he left behind just did not blend well with the two scientists teaming up to read an alien embryo brain. Ha. Even just writing that out made me laugh again. But it amused me greatly.

Happiness

My car died yesterday.

Turned the key. Nothing. Lights showed up, but the engine acted as if I wasn’t even there.

I love my car. She’s a ten year old Honda Civic hybrid, silver blue. Her name is Sylvia and she is absolutely reliable. We had murmurings this summer of doing a car exchange: my dad has a five year old Toyota Prius that he might like to get rid of and it would make sense for me to take the newer car. R was horrified. With great reluctance, he agreed that I could do whatever I wanted when he was gone but he patted Sylvia during his ride to the airport and told her she was a good car and he’d miss her. Unsurprisingly, I still have her.

Yes, I’m the kind of person who can love a car. And I raised one of the same.

But I’m not impractical.

So this morning, I faced the day grimly. Called the car service shop. They’d see her whenever I managed to get her there. Before I called a tow place, C suggested I try roadside assistance for my car insurance. I was skeptical. The car was not by the side of the road, after all. Turns out, yes, roadside assistance would tow my car for free. Yay!

While I waited for phone calls back and a tow truck driver to arrive, trying to write seemed pointless–too many anticipated interruptions. So I vacuumed. Cleaned the bathroom. Took out the trash. Unloaded the dishwasher. Stripped the sheets off my bed. Started some laundry. Dusted. Organized my desk. Opened my mail and actually tossed the useless stuff, filed the rest. And finally, the tow truck driver arrived.

I felt so damn productive. Usually I clean in little bits and pieces around other stuff, and I never get done. There’s always more to do, work left unfinished, jobs I’ll get to later. Today, I just kept looking for something new to do–because after all, the driver would be here in half an hour, fifteen minutes, ten minutes, five minutes, any minute, a while ago, sometime really soon. He probably only took an hour. If I’d spent that hour sitting by the side of the road, I would have been an unhappy camper, but I didn’t and I wasn’t.

Once the car was gone, I started writing. And it was fun.

I’d love to know why. In the fourteen months that I’ve been working on this ridiculous book, it’s been many things but rarely fun. Today, though–well, Natalya and a smart-mouthed teenage boy are getting into it, and… oh, right, writing a smart-mouthed teenage boy entertains me. Huh. That seemed really obvious once I thought about it. I think after I finish this series of romances, I may need to go YA for a while. Not that my romances haven’t been heavy on the teenage presence–I’d say Thought never did manage to decide whether it was romance or YA–but perhaps I should acknowledge that I drift in the YA direction even when I don’t intend to.

But none of that is the point. I had fun writing, I got a lot done around the house, my bedroom is clean, and Sylvia just had a bad battery. $150 and a new battery later, and she’s back home in the garage, good for…well, a while longer we hope.

And a day that started out badly wound up feeling really good. Somewhere in there is a metaphor or a moral or an aphorism waiting to be found, but I don’t know what it is.

Favorite lines of the day (although to be honest, I really like quite a lot of the lines I wrote today):

“What’s he going to do, point a gun at me?” Natalya snapped.

“Ha.” The boy scowled, but didn’t raise his weapon. “Lawyers, more like. Social workers. Judges. They’ll say no proof, need evidence, best place for you, man’s got rights. End of the road, kid.” Bitterness etched his voice and the lines drawing down his mouth.

Food, food, food

I’m not going to turn this into a food blog, I promise. Apart from any other reason, I don’t feel inclined to learn enough about photography and lighting to do all the pretty pictures most food blogs have. That said, I’ve had so much yummy food lately.

I made this recipe for grilled shrimp with italian tomato salsa from simplyrecipes, and it was delicious. Brushing the shrimp with olive oil and sprinkling with salt made it so much tastier than shrimp just stuck on the grill, so yay, learned something new.

