Category: personal & miscellaneous

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How Writing is Like Packing School Lunches

  By personal & miscellaneous, writer development, writing life

Writing, and packing school lunches. I realize the connection might not be immediately obvious. It wasn’t to me, either, until this morning, when I was going about the weekday business of–you guessed it–packing school lunches.

And I suddenly realized that this job (although I don’t consider it one of my more enjoyable tasks) is no longer the huge, pain-in-the-butt undertaking that I once considered it. It takes less time now, and the results are better.

To put it in context, it’s only the past few years that I’ve been packing lunches for both my kids every morning. For the first years of school they came home to lunch every day, but as schools and lunch hours changed, we eventually got around to the point where it made more sense for them both to take lunch with them. And I had to learn the necessary skills for making that happen.

I didn’t take to it very well at first. If you’ve ever packed school lunches, you might understand some of the variables that must be considered. Such as, what can I expect this child to eat (likes and dislikes)? The answers generate a list of possibilities, long or sadly short if your child is a so-called “picky” eater. Scratch off this list any foods verboten at School X, such as peanut butter, eggs, etc. The list is shorter. Scratch off foods that don’t meet microwaving criteria like times or days at School X. Shorter again. Eventually you will probably scratch off foods that the child has grown tired of. With the current brevity of the list, everything might fall into that category at some point. And if you have more than one child, it’s quite unlikely that their final lists are going to contain anything in common. Sigh, and hie yourself off to the grocery store.

So I remember a blur of many, many mornings of repeatedly opening and closing the refrigerator and cupboards, hoping to notice something that I’d missed when I looked ten seconds ago, trying to cobble together lunches while supervising wake-up calls, wardrobe calamities, homework emergencies, and any number of other morning trials.

The epiphany I had this morning was simple: it’s not like that anymore (most mornings, anyway). I’ve somehow become better at packing lunches. And I realize that this is not due as much to broadening palettes or relaxed school restrictions as it is to the plain fact of practice. I’m better at many of the elements of lunch-packing. I prepare better, making sure I have enough lunch supplies on hand at the beginning of the week. I monitor likes and dislikes better. I’m more organized in simply gathering everything up and doling it out. I’ve grown better at dealing with or pre-emptively avoiding morning emergencies.

And finally, here’s where I tie this whole strange musing into writing. Writing, too, is all about the practice, and getting better at all the myriad, interrelated skills one needs to become a better writer. Better planning, whether it’s outlining or cogitating or whatever method you use to work out the story idea rattling around in your head. Better time management, both in making time to write and juggling planning, research, and actual writing. Better execution, because the mere act of writing more words over and over improves the end result. Better troubleshooting, in noticing plot or character problems early and dealing with them before they run your whole story off the rails. And finally, better editing and revising, yielding a more polished, professional final draft.

So just as there’s more to packing school lunches than just sticking things in a lunch bag, there’s more to writing than just putting words on paper. Both tasks require several interrelated skills, and becoming proficient in all of them leads to both an easier process and a better end result. Like just about everything else, practice makes…if not perfect, than an enormous improvement.

And now I’m off to make myself a sandwich, feeling thankful that in my job, I don’t have to pack it…

Photo credit: anissat

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The Butterbeer Project

  By just for fun, personal & miscellaneous, Recipes, summer fun

I know I have a lot of catch-up blogging to do, so things are going to be out of chronological order for a while, but hey–that’s summer for you.

One of the items on our Big Summer Fun List was “make Butterbeer.” We enjoyed this very tasty treat at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando this past spring, and of course at the time tried to figure out what ingredients went into it. We determined to try to recreate it at home.

A quick Googling of “Harry Potter Butterbeer” turns up many, many recipes purporting to duplicate it. Glancing over them, I quickly concluded that many of these recipes were NOT going to come close to what we’d sampled. I also discarded the alcoholic versions. There were still quite a few to choose from, but for our first attempt I thought this one looked like it might come close. I set out to collect up the necessary ingredients, and promptly ran into a couple of snags.

I couldn’t find any toffee-flavoured dessert topping, however I did find this caramel one, which seemed like it might be a decent substitute since it proclaimed itself to be “rich, creamy, buttery.” Next problem: you can’t just buy butterscotch-flavoured Dream Whip, nor could I find butterscotch flavouring, even at the Bulk Barn, which carries all manner of such things. So we were on to experimentation from the outset.

