Going back to pre-school

So, I had a stellar night of revisions the other night–49 pages, boo-yah! :woot: Of course, I’m paying for it now. I’ve always known the ending of this book needed work, but I never really understood just what needed to be done. I was plodding along last night at a nice stable pace of 5 pages when I read a bit more and discovered I had repeated myself.

I am now going to try something completely different. I am going back to the pre-school for writers. I actually sat down in my classroom today, armed with construction paper, scissors, and glue. I also had the last 5 chapters of my book printed in landscape-style (Aside: I like printing my pages in a book format when I’m revising because I can read faster and I can see the larger flaws faster).

Anyway, I’ll admit there’s something liberating about scissors and glue. I could never do this with an entire novel, but for a section of about 65 pages, it’s very doable. I cut out scenes that I planned to keep, and I glued them down on bright red construction paper. I cut out bits of dialogue I liked, and made one big “trash” heap on another student desk. I’m almost afraid to see how much I cut out, but on the other hand, the stuff I’m keeping is solid. I also made notes about which scenes I need to add that I don’t have.

Next step: reconstructing it all. I’ve decided that the best way to move forward is to take my current 284 pages and save them as a separate file. I finished cutting and gluing one chapter today and tonight I’m going to retype it from scratch. As I retype it, I’m going to layer it with the description and emotion it needs. I also have two new scenes to write.

I made some pretty critical mistakes in this book, but they are fixable. I also wrote a lot of wasted scenes. Maybe I’ll use them in another book someday, but they don’t belong here. I think one of the toughest aspects of cutting scenes is the knowledge that I’ll have to write new ones to replace them. I dread that. But maybe, somehow I’ll learn from this.

In other news, two of my friends Stephanie Tyler and Larissa Ione just sold their first books within days of each other! Way to go!:dance: I just love hearing good news like that. It keeps me hopeful for my own dreams.

For those of you who write, what’s your revision process?

Dead Fish

My Dot Moms column is up today. Go check it out!

So, the Tank of Death ™ is running the same as ever. After replacing several of the corpses for my son’s birthday, we were doing fine until Friday when the male guppy went to the big Fishbowl in the Sky again. :flying: So we decided to switch to a new filter and add some live plants, in order to help the fish live a little longer.

Yesterday, we hit a new low. We bought a male guppy and another neon tetra. The tetra was on his last rites before he even got inside the tank. Now that’s terrible! We found him stuck to the filter this morning. Ew.

My son, of course, was inconsolable. “Guppy’s dead! Let’s flush him!” :shark:

“No, sweetie, that was a tetra.”

“Oh. I want to flush him!!” :mallet:

Looks like we’ll be making another stop at the pet store after church today. :coffee:

Hormonally-Charged Little People

So, over the past few weeks I’ve been a bit perplexed by a certain situation. I have a particular student–we’ll call him Bob to protect the socially-challenged. Bob is very tall for a twelve-year-old, an average student, and his behavior used to be right in line with the typical boy. Yes, he believes that knocking down his friends and laughing when someone makes a mistake will earn him the Gold Medal for Super Personality. :sword: He’s in my homeroom English class and also my afternoon history class.

In the past few weeks or so, Bob has gone from being a normal boy, to a spaz. He blurts out whatever is on his mind at the time.

Me: “Who can name the causes of the Great Depression?”
Bob: “I have to blow my nose.”
Me: (ignoring Bob) “Anyone?”
Bob: (laughs hysterically and gets a tissue. Tries to shoot the tissue into the wastebasket and fails miserably.)

For the longest time, I questioned many different possibilities. Was Bob just being a goof-off? :loser: Why was he so different from first period until fourth? Did aliens snatch his brain and eat it? (Always a possibility, with middle-schoolers)

Then, my Inspector Gadget mind went to work. I suddenly discovered that Bob was blowing his nose a LOT. Now, yes, it is cold season. But the boy was using enough Kleenex that I wondered if his sinuses were, in fact, inhabited by the aforementioned aliens.

Clue #2: Bob would walk across the room to the trash can furthest from his desk, to throw the used tissue away. He would hover over the trash can and blow his nose yet AGAIN.

Hmmm….

So yesterday, I watched him and I saw his face get the goofiest grin while he blew his nose at least three times. Bob found a girl that he likes. And her chair happens to be right by the trashcan.

As you can imagine, she is falling all over herself in love with Snot Boy. Because, after all, what is more romantic than having a boy blow his nose right next to your chair? Repeatedly?

Poor girl.

Reading Something New

I decided that after many years of the Tom Clancy hype, I’d try reading one of his books again. The first time, I think I started with Clear and Present Danger. It was about ten years ago that I tried it, and I just couldn’t get into it. My husband advised me to try Patriot Games instead, and it’s moving much quicker.

I thought it would be interesting to compare men’s military spy/thriller fiction (whatever you want to call it) with romance. One of the trickier aspects of writing romance is getting inside the male mindset and yet making it appealing to women. We love alpha males, but they can’t be too cavemen in their demeanor or we’d toss the book against the wall.

