Ghost-of-a-Chance

It's Thanksgiving. My mother-in-law invited herself over for dinner and will be here around five. I barely managed to get the place clean. My husband is cranky, I've got cooking left to do, and Woozle just tried to pee on his sister.

...at least the apartment smells like orange cupcakes.

Writing Advice from my former professors

^{largely paraphrased}

• If a point can be delivered with a pinprick, avoid substituting a sledgehammer unless the situation really calls for a sledgehammer. In that case, illustrate the fallout from said sledgehammer.
• There are good writers, and there are popular writers; rarely are the two the same, but overtime, they may become viewed as the same. CoughcoughSHAKESPEAREcough.
• If your narration has to include “somehow,” you’ve probably got a plothole. Get a shovel and fill the damned thing.
• Books aren’t gardens – take it easy on the flowery prose or your readers may start sneezing.
• Hook them in the first sentence or you’ll have to fight to reel them in; land them in the first paragraph, or all you’ll have is a fish story.
• Know your audience and choose your vocabulary accordingly; learned middle age Brits may know what it means to dandle a baby but teenagers will assume you’re a sex offender.
• Dickinson never said anyways. Austen never used the word orbs. Orwell didn’t write bugged eyes. If you’re going to emulate someone, pick someone who knows what they’re doing, not a teenager who just discovered twilight and writes in emojis.
• Mark Twain. You either love him or you hate him, and if you love him, chances are, you also kinda hate him a little bit.
• Avoid the monologue – your characters need to breathe! They need to process things! They aren’t standing alone on a stage bitching at a bleached human skull, let them be interrupted!
• Adverbs. Know when they contribute to the story, and slaughter them when they don’t. It’s okay to gate-keep parts of speech.
• Sheep is already plural, you bloat-brained mindless self-important turnips. Pluralizing plural words will earn you a failing grade and a sound brain-dusting.
• Keep a hard copy of common references handy while writing, especially a decent dictionary. It takes a minute to flip through pages; checking online leads you to Facebook which leads you to Twitter, then your favorite blog, then five or six click-bait articles, then next thing you know, it’s one and your assignment was due at midnight.
• English is bullshit. Next question.
• We’re taught that Paragraphs need to be 4-6 sentences, but guess what? Paragraphs aren’t prescriptions. Sometimes they need to be smaller. Sometimes, larger. Always, they’re prescribed for one speaker at a time except in extenuating circumstances. Start a new one for each new condition and each new patient, or you’ll never break down the text walls.
• You can’t apply the same rules and fixes to every single situation. Learn what to apply and when, otherwise you’ll just confuse yourself.
• Vary your fucking sentence structure and length, you filthy rotten philistines. Don’t line the entire page with rows of naked uncut spaghetti noodles and olives and expect the reader to call it delicious! Syntax! Variety! Don’t leave your readers lost and hungry!
• Do! Your! Fecking! Research! You! Lazy! Impudent! Brats! Don’t write about high wind warnings on planets with no atmosphere or gravity or you’ll look like an out of this world idiot.

Things dog people should know about cats:

• They don’t hate everything – some of them just have resting bitch behavior.
• They don’t want to kill you in your sleep – they want to cuddle...your face.
• Some are picky about food. Others? “Feed me right now oR i WiLl ScReAm!!!”
• The fat ones are the cuddliest. The skinny ones make good parrots.
• They’re not lazy – they conserve energy for their one-am zoomies. No, they don’t care if that doesn’t work with your schedule.
• Hairballs...that’s really just a euphamism for “fur-filled barf-cigar.”
• If you treat them right, and don’t treat them like dogs, chances are they’ll love you for life. If you treat them like dogs, they’ll become assholes.
• On the other hand, some really are just assholes from the start. It’s a toss-up.
• Toe-beans. ‘nuff said.

Brought to you by my two babies, Heiferlump Chance and Woozle Thomas...one of whom is screaming for food right now. Cats.

I’m so ready for Fall.

...if I break my neck on the stairs tomorrow, that’s NOT what I meant.

My brain does the weirdest shit sometimes.

A little-known fact about PTSD: even when it’s ‘managed,’ it can affect your ability to concentrate and focus in entirely awkward ways. In my case, this often means losing concentration when there’s background noise, getting distracted, and visually blending words, sentences, and lines together when I’m struggling to focus. Blame hypervigilance and its many little cohorts.

Stressful? Very.
Annoying? Definitely.
Amusing? Sometimes.

This is one of the funny moments. I’m doing research on TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) for the next chapter of Shifting the Paradigm, specifically looking for details about common materials used for cranial plates. (...I may need help.) I hit a generic article, beginning...

Quote

Brain injuries can be acquired in a variety of ways, including:

...and I began scanning down the bullets on the list. I stopped – THAT doesn’t sound right! – I double-checked.

