thinking ahead: nanowrimo 2009

JUST 96 DAYS UNTIL WE START WRITING OUR NEW NOVELS! Odds bodkins!

Does this swing our verge, my friends? Why yes, yes, I believe it does.

WHO'S WITH ME???

excerpt from an email

He asked: What is the most important thing in your life? What drives you, or what is your motivation?

I replied:

The most important thing for me is probably communion. And by that I don't mean what goes on in church buildings on Sundays. ;o) I'm talking about communion: sharing my thoughts with someone--the other person sharing their thoughts with me--in a way that is transparent, vulnerable, honest, gritty. It's inextricably interwoven with genuine emotion, empathy, understanding. The kind of meeting-of-the-minds-and-hearts that happens after you've been talking for hours and hours and it's four o'clock in the morning, you're so tired you're delirious and yet each of your senses is sharpened, hyper-aware, perfectly attuned to the other person's wavelength. Four in the morning is the ideal time, but communion can happen anytime, anyplace, as long as both people are laying things out The Way They Really Are. You get to the point where fewer and fewer words are necessary...until just looking each other in the eye suffices for communicating a universe, a googolplex of thoughts.

This can happen with other humans. This can also happen with God.

As for my motivation.....I guess it's to become the kind of human capable of that level of communion--sustained.

If I could reach this goal....everything else would fall into place.

this one's for all you book-lovers out there...

Hi friends. Read this: literary agent Nathan Bransford on Kindle, Orwell, and Amazon's Trying To Take Over The World.

For my writer friends: Nathan Bransford is a Most Extraordinary Blogger Who Will Teach You All You Need To Know About Agents, Query Letters, The Publishing Industry, And Why You Should Hate The Lakers.

Also, I got to meet him in April, and he's nice.


Also, I still need to trim my fingernails.

status update

My neck still hurts. It felt better yesterday (after Refinnej worked on it on Tuesday--thank you again!!!), but the betterness has not progressed into today. Alas, alack. I feel discouraged. And irritated with vertebrae. Why do I need those, again?

Also, I need to trim my fingernails. They're interfering with typing.

That's all.


Oh, and I have neat writer friends. :o)

amen, amen and amen again.

Air and light and time and space

by Charles Bukowski

“-you know, I’ve either had a family, a job, something
has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
For the first time in my life I’m going to have a place and the time to
create.”

no baby, if you’re going to create
you’re going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare,
you’re going to create with part of your mind and your
body blown
away,
you’re going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.

hey programmers, two technical questions for ya

Edit: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a toolbar. I repeat, we have a toolbar. Thanks, Aaron!!!
14:44pm

1. How do I get the Blogger toolbar back? (Toolbar has search function and "next blog" option, etc.) I used to have it, but when I changed blog templates, it disappeared. If you'll tell me where to find the toolbar code and where it goes in the template code, I can probably fix it myself. If I can't, I'll ask. :o)

2. What would need to be done to set up a reply-to-comments function on Blogger?


Thanks! I give you all virtual chocolate.

to whom it may concern...

...I did manage to dissolve whatever was blocking my writing. Yesterday morning, I moved my laptop from my desk in the office to the kitchen table...

...and BAM!

More than 3000 words in two days. On a brand-spanking-new story*. Yes, it's the rough first draft...but it's not drivel.

This swings my verge, Gentle Readers. It really, really does.



*Working title: "Deren's Story." Now, ain't that all sortsa hunky-dory creative? ;oD

for my fellow fantasy enthusiasts**

What do you expect from outlaws in your fantasy reads?

What's your favorite thing about outlaws?

What's your least favorite thing?

What do you consider cliche* about them?

Maybe you consider outlaws-in-fantasy to be cliche altogether, I don't know. ;o)

Whatever, just let me know what you think!



*Please forgive the lack of correctly accented 'e's.

**Addendum: Although I am interested in feedback from all of you, my faithful readers ;o) and though I do appreciate my fellow ladies' opinions, I am particularly interested in hearing about these things from the guys' perspective. So, gentlemen, speak up, please! I need to hear how you view this aspect of the fantasy world! :o)

two items of ridiculousness

1. Cellulite.
There is absolutely no logical reason why my thighs are not as muscular as my calves. Not that my calves are entirely free of fat, but they're doing a lot better than what's above them. There is no logical reason for this. Cellulite is a cosmic joke on women. Gah.

