I HATE TECHNOLOGY!!!

     Okay, so now this blog isn't allowing me to post my own comments in reply to other people's comments.  This is a very annoying glitch which I haven't encountered before.  I've tried my (extremely limited) array of tricks, all to no avail. Are there any tech wizards out there who can help me?  I'll just thank you in advance in case you have a suggestion to offer, because if it doesn't work I still won't be able to leave a comment to thank you, but I will nonetheless be very grateful!

STILL HERE

  This title has a dual meaning.  I'm still here, meaning that although I've shamefully neglected my blog over the past two weeks, I still exist.  I just haven't had time for much of anything outside of working at my Paying Job during the day and working at my Nonpaying Job - writing - in the evenings.  Because - and here is the second meaning of the title - my Muse is STILL HERE.  She has hung around for two weeks now, bless her, and she and I have accomplished a lot of revision during her visit.  There have been evenings when she's been here and willing to jump in, but I've been too tired even for her.  For the most part, though, we've been hustling, she and I.
     Amazingly, the crazy system I came up with for adding a new plotline to my book has been working, for the most part.  I haven't completely written each chunk, but I've written enough to know what happens in each episode as well as approximately when in the existing story it has to happen.  Last weekend I drew up on a big sheet of drawing paper a chapter-by-chapter, month-by-month timeline for the book as it then existed, and then I began the process of figuring out where each new partial chunk of story belongs.  And since then I've been transferring those chunks, one at a time, from Document #2 to Document #1, and then fleshing them out with the new ideas that the Muse keeps feeding me.  It's a messy process, but progress is being made.  Of course, once all the partial chunks are in place (which should occur fairly soon, I hope) I'll still have to complete them.  And even then I won't be close to done because I'll have to go through the entire book line-by-line and figure out what needs to be added, or subtracted, or woven together.  But that's all okay, because I can see the endpoint far off on the horizon.
     So that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.  The world swirls around me and I ignore it all and focus on my book, watching it come to life word by word, emotion by emotion, link by link. 
     Lord, this makes me happy. 

CONFERENCE MAGIC

     I spent this weekend in Princeton at the New Jersey SCBWI fall craft conference.  I really enjoyed it.  I learned some things at the workshops, including some great sources for incorporating a new plotline into an existing novel (thank you, Yvonne Ventresca!), some other great resources for writing historical fiction (thank you, Darlene Beck Jacobson!), and what an objective correlative is. (Thank you, Meg Wiviott!)  I met some very nice people.  But here is the best part. 
     As you may know from prior posts, I'm adding a new character and a new plotline to my novel.  I know the character now, and I knew much of how (although not exactly where) she would be introduced into the story.  The problem was that although I had figured out how she would (or would not) be involved with the main character for the three months following her entrance onto the scene, the main story line continued for another seven months from that point, and I had to somehow make myself know what would happen to her for the rest of that time frame.  And I didn't have a clue.
     Until yesterday.  I spent all day Saturday attending workshops, and I'd planned to do the same all day yesterday, but at about 10:30 I looked over the list of available workshops again, and not one of them grabbed me.  So I decided that rather than attend any one of them, I could use my time more productively by actually writing.
     I walked over to the building where lunch was going to be served, found myself a comfortable chair in the entrance hall, took out a pad and pen (because I hadn't brought my laptop with me), and sat down to think about my character and what she needed to do from October to April.
     EUREKA!!  Suddenly, after weeks of fruitless scratching around  in the deep recesses of my brain for ideas, I just knew.  I knew the main thing that had to happen, and as soon as I knew that, it became obvious what had to happen in order to lead up to it, as well as what had to follow it.  I repeat: I just knew. And I started to write. And I didn't stop until people started streaming into the building for lunch.
     This has never happened to me before: a writing puzzle solving itself before my very eyes, and making it look effortless.  And so I'm chalking the experience up to my having been immersed in the magical brew of this conference, from my toes right up to and including my brain, which for that hour and a half magically swelled into a superbrain.  Exactly long enough.  And though, sadly, my brain has now reverted back to its very nonsuper self, I know with 100% certainty that all the ideas I came up with were absolutely right for the story, and that in fact they were the only ideas that could have been right.  And for the life of me, I can't understand how I could have failed to see all of it in the weeks leading up to the conference, when there were so many ENORMOUS clues already existing inside my manuscript, if I had only bothered to look.
     What's that elixir that Harry Potter swallows at some point in one of the books (I can't remember if it made it into any of the movies) that suddenly gives him perfect, almost Godlike clarity of vision, so that in an instant, he knows exactly what he has to do and exactly when he has to do it?  I seem to remember that it involved Harry's marching down immediately to Hagrid's hut, although he couldn't have said why, and its turning out (of course) to be exactly, but exactly, what he needed to do at that precise moment - I believe it was to overhear a conversation which then required him to take action in order to save Hagrid from a terrible calamity that would otherwise have befallen him.
     Well, it was like that.  And you know what else?  At this point, the magic has lasted for a day and a half.  Pretty potent stuff, wot?  Because today I was on jury duty, which is something I dread every time it happens (and it happens to me a lot) because I know full well that I will waste my time traipsing from one courtroom to another but that (as a criminal defense lawyer) I will never ever make it onto a jury panel.  But today - today - as soon as the orientation session ended, I sat myself down in the computer room with my laptop, and I wrote and wrote and wrote all day, and not once did I get summoned to a courtroom in order to sit through the tedious selection process, only to be bounced off the panel and sent back to the jury assembly room to go through the whole thing all over again an hour or two later.  Not ONCE.  I wrote and wrote and wrote, and it flowed and flowed and flowed.
     I can be a real cynic, and it's not often you'll catch me saying this, so listen up: I do believe in magic.  I do.  I do.  I do.