I did buy Coca-Cola, as called for in the recipe, but I also picked up a bottle of root beer, since we’d all thought in Florida that root beer must be on the ingredient list. Ginger beer was no problem to find at the grocery store.

So first we whipped up the Dream Whip. I followed the package directions, but reduced the vanilla to 1/4 tsp. and added a teaspoon of the caramel sauce. It whipped up nicely, but the topping that forms the “head” of the butterbeer was quite runny when we had it in Florida, and this was still fluffy. I added another teaspoon of the sauce and whipped that in, which helped some, but I think you would have to add a LOT of sauce to really get it to the right consistency. This turned out to be the most difficult part of the project, and one which we haven’t really solved yet. The taste was very close, but the consistency was not right. Anyway, we were ready to experiment. I still wasn’t feeling very certain about the Coke, so we did a small test glass and decided that no, it wasn’t right. So we switched to the root beer.

I did roughly follow the directions in the recipe. We added a tablespoon of the caramel sauce to the bottom of each tankard, then filled the glass about halfway with root beer. I used a small whisk to stir in the sauce, which caused quite a head of foam to appear! We added about half as much ginger beer as we’d had root beer, then a dollop of Dream Whip. Which of course, since it was fluffy instead of runny, just sort of plopped into the foam and floated. More research is needed in this department! I suppose one could skim off the root beer foam and then try to spread the Dream Whip on more smoothly, but the kids thought that the foam was delicious and would strongly oppose removing it. Hmmm…I wonder if we could skim the foam and mix it into the Dream Whip? (scribbles a note for next time)

Anyway, the finished Butterbeers, reposing in the mugs brought from Florida:

They were downed with great gusto and proclaimed a huge success. Indeed, they did taste remarkably as we remembered them. My husband opined that they were “fizzier” than the originals, so perhaps letting the root beer go partially flat might improve them. And the topping consistency still needs work. However, if you’d like an idea of what Butterbeer tastes like (without the expense of going to Florida), give it a try! Great on a hot day (although those are harder to find in Cape Breton this summer than the Room of Requirement).

Our modified recipe:

2 L. root beer
2 small bottles Ginger Beer
1 Pkg. Dream Whip
1 bottle Sensations Creamy Caramel dessert topping (although I expect any caramel or butterscotch-type sauce would yield much the same result)

Mix Dream Whip according to package directions, BUT reduce vanilla to 1/4 tsp. and add 2 tsp. of the caramel sauce (or more, if you’d like to try and make it runnier and increase the butterscotch flavour).

Add 1 tbsp. caramel sauce to the bottom of tankard. Fill about halfway with root beer. Whisk or stir gently to mix in the sauce. Add about half as much ginger beer as you had root beer. Add a dollop of Dream Whip. Enjoy!

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Social Media Thoughts for Writers (or anyone, really)

  By personal & miscellaneous, web development, writer development, writing life

I was reading an excellent post the other day titled “Which Social Media Websites Work Best For Writers?“, by Conor P. Dempsey. (He forgot Goodreads, but overall it was a good list.) However, I don’t want to rehash his thoughts here. I mention his post because I like the assumption inherent in his title: writers need social media sites, it’s just a matter of choosing what’s the best use of one’s time.

I know that not all writers (particularly, but not limited to, non-genre writers) see any point in using social media at all. It is often largely described by these writers as a waste of time and a waste of brain power. “I don’t have time”, “I don’t have anything to say”, and “I don’t care about the silly things people talk about on social media sites” are the three main complaints I hear, so Conor’s article got me thinking about them. (Note, too, that these complaints come not just from writers, but from others who are hesitant or downright intolerant of social media.)

Whether or not you believe in the “ebook revolution,” it’s been clear for a number of years that traditional publishing is a) walking a financial tightrope and b) choosing very carefully where to spend advertising and promotional dollars. Mid-list authors have lamented being left out in the cold, new authors have lamented being dropped after one book fails to make the sales grade. This predates the real take-off of ebooks, so it’s not entirely tied into those sea changes, although I think its impact has probably been accelerated.