The next night, we made fish in parchment pockets again. We had a lot of the italian tomato salsa left over, so it became the vegetable used on top of coho salmon. . Yum, yum, and yum again. Never tried tomatoes with salmon before, but they added a lovely flavor.

Last night, we were going to have chicken and I decided to try an Asian-inspired pan sauce. Sherry, red wine vinegar, soy sauce and red paper flakes with a teaspoon of butter. It didn’t work out exactly the way I expected it to, because I decided to cook the rice noodles in the sauce and the sauce got soaked up by the noodles. Instead of a sauce poured over chicken and rice noodles, it wound up being spicy rice noodles with chicken. The noodles had serious kick to them, which blended well with the plain chicken, so serendipity for the win.

In other news, writing has been going really well, until this morning, when I decided that the chapter I’m working on stinks. *sigh* Yes, that is the reason I’m writing about food now. I promised myself I wasn’t leaving the house until I’d written 500 words one way or another, and this post counts for at least 350 of them.

However, I still love–and am definitely going to save, somehow, one way or another!–this bit:

Zane shrugged. “Tough to say. If you ask Akira, she’ll mutter some mumbo-jumbo about quantum entanglement and the position of photons in time.”

Hmm, when I went back to copy that bit, I found at least three more bits that I quite like. So maybe this chapter isn’t as bad as I was thinking it was an hour ago…

Zelda playing ball

Zelda playing ball

Posted on tumblr because I couldn’t figure out how to post a video here. Less than 30 seconds long, though, and worth the click if you like cute dogs behaving in cute ways.

Someone suggested Shadow for the new dog name. It would have been a good name, because he follows two steps behind Zelda like a little black shadow to her slightly bigger white body. Instead he’s Bartlebee. He’s doing okay. I think I’m probably going to perpetually worry about his health — he’s a wheezy little guy, snores horribly and has times when he sounds as if he’s choking on snot. (Sorry to put that graphic into your head.) But he’s peaceful and happy-go-lucky and has been quick to pick up new house rules.

In other news, R is in Seattle. I miss him horribly. Not going to dwell on that, because it will make me sadder, but oh, I miss him.

But my friend C has moved in, so my nest was not empty for long. C likes to cook, even more than I do, and we are having amazing meals. C is fond of slow cooker foods wrapped in tortillas and I’m fond of grilled foods wrapped in tortillas, so we’re mostly eating interesting tortilla concoctions: Korean pulled beef with cabbage and carrots, buffalo chicken with blue cheese and celery, jerk shrimp with avocado and tomato. All wrapped in tortillas. C picks the healthy whole-grain kind, but I’m finishing up the flour tortillas. I’ll probably switch to whole-grain when I run out of flour and see how that goes. I’m eating healthier but I’m also eating more, so any nod to fewer calories is probably a good idea.

Anyway, I keep saying I should take pictures and keep not remembering, but I do want to remember this dish. On Friday, we made fish cooked in parchment paper. We took the fillets (swai, a fish I’d never tried before), sprinkled them with salt and paper, added a couple of thin slices of lime, some small pieces of zucchini, carrots, and green onions, cilantro, and a little olive oil mixed with wine, and folded them into parchment paper envelopes. Baked in the oven for fifteen minutes and it was so, so good. Really easy and fast, absolutely healthy, plus the only dirty dishes were the knife and the cutting board. Ha. It wasn’t even expensive. The fish (to feed four( cost less than $5 at the fish market. Totally worth making again and again–although C and I were already talking about all the possible variations. I want to try it with tomatoes and olives, and then with lemons and asparagus, and even though I’m not a huge pepper fan, I think peppers and onions and some Season-all would probably be tasty. So many options!

Mystery Dog Update

Zelda, saying, “WTF, Mom? You can’t be serious!”

So no frantic owner turned up for Mystery Dog.

On Wednesday I took him to the vet to see if it was safe to let the dogs get together. I’d been keeping him in the guest bedroom and then R’s room, but that meant he was alone a lot and I felt bad for him. But if he was going to stay, I wanted to be sure he wasn’t sick.