          

THROUGH A LENS, DARKLY

     Oh, my Lord, I've gone two whole weeks without blogging, and even longer without really blogging.  I'm aware that my "canine geniuses" post doesn't actually count.  It's just that this writing life is so hard, you know?  I'm squinting into a dream through the lens of a microscope, seeing only shapes and shadows moving continuously.  Once in a while a shape swims into focus for a second, and I feel I can almost decipher it, but then it slips back into the shadows again.  Tiny snippets of this miniaturized world coalesce here and there, long enough for me to catch them in my net and dredge them up into the light.  But of course, they look so different once they're captives.  They're damaged, inert.  Maybe I can transplant life back into them, maybe not.  The only way it can possibly work is if I wield the scalpel deep into my own life and sacrifice some cells.
     It's always worth it, even if the transplant doesn't take.  But it's exhausting to perform surgery on yourself day after day.  And sometimes I don't have the energy left to talk about it, but I can't think about anything else.  And so a week or two can go by without my blogging.  I hope you understand.

 

 

p.s.  I actually have a very important public service announcement - can't believe I forgot this before.  Here goes: "rutabaga" is not just a silly made-up word.  It is the name of a real live vegetable, also known as a "waxy turnip."  It doesn't taste half bad in a vegetable soup, either.  And, because I want you to be able to recognize it in the produce section instead of having to embarrass yourself by reading the labels on anything that looks like it might be a rutabaga:

 

 

     Sort of majestic, in its own crude, aggressive way.  If Beethoven had been a vegetable, I think the odds are at least 50-50 he would have been a rutabaga.  Rutabagas don't take no shit, I can tell you that.  If you want to cut one up and eat it, you'd best sneak up behind it and make your move before it knows you're there.  Don't say I didn't warn you.



CANINE GENIUS CONTEST

     Which of the following dogs truly meets the definition of genius?  Is it:

A.  Minnie the Rottweiler, who has better table manners than some people I know?

https://screen.yahoo.com/popular/minnie-rottweiler-appreciates-fine-dining-135538504.html.


or, B.  My dog Murphy, who has developed the ability to take selfies?

     Only one vote per person (or dog), please.

#amwriting #amcrazy

    Listen up, kids!  Want to know a totally dysfunctional way to add a new plot line to your book before resubmitting it to an agent?  Well, you've come to the right place!