What writers who don’t “do” social media seem to overlook is that even before the e-valanche of ebooks, there was one thing needed to sell books–readers have to find them. Books have to be accessible, available, find-able. You have to let readers know they’re out there, unless you’re going to depend on the odd reader here or there who finds your book by accident among the myriad covers stacked on bookstore shelves. Publishers used to look after that for you, so you could get on with writing your next book. Except in the case of that handful of authors who don’t even really need it, publishers’ efforts in this case have been severely curtailed. There’s no sense in blaming the publishers–they are making business decisions.

But the upshot is–you’d better do everything you can on your own, to promote your book. To do that, you have to let people know it’s out there.

Now, I live in the back of beyond as far as the book-buying public is concerned, but even if you live smack-dab in the middle of NYC, your personal circle of book-buying readers is limited in scope. If publishers are not going to be out there hawking your book or footing the bill for you to go gallivanting around hawking your book, how are you going to let people know about it?

Social media is a great answer. No ifs, ands, or buts. Unless and until the Internet collapses under the weight of its own information overload, it’s the best tool you have for connecting with your readers.

Does it take time? Yes, it takes some. It needn’t be great gobs of your time, sucked into the black hole of your monitor while you struggle to stay at the edge of the event horizon. But look, you’re a writer. You can’t write a 500-word blog post a few times a week? You can’t share the interesting things you find on that selfsame Internet, or a few random thoughts and updates through Twitter? I think you can. I think you just don’t believe you have to.

Don’t have anything to say? I hardly think so. You’re continually writing stories about fascinating characters (or trying to) and yet in your own life you do nothing of interest? No hobbies, no interests, no travelling, no reading, no movies? You never find anything of interest on the Internet? You never want to talk a bit about your writing process, the story you’re working on right now, or the way your cat/dog/kid/gerbil/spouse did that really cool thing the other day? No? Then I have no idea where you’re getting your stories.

And finally, you can’t be bothered listening to/reading about other people and the silly, pointless things they’re doing or talking about? Well, in the first place, you don’t have to. You only need to learn to control the way you use social media (which sounds like a topic for a future blog post). If you are going to let it control you then, yes, maybe that’s a problem. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Social media has all sorts of tools and tricks you can use to make sure that your incoming stream is not full of garbage. Sure, you might annoy a few followers if you shut them out, but if you’re connecting with hundreds, if not thousands, of potential readers, that’s not a worry.

In the second place, people talking about the silly, pointless things they’re doing can offer great insight into characters and the way they think. It can be like a whole laboratory full of specimens for you to study at will. (insert evil laugh here)

And third, people talk about a lot of things via social media that are neither silly nor pointless. Social media can highlight the most important issue of the day. It can show you how others feel about it. It can point you to information about it. It can inform you how you can act to be a part of it. If you think social media is filled with people talking only about how drunk they were last night or the flavour of chips they’ve just eaten, think again. That’s out there, sure. But there’s a whole lot more that’s important, current, and relevant. And you can have a voice in it.

Readers tend to like that.

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A Garden of Stories and Words

  By gardening, personal & miscellaneous, reading, writing life

I’ve been trying to remember how long it is that I’ve been listening to podcasts. Quite some time, for sure…if I open my old podcatcher and look at some of the dates, it’s been at least five or six years. I haven’t listened to a huge variety of podcasts over the years, but I’ve listened to a lot of episodes of the ones I like.

I love podcasts because they are perfectly suited to my preference (or possibly obsession) for multitasking. I can listen while I clean, while I do laundry, while I walk, while I drive…and especially while I garden.

Gardening, of course, is rewarding in and of itself, and I do enjoy the instant gratification of pulling weeds. However, at my house, it’s a solitary pursuit most of the time, unless I recruit kids or husband to help out–so yeah, like I said, most of the time, solitary. And a great chance to listen to podcasts and audiobooks.

I think my first combination of listening and gardening was Mike Stackpole’s The Secrets podcast. Around that time I was also listening to a lot of episodes of Escape Pod, so that summer was a nice mix of storytelling and writing advice. Throw in some regular episodes of This Week In Science, and my brain got just as much of a workout as my arms and back.

Not long after that (maybe the next summer) I added Writing Excuses into the mix, and found Decoder Ring Theatre. I still had a steady diet of Escape Pod stories on the go as well, but I discovered Podiobooks, where I still find a lot of great stories to listen to. I’ve spent literally hours in the yard and had them fly by like nothing, because as I methodically pull weeds and prune shrubs and spread mulch, I’m really transported to other worlds and times, or considering how to improve my own stories with the advice I’m hearing. (Of course this list of podcasts doesn’t include everything I listen to, but this post was only going to be so long, you know?)

