Up in the writer's garret, eating low fat Oreos

Only one more day to work on the novel for the May word count!

I'm up here in my artist's garret with Chino-cat the landscape painter (he loves the outdoors), Mystery-cat the musician (mraw mraw mraw), and Sassy-dog the struggling actor (she's got the diva personality.)

Mystery and Chino

Chino - being *helpful* as writer cats are wont to be

Sasserooo!

It's La Bohème, I tell you. I hope no one dies of tuberculosis.

When I was a teenager I'd visit my mother every summer for a month or two.

17 yrs old: I can remember when she was living with her uncle in North Vancouver; thumping away in a little office, at a typewriter all night until I saw her leave for work in the morning.

15 yrs old: Little historical house in Kingston, Ontario, which she shared with three other law students. She'd be in the living room watching TV and reading, and I'd be down the hall in the dining room slapping away at the electric typewriter. She'd always make sure to procure one for me--those big fat powerful ones.

13 yrs old: I can remember two different kitchen tables, when she housesat for two different people in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (up by Alaska.) My soundtracks for my stories always consisted of my mother's music, and whatever was in the home she was in.

10 yrs old: When I was a child and she lived in Edmonton, Alberta I would sit on the floor of the living room making "newspapers" using various clippings and my own drawings. I had a beer ad called: Alcatraz Beer. The slogan was: "A beer for alkis, a beer called Traz."

When I got older and my trips were only a couple weeks cause I was working now, I didn't do much writing. So it's been a weird experience sitting up here typing away, while my mother is downstairs watching Dancing With the Stars and CSI. Sometimes I feel like I'm 15 again, in a good way. Recapturing that feeling of "pantsing"* my way through a comedy about a time traveling Shakespeare, or a comedic Middle Ages play, or some story about my friends.

My inner teenager has come out to play.

Today's Song - From one of the Yellowknife novel's soundtrack...

   
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* "Pantsters" make up a book as they go along, versus "plotters" who preplan.
     

Look Bravely and Say Nice Things

I turned 39 today (well yesterday, May 29).

I don't feel bad about my age. I don't really have body image hang ups. And both my step-mother and mother crossed the 40 year mark with no big fuss, so I've never seen it as a scary age.

My mother's bathtub is an old claw foot (painted gold). Along one bathroom wall there's a ridge with paintings propped on it, and for some reason there's a mirror propped up that faces right into the tub, between the two edges of the shower curtain. So you get in the shower and -- woo! There you are! In all your glorious nudosity.

"Fat Cat Capsizing" - the view from the toilet

It was disconcerting at first. But I believe you shouldn't look away from yourself in mirrors, and you also shouldn't trash talk yourself when looking. Y'know... look bravely and say nice things.

I gained weight again in the last 6 months (I now weight 225 lbs, I'm 5'10'') so I have a poochy belly now and stretch marks on my hips. But every time I shower I Look Bravely and Say Nice Things.

I tell it it has lovely curves and when I need it to work hard, it does a damn fine job. My arms might jiggle, but they can still spend four hours pushing a mower, wielding a rake, and hacking at the Weeds of Doom.*

I have big thighs now, but every day they carry me around the nabe so the Brat Pack can check their pee-mail and yell at the neighbors.

My hands are starting to paper up in fine lines and age spots, but every day this month they cranked out 2000 words, and day before yesterday they did 8000.

Happy Birthday body! You're gettin' older, but you've still got it where it counts.

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* Today I discovered the blackberry weed's mother ship! It was a gruesome battle. The head-high thistles were easier, I just mowed those suckers down.
   

Learning Character Description from Tom Rachman

For your amoosement:

What I Learned About Writing from Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists - Character Description

The Imperfectionists is a series of related short stories, the tie-in being that they work, or are somehow related to, an English language newspaper in Italy. Because of the short story medium he has little time to establish each new character, but he does so quickly. In a page or two you have a good handle on them; they're nuanced and very real. And even the unlikable ones, I felt compassion for by the end.

Here's the first paragraph of Kathleen's story:

The first paragraph about the copy editor Ruby:

And one of my favorite stories was about an inexperienced, ineffectual young foreign correspondent who doesn't know the first thing about journalism, and the experienced journalist who swoops in, mooches off him, and steals his job:

Come and Get Us

Folks, pigs have flown. American Idol finally produced a non-schmuckaholic original song for its finale:



Fave music in 2011

"Come and Get Your Love" - Redbone - Only in the 70s would someone named Bert Sugarman have his own show.


"Us" - Regina Spektor - Another from 500 Days. So talented that Regina. Though I've no idea what the f**k the lyrics mean.

Random Neural Update

Hallos! Just thought I'd do an Everyday Here's What's Up post.

WEEDING!

I've started clearing out parts of my mother's yard, for eventual sale. This part of BC is rainforest, so man does that yard GROW. If something gets left in the grass, the rainforest reclaims it. The vines and weeds grow in between and twist all around the object, and layers upon layers of vines grow over top. I feel like Indiana Jones excavating treasure! (It's a big yard, and the back corner used to have a greenhouse, so there's all sorts of strange things that were left behind and grown over.)

So then I got all interested in invasive plants. We have some thistle, some dandelions, but the real invaders are:

Buttercups! Adorable but they're EVERYWHERE.