Clancy creates a likable character in Jack Ryan, but I just about fell over when I read a few lines about the wife’s character, Cathy Ryan. As a surgeon, she has that no-nonsense air about her, and that part I could buy. When Jack Ryan is wounded and their four-year-old daughter is present at the scene, I had a bone to pick with the dialogue Clancy chose. In her efforts to save Ryan’s life, Cathy yells at a policeman (in regard to her daughter), “Get her away from here.”

Maybe it’s the mom in me overreacting, but I would NEVER say that about my kid. I might yell to the policeman, “Take her, please.” Or to my child, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” I wouldn’t yell, “Get her away from here!” To me, it just sounds harsh.

Now, I could COMPLETELY buy it if a father said that. Not a mother. My husband and I had a disagreement. He claims that a doctor wouldn’t care about her child–that all she’d be thinking about is saving her husband’s life. It’s true that you would be thinking about your husband bleeding on the pavement, but I’d be just as concerned about my 4-year-old wandering into the path of a stray terrorist. :sword:

I won’t belabor the issue, but it was interesting to see how a man would write the character of a woman. It’ll be interesting to see as the book progresses, whether he pulls her off in a convincing manner.

What’s your opinion on Tom Clancy novels?

The Joy of Baking

One of the things I love to do most when the weather is nasty is bake. Whether it’s warm loaves of banana bread (what else am I going to do with overripe bananas?), fudgy brownies, or cookies, I enjoy making something delicious. :hungry:

Oh, I’ve had my share of cooking disasters. I learned not to trust candy thermometers when my Christmas toffee came out like burned sugar. :ick: I’ve had cakes that were burned on the top and raw in the middle. Clearly a defective oven. It could not be that the temperature was too high. Nope.

Lately, cooking has become more challenging. For whatever reason, my children can be playing in the most remote location of the house, but they have little sensors that go off when I open the cabinet for the mixing bowl. It’s like an army drill sergeant yells, “Go, maggots! Your mother needs your help, now move, move, MOVE!” I have to pry little hands off my legs and suddenly I’m surrounded by chairs. Two vertically-challenged toddlers will scale the chairs to reach the countertop, demanding, “Help! Help Mommy!”

I’ve tried distracting them with wooden spoons and pots. No, no. That will never work when there is real cooking happening around them. They want to be in on the action. They want to crack eggs, fling batter across the kitchen, and of course, taste the dough. (My engineer husband is wincing at the thought of the salmonella quotient in raw eggs.)

Me: “No, don’t touch that! You can’t eat melted butter!”
Daughter: “Want this! Taste!”
Son: “Mom, can I stir?” (He says this as he sends a gob flying off the spoon toward his sister.)

Yes, it’s challenging. But in a way, it’s a bonding moment between the three of us. And no one is prouder than my little munchkins when they proudly announce to their dad, “Dad! It’s ready!” Or in the words of my daughter, “Eat, eat, eat!”

What do you enjoy baking? Any cooking disaster stories to share?

Avoiding the Stack

I teach one class of English, as well as my four history classes. A few weeks ago, I set a due date for a science fiction story the students had been working on, and I now have a stack of twenty-five stories to grade. I’ve been avoiding them like a dreaded disease. Somehow, I wonder if editors feel the same way about manuscript stacks.

Every once in a while, a child will write a compelling story that’s fun to read, and not an excruciating ordeal of run-on sentences and fragments. Those are the ones I don’t mind grading. In a way, it’s also easy to give F’s out to the students who write a half-page story, scrawled in pencil, with misspelled words. Hey, they wrote less–easier on me.

But now that I know my students, I can see a name and predict their grade. It’s not often (okay, never) that they somehow rise above their typical writing pattern and give me a high quality story. The ones who enjoy writing well tend to write well, no matter what. The ones who don’t write well don’t care enough to put more effort into it.

Do editors view writers the same way, I wonder? Do they see a name and think–”Great! This will be fun to read.” Or do they groan and think, “Oh, no. Not another one from this author.”

Do they avoid their manuscript stack the way I avoid grading papers? I have to be in the right mood to grade stories. I put on some good 80’s music, get a nice red pen, and attack the pile. When I’m in the Zone, I can read and grade quickly. All too often, I have so many other priorities, I’d rather do anything but grade those essays.

The Powers That Be are also clueless about why the teachers dislike staying after school so much. Could it be that it’s because we are mandated to hold the Minions of Evil? That we are tortured with an hour and ten minutes of hammering in facts and figures to children who don’t want to be there and would rather throw staples at each other? That we’re not supposed to keep the other students with us, the ones with C’s and D’s who are actually trying to improve? Wow, what a concept. I think this argument is looming toward a battle. I’m hoping they’ll see it our way and understand that the old way of inviting children who need help was the best way. The ones who refused to stay for help only cause trouble anyway. Let them stay home so we can help the children who do want help.