And as the pictures show, it’s paid off. I likely would not spend as much time in the garden if I didn’t have podcasts to listen to, because they enhance the experience so much. I can actually look at portions of the yard or even certain plants, and associate them with a story. Which simply makes it all that much more enjoyable.

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Summer Reading List

  By ebooks, personal & miscellaneous, reading

I generally read a lot of books in the course of the summer. It’s not that I’m not as busy in the summer–far from it! It’s just that summer reading is…part of summer for me. So last night I wrote up my summer reading list.

I actually have a huge To Be Read list…or rather, not so much a list as a pile…not so much a pile as several piles…and scattered volumes, and ebooks queued and waiting on my Kobo and my phone, and things I want to read but haven’t yet acquired. So, yes, I have a lot of books waiting to be read. You know that t-shirt, the one that says, “So many books, so little time”? I should just be wearing that one all the time. (Because, you know, it works both ways for me, reading AND writing. But anyway…)

So I sat down and looked over all the myriad possibilities and came up with a pared-down list that says “summer reading” to me. I thought I’d share here. And if you’re on Goodreads, you can check up on me there to see how I’m doing.

(The list is in no particular order, just as I came across them.)

Murderous Magick by Michael A. Stackpole
Remake by Connie Willis
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland… by Catherynne M. Valente
Suspense and Sensibility by Carrie Bebris
Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear (a book club book, if we get our book club active again–it’s next on our list, IIRC)
Steam and Sorcery by Cindy Spencer Pape
Wit’s End by Karen Joy Fowler (which I started reading last night, actually)
The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross
The Strange Case of Finley Jayne by Kady Cross
Industrial Magic by Kelley Armstrong
Barrington Street Blues by Anne Emory
The Native Star by M.K. Hobson
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
Spiral Hunt by Margaret Ronald
The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma
The Thackeray T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (eds.)

Heh, no, I have NO illusions that I will read ALL of these books over the summer. If I were taking the summer off from writing I could, but I’m certainly not doing that. But this is likely the list I’ll be choosing from. Unless I see something that catches my eye and I just dive into it. I’m like that, as a reader. The TBR pile is often ignored as I pick up something on a whim. But I like to have room for spontaneity in my reading.

Photo by xandert

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Help Rebuild the Slave Lake Library

  By personal & miscellaneous, reading

Alberta author Judith Graves recently blogged about efforts to rebuild the Slave Lake library, which was destroyed in a fire just days ago. We all understand how important our libraries are to our communities, and if we all do just a little, we can make this happen.

Details of how you can help (with donations of books or funds) can be found on the Peace Library System website.

Please consider helping out with this worthy project.

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Motivation

  By current projects, personal & miscellaneous, writer development, writing life

Well, I think I’ve finally figured out what keeps me motivated, stops me from procrastinating, and makes me more productive on a daily basis.

Timekeeping.

Yep, maybe it hearkens back to my lawyering days, when you lived or died by your billable hours, but if I keep a timesheet of how I’m spending my day, I seem to get a lot more productive work done.

Earlier this year I made up a schedule for myself, intended to keep me organized and on track by allotting a certain amount of time each week for the various committments I have. That lasted maybe a week before I wasn’t even really looking at it anymore. However, I decided to keep a timesheet for a week or so, because I really felt that I was falling prey to a lot of time demands that were interfering with my writing. I wanted to see what was sucking away all my time.

The discovery that timekeeping keeps me on track was only a happy coincidence. However, since I’ve made it, I’ve seen a big difference.

I’m not using anything fancy–printed sheets with a simple table I made in OpenOffice, to keep track of time blocks and what I’m doing in them. That’s it. It’s early days yet, but so far it’s working better than anything else I’ve tried. If you have difficulty keeping on task and on track, something similar might work for you.

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The Writing Room

  By current projects, personal & miscellaneous, writing life

Yesterday I happened upon this video, wherein writer Laurie Halse Anderson chronicles the building of her writing cottage. Wow, it’s beautiful. And she quotes Viriginia Woolf, who said:

“…a woman must have…a room of her own to write fiction.”

