So there’s this Magical Medicine Show…now what?

One can work in one’s peignoir

The lovely people at National Novel Writing Month are pushing a new thing, or at least a thing I don’t remember them being as pushy about in previous years. Now that we’ve all written a novel, they’re all about making it good. And because I’m into the whole “Show Your Work” movement, you get to read about how I’m going about making it good.

NaNoWriMo works for me because of the combination of deadlines and the group solidarity. In the past, I either haven’t had a novel with any potential, or I didn’t want to go through the scary, scary revision process all on my own. Luckily, one of my writing peeps, KatherineWriting is leading an editing path as an activity of our local writing group, The Writing Journey. She’s all about deadlines and group solidarity. This past week, those of us who are participating received an email with this request from her:
Please post a brief blurb about what you’re planning to do for the Editing Path. (Often it helps people achieve their goals if they write them down.)

• Where are you starting? It doesn’t have to be chapter one.
• What do you intend to do first? Quick overview changes, detailed line by line, or ?
• How much do you hope to get done in February? How many chapters per week?

Here are my answers.

Where am I starting?

Pretty close to the beginning. I spent December and the beginning of January going through the novel I drafted in November of 2012 and November of 2013. I smooshed the two drafts together and attempted to remove extraneous character, scenes, etc. I’ve been looking at the first section with mixed feelings of dismay and delight, mucking around in it a bit. Time to stick a fork in it and move on.

What am I doing first?

I’d like to get it to pass the sniff test—making sure it doesn’t stink. Shall I count the ways in which it might stink? That will take too long. The least painful way to ease in will probably be to:

1. Fill in the blanks. I have some bracketed and/or highlighted text which might denote a missing character name, location or some specific research detail. So fix those bits.   
2. Make sure I buy the character motivations. I remember a few of them as needing work.   
3. Remove overwriting and redundancies. Repetitive redundancies. You know, where you say things more than once even though the reader got it the first time.
4. If I have any time after that, I’d like to fill in specific sensory details. More showing, less telling. Not so much white room syndrome. All that good stuff.

How much do I hope to get done in February?

I would dearly love to get the novel in good enough shape to share with beta readers (alpha readers?) by the beginning of March. Or by March 14 at the latest. It’s not exactly in chapters, more like scenes or sections. A March 1 deadline would mean about one section (averaging 4500 words) per day; I’m not sure I can do that in three hours, let alone one. I may or may not have the damned thing* ready by May. Though of course if I feel I’m on the right track, I can always start sharing chapters before I’m all the way through. That’s probably what I’ll end up doing. If you like being of service to your fellow man (or woman in this case) watch this space for requests for beta readers.

*Sorry. I didn’t mean “damned thing.” I meant “my wonderful, exciting novel about which I’m passionate.”

What we saw, heard, felt, smelled and tasted on our winter vacation

I don’t know about anyone you guys, but it takes me forever to get back on schedule after going on vacation. It might help if I didn’t always take a gazillion pictures which I then have to sort through (tossing most), apply Photoshop magic to the rest, and only then make available to those who have expressed an interest.

Fear not; if you don’t want to see any more vacation pictures, we’re done! If you do want more, I’m including links to the albums on Flickr.

• Here are about 40 shots of central Florida scenery
• Here are about 80 shots we took at Universal, which is mostly Harry Potter stuff, but has a few shots of the Blues Brothers Show and other areas
• Here are about 60 shots from Disney World

So. Here’s where I use my words to try to convey the sensory delights of Florida. Aside from things to see (some of which are captured in my photo albums), there are also things to hear, feel, smell, and taste.

Sights

• Tired red flowers…and glorious red flowers (like those pictured above)
• Chartreuse and red foliage
• Palms, both tall and bushy
• The model timeshare unit they showed us, with decor from this century…unlike the unit we stayed in.
• Faux aged wood and stone at the pristine theme parks
• Pretend settings in general: a New York street with the Blues Brothers (or reasonable facsimiles thereof); Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade; a supposed antiquities museum where you can buy faux Egyptian goods; Thunder Mountain “mine train” which is really a roller coaster
• So many swimming pools!
• A long, long beach
• Dunes
• Little black-eyed Susans nestled in the sand
• Gray skies
• Bright sun