2. Journalists who don't know what subject-verb agreement are.
Error intentional. 'Nuff said.


P.S. I have had a severe case of writer's block over the last ten days. This does not swing my verge in the least. I'm going to do something about it today. When I figure out what that something is, I'll let you know. ;o)

thinking more cultural thoughts....and others

Last week, we got to hang out with various old friends who were visiting Oklahoma for various reasons. Two of these friends were Randy and Bri, who work with the church in Dresden and were here on furlough. I think being around them is probably part of the reason I've had Germany specifics on the brain for the last few days.

Anyway, one of the specifics this morning is Joe, our Iraqi friend from the Turkish place in downtown Chemnitz. And what I'm thinking is that I'm sad we never got to have him and his wife over for dinner. I would have loved to find out more about his culture than what he was able to communicate to us over the busy lunch counter at Kervansaray. I wish we could have learned more about each other's cultures and discovered more common ground. I wish I could ask him how he feels about Americans now and whether or not he still likes us. I wonder if he has been able to go home to visit Kirkuk. I wonder if his daughter knows her grandmother yet. I wonder if his mother and sister are still alive.

How do you brighten the corner where you are--in the midst of a war? Forget all the political claptrap, forget the justifications and reasons and excuses on both sides. The definition of war is humans killing each other. The definition of war is humans snuffing out lights instead of making them shine brighter. The definition of war is humans destroying opportunities for sympathy, compassion, and mutual understanding.

If the goal of human existence is to cross the bridge which spans the breach between humanity and God--and I believe this is the goal--then those who have seen the bridge need to be able to tell others about it.
We cannot tell others about the bridge unless we first learn a way to communicate with them.
Humans cannot communicate with one another unless they find common reference points.
This means sharing thoughts, feelings, experiences, cultures, personal background, collective history, language, habits, traditions, taboos, hopes, fears, dreams.
We all have a responsibility to share these things with each other. Not because we're American or German or Iraqi or French or British or Finnish or Chinese or Venezuelan or whatever. But because we're all human.

I wish Ed and I could have exchanged all of that with Joe. He gave us a small taste of his culture--both literally and figuratively! ;o) --and we gave him a small taste of ours. It wasn't nearly enough. But in our brief conversations across the lunch counter at Kervansaray, Joe brightened his corner of my world. I hope I succeeded in doing the same for him.

As always, I don't have the answers to any of these dilemmas. I don't even have a personal answer to the question of whether war is fundamentally right or wrong. I'm just thinking out loud and letting the world overhear.

i've probably shared this before...

...but if I did, I'm gonna do it again. Take that, you Evil Imps of Repetitive Redundancy!

Living in the modern age,
death for virtue is the wage.
So it seems in darker hours.
Evil wins, kindness cowers.

Ruled by violence and vice
We all stand upon thin ice.
Are we brave or are we mice,
here upon such thin, thin ice?

Dare we linger, dare we skate?
Dare we laugh or celebrate,
knowing we may strain the ice?
Preserve the ice at any price?

--Dean Koontz
in "Dragon Tears"

mafias gnawn thru...

...or: fun with anagrams.

Today, I wrote a poem for which I required anagrams, so I spent several hours playing around with this online anagram generator. From said generator, I derived a grey jot--I mean, great joy. I thought you all might receive a similar jaunty of moo amount of joy, so here are a few of the anagrams I came across today. Feel free to interpret at will!

thyroidal woof
holy woo, adrift
wily foot hoard
Hen with eatables!
I linger on mops, yet.
some wise fatheads
fatheads meowing
antisera de-fog
magenta shrews
tame hogness
tea theism (I think I am becoming a believer.)
A seventh moo howled!
I linger on my pesto.
Seesaw thongs mow. (Oh dear.)

Thus ends the fungi wash mantra. Tune in next week for another rousing round of A Ham Fig Nun Warts!

Sincerely Yours,

None Any Cuter ;o)

roll call

If you read this, leave a comment. I wanna know you're there.

I'm going to go paint my toenails now.