Ghost-of-a-Chance

We ordered Chinese tonight, and got a broken fortune cookie. My husband’s response? “Now that’s a misfortune right there.”

 I’m choking on my chicken, people. 

That moment when you keep hearing a soprano velociraptor playing one-sided Marco Polo out in the hallway and realize, oh, no, it’s just the Velcro cat wailing pitifully because you locked him out of the office. 
Woozle. Because of course, it’s Woozle. Never mind that I locked him out because I have cramps, a headache, and writer’s block, and I don’t feel up to fending off his usual shenanigans. By Shenanigans, I mean shaking slobber everywhere, whining, trying to insinuate his fat butt between the desk and my rack, and trying to scale Mount Mom’s-Desk and causing a landslide.

Kid, Mama needs to work! Stay in your box!

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.”

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.

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.)

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.  

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.

Recently, someone asked me “What do you want to accomplish in the next ten years?” They probably expected something entirely different than what I answered. Some folks, surely, must answer that question with “I want to be promoted in my job” or “I want to get married,” or even “I want to own my own home and not have to deal with my bitchy landlady anymore.” My answer perplexed this person, and honestly, it confuses me, too.

I want to be truly finished with pieces after I’ve written them. I don’t want to spend hours, days, weeks, and even months and years wondering how I could have improved them. I don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night and realize I left a huge-ass plot-hole somewhere, spelled someone’s name wrong, or got chapters out of order. I don’t want to go back, read over my stories, think “My GOD that’s crap,” and spend the next several months agonizing over how I can improve the crap. I want to write, proofread, make final edits, and be done with the piece, able to move on without worrying I’ve made some horrible mistake...and no, I’m not just worrying for nothing. I do make horrible mistakes and find them months down the line, frequently enough that it’s given me some nasty recurring writer’s block.

Improving your craft can make you so much more critical of yourself. When I first started writing (we’re talking single digit ages here) I never looked back. Now I have decades of experience and years of education behind me, all geared toward improving my writing...and I can’t stop looking back long enough to look forward.

Maybe it’d be more realistic to say “I want to win the lottery without ever touching a ticket.”

In our going-on ten years together, I’ve lost count of all the wonderful things Cold has earned my gratitude for. He’s saved my life and my heart. He’s brought me out of my shell and supports me when I inevitably crawl back into it to recoup. He’s broadened my interests, made me feel more confident in myself, and taught me that it’s okay to be who I am.

On top of all of that, he’s introduced me to music I would previously have never given a chance. The very idea that I would have lived the rest of my life without ever once hearing AFI’s “Synesthesia” is, to say the least, horrifying. I’ll have to bake this man a potpie sometime soon...after I’m done stabbing the replay button to death yet again. If I ever find somewhere I can buy the song, I might just cry from happiness and embarrass Cold to bits. Alas (or rather, fortunately for him,) the song seems to be unavailable for sale and was released as a hidden track on an album we own.

Replay button, brace yourself – it’s gonna be a while.