The Perfect Valentine’s Gift

You know, it’s funny how we were talking the other day about the Geeks Who Loved Us when we were young and stupid. Probably most of them are millionaires and pretty hunky.

The conversation made me laugh, because do you know what my darling husband bought me for Valentine’s Day? A hard drive.

Now get your minds out of the gutter. I have enough problems with Spam as it is. Ahem.

He bought an external hard drive with a USB port so I could back up my writing files and have more space on the computer. It has 200 GB of space. :woot: Gotta love that.

I also received some chocolate and a lottery ticket. :dance: So, all in all, a very nice Valentine’s Day.

Last, but not least, I received an e-mail from the editor I’m working with. She said that most likely a decision on my book would be made at the end of March. I really really hope she meant March 2006. :help: In the meantime, I’m 1/3 of the way finished with my revisions on a different book and I’m hoping to have that done by the end of this month. We’ll see. It needs some reconstructive surgery in places.

What did you get for Valentine’s Day?

And the winner is….

And the winner is….Amy! Congratulations! :hello2: Email me your mailing address and I’ll send your romance novel and chocolates. Amy correctly guessed that my battleship feet are size 10. And though it might seem that a size 10 would be easy to find, you’re more likely to locate boxes of dead-otter shoes than strappy cute shoes.

Don’t even get me started on the long pointy-toe stillettos. They make even small feet seem huge. I tried a pair on once, and I swear, it doubled the length of my foot. Very frightening.

Thanks to all for the shoe recommendations. I think I’ll have to just order shoes online if I want the nice ones.

Let’s talk about the forthcoming Valentine’s Day for a moment, shall we? I won’t ask you what you enjoy receiving or stories about your sweetie. Instead, let’s revisit our adolescent years. Do you remember when certain school clubs would sell Valentines to be delivered? Oh, the horror. I hated Delivery Day. It was like being Charlie Brown all over again. I would dream that maybe somewhere, somehow, a secret admirer would send me a Valentine. I’d be on the edge of my seat when the Delivery person would come by.

Most years, nada. Zip. Zilch. I’d come home and my parents would have a little heart box of candy waiting for me. God bless ‘em. But how pitiful is that?

One year, I was in seventh grade, and I just about fell over when the Valentine Delivery person brought TWO Valentines to me. And they weren’t from my friends! :headspin: They were actually from A Secret Admirer! :woot:

From the horrible sloppy handwriting, I deduced (Okay, yes, I was ALL OVER that analysis like Nancy Drew with a magnifying glass and a bright light–Forensics Investigations had nothing on me.)….that the Valentines were from the boy who sat in front of me in history class. Michael Weiss was his name. He was unusually tall for his age and had the Clark Kent glasses. Okay, so he wasn’t the class hunk. But the class geek melted me into a little pool of Ahhhhh….

He never revealed it. But I figured it out. So, here’s to all the boys who will make some girl’s heart go pitter-pat when they send a secret Valentine. :beer: Gotta love ‘em.

So, did anyone ever send you a Secret Admirer Valentine?

Winter Wonderland and a Contest!

The children are being spoiled rotten by their grandparents. You can tell my daughter is completely broken up. She hates having to eat M&Ms all the time and getting everything her little heart desires.
Grandma clearly loves her.

In other news, it’s snowing here in Maryland!
I’m hoping I’ll be able to drive home tomorrow without any problems. It’s raining where we live, so I’m enjoying this while I can.

I am also on a Shoe Quest. :sword: I unfortunately was cursed with big whomping battleships for feet and buying shoes is very difficult. I can’t look around to find a cute pair; instead, I look at all the stacks of boxes to see if even one of them is in my size. Today I found a pair of brown furry pumps with a fake topaz. It looked like a furry otter had died on my foot. Um, not quite what I was looking for.

I also would love a pair of boots. I see these glamorous, sleek leather boots and think–”Oh! I would love those.” But I end up looking like Wonder Woman on crack.

Just for a fun, February contest, see if you can guess what size shoes I wear. First person with the correct answer gets a Valentine’s Day surprise package (chocolate and a romance novel). If you can give me the name of a good online store where I can buy a pair of decent shoes that don’t look like I’ve strapped surfboards onto my feet, I’ll throw in a bonus book. Enjoy! :beer:

Just for a Smile

So, on Sunday, they cancelled CCD and my son and I enjoyed some quiet time at Mass. He’s really good in church (unlike Demon Baby who was in solitary confinement with her father). I can count on him to sit on my lap, snuggle close, and in general be very good. It’s nice.

As a reward, when it was time for the Offertory, I gave him my envelope to put in the plate along with a dime and penny of his own. The basket came his way and he dutifully dropped the envelope in. He kept the money clenched firmly in his fist.

“Honey, you need to put the money in the plate,” I urged gently.

He looked aghast. “But Mommy, I need it to go play golf!”

Now where in the world did that one come from?