Note that I don’t think it’s only women who need a dedicated writing space. I think all writers deserve that spot where they can go and feel that they are in “writing mode”. It needn’t be a room, if space constraints don’t allow it–but it should be a place where you can get away from distractions and know that it’s time to write. (If you Google “writing room” and choose images you’ll find some lovely inspirational rooms to look at.)

I’m lucky enough to have had a “writing room” since we moved into our house fifteen years ago…it was a different room at first than it is now, but I’ve always had the space. I’m grateful for that.

But as I look around it now, I’m not sure that I’m being the best caretaker of that space. It’s pretty cluttered and messy and probably dirtier in the nooks and crannies than I would like to think about. So I’ve decided to overhaul it, clean it up and make some changes that I’ve wanted to make for a while.

Now, this decision makes me nervous, because I know my brain. I have a lot of writing and writing-related projects on the go, and my brain often chooses these times to cunningly push me into some big project that isn’t writing, because it doesn’t want to work that hard. So rest assured, I am not going to drop everything and start my office overhaul. I’m going to use it as a reward motivator instead. For every hour spent on writing, I will spend half an hour on the office. It will take longer to get it done, but I think it’s the only smart way to do it.

So now I’m going to go and take some pictures of it in its current pathetic state. These “before” pictures will not be revealed until I have the “after” pictures to go with them. By that time, you’ll all have forgotten about this project, I’m sure. But don’t worry, I’ll remind you.

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Organization Quest 2011 (Part 2)

  By current projects, personal & miscellaneous, software, writer development, writing life, writing log

After getting my submissions in order, I decided that the next thing I had to organize better was my time. This is a big issue for me as I have a lot of family demands on my time that I don’t really have complete control over, and I need to be flexible. However, I also need a sort of guide to come back to, so that I know what I’m supposed to be doing when time presents itself.

I started looking for organizer programs, then realized that I already had one on my computer that I use every day, just not to its fullest capacity. My mail program, Outlook, which also has a built-in calendar, with the ability to schedule repeating tasks and appointments, reminders, etc. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. It was right in front of me the whole time.

So I spent an afternoon deciding how much time I had in the run of a week, and how I should apportion it. Other writers dealing with the same time issues might find this useful, so here’s what I did. First, I made a list of all the things, writing and writing-career-related, that require some of my time. Then I thought about how much time each one of them requires if I were addressing it on a weekly basis. For instance, publishing The Scriptorium. If I worked on it a bit at a time, instead of frantically trying to put together an issue in a day when the deadline hits, how much time would it take per week? How much time should I spend on the business aspects of writing? How much on Third Person Press? And so on.

Then I filled in a weekly calendar with all my non-negotiable time committments, and looked at what was left. Working back and forth this way, changing things around, and thinking about what times of day are better for me to do what sorts of tasks, I filled in the time slots. This gave me a baseline calender or schedule. It may change as I apply it to the real world, but it’s a starting point. Color-coding the chunks of time also lets me get an overview of how I’m spending the time.

I also made a second calendar, on which I can add one-time events or appointments. I can overlay this calender with my baseline calender to see a week at a glance and know what’s coming up that will interfere with my baseline schedule, and decide if I need to move things around just for the coming week.

I am just beginning to put it into practice, but so far it’s working well. If you’re having trouble fitting writing into your schedule, you may want to try this kind of strategy and see if it helps you apportion your time more productively. Although I’m using Outlook, find a calendar program that suits the way you like to work, and whose appearance and functionality you like. You’ll be a lot more likely to use it consistently if you do.

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Hello, 2011

  By personal & miscellaneous, writer development, writing life, writing log

This is the promised “writing goals” post. I’ve sorted my plans for the year into short-term, medium-term, and long-term. I think I will also print them out and put them up on my bulletin board, because the fact that I habitually have to hunt around at the end of the year to find the last year’s goals makes me think I’m not using them to the greatest advantage.

Short-term (within the next one to two months)
1. Finish anthology story
2. Organize submission history/tracking
3. Submit Murder Prophet to second market

Medium-term (within the next six months)
1. Get short story submissions moving again (and keep them moving)
2. Revise and complete last year’s NaNo novel

Long-Term (by the end of the year)
1. Write five new short stories
2. Get another novel ms into submission

Besides all these things, I will be doing more school visits, regular critiquing for my SL writer’s group, and in the first part of the year, acting as a first reader for a writing competition, so I don’t think there’s any worry that I won’t have enough to do.

*Photo courtesy of rdragan79