Sounds

• The drunk guy in the airport elevator. Our first clue to his inebriation was his slow, overly dramatic reaction to the request that he move over a bit so our luggage cart would fit. Then he yelled at us to come back so he could continue fighting with us.
• A “90-minute” time share pitch that lasted more like 3 hours; the snappily dressed young men—Faisal and Neph—who faked friendliness and interest in us so they could sell us a time share at Westgate Lakes. It didn’t work.
• Traffic on the interstate
• The loudest housekeeping staff ever, banging and shouting at 8 a.m.
• Improbably cheerful confectionary shop workers
• Rolling waves at Cocoa Beach

Feelings

• Fighting strong current on the lake (in a paddleboat)
• Aluminum-framed sliding glass doors to the screened balcony. So hard to open and close!
• Warm paraffin during a pedicure
• The scrape of exfoliating scrub on my legs
• Misty drizzle
• Gully washing rain
• Cold water and the grit of drying sand as you rub it off your feet
• Soft sand
• The overhead scorch of the dragon’s breath at Gringotts
• Chilly, misty breezes
• Warm sun
• The scary elevator that arrived on the top floor, bounced and banged around for several excruciatingly long seconds before finally opening its doors and allowing escape
• Bicycling on twisting, bewildering “roads” around the resort

Smells

• The drunk guy in the airport elevator. Seriously, the alcohol emanated from his pores!
• Asphalt
• The ocean
• Warm paraffin during a pedicure
• Butterbeer (a butterscotch soda) at Harry Potter world/ Universal Studios

Tastes

• Fat Tire amber ale – strong, with a clean finish
• A lovely white bordeaux and the best spinach goat cheese quiche ever at Le Cafe de Paris in Orlando
• Cucumber-lemon water
• Fortescue’s sticky toffee pudding ice cream: caramel deliciousness
• Potato leek soup at Three Broomsticks: smooth and mildly aromatic
• Spring green salad with red and golden beets, walnuts, chèvre, dried fruit and apples
• Apple caramel cheesecake
• Fizzing Whizbees, which are much like having a milky chocolate soda in solid form
• Chocolate Frogs, which actually taste only faintly of chocolate, but at least included a trading card of Rowena Ravenclaw
• Grateful Dead wine, berry-flavored and full-bodied, with some tannin

Answers to the geography quiz

According to BK, the state of the first picture was:

Domestic Peace

And the state of the second was

Blissful Tranquility

Though if you guessed Illinois and Florida, you’d also be correct.

Here are a few more Florida pictures:

Palms near Portofino Bay

Portofino waterfront – Universal resort

Gringotts dragon – Universal Studios

Shorebirds at Cocoa Beach

Captain Jack Sparrow at Disney World

To come: links to the photo albums on Flickr.

A geography quiz, with pictures

On Friday, January 9, I left this:

For this:

Can you name the state shown in each picture?

Details to follow…

Habits, revisited

It’s that time of year again. Okay, it’s about two weeks after that time of year. But, hey! If you were going to make New Year’s resolutions, you’ve already made them and have some sense of how well they’re working out for you.

I don’t make ’em, or not exactly. I do try to find behaviors that work well for me and to eliminate bad ones. I don’t limit that strategy to once a year, though. I do find myself thinking, come January, what’s worked out for me. Lately I’ve had encouraging success with adding new, good behavior, though I’m a bit iffy on getting rid of ones that are less positive. Ah well, each of us special little snowflakes is a work-in-progress.

Regarding habit change, I’ve mentioned books and web sites on this blog that I’ve found helpful. If you’re interested, here are a few links:

• About the Pomodoro System and Getting Things Done
• On Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit
• A Medusa’s Library post : Productivity

Here’s one I haven’t mentioned before. A guy named Drew Hendricks lists 6 things you should do when you first get up in the morning. I’ve been following most of his suggestions for the last 2-3 months, and I think he may be on to something.

At any rate, I’ve developed a few habits well enough to be convinced of their efficacy. What do I mean by that? I mean I’m writing more. I’m also accomplishing more of my non-writing tasks. So, huzzah!

In case you’re interested, here are some habits that work for me:

• A morning routine which is my own variation of Drew Hendricks’ suggestions:
  1- No screen time for 15 minutes,
  2- Drinking room temperature water first thing; also holding off on coffee for half an hour,
  3- Getting out of bed in such a way that I don’t hurt myself,
  4- Setting three (and no more than three!) feasible goals for the day,
  5- Stretching, and
  6- Meditating. Yes! Meditating! I couldn’t seem to stick to it for the longest time, but I’ve worked up to doing it 15 minutes every morning. Who knows, one of these days I may add an evening session as well.
• Exercise 4-6 days a week. Mens sana in corpore sano, after all.
• Writing. I may not write fiction or a blog post daily, but at the very least I make a journal entry. Every day.
• Making the bed.