Her conclusions were much, much sadder than mine. He has a bare patch on his back: flea allergy, she said. His eyes were goopy: dry eye, a chronic condition for which he should be taking medication every day for the rest of his life. He hasn’t been neutered, which I hadn’t noticed, but became more apparent at the vet’s, where he was marking every corner he could get his leg on. I managed to stop him a few times but he got the wall a couple. He’s fat–which I thought meant spoiled–but the vet says he’s been being fed table food instead of real dog food. And the slowness is the worst. She thinks he’s probably heartworm positive.

In other words, his owners suck. And since all my signs and all my neighborly conversations turned up no sign of anyone who had ever seen him before, they probably dumped him. I live on a corner, and the side where he would have come over the fence doesn’t have any windows that face onto it. It might have looked like a place where they wouldn’t be noticed.

I’ve been trying to find sympathy in my heart for them. I can usually make up a story that justifies almost any behavior. Someone cuts me off in traffic and I write them an elaborate scenario where they’re desperate to get to work on time because they’ll get fired and the sick child at home needs the health insurance. Repeat ad nauseum. But these people, not so much. I am angry at them. Really truly angry. I hope they get reincarnated into dogs that get abandoned themselves and get to see what it feels like. Well, no, I don’t really because abandoning dogs is just a horrible thing to do. But I do think that they’ve earned themselves some serious negative karma points.

Anyway, the vet was pretty pessimistic about poor Mystery Dog. She said that he will be a very expensive dog to own. The tech gave me a bunch of print-outs for rescue groups and told me that he has no chance in a shelter here. They’ll put him to sleep immediately. I checked out a couple of the websites for the groups, sent one an email, but they’re overloaded. Too many dogs, not enough homes to go around.

I was really sad about it for about twenty-four hours. I need a job, not a dog. I don’t have the money to own an expensive dog. And I already own a dog, one who gets jealous of my affection. It would be entirely impractical for me to keep Mystery Dog.

And then I said, the hell with it, he’s mine now, and started feeling much happier. This morning I ripped down the signs I posted. Later today, I’ll go buy him his collar and leash.

But now I really need to find a job (or write a bestseller) because I have an expensive dog counting on me to provide heartworm treatment and eye drops. Also dog food (he has grudgingly accepted that kibble is edible), vaccinations, neutering, and lots and lots of snuggles.

Zelda says, “Okay, yeah, whatever.”

Oh! Name poll! Suggestions so far:

1) Mystery Dog

2) Mario

3) Link (to go with Zelda from the Legend of Zelda video games)

4) RJ (for R Junior — probably a joke, but eh, it’s kind of cute, IMO)

5) Louis (entirely random as far as I can know, my dad just thought he looked like a Louis)

6) Other ideas?

I’ve been calling him Mystery Dog for a week and he comes when I call him, so…Mystery Dog it might be, by way of acclimation. But if I get lots of votes for something else, I’ll try it out on him and see how it works!

Mystery

I found this dog in my backyard yesterday.

My backyard is fully fenced. The fence is six feet high–although now that I’ve typed that, I kinda want to go stand next to it and see if it’s higher. Suffice to say that, though, that it’s high enough that I can’t look over it. And this dog–this little sweetheart of a dog–was just placidly wandering around inside. No collar, of course, so no tags.

I did the obvious: took him out and encouraged him to go home. He didn’t.

I wandered my neighborhood, asking every one I saw if they recognized him. I talked to kids and grown-ups, neighbors I know and people I’ve never met. It was sorta nice, actually–people are quite friendly when you’re walking around with a lovable stray.

I took him to the vet to see if he had a microchip. I think he recognized the vet’s office. He was quite cheerful about getting there. And two people at the vet’s felt like they knew him but couldn’t come up with a name. No microchip, unfortunately.