...yep. I seriously managed to read

• Haemorrhage; 

and

• Disorders (e.g. Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis)

and visually combined them into Hemorrhoids. The funny part? There are folks I know IRL for whom TBI by hemorrhoids could be a valid threat...because...you know...they’re such massive buttheads.

...I’m gonna shut up now.  

Fair warning: next person to call me "Gimpy" gets my cane up their ass. 

(...I'm looking at you, ColdWarriors. I know where you sleep.)

The state of the world has finally convinced me: humans are too ridiculous for words.
From here on out, I choose to identify as a porg...

...because I, too, am small, awkward, chunky, incredibly useless, frequently in the way, and undeniably adorable, and I, too, make obnoxious sounds to communicate with others of my species.

Next chapter of A New Lease on Life – “61: Forgiveness Goes Both Ways” – is complete, sent out for beta-reading, and with a little luck, should go live on ALL SITES (except Tumblr because Tumblr is run by censor-happy dickbags) by the end of the month! 

And just think: it only took almost a YEAR to get that chapter completed.  Kimber Bryant is, again, a very large part of the delay. She’s so hard to write, I swear, sometimes I want to just give in and kill her off AGAIN. Forget second chances in other worlds, it’s too hard to get in her headspace to deal with writing her often. At least we only have two more Kimber-centric chapters before we can get back to our regular programming.

...why did I commit myself to her arc? I must be a masochist or something.

THIS is why I have no faith in Reverse Dictionary. Granted, I suck at summarizing phrases and that doesn’t help the AI anyway, but its best guess for “Someone who has had wrong done to them” is VIRGIN?!

...I can’t. I just can’t even.

Quote

 

For the first time in his life, Leon was entirely, utterly alone, and with no end in sight. Unbidden, he recalled his brother’s final words to him: it was always you or me...now it’s just you. Yet again, he wondered what Norton meant by that; yet again, he wondered if, in some backward way, it meant only one of us will survive this life, so I’m choosing you to do it. The suspicion always left a twisting, burning, aching feeling in his gut—something somewhere in the messy middleground between resentment, heartache, and resignation. That middleground was nothing new – before Norton’s sudden and grisly death, it was where Leon’s heart inevitably landed after any length of time around him.

...and that, Leon admitted if only to himself, was what hurt the most.

 

 

Excerpt from A New Lease on Life – 61: Forgiveness is for the Victimized (WIP)

Sometimes when I read back over what I’ve written, it feels like I just vomited up words on a page, swept it into a pile, and called it good. Other times, like this, I wonder if I carved them out of my chest and walked away without realizing a piece of my heart was missing.  All I meant to do was get into the groove of the chapter and I stabbed myself right in the feels.

*From a WIP/rough draft, no checking done yet – expect mis-comma-ing all over the place and maybe a spelling/grammar error or two.)

Grammarly had a blonde moment. Grammarly identified “blonde” as two different incorrectly spelled words somehow jammed together. 

This is why you always, always, ALWAYS either do your own proof-reading or have a beta proof-read your drafts instead of just running them through spellcheck and accepting all corrections. Grammarly’s free checker is, so far, the best I’ve come across, but it works best in combination with proof-reading. No checking program can replace proofreading.

The difference between this site’s forums and FFnet’s forums is...uh...what’s a good solid word for “incredible?” There’s no doubt which of the two is better.

FFnet forums are plagued with simple, honest, non-aggressive questions which are subject to aggressive dogpiling, bullying, retributive reporting, and immaturity from users who don’t comprehend that you can disagree with someone without that disagreement making them a horribly nasty and evil person AND without being an utter dickbag about it. I’ve seen questions about site functions and guidelines turn into cyber-bullying sessions that have made people log off for weeks to recover; many of these times, I’ve given up on getting my answer to track the bullied user down and reassure them only to find out they were brought to tears and considering deleting their accounts entirely. The immaturity and bullying on that site is appalling, and even more so that it’s allowed to continue without repercussions. 

AFF forums? I’m looking for a thread to get answers from; instead, I just found a topic titled “Uses for a pet demon” and sprayed hot tea out my nose. No attacks in the replies, just people having fun with the idea and being – GASP! – rational human beings! Even more, users replying are – if you can believe it – JOKING about it! I feel like a kid who heard “Detention” but instead wound up at Disney World for the week. Plus, I can say someone’s being a dickbag without being reported for profanity, and I can write “this hit me hard” without the censors leaving only “me hard.” That's always awkward.

I love this site, and I love its users. Y’all are awesome. If only the site was easier to navigate and use on my tablet and if only it had better log-in security, I’d love it twice as much. Either way, it’ll be a while before I bother with FFnet’s forums again.

Now I just need to find a thread for language research & resources...

Listening to Loreena McKennitt….because only in Celtic folk music do people respond to finding a drowned woman by making a musical instrument from her corpse.

“The swans swim so bonny, oh.”