That last one surprises even me. I used to think only martinets or uncreative people or other judgmental sticks-in-the-mud worried about making their beds. After all, you’re just going to mess it up again, right? However, I have reconsidered. I’ve heard bed-making referred to as a cornerstone habit. That means it’s one of those habits (exercise is another one) that leads to other good habits. For me, it makes it unlikely that I’ll climb back in and/or stay in my pjs all day.

So those are my positive habits, the ones that help me get things done and generally feel like a worthwhile member of society. Most days.

What works for you? I’d love to read about it in the comments.

Austin Kleon says to Show Your Work

I wish I could remember who first pointed out the work of Austin Kleon to me, so I could give credit where credit is due. Alas and alack, I cannot. However, I can share some tidbits from Show Your Work!, a short book which is kind of about getting your work out there and noticed, but it’s also about how to retain your humanity and learn to do work worth noticing while you figure out how to get noticed.

From Chapter 1 – “You don’t have to be a genius.” There are many valuable tips in this chapter—as in all the chapters—but reading obituaries was one I found particularly surprising/interesting. Kleon says he reads obituaries daily and that obituaries really aren’t about death. They’re about a person’s life. Read a few and you might just decide to do something with your own life before it’s too late. There are tons of reasons to put off working on what’s really important to you. Reading obituaries is a way Kleon inspires himself to make his best contribution.

From Chapter 2  – Think process, not product. If you don’t have a fabulous portfolio of finished work to show people, just let them know what you’re up to. Document it. When you keep track of what you’re doing, you also gain the benefit of seeing your work more clearly. You may even feel encouraged by the progress you’re making.

From Chapter 3  – Share something small every day. This is a natural outgrowth of the previous chapter; the idea is to look at your work and decide what you found most interesting. Scoop up scraps of whatever you’ve worked on and shape it into some interesting bit of media—maybe photos or video—to share on your website or via some other media platform you use, like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. However, you’re eventually going to need a good domain name, which will allow you an easy venue for making what you’re sharing easier  for others to find.

Chapter 4  goodie – Open up your cabinet of curiosities. Share your influences. Our tastes make us who we are. If you love something, stop thinking of it as a guilty pleasure. Own it. It will help you find your artistic tribe. Just remember to give credit where credit is due.

Chapter 5  tidbit – Tell good stories. It would be nice to think that your work speaks for itself, but in reality, people will value it more if they have a sense of what went into it. Study story structure and then share your own stories so they’re interesting enough that your audience cares about how your project turns out. This story should be true, however. Kleon cautions, “Unless you are actually a ninja, a guru, or a rock star, don’t ever use any of these terms in your bio.”

Chapter 6 – Teach what you know. If you learn how to do something, turn around and share it with others. In return, people will help you consider things you hadn’t thought of before, thus teaching you and renewing the cycle.

Chapter 7 bit – Don’t turn into human spam. Or as my sainted mother used to say when Bro, Sis, or I talked about ourselves too much, “Give your ears a chance.” Listen to others, learn from them, and support them by telling others about their work. If you want fans, be a fan.

Chapter 8  – Learn to take a punch. I’ll have to see how this one goes; it seems like it will be the most challenging for me. Maybe, as Kleon suggests, I’ll get better at it with practice. He advises you to relax, breathe, keep putting work out there, roll with the punches, protect your vulnerable areas, and keep your balance. This chapter, like all the others, is one I can’t possibly do justice to with a summary. Read the actual book for suggestions on putting his advice into practice.

Chapter 9 – Sell out. Get over the idea that getting paid for your work somehow makes you less of an artist. Michelangelo got paid for painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, for Pete’s sake. Enjoy the fact that you get paid to do the kind of work you love; that financial support provides you with the opportunity to continue growing, learning, and doing more work.

Chapter 10 – Stick around. If you want to do something, keep doing it no matter whether it looks like you’re a success (don’t rest on your laurels) or failure (don’t quit). Focus on improving your weak areas for the next project. Take a break if you need to. Just don’t forget to get back to it.