I brought him home and made some signs and in absolutely miserable late afternoon, pre-storm humidity, wandered around putting Found Dog notices up. I got pretty cranky during that part. This is a small, slow dog. He could not possibly have wandered far. Why weren’t his owners out looking for him?

I looked online. Checked with one person whose lost dog was a remote maybe. He wasn’t hers. Posted a message and a picture on a local lost dog site. Called Animal Control and filed a found dog report.

And now I wait. It’s been 24 hours and counting now, and I have to believe that somewhere out there an owner’s heart is breaking because he is the sweetest, nicest friendliest little dog. Wherever he came from, he has been well-loved, because he thinks people are just swell, and strange dogs (I’ve got Gizmo again, so two) are new friends, and that snuggling up and getting his ears rubbed is simply his due. Not to mention that he probably ought to go on a diet, he’s well-fed. Plus, his teeth are fantastic–I bet his owner actually brushes them.

Still, wherever that owner is, she had better get her act together soon, because with every passing hour, the evil temptation to go rip down my signs and head off to the pet store to buy him a new collar and tags with my address on them grows stronger.

If he becomes ours, his name will be Mystery.

(I won’t rip down the signs, of course, but I might take the car and start driving around other neighborhoods looking for signs. I don’t understand how he could have gotten into my backyard, but maybe he managed to wander farther than one would expect.)

Time Status

So, I finally finished what we might call the first act of A Gift of Time yesterday. Six chapters, about 25,000 words, and the story is established: background, Natalya’s gift, the history between Natalya and Colin, and most importantly, the major aspects of the plot, which involve Natalya’s precognition and a lost little girl.

Woo-hoo! So on to what we fondly call the “murky middle”–the part of the story that leads to where I know I’m going, the outline details of which consist of clear guidance like, “Stuff happens and time passes.” I actually kind of like this part of the story, because it’s where there’s the most room for surprises. Instead of trying to get things done, it’s when I expect the characters to take over and do what they do. In the case of Natalya and Colin, I expect arguments and fun, some movement toward romance, heat in unexpected glances and most importantly, a gradual pulling together as they work towards rescuing a hurt child.

All of that is great. I’m happy with it and it’s good news.

But–why is there always a but?–I went back and re-read the last draft that I still have in order to see if there were any parts that I wanted to save. And damn it, damn it, damn it.

I pulled Rose out (mostly) of the latest version of the story. I realized that one of the things that I was not satisfied with in A Gift of Thought was that writing from a ghost’s point-of-view is limiting. Dillon’s sections sometimes feel slow to me because he can’t talk to people, he can’t act, he’s limited to watching. And a watchful point-of-view is hard to write and hard to make interesting. So I cut Rose. But re-reading the draft that I haven’t looked at in months made me go “ARGH!” and want to pull my hair out because Rose is awesome.

I should learn from this to stop editing myself, at least until I’m done. Really, it’s depressing to go back to a version that I tossed and declare it good. But here’s a little angelic Rose for a Sunday afternoon read. (It won’t be in the final book most likely, but don’t read if you hate all spoilers. Also, it’s first draft, unedited, ya-da-da-da.)

*****

Rose really hoped the sheriff wasn’t counting on her angelic nature to do him much good. She’d tried telling Akira that with no wings, no halo, and no harp, she couldn’t possibly be an angel. “Mmm-hmm,” Akira had murmured. “So why exactly are you babbling about hospitals and safe places in the middle of the night?”

Rose hadn’t had a good answer.

Natalya, though, said, “Pfft.”

Rose approved.

“So far our angelic assistance has consisted of vague presentiments of danger. I’m gonna want something a lot more concrete before I consider that useful,” Natalya snapped before stilling. Glancing around warily, she added, “Um, Rose? Are you here?”

“Yep,” Rose replied, laughing. “Don’t worry, I don’t mind. I can’t say as useful has ever been much in my nature.”

Natalya looked at Colin questioningly.

He shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t hear her. Did Akira call you earlier?”