     Now, please be aware that this method I've just discovered is a totally different dysfunctional method than the one I use to write the book in the first place.  It is, however, somewhat related.

1.  Figure out the new character and the new story line.  Blah, blah, blah, right?  That part's kind of normal, I guess.  But here's where the fun starts:

2.  Create a new document and start writing the new story line, chunk by chunk, scene by scene.  Do this without the slightest idea of where, or indeed whether, any of it will fit into the existing book.  Just write.  This is the step I'm currently on.  And when I'm done, I plan to follow it with:

3.  Map out the existing book, scene by scene, chapter by chapter, in the belief that when this process is done, the places where all the new chunks belong will magically be revealed.

4.  Insert all the new chunks in their perfectly foreordained spots.  Then read the whole book and make changes as necessary until, voila!  There are no longer two disconnected documents, but a perfectly blended whole.

Simple, right?  What could possibly go wrong?  You know the phrase, TRUST THE PROCESS?  Well, it's not "trust the sane, logical process," is it?  Nope.  It's "trust your own process."  So I take that to mean that if your own process seems, even to you, even as you're experimenting with it, insane and illogical, trust it anyway.

     Okey dokey.  I'll keep you posted.  Don't worry, it's not contagious.

AND OTHER REVISIONS...

     Before I became an appellate lawyer, about 18 years ago, I was a trial lawyer for nine years.  And when I was on trial, I wore suits.  Suits with skirts, because believe it or not, not many women were wearing pantsuits to court that long ago.  I wore tasteful, classic suits, I like to think.  So tasteful and classic that a number of them were still hanging in my closet, until this past weekend.  Because who knew when I might have cause to wear them again?
     Secretly, I knew when: never.  Not because the suits were old, but because they no longer fit me.  Not, I must admit, through any fault of their own.  The suits were entirely blameless, remaining at the ready whenever I might choose to call on them.  I was the one who had gained fifteen pounds or so over the years.  But I kept the suits.  Obviously, if I really wanted to, I could shed those pounds right off, couldn't I?  It could happen miraculously, at any time, through no effort on my part.  I would just wake up one morning, and zowie!  I'd be 15 pounds lighter, and you know what?  When that day came to pass, imagine how tragic it would be if  I DIDN'T HAVE ANY SUITS TO WEAR!
     So I went on for years and years in this state of blissful denial, until about a month ago I finally opened the closet door, experienced a temporary whiff of sanity, and said to myself: What if you did miraculously lose 15 pounds?  These suits are twenty years old.  They have passed so far beyond the realm of out-of-style that they might be considered retro, if they were cute and funky items that the cool kids would wear.  But they're not cute and funky.  They're conservative business suits in muted colors and no hipster would be caught dead in one of them.  They need to go.
     But I still couldn't bring myself to put them in a bag with all the other clothes I was planning to donate to charities, because they were of such good quality!  Look!  Pure wool!  Jones New York!  Impeccable condition!
     And then I remembered the consignment store I regularly pass on my training-for-the-Avon-Walk walks, but have never entered.  The signs on the plate-glass windows read TOP QUALITY! and DESIGNER LABELS!  How perfect is that?  And so last Saturday, I put an armload of clothes in the back seat of my car and drove over.
     I approached the store empty-handed, which seemed to me like a classy way to handle this.  I'll just ask them first whether or not they might be interested, and then I'll dazzle them with the actual goods.  One tall, thin, middle-aged woman was sweeping the sidewalk outside the shop.  She smiled and directed me inside to speak with her business partner.
     The business partner, another tall, thin middle-aged woman, did not smile.  Instead, she listened, expressionless, to my proposal, eying my shorts-T-shirt-flip-flops ensemble with deep skepticism.  But, as luck would have it, there wasn't a single customer in the store and she was clearly doing nothing but tidying up the racks, so she sighed and asked me what kind of clothing I had brought.  Dresses and suits, I told her.  "Business suits?", she asked in a tone of barely concealed revulsion.  I had to admit that was, indeed, what they were.  She shook her head sharply.  "Business suits don't sell."  But she stoically permitted me to go out to my car and bring back my wares.