In addition to the advice within each chapter, I especially appreciated the bibliography, his list of suggestions for what to do next, and some rough-draftiness that he unflinchingly shared at the end of the book.

As soon as I get through a few other books I’m reading, I plan to delve into Steal Like An Artist, another book by Austin Kleon. In the meantime, I’ll just dip into his web site, http://austinkleon.com,  for the fun of it and—who knows?—maybe some inspiration.

Tea at the Drake, Take 2

After tea–Danny, Lori, Cookie, Cookie Jr., and Sis
I’m the one in the white box

We had tea at the Drake again this year.

Last year, photographers wandered through the Palm Court, taking pictures if people wanted them, but they weren’t there this year. Resourcefully, we took our own pictures with our handy smart phones. I took the one above, and Sis took the rest.

Cookie and Cookie Jr., looking lovely as always

Danny, perusing the tea caddy

I didn’t understand why they gave us only five of each item on the tea caddy when there were six of us. For some things, this didn’t matter; not everyone wanted a cucumber sandwich, for example. However, everyone wanted a scone and a swan-shaped cream puff.

Fabulous puff, right?

So, while we may try a different tea venue next year, it looks like holiday tea is becoming a tradition. Lori and Danny both like it and we like to make them happy.

Pericles at Chicago Shakespeare

Pericles suffered through a lot of shipwrecks

Usually when we see Shakespeare, we have some idea what to expect. Because of my past life as a theatre person, I rarely see an unfamiliar Shakespeare play in production. Either we’ve already seen a particular play (often multiple productions of it, in fact), or I’ve at least read it. However, Pericles, Prince of Tyre is one of those plays you almost never see in production for several reasons. First, it’s not considered one of Shakespeare’s best. Also, most people believe Shakespeare was not the sole author. A skeezy guy named George Wilkins is often credited with the first 9 scenes and Shakespeare with the last 13 or 14. Whenever I studied Shakespeare, it was one of those plays everyone turned up their nose at, so I never even read it.

Because we didn’t know quite what we’d let ourselves in for, and because we were there early enough, we decided to take advantage of one of the great features of Chicago Shakespeare at Navy Pier, the preamble. About an hour before many of the matinee performances, you can hear a lecture about the play you’re about to see; Stephen Bennett from Roosevelt University was the lecturer we heard, and he was excellent.

A good preamble helps place the play in context within Shakespeare’s canon, and the presenting scholar will also talk about the director’s production choices. The director, David Bell, who has a resumé as long as your arm, has wanted to direct Pericles practically forever. Bennett sketched out  some of the liberties Bell took with the script. The main change was doing away with the John Gower character, who was a historic figure (poet and a buddy of Chaucer’s) but not someone most modern audience members would have a clue about. Gower’s speeches were split among various members of the ensemble. For my money, Bell’s adaptation worked beautifully.

Like other Shakespeare “problem plays”, notably my favorite, The Winter’s Tale, there are plot holes you could drive a truck through. That kind of thing doesn’t bother me the way it does many theatregoers. It gave me the opportunity to wisecrack, Mystery Science Theater style. My favorite comments (delivered to Cookie, sotto voce) included: “Kidnapped by pirates is good.” and “She’s only mostly dead.”

Also, I think it would be an interesting experiment to take one of these less-loved Shakespeare plays and try to reimagine it in novel form, maybe explaining the plot holes. I’m mulling the idea over for an upcoming project.

Anyway, if you live in the Chicago area and  this post has piqued your interest, Pericles is still at Navy Pier until January 18, 2015.

2014 in review plus scoreboard update

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s some of what the aforementioned WordPress monkeys told me:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,900 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 32 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

I also promised a scoreboard update. On December 30, 2014, I looked around and noticed this:

I have made a total of six submissions. Pitiful. I have a total of zero acceptances and six rejections, putting me and the publishing universe in a dead heat. Time to pull out one last-ditch effort, to end 2014 as a winner!

My submissions scoreboard now looks like this:

December 31, 2014 — 8 p.m.
Submissions: 8   Acceptances: 0   Rejections: 6

I spent Wednesday afternoon finding a couple of markets for two out of three of my poor little orphan stories. Still need to shop out the last one, but at least I’m ahead for the year.

Hope you had a wonderful holiday season and will have a happy, healthy, prosperous 2015!