Blackberry - Look at those spikes! We have them as high as my face, so I have to cut those down first so I don't get scratched up when I clear the ivy.

English Ivy - Holy crap this stuff grows and GROWS. It creeps across the lawn, sucking in everything in its way. It's beautiful but man! Takes forever to find where the plant starts!

Luckily we do not have (though it's common in this area) Giant Hogweed. The juice and pollen get on your skin and when expose to sun starts burning and bubbling, getting worse every hour. And that same spot will burn in the sun for years afterwards. When hogweed is spotted the city ropes it off, and you have to wear hazmat or similar  clothing to take it out. Neat! It's so Star Trekian!

So you can see I'm having a fun time. I like novelty.

SUNBURNING!

In Montreal I lived in an apartment and never went out--I need a yard in order to venture out. And my balcony gets invaded by yellowjacket wasps almost the entire summer--they won't leave me alone! So here at mum's, when sunny, I sit out and write or weed. But I'm not a good sunblock applier. Lack of experience I guess.

First I burned my face and top of my head. Not too bad, you can see I just look like the ruddy Anglo-Saxon I am.

Then I burned an exact triangle on my chest. It's fading now.

Then a patch on my right shin, but it's hard to see now.

None of these hurt. But today I was weeding from 2 PM - 5 PM and didn't realize my skin was poking out between my t-shirt and yoga pants. So now I have a real burn, the ouchy kind.

It's all très cool.

WRITING!

In the evening I watch some TV with mum, then go upstairs to the little attic apartment. With its sloping ceiling, and my foamee bed, I feel like a real artist. I sit on a chair with my feet on a loveseat* and sometimes put my laptop on my purple suitcase as a table. It's weirdly comfortable.

Behind me Chino the cat naps away. (I used to have the two foamees piled on top of each other, but when the cats started sleeping with me I separated them so that there's more room for everyone.) Sometimes Mystery comes up. I feel like a Real Writer, working away in my garret with a bed on the floor, living out of suitcases. I am so bohemian. No wonder my word count's going well!  ;-)

"They call me Mista Nails!"

And JJJ's WillWriteforChocolate challenge continues, super fun. It's starting to take on the feel of a writing community. And more people keep joining including a reader of my blog! I am so humbled. 

PROCRASTINATING!

I start by looking up legitimate research on the nets, like Paris in the 1920s, and then end up everywhere else. Here's my browsing history from yesterday.

* Here's me looking at photos of Michael Jackson's kids! Procrastination is weird shit.

* The actual research...

So. Things are going along peacefully enough. Do you guys garden? Procrastinate on the net? Live in an attic?

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* I can't sit with my knees above my hips, or most of the time it will trigger a headache. The loveseat is too plushy, I sit too low.

Writing: What I Learned from Jilly Cooper

I've started slowwwly working on things that need doing before my mother's house can be listed for sale. I'm still having trouble getting my get up to get up and go. But the writing side of my life is going well, thanks mostly to JJJ's fabulous Chocolate Bootcamp for Writers*. Every day I walk the dogs for about 45 minutes while I listen to old Storywonk podcasts--that really keeps me in the writing mood. Then around 3 in the morning, after my mother's gone to bed and all is still I attack the keyboard. Usually go to bed around 6 AM, and I don't let myself go until I've done 2000 words.

I'm climbing the ranks! This week I was #1, and overall #2. But in all fairness I must remind the good reader that, other than helping my post-operation mother out, I'm not employed right now. But I'm hoping it will instill future good habits in me. My butt-in-chair problem is that I usually get going and can't stop, and then I go to bed too late for work. Which makes me reluctant to write on work nights. I need to learn how to start at the right time and then END after 2-3 hours.

AUTHOR I LEARNED FROM: Let's try to make this a mini-series, shall we?


Jilly Cooper
Learned: Advanced Show-Don't-Tell

She writes funny novels about rich English people falling in love, back stabbing and bonking. There's usually one damned good love story tucked into those 600 pages and they're fabulous. (If you like romance between two sweet, beta, beaten down people, then The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous is lovely. If you like to see the charming rake fall head over heels for nice girl, then try Rivals.)

Often in movies etc. when the viewer is shown a mean character it's done through big gestures. She/he walks in and finds her boyfriend/his girlfriend in bed with ___ (Love Actually, Sliding Doors, etc). Or heroine sleeps with a guy but then runs off in the morning cause she can't handle nice men (Bridesmaids.) There's almost one event that shows their jerkiness.

Cooper likes to deliver cruelty in a thousand cuts. She'll take a whole chapter to show you all the wee assholeries a guy delivers to his wife every day (The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous.) Or during the car ride the bitchy chicks will deliver a series of tiny rudenesses to the heroine. So that when someone comes into her life and runs wee rivulets of kindness through it, you understand how much it means. It's subtle, convincing, and moving. Yes, even amidst the bonking and bitching, it's moving.

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* You compete against other writers the have the highest word count by the end of the month, and Judy, Judy, Judy will buy chocolate for the winner. :-)

Children's Book Week!

I had never heard of National Children's Book Week. At my old book store job it was never celebrated! I think that's a shame. Some of my best childhood memories are of trips to the library.

Children's Book Week just passed here in Canada.

Here's some of the wild and wonderful posters from previous years (US and Canada mostly.) Some are really beautiful.

I noticed you don't start getting children of color in the posters until the 1960s--though not even always then.