     When I returned, before I had even crossed the room halfway in her direction, she was already shaking her head definitively.  "Our customers only want clothes that are very current.  Everything moves fast in this business.  And we carry only high-end labels."
     "Like what?," I asked curiously.  She didn't even answer that question.  Obviously she believed that the odds of my having heard of any of the high-end labels they carried were slim to none, so why waste her breath?  Instead, she fixed me with a peculiar look and told me about a store that would be much more likely to meet my needs.  It was a combination thrift/consignment store in a nearby town.  Yes, it would be perfect for me and my poor, dead merchandise, she was sure of it.  She slowly repeated the store's name several times, as if she wasn't quite sure about the mental capacity of someone so fashion-impaired, and it was at that point that I recognized the look she was giving me.  It was one of naked pity.  I felt rather shaken.  I knew quite well that I was no fashionista, but I had always believed that I looked generally acceptable.  The clothes I wore were seldom new, but they were clean; they fit me, and matched whatever else I had on.  Was I delusional in thinking that was good enough?   Had I really let things get so far out of hand?
    When I got home,  I googled the magical place that was evidently designed specifically for me, and discovered that it accepted consignments on Tuesday mornings beginning at 10:00, and that - O joyous omen! - it was located only a few blocks away from the doctor's office where I had a 9:00 a.m. appointment that very Tuesday.  As in, yesterday.  Clearly, it was all meant to be.
     So at 9:40 yesterday morning, there I was, standing outside the store.  The website had said that once the doors opened I would need to take a number and wait, but I was second in line, ready to roll and feeling pretty jaunty.  I would be in and out of there in no time and on my way to work, with the pleasant prospect of earning several hundred dollars to speed me on my way.
     Well.  The doors opened at 10, but as I soon learned, I couldn't just walk in and consign, oh dear me no.  I had to first go to an office in the back to meet with a woman who was in no hurry at all.  At her own leisurely pace, she repeated to me everything I had read online about their organization and the consignment process, had me sign a form inducting me into the sacred society of consignors, and then finally took me to the front to get a number, at which point there were about ten people in line ahead of me, and each of them had many, many, many items to offer.
     I was in that store for an hour and a half,  and for almost all of it I was standing and waiting for my number to come up.  I could have walked around the store and looked at the items for sale, but I could see plenty just by standing right where I was.  It felt like one of the saddest places I had ever been in, not counting hospitals and rehab centers.  The housewares on the shelves were mostly items I could not conceive of anyone having owned in the first place.  I won't go into detail except to say that cute woodland creatures were heavily featured, perhaps outnumbered only by angels.  And all I kept thinking was: this is the place where I belong.  These are my people.  The woman in the other consignment store told me so.
     At 11:00 a.m. my number was called and I got to pull my clothes out of the bag I'd stuffed them into and show them to the woman whose job it was to price them for me.  I started off with a pantsuit I considered quite chic, and in excellent condition.  The woman took it from me, inspected it closely for damage, found none, and suggested, "Sixteen dollars?"
     I walked out fifteen minutes later with my list of the five items that had been accepted for consignment (yes, a few others were rejected due to minor flaws), and added up the total prices in my head.  Well, I thought philosophically as I walked to my car, I had just squandered an hour and a half of my time, but that was okay.  My dear, stalwart clothes were going to support a good cause, and at least I might end up with a grand total of $64 out of it.  (Actually it was $74, but I had to pay $10 for the privilege of being permitted to consign.)  Still, I was able to focus on the silver lining to all of this  until I got to work and glanced through the brochure I had been handed, only to be reminded that at most, if every item sold, I would receive 60% of the sales prices.  I didn't pause to figure out what 60% of $64 is because, honestly, I don't want to know. 
     So, if you've read this far, you've been wondering for at least the last dozen paragraphs why I entitled this post AND OTHER REVISIONS.  Here's why.  Because I've concluded that there's one lesson I need to take away from this entire experience, which is: do yourself a favor and buy some new clothes once in a while, would ya?  I mean, just grow up, okay? 
     The end.