Rose pursed her mouth. She leaned down, as close to Colin as she could get without letting her ghostly energy move through him and yelled in his ear. “I’m right here.”

Colin rubbed his ear as a faint frown creased his forehead. “Or maybe…” He tilted his head slightly, turning it up.

Rose tried again.

“Almost,” Colin murmured. He glanced back at Natalya. “Or I could be imagining it.”

Rose wrinkled her nose. She’d thought last night that Colin had heard her pretty clearly, much more so than most people did. Maybe that was because he’d just died. Maybe being a spirit, even if only briefly, had left him more perceptive than usual. But if so, it had been only temporary.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Natalya muttered, before saying, in a louder voice, “If you’re here, Rose, can you give us a sign?”

“Help Wanted?” Colin suggested.

Natalya’s lips twitched, but she didn’t smile. “Trespassers will be shot?” she offered instead.

“Now how angelic would that be?” Colin drawled, his grey eyes alight with amusement.

Rose looked from one to the other, her lips curving up. She couldn’t read minds and she didn’t know the sheriff well, but she could tell that his thoughts were not angelic. Good for him, she thought. Life was meant to be lived after all and she’d always enjoyed a good flirtation herself.

“Dillon can send text messages,” Natalya told Colin. “If Rose can do the same, maybe she’ll let us know what she wants us to do now.”

“Oh, that’s so hard,” Rose protested. She’d tried, she had, but she’d never succeeding in replicating Dillon’s skill at controlling cell phones.

Still, Natalya had only asked for a sign. Maybe Rose could manage some other ghostly feat? She was good at switching channels on the television, but that wouldn’t work while they were outside. They wouldn’t notice unless the little girl came out and complained, and she didn’t seem like the complaining type.

With a sigh, Rose stepped away from Colin and into Natalya. Standing on top of her, her legs lost in Natalya’s body, she tried to think of the worst, saddest, bleakest thoughts she could.

It took her a minute. Death, the obvious tragic thought, just didn’t scare her anymore. Not hers or anyone else’s. Sure, it would have been sad if the little girl died, but she probably had a nice granny waiting for her through the passageway, and Colin, why he’d practically been looking forward to seeing his parents again. No, death wasn’t scary.

Loneliness, though, that had power. Rose imagined herself still tied to her house, but without Henry, without the boys in the backyard, without Dillon or Akira or Zane, without music or television or visitors.

Natalya shivered, tugging the light cardigan sweater she wore closed, and tucking one hand into a fist by her neck.

“Do you hear anything?” she asked Colin.

He shook his head. “Not a word.”

“Huh,” she said. “Well, maybe she’s not here.”

Annoyed, Rose tried harder, concentrating on the thought of a completely silent, completely empty world. Why, it was such a miserable idea that she almost wanted to cry herself. Natalya couldn’t possibly miss that.

Natalya shivered again, wrapping her other arm around her body in a tight hug.

“Weather’s supposed to change tonight,” Colin remarked. “Cold front coming in.”

Rose stamped her foot in frustration. “Cold front? I’m not a cold front! You asked for a sign. I gave you one.”

Natalya stood. “It’s lucky we’ve had warm weather for the past few days. And dry, too. If there’s rain tonight and the temperature falls much more—well, it’s good that you found her when you did.”

Colin rose to his feet as well, standing on the step below Natalya so their eyes were level. “So no angelic assistance, huh?”

“My phone’s not ringing.”

Colin slipped his phone out of his pocket and thumbed it on, glancing at the screen. “Nothing on mine, either.”

Natalya dipped her head in acknowledgement. “If Rose is here, she doesn’t seem to have anything to say.”

Rose snorted, finally stepping outside of Natalya. “I’ve always got plenty to say. You’re just a terrible listener.”

*****

A copy-editor’s XKCD

Possibly my favorite XKCD ever. I wonder how many messages he’s gotten about the missing apostrophes in the final panel? Let’s face it, only we unenlightened ones care.